Tom Watson

'I say she got what she was asking for'

When a Rand Paul supporter stomped on the head and shoulders of a MoveOn.org protester at a campaign stop in Kentucky, the ugly incident provided an instant and crystalline snapshot into the growing culture of violence that is seething in the darker precincts of the American right-wing.

Yet the act of violence itself - the young woman suffered a concussion and local police are properly preparing felony chargest against the Tea Party thug responsible - seems like a lowercase footnote to the circus of politics in comparison to the wider reaction of conservatives. 'I say she got what she was asking for' said a commenter on Jim Hoft's radical and frequently reactionary Gateway Pundit blog. And that voice was not the exception. It's too easy to cherry-pick insanity from comments sections, but when you can use a squeegee to sop 'em up, well son, that's what we call "a pattern." To wit:

We fight back , I know your not used to it bit get used to it. There are a new breed of conservatives. We have stones. Powder is dry.

These maggots get what they deserve.

To all you pansies who are whining about the foot to the back put yourself in that position. The guy didn’t stomp on her head; he pushed her down flat on the ground. No one knew what she was up to and took measures to neutralize her. If you have ever been handled by the police you will realize these same techniques are used against a perp. Please grow some balls and understand that these situations call for these measures. If she had a gun you would be crying that enough wasn’t done.

So that makes it okay to shove her to the ground and step on her head? Yeah, it does. You wanna play tough, you better get tough. Whiners.

Screw the narrative, make liberals afraid of confronting the right. This is why athiests and secularists cower and surrender to Muslims but feel free to whip up on and attack (literally and legally) Christians.

You want to mess with us? Get ready for an ass whoopin.

My hat’s off to all who acted with charm and grace. And why I never go where cockcroaches dwell. I know MY limits. But stand in my way … on the way to the voting booth this upcoming Tuesday? Then G*d help you.

Too bad nobody had a taser.

She’s lucky she didn’t get her fuxing head blown off. Robert Kennedy and George Wallace weren’t so fortunate.

Catch that last one? That's what in the air these days, the whiff of violence and anarchy from the hard right, from the reactionaries who have taken over the Republican Party. This is the anger stoked by the Palins and the Pauls. Yet the so-called mainstream conservatives, with very few exceptions, consort like pigs in the slop with those who rely violent, anti-American know-nothing for their scraps of power.

Perhaps the hatred on Hoft's sickening blog - where a policy that allows comments like these clearly approves of them as well - isn't so far from what we consider the mainstream? After all, the Gateway Pundit is published by The Institute on Religion and Public Life, which describes itself as "an interreligious, nonpartisan research and education institute whose purpose is to advance a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society." The Institute was founded bythe late Richard John Neuhaus, a Catholic priest and former Lutheran clergyman who advised former President Bush and teamed with  Watergate figure Charles Colson to edit Evangelicals and Catholics Together: Toward a Common Mission. Socially conservative? Yes. A hate-mongering radical espousing violence? No. Yet Fr. Neuhaus's website is now filled with hatred, only a year after his death. 

A week from today, the mid-term elections unfold across the land. The Tea Party wing of the GOP will claim victory in its push of the Republican Party to the far frontiers of the American right. Their visceral - and in some case, race-based - hatred of President Obama masks a wider dislike for true liberalism, the open society we've crafted in centuries of blood, sweat and toil.

So here's what I say: vote against 'em.

UPDATE: Essential Melissa McEwen - "This is the inevitable result of a political movement that constantly engages in violent rhetoric (and there are a lot more links where those came from), whose elected officials feel comfortable speaking casually about the violent overthrow of the government. This shit doesn't happen in a void."

Twitter's Mid-Life Crisis - The Fail Whale of Authenticity

Lately, I've been sort of surprised - shocked, actually - to hear this refrain from both clients and the corporate, nonprofit and foundation leaders I often speak to at conferences:

"Isn't Twitter pretty much over?"

This is very much not a variation on the old but reliable "I just don't get Twitter, explain please" line. No, this harsh Twitter query is coming from people who use the service, understand it, and have invested significant time and resources in building followings, lists, and networks. They tweet. They're mobile. They use apps. But they're newly skeptical of Twitter's long-term advantages. And I think my new standard answer to this questions surprises them:

"Yeah, maybe."

Don't get me wrong: I use Twitter, I find it rewarding, and I recommend it to my clients as a key part of the social media mix. But there's this nagging imp on my shoulder and his message is constant. "Twitter's not the same, it's not like it used to be, it's not as good."

This moment comes for all social networks when the early adoption crowd is run over by everyone else. What felt cool, and forward-leaning, and semi-private now feels like Times Square at midday clogged with double-decked tourist buses. Attention is down. Noise is up. Success can spoil the club. That's human nature.

But there's also something else. Twitter is a private company, of course, but it always felt like a public accommodation - far more so than, say, Facebook or MySpace. It was the user base that created most of Twitter's innovations from the hashtag to the @ message. The small start-up company provided the pipes and tended the code and database. Even smaller companies took the data and created useful applications. Innovation didn't just thrive on Twitter - it fairly seethed. This felt like a new way of communicating - and of sharing causes on the social commons - the occasional fail whales be damned!

Fast forward, as we must. Twitter now has a userbase of 150 million people and a hydra-headed imperative: revenue growth, big company status, an eventual public offering, marketshare, brand domination. We read that it must compete with Facebook and Google or face relegation - that it must find a way to satisfy marketers eager to exploit its vast, tech-friendly, super-connected audience.

And so Twitter is now acting very much like a marketing company. Nothing wrong with that, of course. They're determined to ramp up revenue. But with Twitter, it also seems the decisions they make internally aren't as - well - smart as the ones their committed base of users once made for them.

Take "Promoted Trends." Please. This "innovation" allows advertisers to buy their way to the top of the popular trends lists that adorn Twitter pages on the service's website. Thus, movies and airlines suddenly appear on top of true crowd-sourced trends like real news and pop culture phenomena. Of course, a purchased "trend" is not a real trend at all. It's a lie - though brazen and open in its telling. The other day, for instance, a movie called "Paranormal Activity 2" was the top "trend" on the New York version of Twitter's homepage. It's marked with a yellow "Promoted" tag, which doesn't explain how much money was paid for the privilege. Nor would that label be - in any way - clear to newbie or light users who may not be Twitterholics reading the Twitter blog or following @ev or @biz. And yet it was somehow "trending" higher than "Cablevision" - the real news story of a cable TV black-out at playoff time.

It was weird as well to see Jet Blue buy a fake trend, or Conan O'Brien's usually savvy public brand make the mistake of jumping the line of actual trending topics in the last few days. Couldn't they have - oh, I dunno - actually engaged the community and earned real trends? I tweeted on this of course (I still enjoy Twitter quite a bit) and got thoughtful responses from Morgan Johnston of the Jet Blue team, including this one: "We (@JetBlue) have always embraced Twitter as a company & the community dialog it encourages. Promoted trends contribute to both." And I believe that's true, though I do think it makes Jet Blue look like a line-jumper in the end. But heck, they're advertising a brand and Twitter is offering the unit - at the expense of all the social capital it worked so hard to gather - so who you really gonna blame?

The so-called "promoted trend" is a massive symbolic stumble for Twitter.

It's entirely inauthentic, just shy of truly offensive, and deeply at odds with the ethos that has governed Twitter up until 2010 - an ethos that turns out, in the end, to be about as genuine as promoted "trends."

Further, it adds to the already difficult signal-to-noise ratio that is Twitter with mass adoption. Quite frankly, trends have lost a lot of their value since hashtag spamming exploded during the days of the Iranian revolt. Attention, even with thousands of followers, is hard to come by. Conversation isn't what it once was.

Twitter remains a fantastic network for sharing links and coming across interesting information from a network of great sources. It's also a terrific amplification and promotional tool for campaigns (and products of course). But it feels less social. And with paid "trends" and the direction for the company they may indicate, Twitter feels a lot less authentic these days.

Some Like It Not

Tony Curtis would have made a terrific Rahm Emanuel. I can see him as a tortured, angry chief of staff in a tense fin de siècle drama of rising shadows in a White House under siege. Just as easily, I can picture Curtis joyfully elbowing his way through a comical role as Emanuel the Picaresque, jabbing lefty bloggers with glee and keeping his much more serious boss on time and off guard, throwing F-bombs like bouquets around the wacky West Wing.

Alas, the eras did not align. Emanuel is off to Chicago and Curtis off this mortal coil at 85 - and well remembered, I think, by the Siren as a man who who could nurse a grudge with the best 'em.

Other actors went on talk shows and sat down for print interviews and laughed or shrugged off the mockery they'd endured. Not Curtis. It needled him, and nothing was going to stop him saying so. He was too much the Bronx native to let a slight pass. He was going to stay worked up about it as long as you kept bringing it up.

Hard to find a better description of Emanuel, except for the Bronx part (Chicago suffices), and here's another thing the two men had in common in addition to their Jewish heritage (let's not mention this to Rick Sanchez) and a passing facial resemblance: providing comfort to those in the presence of their performances. Curtis played the kind of characters that made you uncomfortable, providing the nervy, forceful energy that often moved the plot and created situations of drama or comedy. He wasn't a big, comfortable presence - a real leading man. He was a grumbling engine, a nagging voice in the narrative;  for all his good looks, the Curtis characters always seemed to be unhappy, pinched, deprived, impatient, pissed off.

In the drama that is Washington, Emanuel had a similar role. The big media types wrote the grand narrative and then farmed out the script: young inspiring President hires tough guy enforcer as all-out political warfare begins - gimme either Operation Petticoat or Spartacus, baby, but make it sell. Yet Emanuel wasn't even a glint in the President's nascent brand when the 2008 version of Barack Obama was selling hope and change to a hungry nation - he was the living antithesis, in fact, of what liberal Obama supporters projected on their candidate: a profane, centrist, DLC type with scars and combat ribbons from the hated Clinton Administration. Rahm was a candidate for a new Clinton administration - along with people like Gates, Jones, Holder, Lew, Summer and Hillary Clinton herself. From the first "WTF!?" moment of John Podesta's appointment to run the transition, there was a sense among the progressive voices who'd supported Obama through the long campaign that the matador had pulled the cape away and nicked them with the knife.

I had no sympathy whatsoever. They always projected upon Obama their ideal Presidential qualities, rather than the perfectly fine strengths the living candidate actually possessed. They were all waiting for Superman and thought Obama wore the cape. What I saw was a serious, considered, centrist Democrat who made practical decisions and compromises in the course of attaining power - a fine and powerful speaker with a fairly wide intellectual perspective, and the Senator's instinct for compromise (and a Columbia man to boot). While I was disappointed that President Obama did not deliver a more forceful agenda during the early days of his term when he clearly possessed the people's mojo to force several important issues - particularly the thin gruel of phased health insurance reform that served as the understudy for actual healthcare reform - I was not unhappy with the rather easy choice of Barack Obama over any living Republican politician.

Mainly, I don't understand anyone who blames people around President Obama for Administration policy, management, or its somewhat controversial attitude toward the so-called Democratic base. I smiled when Ezra Klein tweeted that Chicago's Mayor Daley did the "professional left a solid" by stepping aside so big, bad Rahm could leave the White House to run for mayor. Yeah, now that meek and rudderless Obama character will no longer be stuck under Emanuel's Clinton-loving, third-way worshiping, DLC-licking thumb! Here's Klein on Emanuel's legacy:

The Obama campaign was about poetry. It was the pretty rhetoric of hope and change. The Obama administration has been, to the surprise of many of its supporters, entirely about prose. It's been about the thousands of pages of legal language that tell the government what's changing. And no one represented that shift better than Rahm Emanuel ... Rahm Emanuel is not post-partisan. He is not of the new politics.

Heh-heh, really. What new politics? I've seen precisely none. And really, Ezra, "poetry?" Not a relentless ground game and intensive and expensive branding funded by tens of millions of campaign contributions, including more maxed out Federal donors than either Clinton or McCain? You can almost picture Emanuel's smirk - as played by Tony Curtis, of course - at a line like that. As the Siren remembers: "here's Curtis, enduring an agonizingly long shoot on Spartacus, surrounded by English actors playing Roman generals, turning to dainty Jean Simmons and groaning, 'Who do you have to fuck to get off this picture?'"

You can't blame Emanuel for pre-negotiating away the public option, adopting Bush era positions on civil liberty and security, and foot-dragging on gay rights and immigration reform. Nor does Rahm get the credit for restarting America's relationship with key world power centers and averting total financial catastrophe. He's not responsible for the wars - one on the wane, the other doubled down on.

Emanuel was one of the bogeymen of the base, particularly among the Obama true believers who didn't - and still don't - want to blame the President directly. This Administration clearly has no patience for constant and substantive disagreement in the ranks of commentators on the left - from Robert Gibbs to Joe Biden to the President's not-so-subtle urging of progressives to get back in line, the Obama political corps wants Democrats to focus on its successes, go easy on the disagreements, pull on the same oar. Many strong voices don't like the suggestion of "whining" over welcome public debate, and have no problem blaming the President directly. [See Peter Daou, Melissa McEwen, Jane Hamsher, Glenn Greenwald, Digby and Memeorandum on any given day].

Yet, it's worthwhile to consider the alternative in the context of the mid-terms. Wild-eyed, government-killing radicals have infected the Republican Party from the right and two years of race-baiting, birtherism, and appeals to violent revolution - combined with horrendous economic conditions and a collapsing middle class - have created an opportunity for conservative non-government. I was in the room when Bill Clinton told a bunch of bloggers that if the Republicans seize the House, the Obama White House faces unending subpoenas and investigations during the next two years. Let's just say he knows what he's talking about in this regard. 

I thought Bob Shrum had a good line today in The Week - along with the rare and welcome use of the word "incarnadined" - that summed up the deal on Obama's plate on his side of the political dinner table:

Obama can change the political weather by a few degrees—and that might be just enough. In the process, he has to inspire and not just scold disappointed progressives. But he has a point when he says that it’s “inexcusable” for Democrats to skip the midterms: “People need to buck up.”

[snip]

They need to realize that the Republican plan is to drag out or destroy the recovery—and then they need to vote.

These mid-terms could set the nation back a generation. It's valid and important to push the President and to push this administration, especially on civil liberties. But it's also important to hold the wrong forces of "change" at bay. Or as Tony Curtis's Sidney Falco put it, and Rahm Emanuel might have: "The cat's in the bag and the bag's in the river."

Giving It Away on Seventh Avenue

From my column in Tina Brown's Daily Beast today on the annual Clinton Global Initiative philanthrofest at the Sheraton - turns out Mick Jagger was wrong: you can give it away on Seventh Avenue:

Six years after unveiling his Clinton Global Initiative in midtown Manhattan, Bill Clinton is happy to reel off the numbers: 1,946 commitments to social change in the world valued at $63 billion “which have already improved nearly 300 million lives.” That's almost 5  percent of the Earth's population. And those numbers will go up this year, as the usual pilgrims for social change make their way to the cool and cavernous Sheraton on Seventh Avenue to announce philanthropic deals, forge alliances, and tweet the latest star sighting.

At the center is an ex-president almost entirely unbound. In setting up CGI, gathering the world's leaders from the corporate, NGO and government spheres, and pressing for a diverse series of philanthropic commitments around the world, Bill Clinton has created a potent alternative to the cloistered, poll-driven, media-obsessed, 24-hour cycle of the 10th circle of hell known as the American Presidency.

To read the rest, dip your piggies in Da Beast.

I Love This Video

Debuted today at the Clinton Global Initiative - created by The Girl Effect, which works toward the "powerful social and economic change brought about when girls have the opportunity to participate in their society."

The Maddest Men and Women

For most of its three and a half seasons, Matthew Weiner's Mad Men has teased, promised, and cajoled like a late night ad campaign for a somewhat dubious consumer product. The cast is terrific and generally little-known. The period details draw the eye, especially the costumes. The little news items in the periphery - John Glenn's flight, the Kennedy assassination, civil rights - served as delicious morsels along the trail. The characters are nicely sketched. And the hype has been spectacular. Every smart television viewer of the artistic classes wanted - ached, even - to love Mad Men, to find Sunday evening 60s commonality to be dissected over Monday morning coffee. To find art.

Yet, art they did not find in seasons one and two. What they found was a weekly hour-long infomercial for the viewing life they wished for, a promise that went unfulfilled amidst an often disconnected jumble of period pieces, strange red herrings, and vast uneven writing. I always wanted to like Mad Men, and continued to watch like I'd watch my son playing a video game from over his shoulder - it looked cool and there must be something there.

Last year, Weiner cleared the decks and wrapped up many hanging transitions. Mad Men flashed more dramatic promise. The characters began to come to life. The arc began to make sense.

Then came season four. Pushed to the edges was the blight of the Draper household in suburban Ossining, the whole January Jones retinue of Peyton Place meets the Klingons. It survives now as another painful burr under the saddle of Jon Hamm's more interesting - and more developed - Man from Nowhere character. Also out is Sterling Cooper, the "Big Ad Agency" sold downstream by the capricious, mannered Brits. The old office gang was whittled to a more cohesive core, all the better for focusing on the conflicts and actual character development (as it's known in the trade) in the service of building the new company. Even the interiors, as the fab Ms. Peel notes, are cleaner and more conducive to human drama. Like a lineman wielding a big old Samsonite World Traveler, the pocket is cleared out for the best storylines - Pete's dual ambitions for career and family (what a snarling, sniveling American Everyman!), Roger's descent into drink and late middle-aged irrelevance, and Joan's struggle for respectability and plain old R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

But the center has shifted and the marriage that once held the lead position in Mad Men is gone; to reference Weiner's experience on The Sopranos is too easy, but it's Labor Day and I'm resting so I won't resist the observation that there's a new Carmela in town. Or more accurately, the true Carmela to the Mad Men's Tony - young Peggy Olson is actual moral counterweight to Don Draper. She's the bridge and tunnel kid from a new generation, daring to make the choices and sacrifices necessary to carve a career in Manhattan. And it's evident now that she's Don Draper's partner.

That bond was permanently forged in a long scene that layered Don's grief over Anna's intuited death in California - the "the only person in the world who really knew me" - with Peggy's conflicted loyalty and bubbling ambition. What started as a squabble between a true bastard of a boss and his over-worked assistant, ended with a new understanding of two complex characters. And it was messy and covered in vomit and glory. In previous seasons, Weiner would have been pleased to let the original blow-up hanging, and jump to another early 60s homage to drinks, cigarette smoke, and heavily-trussed bosoms. This time, the writers kept on writing; the scene was too good to let go.

Man Men has hit its stride. Sunday's episode was the first that could have been performed in blacked-out rep theater blankness, devoid of sets, scenery and costumes - just the actors and the dialogue - and connected like Cassius Clay's counter-punching right to Sonny Liston's head. No, last night was no phantom punch; it was the real thing.

In truth, television characters take time. Gleason rolled Ralph Kramden around the boards of his variety hour for four years before gliding into the brilliance of the Golden 39. Don Knotts played a goofy hick for a season or so before becoming the perfect embodiment of the wacky sidekick as Barney Fife. Kramer wasn't Kramer in the early Seinfelds. And to reference at least one drama, Tony Soprano wasn't quite Tony Soprano the first couple of seasons either. He was thinner, less believable - and yeah, less familiar.

Familiarity is crucial for long-term television writing. Despite it's 22-minute half hours, it's really a long-form craft. Good shows run for years, with dozens of hours of dialogue per year. It takes a while for the writers to know the character, to sift the situations and the relationships. To understand what comes next. Then too, the actors inhabit the great television characters in a more gradual fashion. These aren't plays or two-hour movies. These are marathons. Jon Hamm did fine work with what was handed him over the first two seasons of Mad Men, but Don Draper was at best a thin, comic book hero with a convoluted back story. Now Don is older: the series is doing his make-up "older," and his mannerism bespeak the pain of age's realizations. The back story has retreated. Draper fears for his relevance in the groovy mid-60s. And Hamm has fully created the character in the present, not just as a self-contained super star ad man, but as a real person in daily contact with other real people. The compelling and believable Peggy-Don scene in the overnight hours at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce would not have been possible at Sterling Cooper.

Familiarity also, quite frankly, inhabits our appreciation of the form. The writers and actors have grown in their knowledge of the characters, to be sure; but they also have a better understanding of what we expect from them. It's not quite the shouted sitcom camaraderie of "Norm!" but our past experiences with, say, Pete inform our appreciation of where is character written, and how Vincent Kartheiser portrays him. Pete has grown beyond the one-dimensional office villain - his Eddie Haskell phase - into a more complicated character of some depth and multiplicity. His past deeds inform our expectations, but the long form of multi-season television writing allows the show to surprise us, to leaven the bad Pete Campbell we thought we knew.

Make no mistake. This Sunday past's episode of Mad Men - the "Suit Case" - is one for television seminars, drama classes, and record books. Cassius Clay's two-minute knockout of Sonny Liston in 1965 was indeed, as James Wolcott said, "one of the pivotal moments in the Sixties, when brash and flash took on brutish glare, and the victor set the tone for the rest of the decade." But many forget that it was actually the second Clay-Liston fight. A year earlier, Clay defeated Liston when the older champ refused to come out of his corner. The '65 rematch was one of the most-hyped matches of the decade, and Clay had already changed his name to Muhammad Ali. There's allegory aplenty in both the brash champion fighting under a new name, and the bitter washed-up veteran from the old school of hard knocks. Don Draper lost a hundred bucks on Sonny Liston, but got an ad campaign idea - at best, a B-minus idea that Peggy only kinda, sorta, if pushed to the wall, liked - from the bout. Finally, in season four of Mad Men, the stakes are set, and the champions are in the ring.

Laborious Day

The summer fun season wanes and I welcome its slowly diminishing light and longer shadows. There have been some lakeside revels to be sure, and the ritual jumping of waves so high that sometimes you can see clear across to the bay. Meat has been duly seared. And there was a fraternal wedding to celebrate with high spirits. Much - too much perhaps - has been imbibed. But the highest days of sunlight, the real hot peaks of summer, brought sadness this year and it's still an untreatable ache in the back teeth of the my soul. No picnics, no barbecues, no ballgames can obscure the simple fact that I spent summer's most broiling day at the graveside of my father.

So perhaps it's no minor thing that my attention has been drawn to voices that challenge and sting, writers who refuse to accept a somnolent consumer summer of "recovery" and media, new digital toys and returning television favorites. Sure, I'm angry but there's no rational direction to my anger. There's no form, no ideology - in tandem, it seems, with many on the periphery of American politics. "Taking back our country," the bumper sticker of bland and unformed Tea Partyism, is familiar in tone to me, writ small. The urge to lash out can be strong.

Luckily, my reduced blog reading - and who among us hasn't reduced real blog reading in this age of Facebook "likes" and too-easy retweets - has brought the stress-reducing curled snarl of a smile to my lips. I don't always agree. But I appreciate. And I get in on the buzz, like a passed joint of hand-rolled skepticism.

Among the old newcritics crowd, everyone's favorite angry American is Dennis Perrin, whose propensity for calling out liberal hypocrisy is rivaled only by his willingness to over-share the still-dripping details of his personal life. No matter. The patient anesthetized upon the table needs the jolt of fully-charge paddles, which Dennis deftly and maniacally applies to mainstream Democrats in this bit on President Obama's earth-toned speech on the "end" of the Iraq War:

Obama's plea that Americans "turn the page" on Iraq, while predictable, is unnecessary. Apart from those families directly affected by the terror wars, most Americans really don't give a fuck about Iraq and haven't for some time. It was massive destruction in plain sight, yet few in the heartland showed any anger, concern, or active resistance. Iraq was a shadow war at high noon. And it hasn't ended, nor won't for some time, pious PR to the contrary. Many political observers concede this, but again, it doesn't register on a national level. Besides, there's the other holy war in Afghanistan to "win," plus the dire Iranian threat to our existence to defend against. Iraq is soooo Bush/Cheney. Move to the next Kindle file.

Correct, Dennis. No one cares. The plastic American flags whipping from car windows seven years ago lie in tatters in the back of the garage. We've moved on. We've got iPads! We've got Mad Men! Football season! We've got a proposed Islamic community center to blather on about! (Myself included). On the political scene, the conventional wisdom has a rudderless Democratic Party led by a remote and undramatic President headed for a mid-term disaster at the polls, clanging the bell for the return of Congressional Republican power and the requisite subpoenas and impeachment hearings that are their weapons of Washington warfare. To this CW, my friend Al Giordano (appearing like Zorro from summer hiatus) takes his trusty machete - and his point is a good one. The comic book short-hand - left disappointed in young, inexperienced President while the right is ascendant and fueled by anger in the heartland - ignores the local, or at very least, the regional imperative of all American politics. It layers the most rudimentary of analysis with thick lacquer. And it eschews any discusses. In re: that, Giordano -

In this sense, a political parody site like Wonkette has become more relevant to the 2010 midterm elections than the entirety of the so-called Netroots, which in 2006 became a kind of kingmaker in the Democrats’ midterm electoral triumphs. I tuned out completely on the Netroots blogs since June and only started browsing them again recently, and its as if they’re stuck on autopilot, still debating “Obama, good or bad” and blissfully disinterested in the midterm elections, certainly compared to where they were in 2006. On the eve of the 2010 elections, they’re still infighting like it’s 2009! Meanwhile, day in, day out, Wonkette is producing wonderful caricature profiles of the insane class of GOP congressional and senate nominees this year, and is actually driving the media discourse about them.

Likewise, the cable TV political shows on Comedy Central – The Daily Show and The Colbert report – have become far more relevant to the national political discourse than any host on MSNBC or even Fox, which has gone down the Glenn Beck rabbit hole in a manner that only increases the dysfunction inside the GOP. Fox and the “tea party” minions it has stoked are now the Republican Party’s own version of the 2010 Netroots: mirrors on each side of the partisan divide that seem more concerned with asserting their own illusory relevance and factional power than with actually getting out there and winning general elections in November.

Both Dennis and Al (who would not agree on Obama, by the way, and who I'd like to therefore introduce) kinda of make you want to add a simple inquiry chorus to their best blog posts: "do you, Mr. Jones?!"

Meanwhile, Lance Mannion - otherwise known as the R.A. Dickey of bloggers* - is generally slow to anger. But he's had enough of the Jonathan Franzen literary sales hype (and what else can it be called) and so he proceeds to take a bat the heads of the critical fawns, and in the style of DeNiro in The Untouchables. Oh, Lance might deny it - he's a uncommon gentlemanly blogger - but you can't argue with the splatter pattern analysis:

The literary powers that be, represented in the NPR piece and Ron Hogan’s post by New York Times Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus, routinely decide that an author or a book is IMPORTANT for reasons that seem to have little to do with questions of art or literary merit.  The writer or his books---and it is usually a his---will be declared IMPORTANT because the subject is IMPORTANT.

ISSUES of the day are being tackled.

Something BIG is being said about the way we live now.

And we’re meant to read this IMPORTANT work in order to learn stuff.  IMPORTANT stuff.

Besides that this sort of judgment values fiction as if its purpose was sociology, when books get pushed for their IMPORTANCE, I feel like I’m being assigned homework.

And this is the root cause of my Franzenfreude.

It’s good that a novelist has made the cover of TIME for the first time in a generation, and I guess it might as well be Franzen as anybody else, but he’s not there because the editors at TIME think he’s a great writer.  He’s there because they’ve decided he’s news.

Yeah, oh reader. It all makes me feel better. There's too much counter-cultural power on the American right these days, and too much puffery on the left. Too much convention. Too much respect. Too much acceptance. Too much anointing. Too little hot sauce. Too little heat. Too little anger. So let this summer diminish and dip below the horizon. And let the hurricanes blow.

* Lance not only vaguely resembles the Mets' knuckerballing late-career success story, he always stays on the bench rooting for his teammates until the end of the game, just like Mr. Dickey.

Goin' to the Chapel of Love

Sure, I'm happy for all the Californians who can now join the ranks of the married, regardless of the genetic soup their parents ordered up from the vast menu of life, love and "lifestyle." And darnit, if Judge Vaughn Walker's decision in the landmark Proposition 8 case wasn't coldly and brilliantly reasoned, leaving virtually no path for the anti-marriage squadrons except the strange and non-legal "it just ain't normal, judge!" course. (We'll enjoy Elana Kagan's reaction to that particular oral argument). And yeah, the spectacularly odd legal couple of David Boies and Ted Olson is a stirring Movie of the Week in the making - too bad Matthau and Lemmon belong to the ages. But I also have to agree with the sharp-eyed Roy Edroso that "anything that gets Kathryn J. Lopez palpably shaking with rage brightens my day."

Visions of same-sex in Berkeley (with the Jefferson Airplane on the stereo and the smell of patchouli in the air) will leave K-Lo thrashing on the daybed in her office for weeks to come.

Yeah, it's a good day. So let's all give thanks to Ronald Reagan of sainted memory and his minion Ed Meese for their vision in appointing Judge Walker, and Poppy Bush for elevating him to the Federal bench.

Ground Zero Mosque Hell: Fiddlers on the Hoof?

That the Ground Zero Mosque in question is neither at Ground Zero nor a mosque seems a convenient pair of facts for the predictable chorus of elderly, mouth-foaming Islam-baiters currently braying in and around New York to ignore. But ancient right-wing imams named Lieberman, Gingrich, King and Giuliani jerked their crinkly replacement knees anyway, stepping in time to the fiddle played by Rupe's New York Post in what can only be viewed as a revival show put on in summer stock for little old ladies with blue hair.

It's all so old, so predictable, so lame, and so utterly bereft of any principles having anything at all to do with the human freedoms this little American experiment of ours are supposed to encourage. It's a tidy little package of intolerance wrapped in yesterday's news, a little blue pill for old-timey hatred hard-ons to go with book tours and cocktails at '21.'

Then there's what can only be described as the weaselly attitude of the ADL which, as Greg Sargent points out, seemingly favors a one-mile No Mosque Zone around the site of the 9/11 attacks. And it's hard for anyone to argue with Peter Beinart's reaction to the ADL's strange move:

The ADL’s rationale for opposing the Ground Zero mosque is that “building an Islamic Center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain—unnecessarily—and that is not right.” Huh? What if white victims of African-American crime protested the building of a black church in their neighborhood? Or gentile victims of Bernie Madoff protested the building of a synagogue? Would the ADL for one second suggest that sensitivity toward people victimized by members of a certain religion or race justifies discriminating against other, completely innocent, members of that religion or race? Of course not. But when it comes to Muslims, the standards are different.

But it's not hard at all to argue with Michael Bloomberg. The Mayor has stood tall in the saddle on the so-called Ground Zero Mosque - actually an Islamic cultural and community center two blocks away from the current construction site that may or may not include a prayer room - from the very beginning. Bloomberg deserves praise as well as the thanks of cool-headed New Yorkers who value our wildly multicultural city. There was zero weasel in the kind of statements the Mayor has peppered the media with over the past couple of months; here's two of the menschiest:

"Muslims are as much a part of our city and country as any faith - and as welcome to worship in Lower Manhattan as any other group. This is as important a test of the separation of church and state as any we may see in our lifetime, and it's critical we get it right."

[snip]

"What is great about America and particularly New York is we welcome everybody, and if we are so afraid of something like this, what does that say about us? Democracy is stronger than this. You know the ability to practice your religion was one of the real reasons America was founded. And for us to just say no is just, I think, not appropriate is a nice way to phrase it . . . If you are religious, you do not want the government picking religions, because what do you do the day they don't pick yours?"

Can't say it better than that. Haven't always agreed with Bloomberg. But his sincere lack of wiggle and straightforward, clear-headed policy here can't be overlooked. So what of the planned Cordoba House, the American Society for Muslim Advancement and its "controversial" founder Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf? ThinkProgress has the brief:

While the project has received considerable support from New York state and city politicians, it has also been praised by local religious leaders, Jewish and Christian. And if Abdul Rauf is so anti-American as Cheney and Kristol say, why would the FBI praise his cooperation with the agency after 9/11? “We’ve had positive interactions with him in the past,” an agency spokesperson said.

When President Bush said they hate our freedom in 2001, he was right. And some still do.

The Lamplighter

Even in his last hours, Dad had a smile that could light the shadows of a room and chase away despair. He was that kind of man - the hail fellow with a bit of wit on his lips and the glitter of companionship in his eyes. No one ever minded seeing Don Watson walking toward them down the street. He was easy to be around, essentially forgiving in his nature, and blindly enthusiastic in his almost child-like wonder at anything that he found interesting, which made for quite a list.

Fishing (always at the top). Storms. Horseshoes. Cars. Boats. Power tools. Sharks. Dogs. Cats. Machines of almost any kind. James Bond movies. Castles. Model trains. Trees. Flowers. Drawing and painting. The History Channel. The Discovery Channel. The Weather Channel. Square-rigged ships. Miniature golf and the Masters. Bagpipes. Tommy Dorsey. Buddy Rich. War movies. Battlefields. Hats in all shapes and sizes. Any meal in any restaurant. Any beach on any coast. Songbirds and a whistle. Singing in the choir.

But most of all, Dad loved his family. This was easy on Christmas morning when the rollicking sounds of grandchildren mixed with the smell of pine and all the world was cool and jolly. Dad loved those occasions more than anyone. He'd wear his goofy hats, mix the drinks, and make the rounds. But anyone can do that. What made Dad's commitment to his family, to his marriage of 51 years, so special was his determination during the harder times.

Dad might not have wanted it well known, but he worked three jobs simultaneously for several years in the 1980s to put his children through school, pay the mortgage, and keep food on the table. After his full-time and part-time newspaper jobs, he'd often go home and put on a uniform - dark blue shirt, navy slacks, and heavy shined black shoes. We thought of them as Dad's "guard shoes" because he was moonlighting as a night watchman, running on coffee and four hours sleep - and a commitment to his family that he would not break. Most people who knew our Dad will remember his great good cheer, his quick one-liners, and his smile. But his family won't forget those shoes.

The American songwriter Lou Reed once wrote that if he had to pin one crucial aspect to the elusive quality of love, he'd choose time. How we decide to spend our time, and who we spend it with, is the simplest possible formula for determining the reality of love, a calculation free of roses and flowery words and good intentions. It's a formula that fits our father, because he always made time - and he gave his time freely. He never left. He was always there. His presence was the deeply-rooted foundation of our lives. It's a lesson that his nine grandchildren will undoubtedly understand clearly in the years ahead as they build their own lives and families. Alexandra, Veronica, Sean, Timothy, Daniel, Kelsey, Samantha, Devon and Conor were the leading lights of Dad's third act in life and he spent the best of times reveling in their young spirits.

In his last three months at home, Dad offered another lesson in perseverance and strength. Sometimes it's hard to find dignity in this world. But anyone who visited that bedroom and spent time there found dignity. Cared for so faithfully by our mother throughout his long illness, Dad was still the same "big guy" even as he grew smaller. It was a great gift to spend that time with Dad, watch a little television, listen to some music, and talk over the events of the day. He couldn't speak much but he'd still find a way to express his amazement with a simple "wow!" at something on television or a story from the world outside that room. The smile was constant, and the quips were still there. A few weeks ago, he was asked by a visitor if there was anything he needed. "Yeah," he said, his eyes sparking with mischief. "How about Elizabeth Taylor?"

Even in those dusky twilight days, Dad still provided the spark. And he still does now. His favorite poem was about a simple man going about his daily rounds - "picking them up and putting them down," as Dad would say. The man was Leerie the Lamplighter in Robert Louis Stevenson's poem from A Child's Garden of Verses, who lit the way each night to the delight of children who felt safer for his presence.

My tea is nearly ready and the sun has left the sky. It's time to take the window to see Leerie going by; For every night at teatime and before you take your seat, With lantern and with ladder he comes posting up the street.

Now Tom would be a driver and Maria go to sea, And my papa's a banker and as rich as he can be; But I, when I am stronger and can choose what I'm to do, O Leerie, I'll go round at night and light the lamps with you!

For we are very lucky, with a lamp before the door, And Leerie stops to light it as he lights so many more; And oh! before you hurry by with ladder and with light; O Leerie, see a little child and nod to him to-night!

We were very lucky, indeed. Dad was our Lamplighter, the friend of the children and most faithful of men. We'll miss him on his rounds every day. But we'll carry his light with us.

Thank you, Dad. Fond love, always.

Donald W. Watson
1932-2010

______________________________________________________________ Note: This was my father's eulogy. He died on Tuesday morning and was buried yesterday. Things have been quiet around this address for quite some time, but I hope to return to these precincts more often in the coming months. Thanks for everyone's kind thoughts.

Public Image Libertarian

I'm going over to the other side
I'm happy to have not to have not
Big business is very wise
I'm inside free enterprise
I'm adaptable
I'm adaptable

Thus sang young John Lydon on 1984's This Is Not a Love Song from the record This Is What You Want... This Is What You Get by Lydon's post-Pistols' Public Image Limited. It's not quite a Tea Party anthem yet, but among libertarians of a certain age (and musical taste) that tune has to be right up there with The Fountainhead as at least a formative cultural underpinning of their near-anarchistic view of modern government and capitalism.

And the darling of their "movement" - if racially-tinged anger and class resentment coupled with vague and diffuse "principles" based on incredibly selective readings on American liberty can be said to constitute a movement - bears a striking resemblance to Lydon besides; hell, he looks more like Johnny Rotten's love child than he does the legitimate heir to Ron Paul's dead-enders estate.

While it's not generally my habit to emphasize the physical appearance of personalities on the political scene (I sat out Palinfest '08 in lonely fashion) there is something in Rand Paul's physicality and manner, in his speech and in his sneer, that draws your attention and holds it. He doesn't rock like the Sex Pistols, or even PiL, but it's all a performance piece nonetheless with an emphasis on the outrageous. Paul is challenging our assumptions of what can be said, of what can be asserted, in politely combative political company.

With Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity playing the Malcolm McLaren role, Rand Paul has been polished up and put on special in Kentucky, rollicking past the tired Mitch McConnell machine like a well-funded Lee Harvey Oswald handing out pamphlets in New Orleans crossed with a hopped-up William Shatner hawking cheap travel deals with goofy Kung Fu moves on YouTube. It all looks too much like the Charlie X episode of Star Trek's first season for my comfort. Too much too soon, do ya recall?

It's all performance art, but without John Lydon's wink. Rand Paul's absurd statements about civil rights and private business are revealing of the entire movement he now seems to lead. By refusing to endorse the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on Rachel Maddow's show, Rand left the GOP's slip showing at the big victory dance. It's no secret at all that Republican strategy has leveraged race and class resentment among southern whites for decades; but intellectual underpinnings that deny the advances of the civil rights movement and the strong Federal role in changing the racial formula at lunch counters and institutions of higher learning...well, that's some pretty dirty linen right there. As Jonathan Weisman wrote in the Wall Street Journal: "Republican candidate Rand Paul's controversial remarks on the 1964 Civil Rights Act unsettled GOP leaders this week, but they reflect deeply held iconoclastic beliefs held by some in his party, and many in the tea-party movement, that the U.S. government shook its constitutional moorings more than 70 years ago."

Yet it's that unsettling feeling that's sticking - the old ruse, the sad "states rights" argument looks soiled and ugly taken to its even more conservative extreme by Paul, the new Republican Senate nominee from Kentucky. Talk about appropriate company: Paul embarrassed the so-called mainstream Republican establishment to such a degree that he joined Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia as the only guests ever to cancel a Meet The Press appearance on Sunday morning.

Still, I think it's a mistake for Democrats and progressive independents to under-estimate the Tea Party and its many flavors. Along with the native intolerance that fuels its darker precincts, the Tea Party movement feeds on deep unhappiness with this country's ever-growing wealth gap, with ineffective government, and with the fixed game that big business plays on capitalism's card table. I think Frank Rich is right about this:

The Tea Party is not merely an inchoate expression of a political mood, or an amorphous ragtag band of diverse elements, or a bipartisan cry of dissatisfaction with the supposed “government takeover” of health care. The Tea Party is a right-wing populist movement with a specific ideology. It resides in the aging white base of the Republican Party and wants to purge that party of leaders who veer from its dogma.

The libertarian Republicans engage in what what Joan Walsh calls "their magical thinking about the free market," but their policy has always been selective at best, intellectually dishonest at worst. It's pick-and-choose "libertarianism" - yes on guns, no on privacy, yes on property rights, no on search and seizure, and on and on. The Paulists are supposed to be the most consistent keepers of the one true flame of liberty, and his candidacy is indeed a direct challenge of the broader Cheneyite "one central power" Republicans who have dominated the national party since Reagan. Yet Paul believes in certain strong Federal interventions in private lives, like a national ban on abortions and tough Federal drug laws, and his love for the free market apparently does not extend to ending subsidies for coal mining businesses.

Nor does anyone expect that in keeping with his dislike for government, he'll simply abstain from every single vote in Congress so as not to keep the Federal government's boot heel on the throat of private enterprise and local communities - like, in his own words, the Obama Administration's "un-American" policy of putting that heel to the throat of British Petroleum after its catastrophic accident fouled the Gulf of Mexico. Sticking up for a heavily-subsidized multinational corporation after its negligence damages the livelihoods of thousands of small American business owners - now that's a libertarian!

No, Rand Paul is eminently adaptable, as PiL shouted back in 1984. He comes off the phony and his "anarchy in the U.S." tour just another flavor of Republicans attempting to steer populist anger - and no small about of intolerance - into a few votes with the age-old claim of "taking back government." As John Lydon sang in his first band: "Your future dream is a shopping scheme."

One Road Is Just A Road

Patti Smith wrote a book about her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe called Just Kids, and made the scene at the New York Public Library the other night to talk about it. She read from the text, listened to arias, and sparred with her interlocutor in her down-to-earth girl from South Jersey earth mom kinda way. But she was really there to talk about love and loss and the path through life - and she referred several times to human "passages" and the presence of the dead in our living lives. Facing a passage in my own circle these long months, I found the experience moving, especially Patti's muscular insistence on the evidence of joy within the dark valley of human fear and mourning. Then she picked up the guitar, apologized for her lack of skill on the instrument, and proceeded to blow the room away - and shake the every leaf in the NYPL stacks below - with a rendition of In My Blakean Year from her brilliant 2004 record Trampin'. My crude handheld video appears above, shaky as its maker these days. But the sound is good, and the words are still true:

In my Blakean year
I was so disposed
Toward a mission yet unclear
Advancing pole by pole
Fortune breathed into my ear
Mouthed a simple ode
One road is paved in gold
One road is just a road

Oh Me of Little Faith

After witnessing a year of dithering - and watching those brutal months of lethargy leading to the infamous Lost Summer of 2009 - I never thought that President Obama and the Democrats would get revolutionary healthcare reform done.

And they didn't.

But they did pass sweeping health insurance regulation, a historic development that may - just may - be the first step in a true reconsideration of the American "system" for providing healthcare, a movement that should widen the social safety net, improve care, encourage business and help us all get closer to our promise as a nation.

Led by an energized Barack Obama, who clearly realized that his Presidency rode on the outcome and that his hands-off strategy simply wasn't working, Democrats passed the biggest extension of that safety net in the last four decades. In taking the risk and riding boldly at the head of his troops, Obama largely secured his domestic legacy and energized his political base - which happens to be diverse and opinionated and loud (who'd want it any other way). He also set the the table in political terms for other signature Democratic goals: immigration reform, environmental legislation, and much-needed financial services reform.

Six months ago, I was among the legions of progressives who were down on Obama - but I've watched him fight back since just before Christmas with a growing sense of admiration and excitement. The President is easy to admire for his tone, his intelligence, and his personal story; it's the tenacity I doubted (along with the skills of the White House staff). But as they say on the game shows, "Johnny, tell Tom about his consolation prizes."

I may still believe that a concerted effort from the day after the election through the first 100 days could have yielded real, broad, structural healthcare reform - and I may not entirely admire the shape and substance of the much-kneaded legislation - but I cannot argue that this bill isn't an accomplishment of stunning political proportion.

If the passage of the healthcare bill has raised the President a tick or two on this cynic's politicometer, then Speaker Nancy Pelosi has surged from the bottom to well above eye level.

With the kind of counterclockwise arm-twisting martial arts motion the experts refer to as "Tae Kwan LBJ," Pelosi bullied the package across the line, one hacky-sack Congressman at a time. In John Boehner, who seems to have dyed his face in strange oppositional tribute to the DailyKos, Pelosi faced a counterpart who held total control over his caucus. OK, I'm exaggerating. Boehner just repeated the talking points from Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity that all the Tea Party, er, that is to say, Republican representatives did. Who can forget those wonderful handmade signs on the balcony of the minority leader's office - such artistic talent, such sharpie skillsets! And those wingtips - don't get me started.

But this post is not about the GOP. They speak for themselves and their word is "no."

It's about those rock 'em, sock 'em Democrats. As Lance Mannion says - and who am I to disagree - "nothing like this has happened in my memory." And it's true.

So it's on to immigration, I hope. As Al Giordano wrote this week: "It is unconscionable that twelve million people – children, elders, workers, homemakers – in the United States of America are left defenseless and persecuted for simply existing."

No kidding, and maybe - just maybe - the political wind is at the Democrats' backs. I agree with Bill Clinton's counsel to Congressional Democrats from last fall - winning breeds winning. And the early post-passage polls bear it out. I suspect the fall won't bring Blue Dog Armageddon for the Dems - but their do-nothing obstructionism against a President who was more-than-willing to deal may well damage the Republicans for quite a while (and I'm not alone, even among conservatives).

But today, I'm newly-baptized in the faith of progressive legislative process (and let's give a shout-out to left-wing bloggers who needled and bugged and pushed the President and Congress). So I'm breaking out my old Mao T-shirt and cussin' like Vice President Biden. This hopey change thing seems to be workin' out just fine right now.

Tea Party Anthem: Can You See the Real Me?

The Tea Party crowd has finally found the marrow. With Congress set for the dramatic weekend passage of a fairly undramatic reform package on some aspects of the health insurance industry, the vocal right-wing fringe descended on Capitol Hill crying socialism, threatening gun violence, mocking gay people, shouting racist epithets and hurling spittle on elected representatives.

The full-on freak of the right, goaded by Elmer Gantry fascists like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity, would be entertaining if it didn't carry the explicit promise of violence. At the conservative blog Political Byline, one blogger seems to discern a reason for the defamatory and despicable behavior in Washington:

I mean, and I how to do I put this? Ah, I know! The liberal media and I mean the one’s who are reporting this; You should be glad it was just words. I mean, it could have very well been worse. Luckily and thankfully, it was not. But it could have very well have been. So, to the Race hustlers and Gay Blades; be glad it was just words, signs and insults. Because the alternative could have been much worse.

But again, to the more important point —– What the hell do you people expect? I mean, you want to destroy this Country’s health-care system, all to fulfill a stupid, idiotic socialist agenda; and you wonder why some people are pissed off about it?

Yeah, they're asking for it - for spit, for "faggot," and for a bullet.

There are two forces driving the tea party protesters, outside of encouragement by the insurance industry and the conservative radio entertainers: ignorance and bigotry. And yet it's not all that surprising. Darren Lenard Hutchinson keeps his perspective, as we should keep ours:

Homophobia and racism are pervasive social forces, and fear and anxiety often bring out the worst biases in people. Hence, these developments, though quite disturbing, are not shocking. Furthermore, the Tea Party movement began its healthcare protests in a circus-like atmosphere; apparently, things will remain that way until the bitter end.

Women in the World: Bravery in the Pursuit of Power

Women in the World, which unfolded this weekend at the historic Hudson Theater just east of Times Square - where Arsenic and Old Lace made its Broadway debut in 1941 - was the energetic vision of one of New York's most connected women. Tina Brown, proprietor of The Daily Beast (where I occasionally contribute), assembled this town's old guard media tribe and then some: Barry Diller, Barbara Walters, Katie Couric, Christiane Amanpour, Diane Sawyer, and Charlie Rose mingled with Queen Rania of Jordan, Meryl Streep, Madeline Albright, Donna Karan, Nora Ephron and the ever-present Diane Von Furstenberg.

"My hope is that it will help grow this important message of economic empowerment for women as the key to prosperity, and help spread this message around the world," Brown told USA Today.

Bringing together what Brown referred to as "lioness leaders" in the cause of telling stories, getting prominent people (including corporate and media types) more involved, and building a movement. Yet this movement clearly dates to 1995, when Hillary Clinton famously told the UN's. Fourth World Conference on Women that "women's rights are human rights." Yet it's a decade and a half down the road, and the horrors that women endure in fields of conflict, throughout the developing world, and just down the block continue to shock and sicken on almost a daily basis. Just a day before Women in the World opened, a young woman was savagely beaten in the bathroom of a clb only a few blocks from the Hudson Theater - reportedly for refusing the dance with the man now charged with her attempted murder.

"Sexual terrorism" carries different meanings in different settings - yet it's the terrorism part of the phrase that should get more attention. Gender itself is so vast, so seemingly non-organizable. It was no accident that Brown named the Daily Beast's conference Women in the World; "of" is untenable, yielding more of a soft-touch 1964 World's Fair exhibit of a title than a call to action. No, this gathering, for all its glamor, had a sharp point with a barbed tip. The barb that stayed caught was the quest for political and economic power. Time and again at Women in the World, I heard speakers talk about meaningful participation in governance and the world economy. This was a gathering of women not content with traditional philanthropy and corporate hand-outs, with slogans and ribbons and rubber bracelets.

Yet story-telling is so important. One of the real highlights was an evocative reading (directed by Julie Taymor) of Seven, a play that is a collaboration between Vital Voices and seven award-winning women playwrights, including that profiles seven women leaders from the Vital Voices' Global Leadership Network. Meryl Streep added Oscar-worthiness to the ensemble cast, which also featured Marcia Gay Harden, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Stephanie Okereke, Archie Panjabi, Julyana Soelistyo, Lauren Vélez. Over 90 minutes, Seven moves its protagonists from the desperation and powerlessness to activism and achievement. But the overarching theme isn't organizing - it's bravery.

From Inez McCormack, a civil rights leader in Northern Ireland (portrayed by Streep with humor and a believable Ulster brogue), to my personal hero, Mukhtar Mai of Pakistan, who was played effectively by Aghdashloo, the willingness to court more violence in the pursuit of justice pervades the reading of Seven, whose stories were subtly propelled by sparse sound effects and strong photograpic images on the large screen behind the actors. Seven women, speaking for billions. Seven stories to mobilize half of humanity.

Yet in chatting with Rebecca Lolosoli just before the reading of Seven, I was struck by how quickly village-level organizing can attain a bigger profile - and with it, more of a say in the halls of power. Rebecca is the founder and director of the Umoja Uaso Women’s Village, a community of survivors fleeing domestic abuse and arranged marriages in Kenya. She wears the brilliant colors and beaded necklace of the Samburu and, though Vital Voices, has become a recognized voice for changing traditions that make women into victims. We were talking about the violence in Kenya, and she said that real political power remains elusive.

This echoed the words of Suraya Pakzad, executive director of Voice of Women, which provides women in Afghanistan with shelter, counseling and job training. "Don't think of women's issues as a project - women are not a program," she told a panel on women in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pakzad, who courageously risks her life to run her shelters, argued that women belong at the table for peace talks. And this echoed the top global issue facing women identified by a coalition of leaders who gathered last fall in Florence under the Vital Voices banner: Lack of political will and accountability.

That technology can help even the playing field is taken as an issue of faith at gatherings like Women in the World. And indeed, the growth of cell phones and networked organizing is changing the landscape quite a bit. As I wrote in the Daily Beast last week: "The systemic challenges facing billions of women in the developing world defy easy, clickable solutions. Yet from linking remote villages via increasingly ubiquitous mobile-phone messaging to improved water safety and cooking tools, technological innovations are changing the lives of women and their families for the better, around the world."

I heard many people say over the weekend that the network really matters to them - the ability to connect women in remote developing regions to colleagues in NGOs, corporations, and government provides a shorter path to recognition. Cherie Blair talked about her partnership with the GSMA association of mobile operators to get inexpensive phones into the hands of more women in developing nations, where there remains a demonstrable technology gap between the genders. But technology can also bear witness. At Women in the World, the word "Congo" bore as much emotional power as "Katrina" or "9/11" do for many in the U.S. and the reason to me seemed clear: horrific cell phone images of the victims of infamous mass rape.

"Congo" has become short-hand for sexual terrorism.

Yes, images do matter. In introducing Seven, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the story of her recent visit to Guatemala and the request of an American diplomat there when she met with a a civil rights leader. The ambassador's request to Secretary Clinton was simple: take picture with her. "They're trying to kill her." A photo with one of the world's most famous and powerful women carries some power. "Here's a woman who is putting everything there is on the line."

The story provided the perfect lead-in to Seven, which is about women who have done just that - and with success. Yet Secretary Clinton warned that "extremist voices against women's rights are growing louder." And she took a moment to update the language of her 1995 declaration:

"Women's progress," she said, "is human progress."