Shhhh, don't tell, but we get free cable. It's not really as good as it sounds. When we moved in here three years ago, there was a cable sticking out the wall, so naturally we tried plugging it into our TV. Basically, it gave us clear reception on the free broadcast channels plus TNT (all "Law & Order" all the time), C-SPAN, MetroTV (which we love), and then a bunch of Chinese and Spanish language channels that we don't much care about.

But then a strange thing happened a few weeks ago: we suddenly got a lot more channels. Mostly, more Chinese and Spanish channels, but also a few interesting ones, including TBS Superstation, CNN Headlines and, most remarkably MNN -- the Manhattan Neighborhood Network. In fact, four separate MNN channels. Weird community access cable. In fact, I've actually never had real cable before in America, so I'm totally getting off on community access cable, which I've only seen parodied on Saturday Night Live till now.

My favorite new show: Spic 'n' Spanish. Tonight's episode: our host wandering around in Spanish Harlem drunkenly on New Year's Eve chatting up chubby Hispanic girls showing off their asses, intercut with (obviously pirated) on-topic retorts from movie scenes, with a heavy emphasis on Austin Powers clips. Sample commentary: "That's some serious assage!" and " J-lo ain't got nothing on that ass!"

As the credits, such that they were, ran, this exciting opportunity: "Wanted: SNS Webmaster. Must be willing to work for free."

Next up, Lowa East Side Regulars. This episode: the all shout-out show (*yawn*).

Other promising titles: "Inebriated Kitchen" and "The Tony Pignatoro Show: Deranged rambling from the basement."

And -- incredible that I didn't know about this before (oh, it's on at 8:30am on Sunday; yeah, right) -- "Hungarian TV Magazine: Updated news from Hungary, one of the drastically changing Eastern-European countries"

("drastically"?)

How did I ever live without this? Who the hell needs blogging? I want my own community access show. Who's with me?

I remember this NYC. This photo is from 1980, but it doesn't look much different than when I was going to school at Columbia in the late '80s. Recently I've started to notice small pieces of graffiti sneaking back into the subways, and I always think, "Vigilance please, Mr. Bloomberg."

The photo is by Bruce Davidson, part of a recent exhibition for his newly reissued book Subway. Blue Jake photo documents and Aaron Bailey comments.

NYT reports that you can often get fantastic bargains on eBay by searching for misspellings. Bruner Blog reported this nearly two years ago. Except in my story, my friend saved $11,000 on a tractor, not a few hundred dollars on a "labtop."

My new favorite song for the next 24 hours is "Money (That's What I Want)," by Josie and the Pussycats.

(Miki, put that in your iPod and smoke it.)

I think it's fair to say Dean's campaign is imploding at this point and that worrying about his latest stupid statement is really moot, but I was annoyed to hear his comment the other day:

"You can say that it's great that Saddam is gone and I'm sure that a lot of Iraqis feel it is great that Saddam is gone. But a lot of them gave their lives. And their living standard is a whole lot worse now than it was before."

As if this were about "living standard," a phrase that makes me think of color TVs and air conditioning. Despite all of my friends and family thinking I've turned into a Bush-loving conservative, I still consider myself a liberal (perhaps a neo-liberal or some such designation I haven't yet pinned down). I still think Bush is evil and stupid and must be stopped. I still love the environment, feel sorry for poor people, etc., etc.

But, despite everything, I still think going to war in Iraq was the right thing to do, for most of the same reasons I blogged about here on the war's eve. Yes, I'm as disappointed and surprised as anyone that there were no chemical and biological weapons, but for me, this was about more than that. It was about demonstrably changing the U.S.'s historic pattern of coddling fascist dictators. I am no pacifist. I believe we have it too easy at the expense of most of the rest of the world that lives in terror and poverty, which we do nothing about. Sure, we're hippocrates and still coddling many of them (notably in Saudi Arabia), and, yes, it may not be practical to send in the army to chase out every tyrant. But that is not a good excuse for not starting somewhere, like notably with one of the worst there is. Let the rest of them think hard about what it might mean for them, as the Iranian Mullahs and Colonel Qaddafi seem to have been doing.

I realize it is not my place to tell mothers of dead U.S. soldiers that it was worth their sons' and daughters' lives to liberate Iraqis from tyrany, but I hope, for their sake, they believe so, as it would be tragic for them to believe their loved ones died in vain. But considering how many lives have been lost and ruined around the world making Americans' lives more comfortable, I don't think it's too much to ask for us to sacrifice in exporting justice and democracy and hopefully prosperity to other parts of the world. And I'm not the kind of patriot, unlike most of the popular media, who believes that American lives are somehow worth more than Iraqi lives or lives elsewhere. Were I to believe in God, I would agree with Bush that democracy is a divine right, one all people should enjoy.

What I find particularly odious about Dean's comment above is that he's making the judgment call on behalf of Iraqis and parents of dean American soldiers that it wasn't worth it, that the soldiers died in vain and Iraqis were better off with Saddam. What an ass.

Therefore, it gives me great pleasure to link to this Iraqi's blog where he says the same thing, asking who the hell Dean thinks he is. Oddly, the guy seems more perturbed on behalf of the dead American soldiers than in everyday Iraqis hope for a better future, but either way, he clearly has the moral authority to have an opinion on this that Dean certainly lacks.

Moreover, I was also pleased to find this essay from Paul Berman, published in Dissent Magazine no less, making the liberal case in favor of war. It's lonely being a pro-war liberal these days, but I know that I'm not alone, including among my friends (who I won't name, as I don't know how public some are about their feelings or their continued self-identity as liberals) and commentators such as Thomas Friedman and Christopher Hitchens.

Hungarian-born big-time Hollywood screenwriter Joe Eszterhas (Flashdance, The Music Box, Basic Instinct, Showgirls, among others), in an interview with the Cleveland Plain Dealer (where he grew up) about his new memoir, Hollywood Animal, has this to say about our beloved Magyars:

Q: You're proud of your heritage but critical, too. What are some Hungarian traits you write about?

A: Being pushy, suicidally passionate, judgmental, narrow-minded, anti-Semitic, racist - and those are the good qualities. (Laughs) In the book I mention the saying, "If you see a Hungarian in the street, walk up and slap him. He'll know why."

Via Miki (web site coming soon)

Here is a Huge URL for http://bruner.net/blog/

http://www.hugeurl.com/?NWZmZDg5Mjk5MzZlNGU5MGZmZTEzNzljOGFiYjI0NWEmMTIm Vm0wd2QyUXlVWGxXYTJoV1YwZG9WVll3Wkc5alJsWjBUVlpPV0Zac2JETlhhMUpUVmpGYWMy SkVUbGhoTWsweFZqQmFTMk15U2tWVWJHaG9UVmhDVVZadGVGWmxSbGw1Vkd0c2FsSnRhRzlV VjNOM1pVWmFkR05GZEZSTlZUVkpWbTEwYTFkSFNrZGpTRUpYVFVad1NGUlVSbUZqVmtaMFVt eFNUbUY2UlRGV1ZFb3dWakZhV0ZOcmJGSmlSMmhZV1d4b2IwMHhXbGRYYlVaclVsUkdXbGt3 WkRSVk1rcElaSHBHVjJFeVVYZFpWRVpyVTBaT2NscEhjRlJTVlhCWlZrWldhMVV5VW5OalJt UllZbFZhY1ZscldtRmxWbVJ5VjI1a1YwMUVSa1pWYkZKRFZqQXhkVlZ1V2xaaGExcFlXa1Zh VDJOdFNrZFRiV3hYVWpOb1dGWnRNSGRsUjBsNFUydGthVk5GV2xSWmJHaFRWMVpXY1ZKcmRG UldiRm93V2xWb2ExWXdNVVZTYTFwWFlrZG9jbFpxU2tabFZsWlpXa1prYUdFeGNGbFhhMVpo VkRKT2MyTkZhR3BTYXpWWVZXcE9iMkl4V25STldHUlZUV3RzTlZWdGRHdFdiVXB6VTI1T1Zt RnJOVlJXTUZwVFZqRmtkRkp0ZUZkaVZrbzFWbXBKTVdFeFdYZE5WbVJxVWxkb1dGUlhOVU5o UmxweFUydGthbUpWVmpaWlZWcHJZVWRGZUdOSE9WZGhhMHBvVmtSS1QyUkdUbkphUmxKcFZq Sm9lbGRYZUc5aU1rbDRWMWhvWVZKRlNtOVVWM1J6VGtaYWRHUkhkRmRpVlhCNVdUQmFjMWR0 U2toaFJsSmFUVlp3ZWxreWVIZFNNVkp5VGxaT2FWSnRPVE5XYTFwaFZURkZlRmRzYUZSaE1s SndWV3RhUzFZeFVsaE9WemxzWWtad2VGVXlkREJXTVZweVkwWmFWbFl6YUROWlZXUkdaV3hH Y2sxV1pGZE5NRXBKVm10U1MxUnRWa2RhU0ZaVllsVmFWRlJYTlc5WFZscFlZMFU1YVUxWFVr aFdNalZUVkd4T1NGVnVUbFpoYTBwNlZHdGFWbVZYVWtoa1IyaHBVbGhDV1ZacVNqUlZNV1Iw VTJ0b2FGSnNTbGhVVmxwM1YwWnJlRmRyZEdwaVZrcElWbGQ0YTJGV1pFZFNhbHBYWWxSRk1G WlVSbHBsUm1SWldrVTFWMVpzY0ZWWFZsSlBVVEZaZUZkdVJsVmhNRFZWVlcxNGQyVkdWblJO VldSWFRVUkdlVlJzVm05V01VbzJVbXRvVjFaRldreFdha3BQVW14YWMxcEhiRk5OVlZZelZt eGFVMUl4YkZkWGJrcE9WbXh3V0ZsWWNGZFdSbFp5Vm10YVQxVlVNRGs9

A good friend's production. Bring the whole family!

It's snowing in NYC. Hard.

Aren't my kitties adorable?

For the record, they were sleeping in this position, so I don't want to hear any pervy pussy jokes.

A few Bruner Blog commenters, including myself, have been frustrated to find that Haloscan, my comments function provider, now cuts off comments that it deems to be "too long" (1,000 characters for the free version). So, for $10, I've upgraded my account and my comments function is now allotted 3,000 comments for each comment, which is roughly 600 words. So I expect to see you all commenting that much more.

I just got through listening to the special NPR show The Blogging of the President 2004. It was generally interesting, if a bit "inside baseball," to use the host's own phrase. Yes, we bloggers do love talking about blogs, but after you've had that conversation hundreds of time, it gets a bit old. I thought the most interesting parts of the conversation were from the non-bloggers in the discussion, such as New York Times columnist Frank Rich would could provide a bit of outsiders' perspective

One thing that really struck me as to the "preaching to the choir" character of the discussion was that the program opened with a bunch of man-on-the-street interviews of people in Minnesota who had no idea what "blog" meant, yet then the host, Christopher Lydon, immediately then launched into going on about how great blogs are and they're changing the world, etc., without ever defining the term until 50 minutes into the program when some listener called in with that most obvious of questions.

It's only two days old, but I already love Wonkette, the new political gossip blog by Ana Marie Cox, the latest offering from Nick Denton's Gawker Media.

You have to hand it to Nick, he has a great talent for picking talent and manufacturing blogs that are a fine enough blend of topic and personality that they are somehow worth actually reading with any regularity, which is hard to say for most other blogs. I find the only other blogs I read with any regularity are by people I know. Gawker Media's blogs, however, are actual media, not just self-important navel gazing, like 99% of blogs out there.

A week after I complained for a boycott on CBS (okay, I think I might have let an episode of CSI and a few Letterman's slip through since then) and that MoveOn was slow off the ball in rallying outrage in the face of CBS's refusal to run a populist anti-Bush ad, MoveOn has finally now put up a page where people can send letters of complaint to CBS over it. Please do your part.

His official campaign web site is Kucinich.us because apparently he forgot to register Kucinich.com in time, which is being used as a Kucinich parody site. D'oh!

I've seen a bunch of good movies lately, including these, all of which I'd recommend:

• The Triplets of Belleville - entertaining, silly French animation. Musical, fanciful, sees Americans as quite obese.

• Spellbound - Endearing documentary about the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee. Heartwarming and cheesy, just like you'd expect, but completely satisfying.

• American Splendor - Quirky part-documentary, part-fiction based on the life of American-original autobiographical underground cartoonist Harvey Pekar. Again, heartwarming, cheesy and enjoyable, while also passing itself off as an "alternative" kind of film.

• Ken Park - Saw this in Budapest, as it's not supposed to have U.S. distribution, owing to its explicit sex (including, most notably, a young man gratifying himself, with a bathrobe around his neck and a doorknob, to graphic, on-camera completion). I enjoyed it, sex aside (though I admit I am now a big fan of Tiffany Limos); the acting was great and the plot -- exploring mostly unhappy teenage suburban lives -- certainly rang true. Compellingly character driven. You'll have to see it on DVD or abroad, however, as I believe they are not seeking U.S. distribution (though I don't think it was any "harder to watch" than Happiness).

• Mystic River - Just saw this Wednesday. As good as you've heard. Adrienne's only complaint was it was a bit too slick, which I can understand. I could see the big plot twist coming a mile away. But the acting of all the prinicipals was so good -- Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon and Tim Robbins -- that any shortcomings could be overlooked. Expect this to popular during Oscar season.

• 21 Grams - Like Mystic River, heavy drama and great acting -- again with Sean Penn and also Benicio Del Toro and Naomi Watts. I thought the disjointed time sequence of the editing was unnecessary and inconsistent -- it started out jumping all over the place among different charaters' stories and time frames, although soon enough it becomes clear how the subplots all connected, and for the second half of the movie the time frame stays current with the present, at which point the jumpy cutting was just contrived and distracting. But it is a powerful film worth seeing.

All of those films I saw in the last month. My favorite film of 2003, however, remains Lost in Translation, which I saw a couple of months earlier. Just a beautiful film. Superb acting. Certainly Bill Murrary's best performance that I've ever seen.

To those who would criticize it for "making fun of the Japanese" -- a charge I've heard a couple of times -- I'd say, phooey. PC twaddle. Sure, some of the humor is driven by Murray's glib reaction to his not speaking or understanding Japanese and various cultural differences, but none of it is mean-spirited. In fact, there are several scenes of him and Scarlett Johansson emersing themselves in the local culture and making Japanese friends, such as the karaoke scene. More importantly, though, the film is an honest portrayal of its characters. Neither character is in Japan for a love of travel and exploring other societies. Murray's character is an unhappy Hollywood star cashing on a lucrative advertising opportunity, and Johansson is a newlywed there because of her husband's business. They're both bored and alienated in a strange place, and they're acting perfectly naturally in that regard.

I don't know why I'm even making these excuses for such a great film (aside from recently having a conversation to this effect with one frequent Bruner Blog reader, although he hadn't even seen the film...). In any event, it's my pick for the year. It really should be at least nominated for best actor and film. See it, if you somehow haven't yet done so.

Part II of this post about wack search traffic I get (I don't simply note the search phrases in question, as I'm not eager to encourage such traffic). All link positions noted are as of today's date and can fluxuate quickly:

• That about sums it up. Link 21.

• Link #1, thanks to a typo

• #3 (this is a favorite; what are these people thinking???)

• whatever

• No doubt I'm an authority on this

• Who?

• Right on, sister!

• Oh, please. Why am I #15 for that?

• That is an honor. #3 on Google, no less.

• Sick, sick bastard who is searching for that. I swear I can think of no idea why I come up.

This promises to be fascinating, to blog geeks, anyway.

Good flash slideshow of a MLK speech against war, set to images of Iraq today.

(Via Sean)

I can't help but to observe the Jewish connection to most of our serious Democratic candidates:

• Dean's wife is Jewish
• Clark -- my guy -- is half Jewish
• Kerry -- the would-be front runner -- is half Jewish
• Lieberman is all Jewish, and how
• Edwards is a good-ole-boy, no Jew there
• Kucinich is a troll

What are we to make of this? Dunno. Kinda cool. Were any of them elected, it would be a first. That's all. Does that mean it is in any way a liability to "electability"? I guess not, or Gore/Lieberman wouldn't have technically won the previous election. Just thought it was worth pointing out, since I doubt the mainstream media can afford to acknowledge this.

For Nana:

• New Math
• The Elements

Honestly, how often do you get to impress a pretty girl with a Tom Lehrer song? If I may be permitted to answer my own rhetorical question, not very, in my experience.

The Revolution Will Be Blogged!

Direct from the media front lines to you:

“BLOG MOGUL” NICK DENTON, OF GAWKER.COM, TO SPEAK AT [Columibia] J-SCHOOL

WEDNESDAY, 01/28/04 -- RECEPTION: 8:30 PM, TALK: 9:00PM

ROOM 607-B

More ALL-CAPS promotional material here.

Americans realized they didn't want a president with the personality of a hockey dad.

Meanwhile things aren't going so well for Joseph Lieberman. He's two percentage points behind the Taliban candidate.

Hmmm. I think the French have gone crazy.

After having banned "religious symbols" in schools and elsewhere in French society (including, or rather namely Muslim headscarves, along with yarmulkes and "large" crucifixes (though apparently small ones are okay?)), they have now gone entirely around the bend and banned bandannas (when worn, presumably instead of headscarves, in a religious manner), and, if I understand it correctly, they are leaning towards banning certain hair styles or the wearing of certain colors, which could be tricky attempts to show religious affiliation.

Wow. And this is who the American Left thinks are the moral defenders of La Liberté? Stop the world, I want to get off.

I've heard it explained that the reason the French are getting so worked up about this is that they take separation of church and state really, really seriously. Good for them. I'm an atheist and am all for separation of church and state. As I've blogged before, I was sickened by Bush's inaugural evangelical blessing by (Billy) Franklin Graham, Jr. But it strikes me as one thing for the state to eliminate its own explicit ties to religion in official institutions (e.g., school-sponsored prayer, "one nation, under God" in the required Pledge of Allegiance, the 10 commandments in court houses, "In God We Trust" on our money), but quite another to tolerate other people's religious beliefs and passive expressions, such as wearing a headscarf, yarlmulke or crucifix in school. That's called freedom of expression and freedom of religion, and I'm a big fan of that.

Moreover, I wonder how long this French zeal for separating church and state has so fervently been in effect. I'm presently reading a great memoir by French-British journalist Edward Behr, in which he notes that in 1953 when Angelo Roncalli was made a Catholic cardinal (later, he became Pope John XXIII), then French President Vincent Auriol revived an old tradition, formerly the privilege of French kings, in ceremonially presenting Roncalli with his red cardinal's hat (which is also historically noted around the Net, including here and here).

I wonder if you're still allowed to wear those around France these days, speaking of silly hats.

UPDATE:

A friend forwarded (a few days ago, actually, which I just got around to reading today) this commentary in the International Herald Tribune by William Pfaff, where, as far as I could stand to read it, Pfaff was arguing that multiculturalism isn't all it's cracked up to be; that before the Vietnam war, it was a foregone conclusion that immigration meant assimilation and that since then, blah, blah, blah.

My reaction: complete pfullshit. Here is my insight worth blogging (I hope): sure, in recent decades, immigrants have probably done more to preserve their ethnic identities in America than they dared do in the '50s or whenever, but they are still American today even in their multicultural manner. But why do France and Germany and other European and other countries have a harder time with immigration than we do in America? Because what does it mean to be French? It means not a lot more, as far as I can tell, than to be ethnically French, which you're never going to achieve if you were born in Morocco or Algiers or wherever. Whereas, to be American is not an ethnic identity. It is entirely a philosophy. You can aspire to "be an American" precisely because it is a nation of immigrants whose common bond is a believe in a set of ideals.

I remember being perplexed by "nationalism" when I first lived in Europe. One anecdote struck me especially, when I worked with a young woman from Transylvania who spoke fluent Hungarian. Upon my inquiry, she explained, no, she wasn't Hungarian. "No, I'm not Romanian either. I'm Jewish." That made my head spin. Can you imagine an American Jew saying, "I'm not American. I'm Jewish"?

Pfaff writes:

Multiculturalism seems generous, but in practice has produced mixed results for both society and immigrants. It is still new, its eventual consequences on a national society relatively untried.

New? McSorley's was founded in 1854. Shmulka Bernstein's Kosher Chinese Restaurant dates from the 1950s, well before the Vietnam War. Likewise, Cuban-Chinese restaurants in NY date to the '50s.

At first, I started listing some of the many benefits of our most multicultural society -- the blues, jazz, rap, Jewish-American humor, the most widely varied restaurant culture in the world -- but it is almost insulting to have to think of the innumerable ways in which being exposed to many different cultures within our own society has enriched the overall American experience. It is simply who we are. (It's worth pointing out that Pfaff (bio) is ancient (e.g., Vietnam is his touchstone for relevance to our modern society) and has lived in Paris for more than 20 years.)

France was around a long time before their revolution, which came after our revolution. So tell me, what does it mean to be French, and how do Muslims fit in?

My good friends Travis Shook (on piano) and Veronica Nunn (singing) are going to be playing at ZanZa Bar every Wednesday throught February, 9pm till midnight. They're very talented. Please feel free to join me any week there. (No cover.)

If you missed Dean's squawk of a self-imploding campaign last night, here's the MP3 and the video. Very presidential.

I like Ed Cone's comment: "Another Internet bubble popped."

Per the Internet, however, Howie does deserve the credit for putting the fear of that god in all the candidates' hearts. I noticed during Kerry's speech after the event that his podium said nothing but "JohnKerry.com." What else did it need to say, after all?

TomPaine.com has produced a State of the Union Scorecard that you can download and judge for yourself whether Bush acknowledges, avoids or spins critical issues.

Or, if you prefer, you can play the State of the Union Drinking Game. You have several options:

• Drinking Game U.S.
• Alternet
• Adam Felber
• Others

I see that CBS gutlessly rejected the MoveOn.org anti-Bush ad that it tried to pay to air during the Super Bowl.

I went to MoveOn's site to see how they were rallying their troops into outrage and protest and was quite amazed to see nothing of the sort. In fact, the site is quite out of date, promoting some map of house parties around the country where people "will be" hosting parties on December 7th, and it is still talking about the ad that "will be shown" during the Super Bowl. Maybe they haven't gotten the word, yet.

Well, I would love to know who is organizing a mass response to let CBS what crap we consider this cowardly move to be. Anyone know?

I'm intending to blog more again on my professional site ExecutiveSummary.com in the coming weeks, after I do some overhaul on the site in general. Meanwhile, I've ranted a bit today about the shortcomings I find in the networking site Linked In. Enjoy.

Let me just point out, that is approximately the same temperature as inside my apartment.

"...proving that in our society a white male Protestant can still prevail over a Jew, a black man and an overgrown elf."

I'm disappointed by the WTC September 11th memorial, unveiled today. Anything that didn't incorporate the "Missing" posters ubiquitous around NYC for months after that fateful date will never capture the full emotion of the horror of it all for me.

I'm proud to introduce a new feature to the Bruner Blog: "Links What Makes You Thinks." This is very much in the spirit of Anil Dash's Links feature (the links that appear in the left-hand column of his main blog). Likewise, mine now appear as the first item under "Linky Love" in the left-hand margin of my pages.

Appropriately enough, I use TypePad (where Anil works) to deliver this (here's the raw blog for the feature, which still needs to be prettied up), in conjunction with this funky RSS syndication service.

The idea is to log links that otherwise don't merit a full post of their own. (Hold your mouse over the links for additional context, using the anchor "title" tag.) Hope you find it useful.

From an email I just sent my Dad, a Dean supporter:

I just finished this long profile of Dean in the New Yorker

Overall, I guess I feel a bit more favorable about him -- personally, anyway -- after having read it. When you profile someone so closely, there's a lot to his character. He sounds thoughtful, well-intentioned and so forth. I also do admire how effectively he's tapped a popular movement, bucked conventions, so effectively used the Internet, his whole populist verve -- even though the profile repeatedly makes it seem like he's more surprised than anyone that this success so far has fallen in his lap.

My initial dislike of him was based primarily on seeing him handle himself on TV a few times where he just comes off too self-satisfied to my liking. Particularly at the first debate of the Dems candidates, he just had a shit-eating grin the whole time like he thought he was too smooth. Really rubbed me the wrong way.

In any event, my biggest problem is I just think he's unelectable. I think this election is too important for us to pick a candidate who speaks his mind, appeals to the angry far-left and so forth, if he's only going to get trounced by Bush in the end, which I am sure is what would happen if the two ran head to head. He's simply not appealing to Middle America, conservative Democrats, liberal Republicans and the whole middle "swing voters" of the electorate. I think the Left would be cutting off its nose to spite its face to make him the Democratic candidate.

Here's an excerpt from the profile that speaks to this, the second paragraph in particular:

Will Marshall, who runs the Progressive Policy Institute, a think-tank offshoot of the D.L.C., suggested to me that not only was Dean both philosophically out of step with his own party and hypocritically disingenuous but he was also exploiting liberal resentment that has simmered ever since the centrists commandeered the Democratic Party during the nineties (though much of the left was reasonably content while Clinton was in the White House). Dean was essentially a centrist, Marshall said, who had leveraged his opposition to the war, broadening it so that "the centrist morphs into this full-throated tribune of left-leaning activists."

"At the bottom," Marshall continued, "is this left-wing fantasy of a mass mobilization of disaffected voters, a belief that if we’re only left enough and pure enough in our hatred we’ll create this mass movement. The intensity Dean has tapped into is narrow. There's no question he's got the most enthusiastic base of support out there. But, however intensely you feel for Howard Dean, you only have one vote. Intensity is important in politics, but you’ve also got to have breadth. I don't believe they’ve proven that they've tapped into this whole new reservoir of support. That's what makes the Dean campaign reminiscent of McGovern's -- it's the postgraduate proletariat, on the two coasts, plus a dollop of Hollywood liberals. It could be that our electoral market analysis is suddenly wrong. Maybe the country has shifted several quantum degrees to the left. Maybe I took a long nap and missed it."

I'm behind Wesley Clark, so much so, in fact, that I've decided to volunteer for his campaign, which is something I've never done before. I really believe Clark is the best one to beat Bush. My friend M., for example, a life-long Republican, said Clark is the only one of the Democrats he would consider voting for. I think he's solid on all the issues (liberal everywhere it counts: environment, abortion, race, rich vs. poor, multilateral relations, etc.), strong on international issues (much unlike Dean), has a masters degree in economics (and is a Rhodes scholar), and, with his general stripes, can out-position Bush in terms of credibility on national security, international affairs, and so on. And, critically, he'll appeal much more to that middle, to liberal Republicans, to military people and others who, I'm sure, would vote for Bush over Dean.

If the party nomination goes to Dean, I'm sure that means we'll get Bush a second time around. As David Letterman said when Gore endorsed Dean, "The guy who got beat by Bush just endorsed the guy who's going to get beat by Bush."

Friend Peter ("Mucho") Maass is schedule to be a guest on the tremendously erudite Leonard Lopate show on WNYC radio this Tuesday (tomorrow), scheduled for the 12:40 pm slot. That is at 820 AM or 93.9 FM on your New York area radio dial. The show is also rebroadcast live on the web and is stored in their online archives, so you can catch it at your leisure.

He will be discussing the cover story he wrote for yesterday's Sunday NY Times Magazine about counterinsurgency warfare in Iraq, "Professor Nagl's War," for which Peter recently spent two weeks back in that war zone reporting. Read it soon before you have to pay for it in NYT's online archives, as the Sunday magazine doesn't get archived for free via RSS.

He is also the guest on NPR's leading talk show Fresh Air, with host Terry Gross on Tuesday. That show is already available on Fresh Air's archive.

My final installment of photos from my trip to Budapest for New Year's.

Sorry if I was an embarrassing boor last night. So much for the idea of getting a head start at home before meeting friends at the bar as a means of economizing. Comes from reading too much Maccers and Eurotrash.

I'm reminded a scene in some movie I can't recall vividly where the father needlessly smacks his son in order to convey the warning, "Don't trust anyone. Not even your own father."

Here is a warning I just got from Norton Internet Security's software asking me to approve the Norton Anti-Virus in its attempt to access the Internet.

How about doing something useful like protecting me against spyware, dumbasses!

Well, I've made up my mind that I'll be somewhat politically active this season as a Clark supporter. I really like Carol Moseley Braun, though I realize she doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell. After that, I like Clark, much more than Dean, anyway. While on Christmas vacation, I read this piece in New York Magazine a couple of weeks ago, which says that the Dean Machine is ramping up for New York to be the nail in the coffin of any other would-be Democratic contendor. The article goes on to suggest that if anyone, Clark stands the best chance of staging a Dean upset, but that it will all come down to New York, where Dean is much better organized and funded compared to Clark, or anyone else for that matter.

I don't know how trustworthy that analysis actually is, but it is enough to have gotten me off my duff to at least send an email to Clark's official campaign web site and volunteer to show up at a meeting this coming Tuesday. I've since been informed that this is a fence-sitter's meeting, geared at the undecided as to why he's the best man for the job. I've been asked to bring along some other wobblers with me.

So, if anyone who wants to attend with me, the meeting will be held at 7pm Tuesday the 13th in the Colubus Circle neighborhood (exact details offline). Email me if you're interested in joining.

UPDATE:
D'oh! Adrienne just reminded me that we have a prior engagement Tuesday night. Grrr. Well, if you're still interested in attending that event without me, by all means check out the Upcoming Events page on NYforClark.com. Meanwhile, not so easily disuaded, I now plan to attend an event the next night, Wednesday the 14th, a kind of meet-and-greet at Remedy Bar and Grill, 974 2nd Ave. (between 51st and 52nd Sts.).

I had the idea to put together a big compilation of " Best XXX of 2003" lists (i.e., movies, books, music, news, etc.) and invested a couple of hours in accumulating them already, but then I found that Fimoculous already did so, and did a good enough job that it would take way too much time for me to bother trying to do a better job of it, so ignominiously I just point to that list. Oh well.

I need to finish reading this eventually. Good stuff.

For all you fellow bloggers out there, here's a tip about linking to the New York Times: if you use RSS links from Userland's deal with the New York Times, those story links don't expire into the paid archive after a week, as normal NYT links do. Better yet, however, if you happen to miss the RSS link in question, try searching for it on this service: www.windbag.org/nytimes/

For example, here's the same story in the Times from Dec 23 about our favorite cheerleader, Elizabeth Spiers, without the RSS link and with the RSS link.

Drawings by an artist subjected to LSD as part of the U.S. government's experiments with the drug in the 1950s.

A guest columnist with the Seattle P.I., Neal Starkman, offers the most credible explanation for Bush's remarkable popularity: a large number of people are very stupid.

I was having this conversation with someone in Hungary last week. They were complaining that, while I seemed like a nice, intelligent guy, most of the American tourists they meet in Budapest are stupid jerks. My response, beyond getting them to agree that Germans were even worse, was to explain that the U.S. has the largest percentage of college graduates of any country. I've done the Google on this before but I don't feel up to repeating it tonight, so just trust me (or feel free to do it yourself and send me the links if you want to challenge), but from what I recall it's roughly 25% of the U.S. has gone to college vs. around 12% in Hungary, which is more representative of most other countries. Hand in hand with this is the size of our middle class.

Which is not to say that Americans are any smarter. Quite the contrary. It's just that our stupid people are more prominent in our society. The Hungarian couple I was having this conversation with were, of course, college educated and middle class. In Hungary, that segment is small enough that it is something of a meritocracy -- those who can qualify for college are actually rather smart. As a result, my acquaintances are spared social interaction with 85% of the population, a large portion of whom in Hungary are living near peasant lives in the countryside or real pail-carrying blue colar existances, whose ignorances of the ways of the world are a foregone conclusion by the educated classes. That is, it wouldn't even occur to my acquaintances to take those unwashed masses into the equation when judging the perceived collective intelligence of their nation.

Here in America, however, where the average per capita income is roughly 10-times that in Hungary, any dumbass can get into most colleges and land a job in sales somewhere and afford to take vacations in Europe, and many do, sadly misrepresenting to the rest of the world the good ones like me. "Bunkos," Hungarians would call them -- roughly "moron" but there is a cynical edge to it that loses something in translation.

This is Bush's base of support. The "Stupid Factor."

If you haven't seen it yet, you have to check out Bushin30Seconds.org. What I love most about this is the trend towards the power of homemade commercials. This initiative of anti-Bush TV commercials has been organized by MoveOn.org, the online liberal political movement, which says that it will have a lefty celebrity panel chose a winner next week to be shown on TV.

Man, do I hate spyware/adware. I made the mistake of upgrading my KaZaA account, which I knew at the time was asking for trouble (but I do love my online porno!). Not surprisingly, soon after I have been suffering regular brower hijackings. Most annoying was that my homepage kept changing to various crap, and my 404 ("page not found") page has started being shown as that at left, the grossly inaptly named "PerfectNav.com."

At last, I've found an effective way to uninstall this mysterious intruder, courtesy of Kephyr.com, to which I gratefully donated $5 via PayPal.

For more party pics, click here.

• Gain weight
• Resume smoking
• Drink more
• Start beating wife

Just kidding about that last one, Honey.

Intelligencer reports:

Warner Bros. Television recently purchased a sitcom pilot from [Time humorist Joel] Stein about "a young guy without much journalism experience who gets hired by a really serious news magazine" (who could that be?)..."

Hmmm, could it be...Elizabeth Spiers? Oh, no, the clue was a guy...and a "serious newsmagazine."

(I keed, I keed!)

More photos here.

Note to self: never, ever, ever leave the house again without a digital camera on hand. I've learned this lesson over and over since being born into the digital age, but this is nowhere truer than here in Budapest (where I'm visiting for the New Year's, for you non-regular readers). I had planned to be packing digits the whole time I was here, but sadly I wasted a few days hunting down a power converter to charge the camera's depleted batteries.

The most painful case in point was the other day at the Westend shopping mall where I saw Paris Hilton's Hungarian doppelganger. Absolutely freaky. I would be so basking in thousands of page views right now from the inevitable links from The Kicker, Gawker and Gothamist, but alas, it was for my eyes only. What a waste. Today, I almost had to sit down on the sidewalk in a daze as a walked by the mall again and realized it's collocated with a (brace yourself) Hilton Hotel.

Only slightly less thrilling, for me, anyway, was seeing Will Ferrell's Hungarian doppelganger. In both cases, the average Hungarian youth being not greatly possessed of irony, Gawker-like fascination with American B-list celebs and facility with the English language, I resisted the strong temptation to approach them and say, "Has anyone ever told you, you look just like Paris Hilton/Will Ferrell?"