Taking out the Trash

It's trash removal day here in our corner of NW DC, so I've got a collection of things to take to the proverbial curb of my blog. 

Let's start here:

This is a snap shot from a recent splash page at the nytimes.com. Pakistan, if you've noticed, has been in the news lately: military offenses in the Swat valley against supposed Taliban forces, an announcement today from Sec. Clinton for a domestic aid package, and, in this image, an apparent expansion of their nuclear arsenal. But I most liked the story "Picking Up Trash, in a Flash of Rebellion." The story is about middle class youth who, tired of the snipping and complaining of their peers and parents, decided to actually do something: they starting going to a local neighborhood and pick up garbage. Some onlookers were completely flabbergasted: this is the job of the poor they complained. But the trash got picked up, and a glimmer of civil society shined through. More power to them--social change begins in one's own neighborhood.

How do we square this with the other, more violent images from Pakistan (which is, now, truly a front in our "global war on whatever")? It's difficult to see both sides, kids picking up garbage and a build up of nuclear arms, and reconcile them with easy assumptions about a place or a people. But this, I would contend, is the reality of any given place, the US included: belligerence and kindness, militarism and manners, all swirling about in the story of human life. It's useful to remember that these things so often exist side by side.

And speaking of trash: how about a trashy hairstyle? It's not a new thought, but God Bless Jesse Ventura, and Find That Man a Barber! Here he is, on The View, taking it to Ms. Hasselback (really, how does she do it?) on the issue of torture:

Torture is torture. We need to be clear about that. What's really extraordinary are the ways in which certain folk are trying to change the conversation. Yes, Speaker Pelosi is likely fudging the truth about what she knew and when, but as Jesse "The Mind" said, we wouldn't be having this conversation if he hadn't tortured Muslims in the first place. What's the greater crime, lying about what you knew about the government's policies on torture, or the torture itself? Either way, the former administration is complicit in both cases. Going after Pelosi, as Ta-Nehisi Coates illustrates, has rapidly descended into blatant misogyny. It's disgusting. And I don't think it's gonna win many votes.

Speaking of winning votes, the Prez pulled off, I thought, a rather impressive speech at Notre Dame. I'll leave it to others to discuss all the implications, but I was struck by one reviewer's observation that Obama excels at the well-crafted argument without recourse to rhetorical flourish. That is, there aren't many sound bites or memorable phrases offered up, but the force and intelligence of his arguments as a whole are pretty astounding. I'd concur. 

Others don't, of course. David Brooks bends himself backwards and sideways by trying to link the success of "dull" CEO's to Obama's turn at the presidency. His point, oddly, is that good CEO's don't make good politicians and vice versus, and we should therefore be wary of Obama's attempts at getting us out of this economic mess (per Brooks, he's a good politician but has suspect credentials when it comes to being a CEO). The irony, of course, is that we just endured eight years of our "first MBA President" in Mr. Bush. Turns out, that MBA didn't serve him well in any capacity. He failed in the oil biz, won the brass ring, and then promptly drove that ship (our nation) studiously into the ground. Sigh.

Finally, to return briefly to my thoughts on the upcoming Supreme Court vacancy, Jeffrey Toobin has a perceptive piece in this month's New Yorker about Chief Justice Roberts. I would suggest that his article illustrates the point I inelegantly tried to make that being a Justice isn't simply about knowing the law, and isn't simply about interpreting lawyerly minutia: there is a human element that matters, and changes our society. Disposition makes a judge, and we'll be stuck with Roberts' disdain for ordinary people for many decades. At least Scalia's in his seventies (along with most of the rest--I'm not sure this court could look any less like America as we know it).

May your trashcan never overrunneth.