I'm not a big fan of "gotcha" blogging, but this struck my fancy.

I've been reading with interest the debates surrounding Jonah Goldberg's new book "Liberal Fascism." Admittedly, I have yet to read it, but I did page through it at my local bookstore, and was struck by the epigraph at the top of the first chapter, taken from "An early version of the Cole Porter song "You're the Top" caught my attention. It reads:

"You're the top! You're the Great Houdini! You're the top! You are Mussolini!"

Goldberg uses Porter's praise of Mussolini as an example of American Liberals' sympathy for fascism in the 1930s.

Having just seen a production of Anything Goes, the musical in which "You're the Top" is featured, I decided to see just how "early" this version was. As it turns out, not only was the "Mussolini" version not "early" it wasn't even penned by Porter.

Goldberg most likely used a passage from Stanley Payne's A History of Fascism: 1914-1945 as the basis for his "early version" assertion.

However, it appears that the "Mussolini" line appeared first in the 1935 London production, which was adapted by P.G. Wodehouse in an effort to make some of the American references in the songs more in line with British popular culture. It should be noted that the previous link, as well as this one are sourced to people connected with the Porter estate, who would understandably have an interest in passing the blame for this lyric to Wodehouse. Still it's hardly a certainty that Porter actually penned those words at any point, let alone an early version.

All of this was mildly amusing, considering this quote leads off the opening chapter of the book with a possible error. It jumped from amusing to postworthy, when, in my research efforts i came across this 1999 article by Jonah Goldberg. The article begins:

"In 1934 old barriers were torn down in societies around the world. In the United States Cole Porter wrote the score for Anything Goes. In Germany, Hitler thought anything goes as well and he ordered the murder of Austrian Chancellor Englebert Dolfuss. That very year the government of the United States sanctioned the murder of John Dillinger. Also in the United States, Franklin Roosevelt launched a series of social programs to temper capitalism."

Goldberg then goes on to compare list a few more events from 1934 that were destructive in one way or another. But, in the next paragraph, as he sets up his column bashing a PBS documentary for conflating unrelated events that happened contemporaneously, he writes:

Now, anybody who read the above paragraph with a glimmer of attention and even a dim spark of intelligence would find at least a few things wrong. Yes, all of these things happened in 1934. But the idea, for example, that Cole Porter's Anything Goes has anything to do with Nazi machinations in Europe is at least silly and is certainly offensive to many. (emphasis mine)

Silly, indeed.

A Personal Memorial

I have not seen much attention payed to a heart-wrenching op-ed in Sunday's Post from BU professor Andrew Bachevich, who lost his son in Iraq earlier this month. The column, which you should read in it's entirety is a damning indictment not only of the proponents of the war, but of its critics, for whom Bachevich has been a prominent voice, as well. He writes of his own public opposition to the war:

Not for a second did I expect my own efforts to make a difference. But I did nurse the hope that my voice might combine with those of others -- teachers, writers, activists and ordinary folks -- to educate the public about the folly of the course on which the nation has embarked. I hoped that those efforts might produce a political climate conducive to change. I genuinely believed that if the people spoke, our leaders in Washington would listen and respond.

This, I can now see, was an illusion.

The people have spoken, and nothing of substance has changed. The November 2006 midterm elections signified an unambiguous repudiation of the policies that landed us in our present predicament. But half a year later, the war continues, with no end in sight.

As we listen to the debate on the war play out in the coming months, we should keep Bachevich's words close at hand. For whom, and to whom are our political leaders really speaking, and when they do speak what are they actually saying? Bachevich faults himself for, despite what he saw as his best efforts, doing nothing. Is anyone, apart from the troops in the field, doing anything more?

One part inspiration...

Peter Levine offers a take on the competing ideas of manipulation and eloquence in politics.

I think his point is a good one, and I've struggled a great deal recently trying to come to terms with my own internal conflict about the power of rhetoric in modern political discourse.

I think he may be a bit off in how he approaches the issue, however. The conflicting ideas are not manipulation and eloquence, but manipulation and inspiration.

I too am frustrated that political messages today are focus group and consultant tested to the point that they say next to nothing at all. I don't object to the practice of focus grouping messages or even object to the influence of consultants. I think both of these inputs can be valuable in the hands of a politician with courage to stand behind his arguments, and who is not afraid to challenge those who listen to him once and a while. The problem is the message itself, not the route it takes to get there.

We have a great deal of manipulation - through fearmongering of various sorts, half truths regarding policy implications, and good old fashioned obfuscation. What we lack is true inspiration. Sure, someone like Barack Obama occasionally shows flashes of inspiring rhetoric, but he hasn't really called anyone to action yet.

Therein lies the major flaw in contemporary political rhetoric. We are told many things, but nothing is really asked of us. That is what separates inspiration from manipulation. Even if Lincoln had focused group the Gettysburg Address, it's likely he still would have asked us "to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced." The closest we've come in recent memory is being inspired to purchase big ticket items to spur the economy in the wake of 9/11.

Inspiration can come from focus group tested rhetoric, it can even come from consultants. But it must come from a leader who is not afraid to ask those listening to contribute something. That is the point at which private virtue becomes a public voice, and that is what we are sorely lacking in politics today.

Farewell to a true civic patriot

I was saddened yesterday to learn of the passing of a man I barely knew.

Cole Campbell, Dean of the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada-Reno, and former editor of the Virginian-Pilot and St. Louis Post Dispatch, died last Friday in a tragic auto accident on an icy road.

I spoke with Cole only a handful of times on the phone, but I feel a deep connection to his work. If you read the New York Times piece about his death here, you'll learn that Cole was a "supporter" of what is called public journalism. Cole really was more than a supporter, he was a pioneer, and the movement that he help to create was not only ahead of its time, it's ahead of our time.

A better perspective into his life and work can be found through the eyes of Rich Harwood and Noel Mcafee. Mcafee writes:

He was a philosopher who happened to be a journalist. One of the first
times I met him, when I was not too long out of graduate school, was at a
meeting somewhere unremarkable, where the place that caught his fancy was the
nearby bookstore. On the bus back to the hotel he pulled books out of the
plastic bag to show me his finds. All manner of intellectual fodder about
postmodernism, public philosophy, John Dewey, literary criticism. Frankly I
don’t remember. I just recall that it was the sort of reading that my fellow
graduate students and I would read, not what the former editor of the St. Louis
Dispatch would read.

But Cole was more than a thinker. He worked to put his ideas into action, and learned first hand how difficult that could be. He strived to create a civic space in newspapers that had never been there before. He did this for the benefit of this own community, but also worked to bring those same spaces to communities across the nation. He possessed the true spirit of a civic patriot, and that spirit lives on.

If you want to learn more about Public Journalism (also known as Civic Journalism) this article is a good place to start.

More on civic spaces

Marc Fisher of the Washington Post has a few thoughts on a proposed new DC library.

For those not familiar with DC geography, the proposed site is about 3 blocks from the Verizon Center (home of the Washington Wizards and Capitols) and Chinatown, surrounded by swanky hotels and office buildings.

While a state of the art library facility anywhere is good for a city, I hope that this doesn't take resources or focus away from local libraries, which could be a force in some areas of DC that aren't seeing all the redevelopment dollars and boom of the Gallery Place/Chinatown area. Those are the public spaces that are most needed.

View from the sidelines

Just want to point you over to Peter Levine with some thoughts on how disconnected people feel from politics, even in a watershed election year such as this one.

Among the most important observations is this one:

Third, there was no empowerment agenda--no talk of how citizens have become
spectators but could be given new responsibilities for self-government. This is
a deep problem exacerbated by the complexity of modern issues, the delegation of
power to administrative agencies and courts, the weakness of grassroots groups,
and the influence of specialists (lawyers, economists, professional
educators).

Conservatives respond to public unease about spectator politics when
they attack "activist judges" for "legislating from the bench"; but their
critique is usually inconsistent and opportunistic. Some progressives may have
seen voting as a sufficient form of empowerment in 2006--but it isn't. We will
need richer and more demanding forms of civic engagement if we are really going
to grapple with our problems.

This lack of "empowerment" or whatever label you want to give it is an issue that I plan on giving a lot of attention to. Go see what Peter has to say, and feel free to share any thoughts on what could possibly "empower" voters.

Our civic spaces

My walk to work this morning took me past not one, but two polling places. They were about a block and a half apart, and both had lines out the door.

One was in the gymnasium of an elementary school, the other in the lobby of my local public library.

Walking by, I was struck by how both of these public institutions only seem to be used as truly public spaces when election days roll around.

There certainly are some libraries that see themselves as spaces for public discourse. In my home state of Wisconsin, Russ Feingold often holds his listening sessions in public libraries. In the lead up to the 2004 election, I had the opportunity to coordinate some "book clubs" in Wisconsin libraries that brought citizens together to talk about political conduct, and the book A New Political Covenant. The conversations that came out of those spaces was fascinating, but one of the most common refrains was how much people craved opportunities to have those kinds of discussions in a safe space.

Schools are even more closed off than libraries. Certainly, high school athletics can serve as a social center of a community, but to truly be a public space there needs to be more than just entertainment and a sense of identiy at stake. Too often, we view schools as an issue rather than a physical structure that can be a force in a community. Meeting spaces and gathering spaces are at a premium as we move toward a more isolated and insular society, and schools are an abundant source of such spaces.

Of course, taking adavantage of these spaces call for some imagination, so I turn to you. How do you think these, and other potential public spaces, can be used beyond election day to improve the civic health of your community?

Eyes on Virginia

I have been quiet in this space for some time for a number of reasons. The most pressing ones involved a crunched work schedule and a hectic personal life.

The more pressing was a general frustration with public life that has overcome me the last few weeks of the last few election cycles.

Those of us in the DC metro area had two competetive Senate races to occupy our mindshare and our airwaves (as well as our answering machines).

The race in Virginia was particularly frustrating. It was a race that got personal very early, and just went downhill from there. Sadly, it appears that the end is not near, and that the slide will continue with the anticipated recount.

I think being left with this sludgefest as the possible deciding election is appropriate for the politics that we have seen for the past few years. Sadly, it's all of us who will have to suffer through it. Maybe, as this race comes into sharper focus across the country we will finally be able to say enough is enough. Or more importantly, maybe both sides will look at this race and say, maybe if we stuck to the issues we could have pulled it out.

We all can dream.