Jim Fallows writes about something that's starting to percolate throughout the liberal blogosphere. Read, spread the word, and remember the name of Thomas Wales. Allegations do not equal proof, but they require investigation.

The show This American Life should turn to politics more often. In this case, I thought the horror it uncovered is almost surreal, even though it's grown familiar.

See here. I think this decison is a step backward for women's equality and for medicine, though its advocates strongly feel otherwise. There was reason to think the banned procedure might have been safer in some cases. It ought not to be the government's role to use any perceived ambiguity about that judgment to make decisions about a woman's medical care regardless of her will.

I thought this interview with Henry Rollins was pretty great. It's subscription-only, though.

Here's David Brooks, writing today on Sen. McCain:

But in the long run, his embrace of Iraq may not hurt him as much as now appears. In 10 months, this election won’t be about the surge, it will be about the hydra-headed crisis roiling the Middle East. The candidate who is the most substantive, most mature and most consistent will begin to look more attractive and more necessary.

In his speech yesterday, excerpted on his own Web site, McCain criticizes the "cynicism" of those who advocate withdrawal without accepting responsibility for its consequences. But many of us have in fact considered the implications of withdrawal. There are serious arguments against his position grounded in national security concerns. Yes, Gen. Petraeus thinks success of a sort remains possible. Other informed people in and out of the military disagree. Instead of making the case for Petraeus's view just on the merits, Brooks and McCain seem to want to throw in a measure of gratuitous shaming. That their commitment to the war is not shared by a majority of Americans is no doubt painful for them, but for them to imply we are not serious is more offensive than almost anything anyone among the netroots says.

McCain also said this yesterday:

Democrats, who deny our soldiers the means to prevent an American defeat, have chosen another road. It may appear to be the easier course of action, but it is a much more reckless one, and it does them no credit even if it gives them an advantage in the next election. This is an historic choice, with ramifications for Americans not even born yet. Let's put aside for a moment the small politics of the day. The judgment of history should be the approval we seek, not the temporary favor of the latest public opinion poll.

Gone are the assurances McCain made last year in speeches at the New School and elsewhere that our opposition to the war is a sincere reflection of our convictions -- now he suggests it's all about politics. This ignorant, mean, and unsubstantiated assertion is unworthy of him and a contradiction of the idealism he has long maintained he wants to bring to American public life.

While I believe his arguments should be considered, although I already opposed his candidacy, I do think this kind of rhetoric makes McCain less trustworthy, less worthy of the White House. I still grant him, and Brooks, the dignity of recognizing the seriousness of their views, even though I believe their analysis of the prospects for success is flawed and even though they seem unwilling to grant me and other opponents of the war the same civic respect.

Perhaps the next time someone tells you, “I honestly wonder if liberals like you even want America to succeed in Iraq,” perhaps it might be good just to reply, “I honestly wonder if hawks like you want more of our soldiers and Marines to die.” That is to say, ask a stupid and insulting question -- receieve one in return.

The context for this discussion is in this dispute. Pointing out why the criticism of what a commenter calls "stupidity" is overly broad can explain a great deal about the success of the populist conservative mass media and why the allegedly extreme and fuming netroots is a fundamentally meaningful rather than juvenile and unreasoned response to that success. The criticism of stupidity -- by which the commenter means, I think, vulgarity without context -- is one properly applied to name-calling, incessant interrupting, the use of blatant straw man arguments, and all manner of haranguing when these techniques are one's prevailing mode of communication, serving either to prevent further argument on the merits of an issue after the overly aggressive arguer's side has been presented, or to offer up the appearance of substantive debate while leaving an opponent overpowered, flustered, and distracted by intimidation and distortion from articulating relevant points.

Where a selective veneer of procedural decorum by a talk show host as well as his or her adherence to substantively traditional standards of propriety obscures the host's use of these very same hostile tactics on dissenting positions, it is only with great care that one can wisely attempt to engage on the merits, and even then doing so risks having one's best arguments distorted and ridiculed right out of contention. It's safe to say that, for those on the favored side of its carefully constructed framework of rigged rules, this so-called "stupid" media proves very smart indeed, at least in the short term (some ratings may be down -- these things are cyclical), long enough at any rate to help get the country stuck in a terrible war.

In this context, to employ similarly emphatic techniques when discussing its regular purveyors is not, per se, to descend from vulgarity into stupidity, as the commenter apparently believes. To be sure, it's not necessarily wise; it's important to seek space to appeal to the higher possibilities of dialogue and debate -- no one likes to be scorned when they're trying to be reasonable. But it's also true that when the game is rigged, especially by a kind of marketing to which we have become habituated, sometimes the most important act in the service of the exchange of ideas is to hold a mirror up to the objectionable techniques and atmosphere employed by conservative mass media outlets, a mirror that the decorum of the mainstream media declines to wield; this meta-criticism can be thought of as a kind of art intervention. To make this claim is not to comment evaluatively on the intellectual merit of any individual performance of such criticism, which would require considerable knowledge of the context. But I think the circulation of such performances strike a chord in a lot of netroots and other news consumers. Many of us feel considerably alienated from the crude versions of rhetorical unfairness on display in much conservative mass media and, in another way, from its subtler varieties in the opinion fora of the mainstream media, where, after all, liberal and demographically diverse views are still underrepresented and the he-said, she-said format of debate tends implicitly to protect establishment views (as if there are only two sides to every argument), while insidiously presenting surface disagreements aplenty.

Whether the Democrats should have recently cancelled the debate Fox News had planned to host is subject to reasonable debate. But one advantage of the refusal is that the manipulative tactics of an undeniably conservative outlet are being given explicit attention, and possibly diminished credibility, rather than being given free rein to operate on turf Fox would construct. Not all of these techniques are necessarily malign in intent -- pundits and reporters who analyze Democrats' ideas can be unfair out of habit -- but that does not make them fair, or their effect on democracy a beneficial one.

Okay... It's one thing to argue that liberals should monitor the media's campaign coverage for bias against Hillary Clinton that treats her differently or with disdain because she's a woman. Since that has happened before and will again, that's good advice. One could even extend it to say that we should come up with strategies to fight back effectively against gender swift-boaters or the subtler MSM purveyors of bias. It's another thing entirely, however, to suggest that Clinton's low level of support among men and her high level of support among women is a particular reason to argue in her favor in general. I should say that it's a little unclear to what extent Francke-Ruta is arguing for Clinton per se, rather than just against a tendency to "flee her side simply because her gender helps make her a divisive figure." At that level, Francke-Ruta is absolutely right. Treating her gender as a reason not to support her because one thinks others will so treat her is to make the danger of gender bias a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Yes, more talented women should be hired as pundits and elected to office. But in a particular election, one has to judge the candidates on the merits and for the most part argue for or against them accordingly. As I indicated above, they should generally be supported when they are subject to unfair attacks, even if they aren't our favored candidate. But that's a far cry from saying they shouldn't be criticized.

As for Clinton's differential popularity based on gender, I find that troubling in two ways. First and foremost, gender bias is encouraging men (and some women) to denigrate her unfairly, and secondarily, it's encouraging women (and some men) to support her as a woman beyond what their knowledge of her career or proposals can justify. (Supporting her because she's a woman would probably only make sense if one agreed with her no more or less than with other candidates and if one believes, as I do, that she has at least a reasonable chance of winning a general election.)

The broader point is that I suspect that many Democrats' views of her are rather uninformed as of yet -- and certainly, I think it's fair to say that the more female and male liberals learn about her policies, the more their support for her would tend to drop, especially when she is compared to some of ther other Democratic candidates. She is smart and hard-working and I would support her enthusiastically if she were to win the nomination. But we have a primary season precisely so we can study and compare the candidates, all of whom will be subjected to unfair press at times. She'll probably get more unfair press than most if not all of the candidates in both parties, partly for reasons Francke-Ruta explains. As I said, we should fight back against such coverage. But we should also express our own opinions about the candidates, because the differences between them carry divergent implications for the direction of the country.

Both Tim Russert ("54,000") and George Stephanopoulos ("60,000") asserted today that Iraqi civilian deaths number in the tens of thousands. These statements significantly understate the total -- conflicting not only with the results of the most careful scientific studies of the civilian toll but with the Iraqi government's view. This little habit, assuming that only deaths that manage to get reported in the media during a civil war are real, should never go unchallenged.

In the course of researching another piece, I just came across a posting at redstate.com, about Seymour Hersh’s detailed New Yorker article on the administration’s major strategic shift toward supporting a range of Sunni factions, including extremist groups, in the volatile, unpredictable tangle of Middle East geopolitics. “Don’t bother reading the article. It really isn’t worth the time. But look for covert actions in the Long War [against Iran] to be the new line of attack by the Democrats on the Administration.”

The author’s post falsely implies that Hersh’s piece is strictly about covert operations within Iran, and strictly a puff piece about CIA dissent, when in fact it’s a broad regional survey of strategic questions of massive complexity and considerable controversy within the administration itself; it’s also another example of policy’s being formulated and approved in an insular corner of the executive branch. This response reveals something worse than a measure of dishonesty, or poor reading comprehension -- even the subhead ("Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?") should have alerted the blogger to the fact that the issues raised transcend the concerns of Iran doves. Rather, it also reveals a gross anti-intellectualism. The fact that Hersh is the author was enough to discredit the article and to recommend that others dismiss it sight unseen, and remaining willfully ignorant of the issues involved. The echo chamber of comments to the post are no more encouraging.

I admit the Hersh article is long. But it’s written in a reportorial style, draws on many sources, and is not marred by the polemical tone of, say, the redstate.com dismissal. And it’s, you know, important on the policy merits. Next time anyone complains to you that the left’s distrust of the administration is an arbitrary emotional reaction heedless of the administration’s good-faith efforts to secure the nation, you should first cite this article and other good journalism on the administration. Then, consider whether the accuser has projected his or her own proclivities for blind ideological mistrust onto you.

Note: Obviously some hawkish writers are more dedicated than streiff, the writer cited here, to becoming knowledgeable about the dangers and complexities of the aggressive foreign policies they espouse. But the presumptive hostility to an independent press examination of government assertions and actions appears widespread on the hawkish right.

Given the centrality of “doomsday assumptions” to the debate about Iraq withdrawal, the questions raised in this new article by Robert Dreyfuss deserve the widest possible circulation and debate. As Dreyfuss says, the deference given to hawks on future planning makes no sense in view of their performance over the past four years.

Activists for onservative religion or social values often initiate prejudice against people living in different, controversial ways, then turn around and play victim once criticized. Amanda was sujbected to this clever media tactic (by a lowlife, it must be said) and unfortunately has left the Edwards campaign. First, read Pandagon, which is an excellent site. Second, we need to discuss ways to prevent the terminology of equality from being successfully appropriated by those fundamentally hostile to it, because the media is not even close to being fair or smart when confronted with this pattern. The mainstream tilts more to the right and our voices are marginalized.

Two offhand words in an overdue and deeply informed critique of one of our most influential television shows explain the appeal of the hawkish approach to the war on terror, an appeal that has superficially waned, for the moment. The words also reveal something about the populist conservative unconscious. The words are “wish fulfillment” and the article, by Jane Mayer, who did important work exposing extraordinary rendition, concerns the geopolitical thriller series “24,” which, of course, purports to be a gritty, realistic look at the quandaries of national defense in an age of apocalyptic terrorism. But this image, however seductive, is worse than merely being deeply fake, which it also is; it is misleading because it rests on a fantasy the show has helped construct that is the opposite of the truth. In this fantasy, we know exactly who the terrorists are; we need not cultivate granular knowledge of other communities and cultures to identify threats and build cooperative transcultural relationships with which to confront them. (That’s all so soft.) Instead, all we need are lots of technology and the guts to torture.

What an easier challenge that situation would present (which is not to say that torture would almost ever be acceptable, or should be legal). This premise, along with the adrenaline rush provided by the show’s perpetual air of crisis, suggests that conservative fear, even panic, about terrorism -- by themselves, feelings that at some level everyone has shared since 9/11 -- is closely mixed with fantasies of omnipotence. One figure involved with the show acknowledges that “[t]here’s definitely a political message to the show, which is that extreme measures are sometimes necessary for the greater good.” But a show that repeats this message ad nauseam is only pretending to be serious. Like horror movies in which the hero survives after secondary characters have been frighteningly killed off, “24” can be understood not as a way of grappling with troubling or complex questions but of reassuring the audience. The show does not seem to explore, for instance, the diverse tools needed in the fight, or the methodological advantages and the many more limitations of torture, or the consequences of using it for whether our troops and government will ever receive trust and acceptance in other countries with already-abused populations, and what effect those consequences will have on intelligence gathering. Executive producer Joel Surnow tells Mayer of his favorite bumper sticker: “Except for Ending Slavery, Fascism, Nazism & Communism, War Has Never Solved Anything.” That’s an argument against pacifism. It’s rather less useful in accounting for results in, say, Iraq. In view of his own show’s chosen topic, terrorism, his selection of a war bumper sticker is oddly irrelevant (like the war in Iraq itself). A somewhat more relevant choice, given the show’s paranoid and torture-friendly attitudes, reveals the wishful thinking at the heart of the show: “We’re making enemies faster than we can kill them.”

Chillingly, Mayer describes the show as enormously popular among US troops in Iraq and in the administration.

(Note: Mayer's article is must reading because of how much it reveals about populist conservative attitudes. More on this in a forthcoming companion post.)

Andy McCarthy's points here would be understandable with regard to the 14 high-value detainees at Guantanamo (Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, etc.). They are not nearly so compelling with regard to the hundreds of others often swept up due to hearsay from unreliable foreign witnesses or who were minimally involved in hostilities against the US. It is perhaps worth noting that McCarthy is an outlier. The Pentagon distanced itself from Stimson's statements, as did Stimson himself -- under pressure that was remarkably widespread. In some individual cases among the remaining detainees, McCarthy's concerns might be legitimate, but their wholesale application to this profoundly isolated class accused amdist the fog of war is shabby and unpersuasive. Background here.

One of the arguments in Dinesh D'Souza's new book contrasts what he calls traditional Muslim attitudes with radical (and more militant) ones, proposing that America dial down what he regards as the trash of our popular-culture exports to prevent the traditionalists from being radicalized. One of the many problems with this way of conceptualizing the challenge of terrorism emerges in this dispatch from National Public Radio. When curiosity and needs for excitement and identification motivate members of other cultures to create cultural artifacts controversial within their own cultures, should we automatically side with whomever is angry with the latest innovation, for example by not exporting works that might spur on the Saudi avant garde?

Efforts to implement cultural conservatism as a tool of public diplomacy invite constant self-doubt and embolden increasingly censorious impulses among foreign commisars struggling to stem the raucous tide of cultural creativity. (How would reflexive capitulation to voices of fear and conformity really protect modern liberal societies in a globalized world? Who knows from what corner of our cultural life another country's cultural rebels will draw their inspiration?)

As I've implied, the entire project D'Souza advocates along these lines is not simply fraught with random difficulty; rather, it is likely be be counterproductive because it is actually incoherent. After all, the development Kenyon describes, occurring in one of the more culturally restricted settings in the Arab world, illustrates the prohibitive contentiousness of populist or oligarchic attempts to draw a meta-line, conceptually, between benign and harmful cultural products. Qualitative aesthetic judgment is crucial to many individual and social goals in any culture, but it best occurs in thought and conversation amidst the backdrop of a vigorous civic array of art, ideas, folkways, and other cultural forms, not as a matter of a necessarily stagnant canon of received wisdom. To set oneself, or worse, one's country, as fundamentally opposed to the dynamic nature of imagination and its unpredictable unfolding within a social context is to fight a battle that can only be won temporarily and partially by the imposition of totalitarian social organization (and heaven help the culture that "succeeds" in this task for any length of time). This losing-battle dynamic obtains within a country and also, essentially, across cultures. The concept of an open society carries more challenges, but also more uses and levels of meaning, than we often appreciate.