Open Thread with The Professional Left Podcast:
Budgets, Abortion, and the one thing Obama didn't say

enlargeCredit: The Professional Left

Time for your weekly podcast with our own Driftglass and Bluegal, otherwise known as The Professional Left, or soon to be Mr. and Mrs. Driftglass. Enjoy the podcast and have a great weekend everyone.

Link for the podcast: Harold Ford Jr. shows that Math is Hard!

You can listen to the archives and listen to the archives free with no downloads at http://professionalleft.blogspot.com/ and you can also make a donation there if you'd like to help keep these podcasts going.

Read The Full Article:
http://crooksandliars.com/heather/professional-left-weekly-podcast-budgets-a

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Need Any More Proof Of How Disgusting Teapers Are

From David Niewert @ C&L:  Republican Tea Partiers just can't seem to get enough of those Obama/black people/chimpanzee jokes

I'm not gonna publish the garbage here... just go to the link and check it out for yourself.

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http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheyGaveUsARepublic-FrontPage/~3/la_ERb19xFE/need-
any-more-proof-of-how-disgusting-teapers-are

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Late Night: Atlas Sucked

Atlas Shrugged! The Movie! opened yesterday. I considered seeing it, because I am a scientist, and certain phenomena ought to be studied. (Some people make a nice living investigating ringworms, you know.)  And also I figured it just might be good for a[...]

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C&L's Late Night Music Club With Jerry Lee Lewis

Title: Mean Woman BluesArtist: Jerry Lee Lewis

It's Record Store Day, and I was lucky enough to score tickets to see Jerry Lee Lewis live at Jack White's Third Man Records. The show is being recorded for a live album, and the backing band includes Steve Cropper and Jim Keltner, along with Jack Lawrence from the Dead Weather and Raconteurs on the bass guitar. I can't tell you how excited I am, as Jerry Lee is one of my all-time musical heroes. Here's a song from my favorite live record, recorded at the Star Club in Hamburg in 1964, and featuring the Nashville Teens laying it down behind him.

Jerry Lee Lewis - Live at Star Club Artist: Jerry Lee Lewis Price: $17.79 (As of 04/16/11 06:24 pm details)

Read The Full Article:
http://crooksandliars.com/jared-shade-reynolds/cls-late-night-music-club-j-5

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DK Elections: The week that was

PA-Sen: Casey looking comfortable

After a painful one-week hiatus (painful because this feature was 97% written when my computer decided to play "hide and go seek" with my article), the weekly recap of all things electoral returns to its rightful place. For those Kossacks holding down the fort on a Saturday night, here's the news that's fit to...well...view on a computer screen.

And, as it turns out, as there is much to see as we move into mid-April.

In the battle for 2012, there was quite a bit of data this week, and it is nothing short of fascinating. The gentleman immediately to my right is doing surprisingly well, even as his party's standard-bearer seems suddenly imperiled in the Keystone State. New data out of Florida is far more muddy, while the GOP presidential sweepstakes has gone from unsettled to downright comical, if new numbers are to be believed.

Meanwhile, the battle for control of the House heats up with the first 2012 maps nearing completion, and the first true clash of the titans launching this week with a somewhat surprising call from an Iowa Republican.

All this and more as we recap the week on the campaign trail.

THE RACE FOR THE WHITE HOUSE

NATIONAL: This week, arguably, was President Obama's poorest polling week in many respects. The job approval numbers were weak (you know it's a bad week when the House of Ras is offering up your most optimistic data), and the state-by-state numbers were pretty disappointing, as well (more on this down the line).

However, the national numbers were, on balance, pretty decent. And the primary polling on the other side has to bring delight to any Democrat.

So, what do we know? We know that the forthcoming election is going to be very, very interesting. Beyond that, it's hard to draw definitive conclusions from this week's data.

Start with the national head-to-heads. We get three pollsters offering up the head-to-heads this week. Our polling partners at PPP served up a mixed bag. While supporters of the president have to be heartened by the margins in the PPP poll (President Obama leads the GOP field, sans Trump, by margins ranging from 5-18 points), Tom Jensen offered a cautionary note. He pointed out that the overwhelming bulk of the undecideds were pointedly critical of the president, and are more than likely to land in the GOP camp when all is said and done. On a slightly more pessimistic note, Democracy Corps finds Obama's approval underwater (44/50) and also finds him trailing one of the GOP's purported frontrunners (Mitt Romney) by a 48-46 margin.. Oddly, the pollster who seems bullish on Obama is...wait for it...Rasmussen. The House awakens from a deep slumber (haven't seen those guys since Halloween!), and finds President Obama leading his GOP rivals (again, excluding the Donald) by margins ranging from 5 to 18 points. Indeed, their numbers are eerily similar to PPP's national polling, both in terms of job approval (both a net -1, at last check) and head-to-heads.

On the job approval front, this is clearly President Obama's worst week of recent vintage, despite generally favorable polling reviews for last week's budget deal. Only our own Daily Kos/SEIU State of the Nation Poll finds Obama in positive territory, and only at a net +1, at that (48/47). As for the rest of the field: CNN, Ipsos/Reuters, Rasmussen, Gallup, and YouGov all find Obama in net negative territory. Gallup and YouGov share the crown for most pessimistic numbers, clocking in at an alarming 41/50 approval rating.

The best news for President Obama, as has been the case for most of the cycle thus far, is the caliber of his competition. Behold:  a pair of polls confirm that we can now use a phrase that no one could have fathomed even weeks ago?Donald Trump is a GOP frontrunner.

Ponder that for a moment, and smile.

THE STATES: There is a little bit less to smile about in the state-by-state numbers this week. While limited to just two battlegrounds, they provide numbers that ought to give Democrats at least a bit of pause. In Florida, a trio of polls tell vastly different stories. However, taken as a whole, they suggest that the state's bounty of electoral votes are very much in play. Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, Obama trails Mitt Romney (albeit by a single point), and has only a narrow edge over Mike Huckabee. One item of interest: the Pennsylvania poll is one of the first to feature a heads-up test between President Obama and Donald Trump. The Donald, for what it's worth, is an almost Palin-esque disaster in a general election, trailing the president by the not-insignificant margin of 15 points (49-34).

THE BATTLE FOR THE U.S. SENATE

THE POLLS: There isn't a ton of Senate polling this week, but the lead-off hitter is one that should calm the nerves of some Democrats. Apparently, one of the potential targets for Republicans in their drive to reclaim the Senate is in better shape than most observers might have suspected. Freshman Democrat Bob Casey, according to new numbers from PPP, has a sizeable edge over any potential Republican challenger. Despite only modestly favorable approval numbers (39/35), Casey sits right at or over 50% against all comers, and even has a double-digit lead over former Senator Rick Santorum (who is busy getting his presidential campaign off to a brutal start). Against more plausible GOP challengers, Casey holds leads ranging from 16 to 23 points. One note of caution?the common thread among those GOPers is that practically no one knows who the hell they are.

While there aren't any head-to-heads, new polling from Suffolk hints that another "vulnerable" Democrat might be safer than previously thought. Veteran Dem Bill Nelson is sitting at a 43/24 approval spread, which suggests that there may not be a big enough reservoir of discontent to dispatch him.

And, for those truly desperate for data, we have a primary poll in Hawaii looking at the Dem field. For those who care (both of you!), the poll by SMS Research claims that Ed Case leads the field, up five on Mufi Hannemann.

ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL:

• Speaking of Case, he made his Senate candidacy official last week, in an announcement that was a surprise to absolutely no one. It is hard to imagine that he will have the field to himself, especially with both of the state's Democratic Congresswomen waiting in the wings.
• Another prominent Democratic entry into the fray came this week, although this one was not unexpected. In Nevada, longtime Congresswoman Shelley Berkley announced her bid, joining GOP House mate Dean Heller in the field of candidates vying to replace departing Republican scandalmonger John Ensign. Berkley might have to expend some resources, though, as Democrat Byron Georgiou filed an eye-popping seven-figure FEC report (although half of it was self-funded). It sounds, though, like the DSCC is making their support for Berkley clear, and with three open seats in the House, expect some serious Democratic lobbying to have Georgiou consider a House bid, instead.
• Republicans got a potentially legitimate candidate of their own in Wisconsin. Mark Neumann, the former Congressman who came close to dispatching Democrat Russ Feingold in 1998 and ran an unsuccessful campaign for governor in 2010, is openly mulling a bid against long-time Democratic Senator Herb Kohl.
• Republicans, meanwhile, did suffer a setback in the Midwest. While not necessarily a surprise, former Congressman Peter Hoekstra made it official, announcing he would not challenge sophomore Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow next year. Hoekstra was easily the most well-known of the potential GOPers in the field.
• David Nir noted this article earlier in the week, but it's worth the repeat: anyone who is presuming that the convalescing Gabrielle Giffords is the default Democratic nominee for the open Senate seat in Arizona would be well-served by reading this week's feature on the congresswoman in Newsweek. It strikes a noble balance, chronicling her extraordinary recovery while making clear that much (very much) remains unclear about her future.

THE BATTLE FOR THE HOUSE

All is reasonably quiet on the data front this week (save for some pretty dismal favorability numbers for the two Republicans holding down House seats in New Hampshire). The big news this week is that the House maps for 2012 are starting to make their way through their processes. Arkansas and Louisiana are both done deals. Democrats did not gain much in Arkansas, despite control of the process. In fact, the general consensus is that, at least at the federal level, redistricting actually weakened the Dems hand in the sole House seat that remains. Meanwhile, in Louisiana, recent elections did all the damage possible to Dems, who will almost certainly retain the one House seat they hold in the state (the New Orleans-based 2nd district). The state did lose one seat in reapportionment, meaning that the GOP will lose one incumbent here.

ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL:

• Another state is wrapping up the redistricting process, and it has yielded the first marquee battle between incumbents of the cycle. With Iowa also losing a district, the assumption had long been that Republicans Tom Latham and Steve King would battle it out in the heavily Republican 4th district. Instead, Latham has elected to head south, challenging veteran Democrat Leonard Boswell in the neighboring 3rd district. The logic here is pretty unimpeachable: Latham would be hard pressed to out-Republican a hardcore ideologue like King in a GOP primary, and the newly drawn 3rd District is swingy enough (52-46 Obama in 2008) to possibly support a Republican.
• When is a recruiting win really a loss? When it might give Democrats another shot at Angle-time! Former Naval commander Kirk Lippold announced a bid for the House seat being vacated by GOP Senate frontrunner Dean Heller. Lippold joins Angle in the field, which is likely to also include Lt. Governor Brian Krolicki. The more legitimate Republicans land on the ballot, the more likely it is that the winning tally can drop to a level that matches Angle's base support in the district.
• Democrats, one must assume, are a bit happier about their own recruiting this week. High on the list: the return of New Hampshire's Carol Shea-Porter, the two-term Democrat who was washed out to sea in the truly awful 2010 cycle for Granite State Dems. NH native Dean Barker lobbed a comment over at Swing State, and makes a compelling case for CSP's chances next November.
• Democrats landed a few other recruits this week, as well. In Wisconsin-07, poverty-stricken freshman Rep. Sean Duffy is looking at a credible challenge from former state senator Pat Kreitlow. Meanwhile, for Democrats eager to dump scandal-plagued incumbent David Wu in Oregon-01, they may have a candidate. State Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian is taking a look at it. In the open seat being left by Chris Murphy in Connecticut-05, former state legislator Elizabeth Esty is jumping into the race.
• Finally, this week marked the Q1 FEC filing deadline, meaning that campaigns from coast to coast are talking money. As always, check out the guys over at SSP, who have been on top of the money game all week (as well as arguably the best redistricting updates to be found in the tubes).

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/xwfQpVNW0BE/-DK-Elections:-The-wee
k-that-was

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John King Justifies Bringing on Birther Orly
Taitz: Our Job is Not Just to Cover Things We Know to be True

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John King knew he was going to be criticized for bringing in Birther queen Orly Taitz during a segment which began with talking about whether or not Gov. Jan Brewer is going to sign Arizona's Birther law which just made its way through their state legislature.

Here's the damage control from King at the end of the segment from the criticism he knew he had coming:

KING: I'm going to end the conversation now. People are entitled to go to your Web site and I hope we can talk again. But I'm going to end this conversation tonight right now.

Listen, I sit in meetings for those of you at home and I'm going to pick this up and read it all.

For those at home who says, you know, you crazy jerk, why are you even going down this road? I'm going down this road because our job is not just to cover things that we know to be true. It's our job is to cover things that people are talking about in politics. And to try, to try to have rational conversations about why people believe what they believe, even if our reporting suggests what they believe is not true.

And we will continue to do that. I can assure you, we will never be perfect, but we try to do it in a respectful way.

There's nothing "respectful" about spending at least half of the 12 minutes of a segment of your show allowing some discredited Birther nut like Taitz to rant and rave and spew conspiracy theories that you know aren't true. Well, at least someone on CNN admitted what we already knew was true: Facts don't matter much in their reporting. If some wingnut politician or political figure says something, they must cover it in the name of being "fair and balanced."

King went on to ask if the White House is somehow more worried about the Birther nonsense than they're letting on and if they're trying to "at least use a subtle message to rebut this." Yeah, that's it, John. They're speaking to the Birthers in coded messages that the rest of us somehow missed.

Transcript of the portion via CNN below the fold.

KING: OK. Let me -- let me Cornell -- stay with us, please. I'm sorry. But stay with us.

I just want to let Cornell into the conversation -- because when you listen to that, you can say, if you want, you can say, crazy. You can say absurd. However -- however, you're in the polling business, and a chunk and not an insignificant chunk of the American people believe this.

Let's look at our latest poll. Was Barack Obama born in the United States? Definitely yes: 46 percent. Probably yes: 26 percent. Probably no: 15 percent. Definitely no: 10 percent.

Ten percent of all Americans think their president is not born in this country.

CORNELL BELCHER: And I wonder what party they --

KING: Well, you say what party. So, let's look it. Let's break it down by party.

Was Barack Obama born in the United States? Forty-three percent of Republicans say probably or definitely not. Twenty-three percent of independents say probably or definitely not. But this one jumps out and surprised me -- 11 percent of Democrats say probably or definitely not. Does the president have to do something more proactively to clean this up? Or as he said yesterday with this interview with George Stephanopoulos, you know, I don't do conspiracy theories. Is that enough?

BELCHER: No.

KING: Is that enough that in a close election, this controversy, we at CNN have done a lot of work on this and we think it's bogus, but 43 percent of Republicans, 23 percent of independents and 11 percent of Democrats have doubts.

BELCHER: Forty-three percent of Republicans is what you want to focus on, quite frankly. As someone who did polling work for the Obama campaign, it's not something that's new to me and something that sort of has a direct relationship with their inability to sort of accept Barack Obama.

The problem here is this: it is so categorically insane and you have so many sort of rational people, you know, not wanting to accept the truth. You have to ask: what is it about this president that makes them not want to accept the truth? Why are so many people vesting so much in something that is categorically --

KING: Orly, I think the question Cornell is asking, he's trying to ask it more politely. Let me ask it bluntly. If Barack Obama were white, would we be going through this?

TAITZ: Absolutely. And as a matter of fact, when President McCain ran for office, the Senate --

KING: President McCain said -- Senator McCain, excuse me, Senator McCain said, take this off the table. He is an American. I believe he is an American. Let's talk about his views on taxes. Let's talk about his views on Social Security. Let's talk about his views on national security.

TAITZ: Let me answer. When Senator McCain wanted to run there was a hearing, a senatorial hearing, and it was Senate resolution 511 whereby it was decided that he was a natural born citizen. And as a matter of fact, what I believe is there is a political correctness that went haywire that allowed Barack Obama to get in the White House with a stolen Social Security number. Here, I have documents that the nation needs to see. This is --

BELCHER: Senator McCain -- here's the problem. You've dominated the time.

(CROSSTALK)

TAITZ: No, no, sir.

BELCHER: You've dominated the time. I'm going to talk. Senator McCain is a guy who wasn't born in this country and you don't have the same sort of fervor going around saying anything --

(CROSSTALK)

BELCHER: What's the variable? What is the variable here? The variable here is you've got an African-American president.

TAITZ: No. No.

BELCHER: None of this ever came up (INAUDIBLE) African-American president. That's the only variable here.

And when you have this sort of ill logic, there is nothing the president can do to sort of prove this. You have a birth certificate. You have an announcement. They reject the truth. They don't want the truth to be true. Why do they want this truth to be true in this case with this president?

KING: Let me play -- I'm going to play devil's advocate here. Hold on one second. Just one second. I will let you answer. Hold on one second.

My name is in the funny lights behind me. I get to talk just a little bit.

I want you -- this is the cynic in me, Cornell, that the White House says they don't worry about this, but every now and then, you start to hear things where I think that somebody quietly is trying to at least use a subtle message to rebut this.

Listen to this recent little -- several little snippets of the president and things around him.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We're all Americans. And that spirit of patriotism.

This isn't a Democratic or a Republican idea, it's patriotism.

This is what America is all about, everybody from different places, enjoying those things that bind us together.

The thing about America is that is great is that we're bold. We're tough.

We show the world that all things are possible in the United States of America.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BELCHER: That's who he is. I mean, that's not new. That's going back to the very beginning of this campaign.

Look, we've got a fairly good percentage of Republicans last time around who voted for us, I mean, somebody, I think even Ike's daughter voted for us because of this idea of American exceptionalism. There were articles after articles sort of saying this president reminds us of Ronald Reagan because of his exceptionalism.

TAITZ: Sir, I mean, look, this is ridiculous.

BELCHER: The ideals this guy believes that we are one and sort of patriotic. Patriotism isn't a Republican ideal. It's a Democratic ideal as well.

KING: Orly, we've been waiting.

TAITZ: Let me respond to this.

KING: Let me ask you a question. We've been waiting -- Donald Trump, the businessman who says he may run for president. We're waiting -- he's supposed to do a live event down in Florida. That's the event right there where he's supposed to come out and talk to reporters.

He has - he has risen in the polls among Republicans to second in our recent poll behind Mike Huckabee, tied with Mike Huckabee at 19 percent. He has jumped up in the polls the last few weeks because he has been beating this like a drum. Would you vote for Donald Trump for president?

TAITZ: Absolutely. And it's not only because of the Social Security issue. Not only because of the birth certificate. Barack Obama is committing Social Security fraud. The biggest crime ever committed --

KING: You're accusing the president of the United States of committing a felony.

TAITZ: Absolutely. Yes. And he's not a legitimate -- he's not legitimate president. Here is selective service certificate that can be seen on my Web site OrlyTaitzESQ.com, and it was filed with the courts.

KING: I'm going to end the conversation now. People are entitled to go to your Web site and I hope we can talk again. But I'm going to end this conversation tonight right now.

Listen, I sit in meetings for those of you at home and I'm going to pick this up and read it all.

For those at home who says, you know, you crazy jerk, why are you even going down this road? I'm going down this road because our job is not just to cover things that we know to be true. It's our job is to cover things that people are talking about in politics. And to try, to try to have rational conversations about why people believe what they believe, even if our reporting suggests what they believe is not true.

And we will continue to do that. I can assure you, we will never be perfect, but we try to do it in a respectful way.

Read The Full Article:
http://crooksandliars.com/heather/john-king-justifies-bringing-birther-orly

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Republican Candidate X Voted to End Medicare

The House passed Republican Paul Ryan's budget that would end Medicare as we know it and replace it with a privatized system of vouchers. While it is good to know not a single Democrat was actually stupid enough to vote for it, on a purely political[...]

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Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer vetoes far-right
Republican bills with a branding iron

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Now here's a dramatic way to make a point -- Montana style:

"About 96 people think they know better than the 990,000 people in Montana," says Governor Schweitzer.

Governor Schweitzer had the veto brands hot. Covering the gamet of issues important to Montanans, Schweitzer vetoed bills having to do with air and water, jobs and healthcare.

"When I swore to uphold the constitution, I meant it. There's some in this building who say, we don't care about the constitution and we don't care about the will of the people."

Now I'm sure right-wingers will rush to their fainting couches and demand Schweitzer apologize for being so violent and uncivil with his branding imagery.

But they'll have to explain why Montana Republicans tried to keep up with Schweitzer by bringing their own brand to the gathering:

Republican Senator Jason Priest, who had three bills vetoed Wednesday, says he wasn?t impressed with the theatrics.

"Consistently throughout this session we see the Governor making light of the bills that are coming across his desk instead of taking these proposals seriously," says Priest. Priest brought a prop of his own. "That's why we got this brand today. We think Montanans are getting a bum steer and that's the BS on this brand."

And while it may have been a stunt, it was a stunt with an important point:

But Senate Democrat Cliff Larsen says the demonstration gave Schweitzer a platform to tell people about bills that could really hurt.

"The Governor used the opportunity to really make a statement about a lot of the bad bills that came through because there are a group of extremists in the Republican party that have pushed some of the agendas," says Larson.

Indeed, as we've reported, a group of far-right extremists took over the Montana Legislature this year under the banner of the Tea Party, and they've been running amok. Schweitzer torched a number of their bills today:

SB 114 ? Hinkle ? Federal law enforcement officers should communicate with sheriff

HB 318 ? Warburton ? Ensure county oversight in movement of publicly-owned wild buffalo or bison

SB 109 ? Barrett ? Revise definition of eligible renewable resources

HB 272 ? Flynn ? Eliminate ability for FWP to use hunting access fees to acquire fee title lands

SB 159 ? Priest ? Revise energy efficiency and code adoption requirements in building codes

HB 180 ? Edmunds ? Revise close of voter registration

SB 306 ? Murphy ? Revise mining laws regarding cyanide health and vat leach open-pit mining

HB 456 ? Smith ? Define scope/ boundaries of human sexuality/reproduct ed in K-12 public schools

HB 464 ? Blasdel ? Provide medical liability protection for hard-to-recruit subspecialists

SB 111 ? Sonju ? Limit noneconomic damages in motor vehicle accidents

SB 228 ? Priest ? Prohibit creation of health insurance exchange under PPACA

SB 324 ? Balyeat ? Revise consumer protection laws and settlement proceeds

SB 370 ? Priest ? Require cost-benefit analysis of mandated health insurance coverage of service

SB 254 ? Hutton ? Provide state eminent domain authority for federal lands

HB 161 ? Milburn ? Repeal medical marijuana law

SB 183 ? Brown ? Revise interim zoning laws

HB 542 ? Esp ? Revise subdivision and platting act

Good for Schweitzer. He's obviously figured out that giving these extremists even an inch will mean they'll take a mile.

Read The Full Article:
http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/montana-gov-brian-schweitzer-vetoes-

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GOP hopeful Pawlenty doesn't want to talk about
Ryan's Medicare cuts

The House Republicans' Medicare-killing plan has at least one GOP presidential hopeful a little tied up in knots over the fact that it actually retains some of the costs savings from the dreaded "Obamacare." Igor Volsky caught up with Tim Pawlenty in New Hampshire:

During a Tea Party rally in New Hampshire, likely presidential candidate and former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty (R) endorsed the Ryan proposal, saying, ?as a general matter and directionally, I think Paul Ryan?s plan moves in the right direction.? But when I pressed him over whether he supports maintaining some of the Medicare cuts that are part of health care reform, Pawlenty demurred, and took another question:

PAWLENTY: I like Paul Ryan?s plan directionally. I don?t think it?s fully filled out in terms of the fact that we still have to address Social Security and when we issue our plan later in this process, it will have some differences[...]

VOLSKY: Do you support the Medicare cuts in his plan that he keeps from Obamacare?

PAWLENTY: Anybody else have a question besides this guy?

In other words, "Get me out of this!"

Ryan would have made life a lot easier for these candidates had he not decided to crib from the Democrats' work on the Affordable Care Act. They can't say anything that is at all complementary about the ACA, and by extension, Romneycare. It's particularly difficult for Pawlenty to Ryan for his cost-cutting acumen that a) borrows from Obama, and that b) he himself criticized as "unrealistic assumptions regarding purported future cost-savings."

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/44D6MLPOmtE/-GOP-hopeful-Pawlenty-
doesnt-want-to-talk-about-Ryans-Medicare-cuts

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There are people who won't care about the many
layers of Jonathan Franzen's account of his journey to Masafuera; for others it's a must-read

Jonathan Franzen's caption: The uninhabited island was named for a marooned eighteenth-century adventurer who likely inspired the first English novel. I thought I?d strand myself there and read it.

"In the South Pacific Ocean, five hundred miles off the coast of central Chile, is a forbiddingly vertical volcanic island, seven miles long and four miles wide, that is populated by millions of seabirds and thousands of fur seals but is devoid of people, except in the warmer months, when a handful of fishermen come out to catch lobsters. [The island] is officially called Alejandro Selkirk. . . In the nineteen-sixties, Chilean tourism officials renamed the island for Alexander Selkirk, the Scottish adventurer whose tale of solitary living in the archipelago was probably the basis for Daniel Defoe?s novel Robinson Crusoe, but the locals still use its original name, Masafuera: Farther Away."
-- from the opening paragraph of Jonathan Franzen's
New Yorker "reflection" "Farther Away"

Jonathan Franzen's "Farther Away" is available on The New Yorker's Facebook page "for a limited time." (Caution: You have to declare yourself a "fan" with a "like," kind of petty blackmail, it seems to me. I actually am a fan of the magazine, just not of its -- or anyone else's -- Facebook page.

If you miss the Facebook window, subscribers can access the online digital edition, or I see on its iPad app; nonsubscribers can buy access to single issues of the digital edition. (If you're in a bind, drop me an e-mail -- at kenfromdwt&aol.com -- and I'll send you a text version as long as you don't tell.

by Ken

Spread over Thursday night's and last night's late-night slot I presented the title story from E. B. White's 1954 anthology, The Second Tree from the Corner, a story about a man's effort to get relief from physically as well as psychologically crippling anxieties with the help of a psychiatrist, whose help really doesn't do much for him.

I don't know that any readers needed my elbow in their ribs, but I couldn't resist belaboring the obvious by recalling White's own dictum (articulated, in fact, in the Foreword to Second Tree: "Whoever sets pen to paper writes of himself, whether knowingly or not, and this is a book of revelations." And so apart from the story's value as a nice piece of fiction and as the piece the author and his publisher chose as a title for the book, I thought it was interest for White's grappling with what was clearly his own problem in finding meaning in life.

By weird coincidence, I already had in my possession, but hadn't yet read, Jonathan Franzen's
in the current (Apr. 18) "Journeys" issue of The New Yorker
Actually, I think I had already looked at the start of the piece, and definitely planned to come back at some point to what I assumed was simply an account of the author's "getting away from it all" trip to one of the planet's more remote spots. That certainly sounded interesting, and as I said, I always planned to come back to it when time permitted, like maybe on the weekend.

I might note that I've never read any of Franzen's books, or for that matter any of those of his close friend David Foster Wallace, who turns out to figure prominently in this piece. The piece does, in fact, tell the story of the author's trip to Masafuera, and would be worth reading just for that. Just as travel reportage, it's of immediate interest for its depiction of:

*the island's remoteness.

To reach the island, which is officially called Alejandro Selkirk, you fly from Santiago in an eight-seater that makes twice-weekly flights to an island a hundred miles to the east. Then you have to travel in a small open boat from the airstrip to the archipelago?s only village, wait around for a ride on one of the launches that occasionally make the twelve-hour outward voyage, and then, often, wait further, sometimes for days, for weather conducive to landing on the rocky shore.

* its impossible physical setting. When we think of "Robinson Crusoe's island," we think of humanly impossible physical setting, which consists mostly of sheer vertical faces and steep but barely climbable vertical rises. The traveler who surmounts all the above-recorded obstacles to getting to the island finds, first, that getting onto it is an ordeal unto itself, and then requires an immediate climb to 3000 feet above sea level, the site of his planned campsite.

My only map of the island was a letter-size printout of a Google Earth image, and I saw right away that I?d optimistically misinterpreted the contour lines on it. What had looked like steep hills were cliffs, and what had looked like gentle slopes were steep hills.

To his surprise, the 3000-foot climb -- in the company of a young guide and his mule, which carries his backpack -- is accomplished in two hours. However, the weather turns out to be as forbidding as the topography -- fog and clouds and storms so severe that much of the time visibility is near zero, making solitary trekking a hair-raising experience, as he documents vividly.

But the travelogue is only the outermost layer of the piece. It's also a reconsideration of Robinson Crusoe -- of which as noted above, Franzen carried a paperback copy to reread. It's a reconsideration that relates to the physical facts of the central portion of the novel, the part we all know, relating the shipwrecked Crusoe's quarter-century sojourn on his South Pacific island, and it relates to the author's (and his father's) fascination with solitude, and so inevitably it's also a reflection on his own life, past, present, and future, pegged to the state of mental exhaustion, or perhaps depression, that drove him to the trip following a four-month book tour.

The reflection on Robinson Crusoe, which stands at or near the invention of the form of the novel, at least in English. At first Franzen's poking around the history of the novel may seem like an academic exercise, but it turns out to be central to his own mental state, which seems to have at least somewhat a life crisis, and also to that of David Foster Wallace, for whom the act of novel-writing apparently made it possible to live as long as he did before the suicide that, Franzen believes intentionally, caused the people who loved him most intense torment.

And so the piece also lays out in much telling detail Franzen's relationship with Wallace, and the latter's ongoing struggle with mental illness. Since Wallace has become something of a cult hero since his death, an outcome that Franzen is quite sure he anticipated, I suspect that the particularly close perspective.

Here's a sample:

He was lovable the way a child is lovable, and he was capable of returning love with a childlike purity. If love is nevertheless excluded from his work, it?s because he never quite felt that he deserved to receive it. He was a lifelong prisoner on the island of himself. What looked like gentle contours from a distance were in fact sheer cliffs. Sometimes only a little of him was crazy, sometimes nearly all of him, but, as an adult, he was never entirely not crazy.

And another:

We who were not so pathologically far out on the spectrum of self-involvement, we dwellers of the visible spectrum who could imagine how it felt to go beyond violet but were not ourselves beyond it, could see that David was wrong not to believe in his lovability and could imagine the pain of not believing in it. How easy and natural love is if you are well! And how gruesomely difficult?what a philosophically daunting contraption of self-interest and self-delusion love appears to be?if you are not! And yet one of the lessons of David?s work (and, for me, of being his friend) is that the difference between well and not well is in more respects a difference of degree than of kind. Even though David laughed at my much milder addictions and liked to tell me that I couldn?t even conceive of how moderate I was, I can still extrapolate from these addictions, and from the secretiveness and solipsism and radical isolation and raw animal craving that accompany them, to the extremity of his. I can imagine the sick mental pathways by which suicide comes to seem like the one consciousness-quenching substance that nobody can take away from you.

Franzen has a major problem with the "saintly" public image of his friend, which obliterate the real struggle of his life and seriously misrepresent his writing.

Adulatory public narratives of David, which take his suicide as proof that (as Don McLean sang of van Gogh) ?this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you,? require that there have been a unitary David, a beautiful and supremely gifted human being who, after quitting the antidepressant Nardil, which he?d been taking for twenty years, succumbed to major depression and was therefore not himself when he committed suicide.

For much of Wallace's writing life, Franzen tells us,

Fiction was his way off the island, and as long as it was working for him?as long as he?d been able to pour his love and passion into preparing his lonely dispatches, and as long as these dispatches were coming as urgent and fresh and honest news to the mainland?he?d achieved a measure of happiness and hope for himself.

And then came "years of struggle" with a novel in which Wallace no longer believed, and his suicide became the secret preoccupation of his final year.

Throughout that year, the David whom I knew well and loved immoderately was struggling bravely to build a more secure foundation for his work and his life, contending with heartbreaking levels of anxiety and pain, while the David whom I knew less well, but still well enough to have always disliked and distrusted, was methodically plotting his own destruction and his revenge on those who loved him.

Just as the fictional Trexler's life crisis was so clearly an expression of E. B. White's attempt to grapple with similar issues, for Franzen his friend's more extreme struggles connect to his own, which may be less severe but clearly don't feel minor to him. I don't suppose Trexler's consolation in that indefinable something that makes his life bearable, as exemplified by his imaginary "second tree from the corner," caught in perfect evening light, would be of much help to Franzen, whose talk of his addictions suggests that he's closer to Trexler the patient, who you'll recall answered the question of whether anything at all made him feel better suggested sometimes a drink. (Franzen writes of Robinson Crusoe that "the novel?s most astonishing detail may be that Robinson makes 'three large runlets of rum or spirits' last a quarter century; I would have drunk all three in a month, just to be done with them.)

I think the foregoing should amply warn off any potential readers of this extraordinary piece who just wouldn't give a damn, or for whom the rewards wouldn't repay the effort. Which leaves potential readers who really shouldn't miss it.
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http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2011/04/there-are-people-who-wont-care-about.
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