Tortured Reasoning

God bless the media coverage of Eric Holder’s decision to appoint federal prosecutor John H. Durham to investigate the CIA's interrogation program. Once again, American journalism wisely avoids boring the public with investigative fact-checking, substantive analysis, or penetrating review of the known background of the underlying issues entailed in the story; instead our savvy journalists thankfully focus public attention on the political posturing involved in the “debate”(over tactics not issues) and the campaign-like horserace questions of whose popularity will or will not be hurt by the emerging controversy (surrounding tactics not issues). The big important drama of Holder’s announcement, as relayed in the media, is the fate of Obama’s political capital and whether Durham’s investigation (which it now appears will be “limited to a dozen or so cases, most of which already have been the subject of several reviews”) will prove to be a distraction from the President’s policy agenda.

You know, there are some sentences that should be recognized as inherently absurd—even though they seem to need saying. Things like “Please don’t set your sister’s head on fire again,” or, “This grilled hyena pancreas tastes funny to me.” Into this category, I would place “The U.S, Attorney General should investigate credible evidence that high ranking officials of the previous administration may have authorized torture.”

For the slower of wit, let’s break down just two of the many parts of this statement that signal self-demonstrating absurdity:

1. “…the previous administration may have authorized torture.” Let’s start with the real basic stuff. What the hell world are we living in? WHAT CENTURY IS IT? Imagine if, instead of George Bush becoming president in 2000, Al Gore, or John McCain, or John Travolta, or that weird lady who sits vigil in Lafayette Park and wears a tin spaghetti strainer under her twelve-dollar wig had been elected to preside over the United States of America and the whole Bush crew had never come to town. Can you imagine ANY circumstances, any non-Cheneyized universe in which those words alone would not cause laughter, would not immediately mark whoever uttered them as a What’s-really-going-on-in-Area-51 mouthbreather. TORTURE. You know, the stuff they always show the evil guy doing to the hero of the movie to make you get really angry? Do we now need the movie-soundtrack, heavily minor-key music playing in the background to let us know when something…um…wrong is happening?

2. “The U.S, Attorney General should investigate credible evidence…” And the head of the Center for Disease Control should look into the latest outbreak of plague in Manhattan. IT”S THE AG’s FRIGGIN JOB TO INVESTIGATE CRIMES. (Any Cletus objecting that the interrogations weren’t necessarily crimes if the administration authorized them needs to go back and s-l-o-w-l-y read point 1 above.)

Notwithstanding the self-evident truth (and thus self evident absurdity) of pointing out that the AG should probably have started poking around into this matter about 20 minutes after his confirmation, it seems like one of those kinds of things that somehow need saying at this point. See, we’re now embroiled in controversy about how politically damaging this may or may not be for Obama’s agenda and whether or not Holder is making a big mistake and mucking things up for his “boss”. This is what we are going to worry about? This is the discussion lighting up the interweb? Well aren’t we sophisticated? I wonder if the guys in charge of the Nuremberg Tribunal stopped to think about what a big PR pickle they may have been putting Truman in?

Commenting on Holder’s tepid, half-a-pair decision to appoint an investigator, Dan Balz of the Washington Post writes, “No matter which way he turns, President Obama can't seem to shake the legacy of George W. Bush's presidency.” Is he kidding? This reads like bad 1970s promo copy for a sitcom: Watch as that loveable, hapless President Obama mixes love and laughter to deal with the zany antics of that meatheaded former President Bush! Obama just can’t shale that crummy ol’ Bush legacy.

Dan Balz: The Wink Martindale of journalism.

How about this from Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

“Attorney General Eric Holder doesn’t seem to have any enthusiasm for revisiting the torture controversies of the Bush era. Neither does his boss, President Obama…But Obama and Holder had no choice.”

Obama and Holder had no choice? His boss Obama doesn’t have any enthusiasm for revisiting the torture controversies? Ms. Tucker seems to have forgotten, if she ever knew, that the inclinations, choices, enthusiasms, passing fancies, or desperate political needs of the president aren’t really supposed to enter into an Attorney General’s considerations of the legal merits of an investigation of suspected crimes. Maybe it’s because I grew up with the Watergate hearings banging away on TV every time I skipped school (I saw A LOT of the hearings), but I recall a time when journalists would have eaten a grilled hyena pancreas* just to get a hold of the mere hint of a whiff of a rumor of a leak that a president was seeking to influence the direction, targets, or degree of a Justice Department investigation. John Mitchell must be feeling a touch perplexed at this point (about presidential influence over the AG, I mean, not about the extreme heat in hell…). Forget Obama, Holder has no choice. The crimes documented in the latest release of the CIA report (won by the ACLU not the diligent legal work of the Justice Department, or obtained through investigative journalists bothering to file a FOIA petition) along with the repeated public confessions of Dick Cheney indicate not just the possibility of impeachable-type high crimes and misdemeanors (beyond the reach of which Bush and Cheney are in any event), but first class war crimes – Trial at Nuremberg stuff. Trial at The Hague stuff. Whatever Obama’s political fate, Holder damn well better get some enthusiasm.

And just so we’re clear, Cynthia, this isn’t about enthusiasm for “torture controversies” for chrissake; this is fate-of-democracy-level decision time, not some cocktail party debate in a townhouse in Georgetown. Try the canapés, Cyn, I hear they have real beluga caviar!

Cynthia Tucker: The Brooke Astor of Journalism

Or how about this one from Tim Rutten in the LA Times:

“Let Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) and spokesmen for the activist group Moveon.org keep demanding that Bush and Cheney be "held accountable" if they wish. But let's hope Obama and his attorney general understand that prosecuting a president and vice president for policies they believed were crucial to national security -- however wrongheaded, vicious and destructive -- would be a divisive political disaster.”

Someone at the LA Times gave Tim’s opinion piece the tile “CIA torture indictments? No thanks.” I think it needed a subhead: I’ll take the Health Care Debate with a side of Death Panel Rants instead!

Tim believes that no matter how – what did he say? – “wrongheaded, vicious and destructive” Bush policies may have been, it would be bad politics to prosecute. Wrongheaded? Vicious? Has he read any of the stuff in the just-released CIA report? Viscous is a word usually used to modify other words like “rumor” or “cat scratch” or “tongue lashing,” not “torture treatment.” That was a really vicious mock execution, Bruno. I think I’ll take my pedicure business elsewhere!

Hey, Tim! If you’re combing your thesaurus for adjectives, try CRIMINAL. That’s really the point, here. Either the activities and policies of the Bushistas were criminal or they were not. If they were, then, especially by the standards of conservative-style justice, crime must be punished lest it spread. It looks like a prima facie case has been made that the Bush administration may have committed crimes. The AG exists to investigate that sort of thing, Tim.

And what’s with the gratuitous smack at the progressive left? Tim seems to have some issues with folks like Russ Feingold (the only senator with enough courage to vote against the Orwellian PATRIOT act in 2001) and MoveOn (who, by the by, had the goods on Bush’s Weapons of Mass Destruction lies, Cheney’s enhanced-interrogation, and all the boys in Cheney’s “special” office with their extraordinary rendition, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and all the rest of the heinous, sickening, traitorous crimes of the Republican Party’s fascist-wing well before all the serious journalists started doing their whole “Did we go too lightly on the fact-checking?” shtick they do whenever they’d rather not have you notice that they have all long been in the bag for - or at least at the mercy of - their corporate overlords and, by extension, the Republican party that does their bidding.) Could it be that Tim is resentful of people who have a backbone and would rather risk popularity than ignore barbarity? Could it be that his cynicism is born of justified self-loathing for the man of character he is not?

Tim Rutten: The Tim Rutten of Journalism

So, one again, let’s hear it for the proud, brave members of America’s community of journalists, protected by a First Amendment won through the blood and treasure of a nation, trained at the finest J-schools in the world, and kept busy all day reading and transcribing the press releases of public officials.

American Journalists: The Stenographers to Power

* This, I am told by comedians of my acquaintance, is known as a callback. Bringing back a reference from earlier in a routine is supposed to be the mark of a refined comic. I am nothing if not refined. Ask anyone who knows me…

Legacies and Other Detritus

Exactly when did the meaning of the word “legacy” switch from something to be valued to something to be suspicious about or starved into non-existence?* At a monument to Mary McLeod Bethune in Washington, Bethune is depicted in the act of handing off her legacy as an educator, civil rights activists, and proud, wise elderly woman to two children who stand waiting to receive it. The inspiring words of her Legacy are engraved around the base of the statue. The legacy, here, is used as a symbol of durable, perhaps even timeless values; an inheritance to be treasured, protected, nurtured and maybe even venerated.

But maybe we don’t live in a world than can any longer accommodate such an understanding of things left to us from time gone by.

You will note that US auto companies were not-too-long ago said to be suffering from “legacy costs” – which was intended to mean but not say, the cost of paying on the retirement plans of union auto workers. What well-managed American company would continue to honor these burdensomely generous retirement plans for factory workers (whose productivity had made billions of dollars of profits to pay dividends and raise asset values for shareholders and finance outlandish corporate management salaries)?

We were to understand that grown up people must accept that Detroit’s once-upon-a-time generosity and “Big Labor’s” once-upon-a-time power are now outdated and somehow quaint elements of a bygone, fuzzy-headed era of coddled middleclass expectations and bloated corporate laziness. This was to be seen as an unfortunate legacy left to us by a previous generation, somewhat like big, overstuffed, embarrassingly ornate Victorian furniture left to you in a will by an ancient addled great aunt who’d accumulated a bunch of once cherished pricey pieces now turned to just so much superfluous crap by changing social tastes and mores. You smile politely when the executor tells you where to pick it up, then you rent a u-haul to take it all to the salvation army or the dump, or perhaps stick it all in the “finished basement” that no one ever goes in and is the resting place for your bumper-pool table, exercise bike, and other extraneous junk you don’t want but cant get rid of (in other words, your growing “legacy” for some unsuspecting surviving distant relative).

More recently, we’ve come to understand that US auto manufacturing itself is a legacy industry. In fact, some want us to understand that industry, as we once understood it, is a legacy sector of the economy. Oh, sure it would be nice if we could keep the old thing running, but who has the time or the resources for it any more. I mean, it was great that our parents could expect that with a reasonable degree of publicly provided education, and a willingness to work hard and take some overtime, one could work at a respectable job making things and earning enough to live in small but comfortable home in a nice neighborhood with solid schools, have a nice family meal out every once in a while, take a vacation at a nearby lake for a week once a year, put away enough money to send the kids to a state university, and so forth…

But, c’mon, those rosy days are gone. People need to wake up and realize we live in a globalized economy where brown and off-white folks are willing to work in plants, mills, and factories for a fraction of what spoiled US workers expect to be paid. Lazy American workers expect to earn a living; those frisky, enterprising, realistically hardened folks in the developing world understand that work in a factory producing wealth and products for others’ benefit can only pay survival wages; who should expect more – it’s called labor for godsake, it’s not like working with your mind or something valuable like that!

Yes, we have inherited the expectations of the once mighty American middleclass, but…well, it’s a legacy. We’ll have to figure out what to do to store those expectations somewhere where they won’t be an embarrassing eyesore or reminder…just until we can get rid of them, or they quietly die off from neglect.

Sticking the word “legacy” in front of something you probably ought to value and treat with respect but would rather ignore, neglect, or relegate to some status of invisibility is an uncannily creative and craftily convenient use of language. (Not surprising, since it came from the fun and clever world of IT.) I recently heard someone described as a “legacy catholic.” I found this pleasingly handy for describing my own relationship with the Church. No longer do I have to struggle with the ambiguity of “I was raised catholic…”, now I can say I am a legacy catholic: I don’t really use it, it was just left to me by my parents, bless their cute little souls.

It occurs to me now that that we may soon be encouraged to see our aging friends, relatives, and neighbors as a “legacy population.” Just like Social Security will soon be a legacy social program. Maybe instead of a burdensome Social Security system, we will have a new cost-efficient Legacy Interim Population Support program which will provide minimal survival upkeep and warehousing for us aging babyboomers somewhere out of the way until our demographic balloon of resource-sucking numbers tails off sometime in the 2040’s.

Not that this isn’t what we do now with about a third of the folks who live past 80, it’s just that it will be openly and unapologetically acknowledged as the only sensible way to deal with a legacy social contract and some very irresponsible post WWII procreating by our grandparents; plus it will have a cuddly new acronym: LIPS; just like what you kiss someone gently off to sleep with, kiss a beloved relative goodbye with; kiss off some former prized possession or loved one now turned burdensome and unlovable…

Legacy: It’s the new garbage.

* According to various sources: A gift of personal property by will. A tangible or intangible thing handed down by a predecessor; a long lasting effect of an event or process. c.1375, "body of persons sent on a mission," from O.Fr. legacie "legate's office," from M.L. legatia, from L. legatus "ambassador, envoy," noun use of pp. of legare "appoint by a last will, send as a legate". Sense of "property left by will" appeared in Scot. c.1460.