What we're reading: Different perspectives on Eliot Spitzer

Since I work in media, I try to steer away from politics on the blog. A little Web search will point you to my true feelings on politics, but it's all about the appearance of neutrality, right?

Anyway, New York made some history last week, with a governor famous for bringing down things like corporations who liked screwing investors and prostitution rings got caught with his pants down and $4,300 invested in a...wait for it...prostitution ring.

OK, here's the deal. Wanna make some cash by selling a little sex? Up to you. I don't want government's stinking filthy hands on my profession, either. Want to put up some cash for a little sex? Up to you. I don't the government's stinking filthy hands on my consumer choices, either.

(Like how I hedged that?)

Anyway, here's some interesting stuff on Former Governor Eliot Spitzer you might not have read:

» Find out how Spitzer got brought down by a technique he pioneered.
» Analee Newitz says Spitzer did nothing wrong, apart from the hypocrisy.
» Matisse offers some advice for folks who want to do what Spitzer did, but without getting caught. (At least I think that's the link – the good people at the cafe at which I'm accessing the Internet have deemed that content inappropriate for their patrons.)
» Sudhir Vankatesh suggests that maybe $1,000 an hour isn't enough to spend – if Spitzer really wanted anonymity, he should have dropped closer to $7,500 an hour to work with someone who is a little more focused on consumers' anonymity.

That's what the Internet's for: slandering others anonymously

Thanks, Kevin Smith, for reminding us of that. Tim Couch, thanks for trying to make the Internet useless.

Primary Election Stuff

Fortunately, this year's presidential primary season is greatly condensed. Pretty much any primary after Feb. 5 means zippo.

I'm registered "unenrolled," and I've decided to stay that way. In 2004, I switched my registration to Democrat so that I could vote for Dennis Kucinich in the primary, but frankly, I'm just not going to bother this year. There's no one running I'm truly excited about.

I will probably have a brief comment after Super Duper Tuesday, but for now, the only comment I need to make has already been made.

Jesus Jones, "Right Here, Right Now"

A woman on the radio
talks about revolution
when it's already passed her by.
Bob Dylan didn't have this to sing about.
You know, it feels good
to be alive.

Sometime in the latter half of the 1980s, my paternal grandmother bought my siblings and I our first Walkmans (which, regrettably, is probably the plural). They were our Chanukah presents.

The Walkmans had AM-FM tuners. They were metallic in color. The tuner dials were in the upper right quadrants of the devices.

It was on my Walkman that I learned about a coup in the U.S.S.R. that overthrew Mikhail Gorbechev. I didn't understand what that meant – the end of the Soviet Union. The end of the Cold War.

I knew it meant something, though. Even then, I understood energy.

I was in the basement of my maternal grandparents' house, across the street from the house my paternal grandmother owned.

I understood better a few years later when on cable television we got to see the Berlin Wall come down.

What I understood then: People matter. People make change.

Well, I saw the decade in,
when it seemed the world could change
in the blink of an eye.
And if anything,
then there's your sign
of the times.

The thing that's stuck me most over the past 20 years – from the fall of the Soviet Union through the murder of Benazir Bhutto – is how quickly everything changes.

One morning, we're sitting at our desks, and planes crash into the skyscrapers we're working in.

Another night, we're sitting down to dinner with out families, and someone launches a "shock and awe" bombing campaign against us.

Some afternoon, we sit down to lunch, and nothing happens.

You never can tell.

Right here, right now,
there is no other place
I want to be.
Right here, right now,
watching the world wake up
from history.

There are all sorts of warnings about history. History repeats itself. Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

The real warning should be this. Those who don't learn how to interpret the connections and evolution of historic events are doomed themselves to become history.

One morning, we put the bread in the toaster, and by the time we're done washing our faces, the toast appears on our plates, exactly the color, texture and temperature we like it, buttered and jammed to perfection.

One afternoon, we sit down to lunch, a server points a pen-like device at our eyes, and our bank accounts are debited for the amount of lunch plus a 17.5% gratuity.

One night, we climb in bed, and tomorrow passes us by.

Benazir Bhutto

I was just wrapping up some updates when the e-mail rang Thursday morning.

"Benazir Bhutto has died in an attack at a rally."

That was it, the first update from CNN.

Then my boss walked into the office.

"Let me finish this up, and then we need to talk Pakistan."

My boss, having just arrived at work, hadn't yet heard the news, so he caught up while he was waiting for me.

For those who don't keep up with international affairs the way I do, here's the plain English version.

Bhutto was Pakistan's first female prime minister. Her father was hanged in a coup, and she was exiled.

Pervez Musharraf, who is currently leading Pakistan with the blessing of the Bush administration, scheduled elections for January of 2008, so he could pretend to be running a democracy.

Bhutto returned to Pakistan with the support of millions to challenge Musharraf. She told CNN she was aware that there would probably be attempts on her life. She told her friends and advisors she wasn't happy with the security the state was providing her.

People rallied. Some of the rallies turned violent.

Musharraf declared a state of emergency and put her under house arrest.

The international community cried out – what sort of person running a democracy puts his primary competitor under house arrest and suspends the country's constitution?

Musharraf lifted the house arrest and the emergency declaration.

At a rally Thursday, Bhutto waved from the sunroof of a car. Supporters cheered. A suicide bomber blew himself up. Someone shot Bhutto in the neck.

This is something out of a novel. Or a movie. Turns out this stuff still happens in real life.

Wow.

Let the endorsing begin!

Well, it's started. The Des Moines Register and the Boston Globe have made their endorsements for the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries, respectively.

The Register endorsed Hillary Clinton on the Democratic side and John McCain on the Republican side. The Globe endorsed McCain and Democrat Barack Obama.

I hate when newspapers do this, for a few reasons.

First and foremost, the papers are coming right out and saying, "No, we're not going to be neutral in this race."

Second, not all people do their research. Since they know their local newspaper will endorse a candidate, they just vote for whomever the paper tells them to. I don't feel so much like the papers are cheating those people out of learning about candidates, as much as I feel like the papers are cheating the people who do their research.

Lastly, you give fuel to candidates you didn't endorse. If Mike Huckabee wins the Iowa Republican caucus and goes on to win the Republican nomination (God help us), when the Register comes along looking to do an in-depth profile on Huckabee and sell him some ads, the candidate can just look at them and say, "You endorsed McCain. Go screw." And then the paper's not able to properly serve its readership.

I know endorsing candidates is a time-honored tradition, but it's one that needs to stop.

What we're reading: The True Believer by Eric Hoffer

When I was writing for a newspaper, I met a man who, in trying to memorize a complicated mathematical proof of his own concoction, wrote his equation on the inside of a paper bag, and walked around his attic apartment with the paper bag on his head for four days until he had it down pat.

He is what we call a wingnut. This is not the medical term. Nor is it, I imagine, the politically correct one.

I think of wingnuttery as working on a V-shaped spectrum. My paper-bag-wearing friend, strange but benign, might be the bottom point of the V. As we head up the right side, we get political wingnuts like George W. Bush and, further up, Joseph Stalin. Along the left side, we get pontificating wingnuts like Eric Hoffer and, further up, Noam Chomsky.

And pretty much anyone who blogs because they feel like they have something interesting to say. Hi, pot. Meet kettle. Anywho...

The story on Hoffer goes like this. When he was seven, his mom fell while carrying him downstairs, and young Eric went blind.

When he turned 15, his eyesight magically reappeared, and he began reading as much as he could as fast as he could, lest his eyesight go away again.

Hoffer never graduated high school, but he read. A lot.

His first and best-known book, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements came out in 1951, when the world was reeling from World War II, Hitler, Stalin and the vague beginnings of the Cold War.

The True Believer reads like a how-to guide for any pretentious human who wishes to start and maintain a revolution, then oversee the final result when it's done being a revolution.

With the perspective of 50-plus years since the book's publication, the guide still holds up. To run a revolution, you need people who can write, people who can convince (oratorically and forcefully) and people who can organize.

To get people on board with your revolution, make sure the past looks glorious and the present looks bleak (but not desperate – people who spend their days hunting for scraps of food aren't going to get behind a cause). Also, people who are bored make great revolutionaries.

To keep people on board after you've reached critical mass, make sure they don't think too much.

To me, the most striking point makes a lot of sense: Someone prone to revolution will get behind pretty much any revolution; it doesn't matter what the cause is.

The book is going to appeal to a narrow cross-section of people: Those with a large vocabulary (words like religiofication and renascence pop up every other paragraph) who don't mind specious citations (the one source I was interested in exploring was in Section 8; when I got to the footnote, it told me to refer to Section 111 – not only is he using the current work as the source, he's using something 100 pages after what you're reading as the source).

What we're reading: Full Frontal Feminism by Jessica Valenti

I've learned a lot from Jessica Valenti over the past few years. Apart from my anonymously blogging friend Sassy Pants and my simply amazing friend Catherine Orland (and, of course, my mother, who had a hell of a head start on these ladies – though she is also amazing), I've learned more about human interaction from Valenti than most other people.

Valenti is one of the founding editors of the blog Feministing. (She wins points straightaway for turning a noun into a verb.) Her blog deals primarily with feminist issues, and it becomes painfully evident right away that there's no such thing as an issue that belongs to a single -ist.

Queer issues, class and poverty issues, racial issues, immigration, employment, religion, these are all feminist issues. They're also human issues. Funny how that works.

This is the most important thing I've learned from Valenti: I am a feminist.

I've given away my copy, but somewhere in or on Full Frontal Feminism, it says, "You're a feminist, I swear!"

And she's right. Pretty much everything in the book falls under the category of "common sense." You can't tell kids that condoms cause cancer then be shocked when they go off and have sex without condoms. You can't allow pharmacists to withhold emergency contraception and then be shocked when abortion rates rise.

It's not brain surgery. And the masses aren't stupid.

The one thing I can say I didn't (a) enjoy and (b) learn from in FFF is the language. Valenti has clearly aimed this book at people younger than me, and she uses a lexicon you're more likely to hear on high school and college campuses. Read: She has a potty typewriter. I'm no prude when it comes to language (really, sit with me for a meal – or worse, watch a football game with me), but when it comes to making a point, I'm strictly in the Kurt Vonnegut camp: every curse word is just another reason for someone not to listen to you.

The Stranger: Just one thing, Dude.
The Dude: Oh yeah, what's that?
The Stranger: Do you have to use so many cuss words?
The Dude: What the fuck are you talking about?
The Stranger: All right, Dude. Have it your way.

But there's no other reason I can name not to read Valenti's book. Especially with an election coming up. And while you're at it, make sure you're reading Feminsting at least twice a week (it's updated several times daily during the week, but I know you folks and daily commitment).