The Flag of the World

So The Passion of the Christ earns Lord of the Rings style numbers>The Lord of the Rings sweeps the Oscars. There are some things in this world that there is just no escape from.

Yes, yes, the polls look bad for Bush. But Bush hasn’t even started campaigning yet, while Kerry’s been stumping for months. I realized today that Kerry is such a flawed candidate that I could eviscerate him without much effort at all.

Of course, the response from the Democrats is, “Yeah, that’s what we thought about George W. Bush. Don’t get too cocky.”

And my response is, “You also thought that about Reagan. That proves nothing except that you’re generally wrong. On the other hand, we Republicans thought that Dukakis and Mondale would be relatively flaky candidates, along the lines of John Kerry. Guess what? We were right.” And we are now.

UPDATE: For some of that evisceration I promised you, go check out Robert Musil’s series of posts entitled “Pathetic… And Bound To Lose.” Just keep scrolling.

Jeff Jarvis and James Lileks both adress the recent move by Clear Channel radio to drop Howard Stern after he referred to African-American women in a vulgar way. Jarvis is very, very exercised over this. Lileks is not. I side with Lileks.

Here’s the issue at stake here. The wavelengths through which broadcast television and cable are spread through the atmosphere are a very limited commodity. As such, it has been decided that they belong to the public, and anyone who wishes to broadcast on these wavelengths must seek out one of a limited number of licenses. There are arguments against doing this, but few people make them. If we did not, then utter chaos would ensue, as stations would broadcast on as many frequencies as possible, and whoever had the largest radio tower would win. You get a feel for what it would be like for everything–radio and television alike–by paying attention to the wars that can occur on the unregulated edges of the radio spectrum.

Now, as the public owns these airwaves, the public also gets to decide who gets the licenses, and there are conditions put on these licenses–for example, “don’t be obscene.” After the public outcry over Janet Jackson’s Superbowl strip-show, the government determined–probably correctly–that it was the will of the people that there be less of this crap, that some line be drawn. ClearChannel reacted with a new “zero-tolerance” policy. A day later, Stern goes and tests it. ClearChannell follows through on what they said they would do. Most people, as evidenced by the comments to Jarvis’ post, appear to think that was a fine thing to do. Jarvis is annoyed by this, and in denial over it. His post is entitled “The death of broadcast,” and he makes some predictions.

- Broadcast radio will quickly falter, losing attention to MP3s, satellite, and cellular broadcast. Broadcast radio will die. Consolidation won’t kill it. Censorship will.
- Satellite will grow rapidly, getting more consumer revenue and ad revenue.
- Broadcast TV will suffer similar blows.
- Cable and satellite TV will grow.
- The bottom line: Any medium that can be government-regulated will shrink; any medium free of government regulation will grow.

He sees this as a bad thing. He apparently likes broadcast, despite its public-owned qualities, for some reason he never gives. But it seems inevitable that, the government being what it is, technology will eventually find a way to replace broadcast as the standard thing that people watch. But it won’t be any time soon, and it won’t be because Howard Stern got kicked out.

But Jeff makes a mistake that far too many people on the Internet make if he thinks that satellite radio will replace regular radio within the next 10 years. We’ve had the Internet for over a decade now, and what has it replaced? Nada. Zilch. Zippo. It has provided competition, certainly, and a new outlet for people such as myself. And in the future, it may well replace another medium, or all of them, even. But even today, the number of people affected by something on ABC news or on nationally syndicated radio dwarfs even the readership of Instapundit by several orders of magnitude. Or take cable TV, which has been around for, what, 30, going on 40 years? It’s as close to replacing broadcast as its ever been, but broadcast still has many, many more viewers. Similarly, satellite radio may be the future, but not for quite a while.

So relax, Jeff. The world’s not coming to an end. The majority is just exercising its perogative regarding their airwaves. You say, ” Yes, they are public airwaves. That means they belong to me, too. I want to listen to Stern. You don’t. Fine. Change the channel. We have lots of them.” I say, there are more of us than there are of you, and in a democracy, that means I win. You don’t like it, change the medium. Go listen to satellite radio or watch cable TV.

One of them is easily made, the other is less so. First off, Kerry wins the nomination easily. Despite the desperate wishing of Mickey Kaus, Edwards has no hope. Read the polls. Barring some sort of serious mental breakdown on Thursday, Kerry will win. And even if he does have one, he still could win.

My second prediction is this: come November, it will be similarly obvious that Bush is going to win, though the media will try mightily to make it sound like it’s going to be a horserace. However, this effort will be undercut greatly by one Ralph Nader, who will point out to anyone who will listen (and everyone else while he’s at it) that Kerry has no hope, so you may as well vote your conscience and vote Nader.

I will not, however, predict the success of this strategy.

Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ opens today, and despite the grumblings of critics, the commotion of the ADL and the disgusting venom of people no one cares about, thousands of Americans will see the movie. Some of them will be changed forever. As someone who’s been following this movie since before it had subtitles, I’ve been paying pretty close attention to the recent developments. I’m looking forward to seeing it sometime here, and have already talked to someone who saw it Monday.

So these are my thoughts going into it–this is not a movie, not in the traditional sense. It utilizes the medium of “motion picture” but it is not a movie, per se. It is filmed religious iconography, a moving stained glass window–it is a passion play. People going into it expecting a traditional movie will be disappointed. But I’m okay with that.

One of the most interesting things about this movie is how it has driven the previously standard movie star Mel Gibson to becoming a flaming, Bible-thumping Jesus freak. And not because he has changed, but because by doing something he thought God wanted him to do, he has put himself into a position where he is required to explain and defend his faith. I think it is an instructive lesson for all us Christians, and this sort of thing can happen to all of us.

Imagine Joe Christian who works in an office for GeneriCo. Joe doesn’t talk much about his faith, but he doesn’t try to hide it, either. Everyone know’s he’s a Christian, but the details of it just don’t come up. But then one day, Joe feels called to use his next vacation on a mission trip to Haiti. A couple days later at the water cooler, Jill Agnostic asks Joe what he’s doing for his upcoming vacation. “Oh,” says Joe, a smidgen uncomfortable but also glad to be asked, “I’m going to Haiti.” “Haiti!” exclaims Jill, “why would you go there?” And so Joe explains himself, defends himself, and shares his faith. From then on, everyone in the office sees him in a different light. Not because he changed, but because he acted on his faith in a way that brought it to the surface. This has happened to Gibson on a grand scale.

Incidentally, I think Gibson and I would get along pretty well. Not just because of the movie he made, but also because he has the most involved guest appearance on The Simpsons that I have ever seen.

National Review Online has good Passion coverage–I suggest this quick article by Ralph Winter, the producer of the two X-Men movies, and this moving piece by NR editor Ramesh Ponnuru.

The headline reads, “USA’s Youth At High Risk For Venereal Diseases” Well, duh. But then the disturbing part–fully half of American young people will, according to this study, get venereal diseases by the time they are 25. This number lines up eerily well with the fact that half of all high school students have had sex.

But then read the reasons that are given for this–”because so many are single, have a series of partners and fail to recognize their risk.” Oh, right! Just “recognize the risk!” That’s all people need to do. Once they recognize the risk, they will no longer be at risk, and can go on their merry way. Of course, the researchers discard abstinence as a strategy, despite the fact that that would solve all the problems. Instead, we should all use condoms! Why? Well, “other studies have shown that condoms prevent the spread of HIV and reduce the risk of other STDS.”

Come again? Condoms “prevent the spread of HIV,” but only “reduce the risk” of other STDS? How does that work? Are condoms imbued with some sort of magical anti-HIV potion? Or perhaps if they admitted that condoms only “reduce the risk” of HIV infection, then it wouldn’t sound like such a good idea. But let’s face it–the best you’re ever going to get with a condom is a reduction in risk. Insisting otherwise is ridiculous, and downright dangerous.

kquote>”The candidates are an interesting group, with diverse opinions - for tax cuts and against them, for NAFTA and against NAFTA, for the Patriot Act and against the Patriot Act, in favor of liberating Iraq and opposed to it,” Bush said.

“And that’s just one senator from Massachusetts.” Bush just needs to keep talking like this–exactly like this–for nine more months, and re-election will be a breeze. Bush has a sense of humor that allows him to go negative without going negative which is one of his strongest assets. Meanwhile, if John Kerry is going to keep muttering about “Republicans who never fought in a war” for nine months, the American populace, most of which, you know, never fought in a war, is going to get mighty sick of him.

Micky Kaus, Law Professor Rick Hansen and the Wall Street Journal discuss the “stand by your ad” provision of campaign finance reform (requiring the candidate to appear onscreen at the end of an ad giving his endorsement to it), both its legality and its effects. I’m wary of campaign finance reform in general, and this sort of thing just gives me the willies. As Kaus asks, who is the government to tell candidates what to say when?

The Wall Street Journal article notes that this sort of thing has already had a major effect in the Democratic primaries. Dean and Gephardt both went negative in Iowa, and both lost big (whether or not there’s causation there, of course, no one can say), and no one has dared do so since. As such, Kerry is cruising towards the nomination very much unscathed.

The article sees this as a plus for Kerry. I see it as a negative for the Democratic party, and for the democratic process in general. Shouldn’t a presidential candidate be tested and tried before he gets the nomination? Shouldn’t he wade through the fires of negative campaigning and electioneering, and prove himself up to the task of running for President for real? As it stands, Democrats have just about picked a candidate they know almost nothing about. When negative campaigning starts–and it will, one way or another (here’s an easy example of how it will be done)–no one knows how Kerry will hold up.

But my real interest in all of this is how this rule will be creatively avoided or exploited so as to allow negative ads without condemning the candidate at the end of them. We may not see any of this in the Presidential election–the stakes are too high for this sort of experimentation–but, mark my words, we’ll see some ingenious creativity in this regard at some point. I’ve got a couple suggestions to kick off the season

1) “I’m George W. Bush, and I am supposed to tell you that I endorse this ad. But I just can’t. This negative attack ad is just the sort of thing that is turning people off to the political process. I’m sorry you had to see it, and I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

2) “I’m George W. Bush, and I’m supposed to tell you that I endorse this ad. I don’t want to, because it’s negative, it’s mudslinging, and it’s what’s turning Americans off to the political process. But, with a heavy heart, I will endorse it, because it’s true. And Americans deserve the truth, even if it’s negative.”

I’m sure there are some other ideas out there. Hopefully we’ll see some of them this year, though it may take a while for people to get so sick of the rule that parodying it is welcome.

So, Howard Dean is out of the race. Or is he? Powerline’s roundup of the commenter reactions to Dean’s defeat at the Dean blog reveals something very interesting. Dean still has power. Right now, he’s apparently planning to use that power to promote progressive politics from within the Democratic Party. But the Democratic party has obviously shown that it has very little use for Mr. Dean, and that his brand of progressive politics aren’t going to win many elections. If you can’t even get elected by Democrat, then what the heck can you do?

Well, he can split the vote. As Powerline’s post shows, if Dean ran as an independent or a Green, he would be Nader times five. Which is to say he would get 10% of the vote. But that’s a mighty big ten percent. And once it became clear that Kerry was, no way, no how, going to win the vote with Dean taking out that big of a chunk, lots of the “dated Dean, married Kerry” folks would dump their lackluster hubby and come back into the arms of that daring renegade.

So, Dean has a choice. Does he toe the party line, and work hard on an inevitably fruitless attempt at “change from within,” or does he become a historical figure who fundamentally changed American politics? Not that he’d win. But he could destroy the Democratic party if he kept at it, just as Teddy Roosevelt could have destroyed the Reublican party back in the years after the election 1912, if he had wanted to.

I’m sure Dean will play it safe. But I hope he at least recognizes that he has a choice, and uses that threat as a club to keep his ideas near the front of the Democratic party. Unfortunately for Dean, the only reason I hope that is because I know that America will fully and utterly reject those ideas, and the party that sponsors them.

What do I, as a Seattle Mariner fan, make of Alex Rodruiguez’s move to the Evil Empire? Well, like at least one other blogger, my first thought was “I hate these guys more than communism.” But now that I’ve thought about it a bit, I think I know the plan.

Much like the United States in Iraq, the Seattle Mariners are ensuring that all their enemies are in one place, making it easier for them to be destroyed.

Admittedly, my blog and my book don’t have a whole lot in common, except that they were written by me. But if you’ve enjoyed what I’ve had to say here, I’d bet that you’ll also enjoy Bright Orange Sweater-Coat, which is now available for purchase! Go buy it! Or, wait until it’s available on Amazon, which should be within a few weeks.

I’m going to kick off the official marketing campaign in March, so if you’ve avoided buying it this time, don’t worry. I’ll bring it up again. And again. And again. And again. I’m like that.

In his latest column, Thomas Friedman has repeated, almost verbatim my post from a week ago about what Kerry needs to say in order to warn off terrorist who hope their actions will tip the election in favor of a more sympathetic president. Good for Friedman–he’s right. However, so are David Adesnik and Cori Dauber–it’s just not going to happen. Not for a while, anyway, and by the time he does, it will probably be too late to do any good, either for his campaign or for American soldiers in Iraq.