O baffled, balk'd, bent to the very earth,
Oppress'd with myself that I have dared to open my mouth,
Aware now that amid all that blab whose echoes recoil upon me I have not once had the least idea who or what I am,
But that before my arrogant poems the real Me stands yet untouch'd, untold, altogether unreach'd,
Withdrawn far, mocking me with mock-congratulatory signs and bows,
With peals of distant ironical laughter at every word I have written,
Pointing in silence to these songs, and then to the sand beneath.
I perceive I have not really understood any thing, not a single object, and that no man ever can,
Nature here in sight of the sea taking advantage of me to dart upon me and sting me,
Because I have dared to open my mouth to sing at all.
—Walt Whitman
Greetings from the far left coast where we are moving at warp speed deep into the maw of winter and the festive holiday season. I have been loving my Tulsa Runner winter apparel on morning runs when the temperature barely nudged the freezing mark.
As you may be aware, I am scrupulously politically correct and would never want to cause offense by extending seasonal greetings for any specific holiday as if that were the only or the major holiday being celebrated at this time of year. I do not though get bent out of shape when someone wishes me merry Christmas or happy Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Diwali, Winter Solstice for Pagans, or other holiday that makes them joyous and bright. I take these greetings in the good spirit with which they are offered.
So happy holidays, my friends! May the season lighten our spirits though our deep care for the world's suffering be undimmed. And as always, thank you for your encouragement and support.
The festive season notwithstanding, onward into the muck. Oh, and about that mainstream media liberal bias. You may recall the foofaraw over Hillary Clinton's "basket of deplorables" remark during the 2016 presidential campaign. Research by Media Matters, a progressive outfit, we take care to note, turned up data showing the major news outlets "devoted dramatically less coverage" to Donald Trump's description of his political enemies as vermin than to Clinton's "basket of deplorables" description of some Trump supporters. Context was largely absent in reporting on her ill-advised comments. She had added that Trump's backers included "people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change.” Her call for empathy and understanding was lost in the media storm.
Findings by the progressive watchdog Media Matters included 18 times more coverage of Clinton’s remark than Trump’s by the “Big Three” broadcast networks (NBC, ABC and CBS) in the first week after the remark was made; and print reports among the top five circulating newspapers (Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, USA Today) in which mention of Clinton’s remark outnumbered Trump’s 29-1 in the same period.
…
The new Media Matters research, [Matt] Gertz said, illustrated how major news outlets responded to “weaponisation” of Clinton’s remark, “rewarding the right for its disingenuous act, showering Clinton’s ‘deplorables’ remark with coverage.
“By contrast, the same outlets largely ignored Trump’s description of his political enemies as ‘vermin’, continuing a pattern of relatively muted coverage of Trump’s abhorrent and incoherent commentary.” (Martin Pengelly, Media gave much less play to Trump’s ‘vermin’ comment than Clinton remark, The Guardian, November 28, 2023)
Last month in The Spectre of a Great Catastrophe I wrote about Christian nationalist pseudo-historian David Barton, who is credited by Mike Johnson as a profound influence on his life and work. This morning Politico Magazine published an article by Tim Alberta titled The Bogus Historians Who Teach Evangelicals They Live in a Theocracy, an excerpt from his new book The Kingdom, The Power, and the Glory: America's Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism. It is a chlling account of Barton, "who once served as vice chair of the Texas GOP…quietly built a super PAC to aid Ted Cruz’s presidential run in 2016…[and] had long been known for hiding his political agenda behind a scholarly veneer," and his influence within certain, disturbingly widespread circles of evangelical Christians.
Alberta describes himself as raised in the evangelical tradition, son of a white conservative Republican pastor in a white conservative Republican church in a white conservative Republican town. He affirms that his faith in Jesus Christ as the Messiah, "the mediator between a perfect God and a broken humanity," has never faltered. For "some four years [he] embedded inside the modern evangelical movement" to write his book. There he encountered earnest people, mostly men, it seems, of integrity and real conviction, but misguided, acting so contrarily to the tenets of his own faith and that of many other evangelicals. "Why," he asks, "would anyone of integrity and real conviction tour the country with a known huckster like Barton?"
On Wednesday William Brangham at the PBS NewsHour interviewed the mothers of two of the three Palestinian college students shot in Vermont this past Saturday night. Elizabeth Price, mother of Hisham Awartani, had come from her home in the West Bank and Tamara Tamimi, mother of Kinnan Abdalhamid, from Jerusalem to be with their wounded sons. They have been best friends since before their sons were born. The boys grew up together, more brothers than just friends, said Tamimi.They met Tahseen Ahmad sometime around fourth grade and the three soon became inseparable. Price said on NPR that she considers all three of them her children.
Elizabeth Price and Tamara Tamimi are impressive, thoughtful, so thankful their sons are alive, at times emotional as they leaned on one another for support in this moving exchange with Brangham. Price, whose son suffered a spinal injury that leaves him with sensation in his legs but unable to move them, told Brangham, "We're going to go see them. We're going to hug them. We're going to be with them. They're going to get sick of us, and we're just—I think we're just—I don't know if I will let go of him for a while, because it was a breath's—just a hair's breadth away from death."
Tamimi recounted how the boys spent hours together "talking about everything, talking about science, physics, astronomy, astrology, talking about playing chess." Awartani is a graduate of a Quaker-run K-12 school in the West Bank now studying mathematics and archaeology at Brown. Abdalhamid is a junior at Haverford College who recently completed training as a paramedic. Tasheen Ali Ahmed is a student at Trinity College in Connecticut.
These are people who should find welcome in this country, and they do find welcome from some of us. Others, too many others, greet them with hatred and violence fueled by bigots, blockheads, and political hacks.
Speaking of bigots, blockheads, and political hacks, the usual suspects, by whom I have in mind Fox News, Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz, Vivek Ramaswamy, Kari Lake, Elise Stefanik, Junior Trump, etc., etc., etc., were quick to traffic in rumor and speculation about a terrorist attack, possibly by jihadis in the country illegally, which would lay the blame at Joe Biden's door, in the aftermath of a spectacular car explosion on a bridge at the Canadian border on November 22.
On that same day, November 22, PolitiFact rated the claim that "a terrorist attack (was) confirmed" in Niagara Falls as false, reporting that the FBI said the Nov. 22 crash had no links to terrorist activity and the case had been turned over to the Niagara Falls Police Department as a traffic investigation.
It turns out the victims were Kurt and Monica Villani, both fifty-three, from Grand Island, New York, a suburb between Buffalo and Niagara Falls, reportedly on their way to a concert.
Associated Press, Victims in Niagara Falls border bridge crash identified, November 24, 2023
Charlie Sykes, Anatomy of a Fake Attack: And the politicians who ran with it, The Bulwark, November 27, 2023
Loreben Tuquero, FBI said a vehicle explosion at Rainbow Bridge in New York wasn’t a terrorist attack, PolitiFact, November 22, 2023
Nadine Yousif, Rainbow Bridge: Police identify couple killed in US-Canada border crash, BBC News, November 24, 2023
Quote of the week from JVL at The Bulwark: "Someone once said that Elon Musk is the kind of guy who sounds like a genius until you hear him talk about something you know a lot about. And then you realize that he’s full of shit" (Elon Musk and the “Misunderstood” Genius).
I was blissfully unaware of Substack's Nazi problem until a few days ago when writers on the platform expressed outrage after revelations that Substack "has become a home and propagator of white supremacy and anti-Semitism. Substack has not only been hosting writers who post overtly Nazi rhetoric on the platform; it profits from many of them." The profit is Substack's 10 percent cut from subscription revenue generated by white nationalist, white supremacist, neo-nazi, etc., etc., etc., newsletters. It gets worse. Jonathan Katz, a Substacker himself, writing at The Atlantic, documents the willingness of Substack's co-founders "not only to accommodate but to promote writers with a history of making inflammatory racist comments" (Substack Has a Nazi Problem).
Last summer I set Portable Bohemia up at Substack hoping to expand my audience. The move has proven modestly successful. In addition, the platform is easy to use, no small matter, and it comes at no cost to me unless and until I solicit paid subscriptions, which I am not inclined to do because I am not comfortable asking people who have been following Portable Bohemia and encouraging my efforts for years to pay to read my work. Nota bene: It is easy to take the moral high ground given that subscription revenue would be wildly successful if it generated income sufficient to cover the frosty, adult beverages I enjoy at weekend happy hours. And anyway, as I have noted before, there is not an entrepreneurial bone in my body.
How willing am I to be affiliated with a platform that encourages and promotes publication of views I find abhorrent? Is this somehow balanced by an array of fine, thought-provoking Substack publications in whose company I am delighted to stand in my small way. Among them are Simple Politics with Kim Wehle, Heather Cox Richardson's Letters from an American, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, The Bulwark, Jay Kuo's The Status Kuo, and Robert Reich?
Some Substackers have suggested taking these concerns to management. Perhaps unrest within the ranks will bear fruit. I remain uneasy about the status quo but am not at present actively seeking an alternative.
Meanwhile, new at Portable Bohemia Substack.
• Each Month Has Its Fill (a poem), November 19, 2023. “Each Month Has Its Fill” was first published in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. This is how it goes…read more>>
• Johnson Endorses Trump and Porn-Addiction App, November 22, 2023. Mike Johnson’s endorsement of Donald Trump is hardly news. Of course he endorses the twice-impeached, multiply indicted former president who promises to rid the country of vermin like me. It is Johnson’s declaration…read more>>
Keep the faith
Stand with Ukraine.
yr obdt svt
