"Moments trip gently along" for Obama, whose "feet hum over the dry walks," in his letter to his NY girlfriend Alex McNear.

Look out! It's David Maraniss's new book "Obama: The Story," which tapped as sources 2 girlfriends, Alex McNear and Genevieve Cook (who were presented in his memoir as a composite character). Vanity Fair has a big excerpt from the book, and I'm just going to home in on one thing, Obama's letter — you can't call it a love letter — to McNear, who was a co-editor of a literary magazine ("Feast") who was "interested in postmodern literary criticism, and her arguments brimmed with the deconstructionist ideas of Jacques Derrida, the French philosopher." After some talk about Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, he moved on to the subject of himself:

Moments trip gently along over here. Snow caps the bushes in unexpected ways, birds shoot and spin like balls of sound. My feet hum over the dry walks. A storm smoothes the sky, impounding the city lights, returning to us a dull yellow glow. 

I am now willing to believe Obama wrote his own memoir. This is that jejune "creative writing" style that I was talking about back in 2009, right here:



Let's continue with the epistle to McNear:

I run every other day at the small indoor track [at Columbia] which slants slightly upward like a plate; I stretch long and slow, twist and shake, the fatigue, the inertia finding home in different parts of the body. I check the time and growl—aargh!—and tumble onto the wheel. And bodies crowd and give off heat, some people are in front and you can hear the patter or plod of the steps behind. You look down to watch your feet, neat unified steps, and you throw back your arms and run after people, and run from them and with them, and sometimes someone will shadow your pace, step for step, and you can hear the person puffing, a different puff than yours, and on a good day they’ll come up alongside and thank you for a good run, for keeping a good pace, and you nod and keep going on your way, but you’re pretty pleased, and your stride gets lighter, the slumber slipping off behind you, into the wake of the past.

Oh, how I hope Obama the President is keeping a journal, describing the experience of being President with exactly this style and perspective. So internal and yet so superficial in the recording of sights and sounds.

You nod and keep going on your way, but you’re pretty pleased, and your stride gets lighter, the slumber slipping off behind you, into the wake of the past.

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Michelle Goldberg searches for a feminist theme in the Norwegian massacre.

Feminism is hard!

"Does Allen West hate women?... [T]he answer seems to be more that Allen West hates everyone."

Oh, boy. It's Amanda Marcotte responding Michelle Goldberg:

That doesn't spare him from being a sexist, however, since his hatred for women has an ugly, gendered tone to it, as evidenced by his strange war on Debbie Wasserman Schultz, whose main sin seems to be a willingness to disagree with West while in possession of a vagina, causing West to claim she's "not a Lady."...

That said, calling a Democrat "not a Lady" and claiming that liberal women are the source of the country's economic woes because we supposedly neuter men are, if anything, the least worrisome parts of the entire Allen West phenomenon. 

Wait. West said ball-busting women have wrecked the economy? Let's refer to the source material: Michelle Goldberg:

Liberal women, he claimed, helped cause the debt by “neutering American men,” which apparently undermined their fiscal rectitude. 

No link for that quote. Isn't it funny that Shirley Sherrod is suing Andrew Breitbart for presenting a quote of hers out of context? Imagine if the law permitted that! We'd all be afraid to say anything. But, okay, I'll go find the context myself. Here. It's a bit rambly, but he's calling for people to be strong and staunch in their conservative virtues. Speaking to a group a women, he praises strong women — even quotes Sarah Palin's "fight like a girl" — but calls on women to demand strength from men. Palin's "fight like a girl" was a "poke in the chest" to men, goading men to fight.

A little more Marcotte:

As Goldberg recounts, West acts erratically, lashes out randomly, has a victim complex that makes Sarah Palin look thick-skinned, and has acted out violently from his rage issues. But the space between Tea Party ideology and unhinged rage is whisker-thin.

So... Palin and West are telling conservatives to stand up and fight, and Goldberg and Marcotte are, really, trying to say no, don't fight. They are happier with tame, sedate Republicans. The method they are using is to portray the fighting Republicans as angry and crazy. I'd like to say that Marcotte and Goldberg are hacks using a boring old rhetorical device, but I think these angry/crazy characterizations do leave an impression.

People are trying very hard to ruin Allen West right now, before he gets anywhere, and they are trying to ensure that Sarah Palin stays down where they think they crushed her.

ADDED: Instapundit says:

Yeah, first Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, now Amanda Marcotte: What is it with the Democrats sending white women to attack a black man, anyway? Are they trying to play on gendered racial fears among white voters? It’s some kind of dog-whistle, isn’t it?

Michele Bachmann — "a freaking dwarf" — screamed "help!" when 2 women — women! — trapped her in a bathroom.

Listen the left-wing radio personality Randi Rhodes (from back in March 2010):



She's calling Michele Bachmann "a freaking dwarf." (Is it not politically incorrect to call a short person a "dwarf"? Isn't that like calling a person with a dark tan the n-word?) Anyway, I ran across that this morning because I was trying to find out how tall Michele Bachmann is. She's 5'2".

I wanted to know, because I've been looking at the accusations of homophobia that are being lobbed at Bachmann, and I noticed this story "Bachmann Feared Abduction by Lesbian, Ex-Nun":

Rep. Michele Bachmann, who is now seeking the Republication presidential nomination, had claimed in 2005 that she was almost abducted by two women in a bathroom, according to The Daily Beast.

The pair consisted of a lesbian and an ex-nun.

At the time of the alleged attempted kidnapping, Bachmann was a state senator from Minnesota and had already started to campaign against LGBT rights. She had previously been caught hiding in the bushes of a gay rights event.

Caught hiding in the bushes of a gay rights event? All right, this article — in The Advocate — makes no pretense of being unbiased. Let's switch over to the Daily Beast article whence these factoids were extracted. Oh! It's Michelle Goldberg. She doesn't provide a link to get us to the root of the "bushes" story, but let's not get distracted. Let's focus, for now, on the alleged kidnapping. Goldberg writes:

A few dozen people showed up at the town hall for the April 9 [2005] event, and Bachmann greeted them warmly. But when, during the question and answer session, the topic turned to gay marriage, Bachmann ended the meeting 20 minutes early and rushed to the bathroom. 

Causation or correlation? What do you think?

When a politician ends a meeting 20 minutes early and rushes to the bathroom, what do you think is more likely?
	She wanted to avoid the topic that had just come up.
	She really had to go to the bathroom.
	Both: stress over the topic brought on the bathroom urgency.
pollcode.com free polls

Back to Goldberg:

Hoping to speak to her, [Pamela] Arnold and another middle-aged woman, a former nun, followed her. As Bachmann washed her hands and Arnold looked on, the ex-nun tried to talk to her about theology. Suddenly, after less than a minute, Bachmann let out a shriek. "Help!" she screamed. "Help! I'm being held against my will!"

Arnold, who is just over 5 feet tall, was stunned, and hurried to open the door. Bachmann bolted out and fled, crying, to an SUV outside. Then she called the police, saying, according to the police report, that she was "absolutely terrified and has never been that terrorized before as she had no idea what those two women were going to do to her." The Washington County attorney, however, declined to press charges, writing in a memo, "It seems clear from the statements given by both women that they simply wanted to discuss certain issues further with Ms. Bachmann."

From the police report:

BACHMAN [sic] STATED THAT WHEN SHE WAS GETTING READY TO LEAVE SHE WENT TO THE RESTROOM. SENATOR BACHMAN STATED THAT WHEN SHE WAS TRYING TO LEAVE THE RESTROOM, 2 WOMEN BLOCKED IN AND TOLD HER THEY WANTED TO CONTINUE TALKING. SEN BACHMAN STATED SHE WAS AFRAID AND SCREAMED FOR HELP. THE 2 WOMEN LET HER LEAVE THE RESTROOM WHEN SHE SCREAMED. THE WOMEN ARE BELIEVED TO BE W/ THE GLBT GROUP.

(Bachmann was a state senator at that time.) Following a public figure into the bathroom and pressing her with questions in that environment is bad etiquette, even if you are calm and friendly, but hostile questions and blocking the exit are completely unacceptable and threatening. Trapping someone in a room is false imprisonment, traditionally, and here's the Minnesota criminal statute: "Whoever, knowingly lacking lawful authority to do so, intentionally confines or restrains... [a] person without the person's consent, is guilty of false imprisonment...." You can go to prison for 3 years for that. I don't know the details underlying the decision not to prosecute.

Do Goldberg and The Advocate think that women are inherently so weak that you're hysterical to get scared when they confine/restrain you without your consent? Are women, especially short women, given special immunity to exercise physical intimidation? We're told that Arnold is "is just over 5 feet tall," but not that Michele Bachmann herself is tiny. That fact is omitted when the aim is to portray Michele Bachmann as homophobic, even as it is used gratuitously to mock her as "a freaking dwarf." How tall was the "ex-nun"? I'm not seeing that information. But we do get to know that she was an ex-nun, as if that's supposed to make her sound benign.

There's a big effort right now to propagate the meme that Michele Bachmann is a raging homophobe. I'm going to monitor that effort for you. I'm not a Bachmann partisan, as regular readers know. I've supported gay rights since long before I started this blog in 2004, and I am not a social conservative. This issue falls right into my zone as a blogger because: 1. I'm observing the 2012 campaign with cruel neutrality as a political independent, 2. I care about consistency in the way women are perceived and described, 3. I think opposition to some gay rights issues should not be conflated with hating or wanting to hurt gay people, and 4. The "Bachmann homophobia" issue is rife with the kind of lying and unfair reporting that I am on a mission to expose.

Asking "Are You Sexist?" is asking the the wrong question.

Bob Wright frames the question that way as he is challenged about the way Bloggingheads commenters seem to get angriest at me and 2 other female diavloggers (Megan McArdle and Michelle Goldberg):



Of course, the commenters respond to his question by denying that they've been sexist. They're good little commenters, so they don't want to be something bad, and they accept that the thing that sounds bad — sexism — is bad, and therefore no one can say anything interesting.

But obviously, the human mammal has a response to the perceived sex of another human mammal. All sorts of conscious and unconscious thoughts and feelings flow through the nervous system. It is the most interesting topic of conversation. Don't squelch it! Facilitate it!

Why have diavlogs at all if not to expose the physicality of the interlocutors? If you want to exclude reactions of the more complex emotional/sexual kind, then let's stick to writing... and use sex-neutral pen names. If we're going to appear and speak out loud, we're doing something that has an elaborate effect on other human beings, and that's not something to deny and pretend not to see. It's something to observe,  have deep (and shallow) thoughts about, and analyze — seriously and jokingly — in writing and in speech.

We're so afraid of hurting other people and of being thought ill of that we make ourselves into crushing bores.

***

Bonus: Here's an August 2008 BHtv segment in which I talked with Megan McArdle about why female diavloggers inspire wrath.

AND: Here's the BHtv link to see the kind of answers Bob got to his question.

Glenn Beck reacts to what they're saying about him.

Watch him watch Michelle Goldberg:



Michelle Goldberg is a lefty columnist I've done Bloggingheads diavlogs with.

Glenn Beck... I don't know what to make of him. I can't listen to him long enough to follow his theories. Seriously, those banks of creepily lit brown blackboards covered in orange chalkings... it's nightmarish. It flips my too-crazy-to-watch switch, which keeps me from ingesting the substance. But I don't turn around and call him crazy. I'd monitor him for you, but I don't have the attention. I'm suddenly like a schoolboy the teacher thinks needs Ritalin, and I just say no.

"BHTV has had 100 DV (or it seems that way) on Palin and only one BHTV head has ever mounted a real defense of her."

"Althouse did it once. And only because no one else was available. I realize BHTV is a left-wing site, but damn - it gets boring."

An apt comment over at Bloggingheads.

ADDED: "DV" means "diavlog" — that is, a video'd conversation between 2 persons. BHTV supposedly pairs people from different or opposite sides, and there really is a vision of producing something like the "civility" we've been hearing so much about lately. But it seems like I'm go-to Palin defender over there. The commenter is wrong that I only did it once. I've done it many times, and I am not a big Palin supporter. I'm more of a big critic of Palin-hating, and there's been a lot of Palin-hating out there to criticize:

September 5, 2008: I defend Palin in a diavlog with Jane Hamsher.

October 14, 2008: In a diavlog with Ana Marie Cox, I argue that Palin is good for the country — even as I say I'm going to vote against her:



November 5, 2008: In a diavlog with Glenn Reynolds, we both defend Palin.

July 5, 2009: I push back when Michelle Goldberg goes all out against Palin.

November 19, 2009: I'm re-paired with Goldberg and consequently better prepared to push back when she attacks Palin. Famous fireworks in this one, when Goldberg doesn't like it when I — as they say — punch back twice as hard.

November 20, 2010: I'm the one BHTV chose to go up against the author of "Palinisms" (a book mocking Palin).

Stray anti-Althousiana.

ADDED: Bashed that humungous melon-head into a wall? I feel sorry for the wall!

ADDED:  Ironically, complimenting themselves on their civility, they are uncivil to me!

"2012: How Sarah Barracuda Becomes President -- Why do you think Barack Obama is being so nice to Michael Bloomberg?"

New York Magazine has a great title for this article (by John Heilemann):

... Until not long ago, the only people who took seriously the notion that Palin would make a White House bid in 2012, let alone win the Republican nomination, were those who really do live at the unicorn ranch—and spend their time there huffing pixie dust. When Palin quit the Alaska governorship in 2009, her political career seemed over.

Oh? Well, let me embed this clip from a Bloggingheads I did 2 days after that resignation:



I was right!

Back to Heilemann. It's a long article... and I don't think it's all that hard to see how Palin could win, so I'm not that inclined to slog through all the details. But speaking of living at the unicorn ranch and huffing pixie dust, Heilemann is really all about the President Bloomberg scenario. I don't get that at all.

Let's compare 2 men and 2 women in the same situation — about to hang up the phone.

2 men (the subject is Israel):



2 women (talking about Obama's and Palin's books):



Discuss!

"The apartment was small, with slanting floors and irregular heat and a buzzer downstairs that didn’t work, so that visitors had to call ahead from a pay phone at the corner gas station, where a black Doberman the size of a wolf paced through the night in vigilant patrol, its jaws clamped around an empty beer bottle."

That sentence, written by Sarah Palin, is howlingly awful. Written by Barack Obama? Brilliant. Just brilliant.

Ha ha. That takes me back to last week... a very short snippet, forgive me:



(Click to continue if you want to hear me trash the liberal's self-love over nuance.)

AND: You know, I'll admit it: After I found out Obama wrote that sentence, it started looking better to me. I could feel this happening and I paid attention to the readjustment going on in my brain. Unlike some people, I am not inhibited about revealing it. It's what I'm interested in: how people think, how mental processes work, how opinions take shape. That, and not adhering to an ideology or supporting a party, is what I think about when I write about politics. I'm different from politicos like Goldberg, and I know that this difference can be very disturbing to them. I've got a hypothesis that when I've gotten into fights in the blogosphere and in the real world — like here — it's been because of this different orientation of mine. Oh, why won't liberals celebrate this difference? Just kidding. I know it drives them up a wall. It drives conservatives and libertarians up the wall too. It's disarmingly unpolitical.

Andrew Sullivan has discovered the Michelle Goldberg/Ann Althouse diavlog.

He says "Michelle Goldberg gets it." Fine, but did he get as far as this clip, where Michelle says something that makes me say, "You hear that, Andrew?"?



Goldberg went to Wasilla to report for The Nation during the campaign, and there she heard the wildest rumors but the one thing nearly everyone agreed about was: "Yes, we all know that Trig is her baby."

ADDED: I know Sullivan wants me to check out his list of "lies." I picked one to check out, that she said the only flag in her office was the Israeli flag. As Sullivan himself notes, she must have meant to say the only foreign flag, since she did also have an Alaskan and an American flag in her office. That's the sort of sloppy speaking that one would correct easily if it were pointed out at the time. Of course, I also have the state flag and the American flag. I mean, it would be pretty ridiculous for a state governor to only have a foreign flag! There isn't even a motivation to lie.

That there's no motivation here doesn't mean it's an "odd lie" — which is Sullivan's term. It means it's not a lie at all. What's odd is his definition of a lie. If I said I was just wearing jeans to a party, you wouldn't have exposed me as a liar if I turned up wearing a shirt and shoes as well. In fact, you'd sound like a dork — or, with good enough delivery, a comedian — if you said, "You liar. You said you were just wearing jeans!"

Calling something like this a lie marks you as someone who's centered not on finding out what is true, but on destroying someone. It doesn't motivate me to go through the rest of the long list systematically to see what each item is about, and it certainly doesn't make me want to look at the list and accept the conclusion that wow, Sarah Palin really is a terrible liar.

ADDED: Little Miss Attila is afraid to watch the diavlog, and naked Tom Maguire devises what would be a traffic-grabbing title, if anybody ever Googled that.

Finally! The Bloggingheads with me and Michelle Goldberg, talking about Sarah Palin's book...

... and assorted other things....



IN THE COMMENTS: d said:

I love how Ann doesn't get exercised over politics, but does over literature!

Thanks for getting me.

Diavlogging about Sarah Palin.

I'm recording a Bloggingheads episode in an hour and a half. In the past, I've always kept these things secret and then sprung them on you when the finished diavlog was up over on the Bloggingheads site. But I'm going to take the liberty to do it differently this time.

They want an episode on Palin's book, and they've paired me — despite my "Sarah Palin is dumb" post — with someone who completely hates Sarah Palin, Michelle Goldberg.

Here I am talking with her last July, in a segment titled "Analyzing why Michelle HATES Palin":



Clearly, the anti-Palin side will be strongly represented in this diavlog. Shouldn't more of a pro-Palinist be found? I'm told that I am the closest they can come to a diavlogger on the Palin side. Fearing that this is not going to be an even match, I'm deviating from the norm and ripping the cloak of secrecy off Bloggingheads so I can invite you to supply me with questions, topics, and ideas. Help me out.

UPDATE: Here.

Now, let's distinguish between wishing someone was dead and...

Jim Lindgren is struck by Michelle Goldberg's passion. It's hateful and casual, as she expresses the exquisite difference between the way lefties wanted Cheney dead and some righties — purportedly — actually want to kill Obama.

Hmm. Did anyone really threaten to kill Obama? It's a federal crime, and isn't it vigorously investigated? If people are doing this, why are we not seeing arrests?

Anyway, comparative hatred is a strange game, isn't it? Let's be rational and analytical, mm'kay?

Hey, kids!

I'm in the NYT...

And: more Sarah Palin, so get cracking. This is sure to be a 200+ comment thread.

It's me and Michelle Goldberg, blabbing about the governors Palin and Sanford.

On the new Bloggingheads.

Special Sex and Palin Edition

Is Sarah Palin insane?
Examining her motivations
Edwards’s sex tape vs. Sanford’s Appalachian hike
Mark Sanford’s an adulterous flake. But he’s so romantic!
Is Palin the next Obama?
Analyzing why Michelle HATES Palin