I’m not the first to say it, not by far: it’s a beautiful song. Here’s Townes Van Zandt:

Here’s Emmylou Harris and Steve Earle:

“Mysterious office would be highest in all of nation.”
—The Onion, October 6, 1789

(via Caleb Crain)

Update!

How Obama can lose this debate is if his opening response is “They still call it the White House, but that’s a temporary condition.”

Things that could be dropped on that scarlet carpet and never found again:

• That damn spot Lady MacBeth couldn’t get out
• Elmo
• Tom Brokaw’s credibility and pride
• John McCain’s blush when he said “Thank you” while Obama was attacking him

Things that could be put up against the blue wall and never be seen again: Vladimir Putin’s eyes (“K,” “G,” and “B” notwithstanding).

McCain shuffles. A lot.

Nashville-area congressional earmarks from 2007 that John McCain would cut:

• $400,000 Meharry Medical College for facilities and equipment
• $150,000 to Nurses for Newborns for prenatal services
• $150,000 to the African American History Foundation for the planning, design, and construction of a museum

Q: How badly does McCain misunderstand economics? A: “As supply goes up, cost goes down.”

“That one”? Really?

McCain was still annoyed about the disagreement between strategy and tactics from the first debate, so he brought it up again while trumpeting the surge.

Brokaw chose “Would you defend Israel if Iran attacked it, or would you wait for the Security Council?” as an important question? Given that fact that no candidate would ever break faith with Israel, what does the question serve other than to let both candidates revive the same old trumped-up disagreement about Iran?

How is “go after al Qaida” equal to “attack Pakistan”?

Three debates, and education has only been mentioned once.

Michelle Obama is hot.

A better debate than the first, but, by virtue of his being ahead, Obama wins! (Indeed! As of 10:30, the Democratic winner-take-all ticket was up to 79 cents on the Iowa Electronic Markets, a two-cent gain since this afternoon.)

William Hogeland has (I know, I know: it was published last May) an excellent essay in the Boston Review comparing the mythologies that have been constructed about Pete Seeger and William F. Buckley Jr.. What is excellent about it is that the comparison has little to do with either man: their records are publicly available to anyone willing to look. Rather, the comparison is about how each man is now perceived, how Seeger is lionized as a great American liberal and musician (he is both) without recognizing his days taking orders from the international communist party in support of Stalin, and how Buckley is lionized as a great American intellectual and conservative (he is both) without recognizing that his characteristic elitism was in large part the reason for his rank racism. Hogeland concludes:

Seeger and Buckley were romantics. When they were young, and without regard for consequence, they brought charisma, energy, and creativity to dreaming up worlds they wanted—possibly needed—to live in. Because they made those worlds seem so real and beautiful that other people wanted to live in them too, they became larger-than-life characters, instantly recognizable a long way off, not quite real close up, and never quite grown up even when old. Hence their decisive influence. Seeger gave American folk music a purism in no way essential to it, a function of New England abstemiousness in Seeger’s own makeup, which also connected him to Soviet communism. The Soviet Union is gone, but our music will never shake the purism. Seeger once said, with wit and accuracy, “I’m more conservative than Goldwater. He just wanted to turn the clock back to when there was no income tax. I want to turn the clock back to when people lived in small villages and took care of each other.” Those yearnings began in his father’s dreams for the future, but it was a dream about the past that made him Pete Seeger. In Buckley’s dream, somebody is going to live in the castle above the village—better for everybody that it be he.

From Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart:

Okonkwo ruled his household with a heavy hand. His wives, especially the youngest, lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper, and so did his children. Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. It was deeper and more intimate than the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwo’s fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself. It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father.

Things Fall Apart has been on my bedside table for more than a month, but I am usually so exhausted by bedtime that I don’t even bother to pick it up. I like it, although, so far, there is a lot of transparently drawn-out translation and explication that could be presented more naturally if, say, an Ibo expression could just be set down as an accepted truth rather than as an accepted truth that also needs to be narrated to non-Ibo readers. It’s a minor annoyance, and I suspect that the more I read, the less I will notice it.

I bring up this passage simply because I like its matter-of-fact point that fear can be a primary motivator in a person’s life. I consider it a character flaw—though not a particularly shameful one, for there are much worse vices to capitulate to—when those who act on such fears refuse to admit that truth about themselves.

By the way, Tim Dickinson has a lengthy takedown of John McCain’s maverickyness in Rolling Stone. If you would like to associate Okonkwo with McCain, who am I to stop you?

From Mark Liberman’s chart of the words most used during the Biden/Palin debate:

Reform also being
policy, Gwen, those
middle states should
understand putting
their ticket down
against George, too.
United, state well:
give even these billion
our just nation.
Americans want
some good.

I do not recommend being sick. It runs counter to every measure of productivity save staying in bed, and it turns all of one’s immediate memories into mush. Case in point: I spent so much of yesterday evening curled up in bed that trying to lay out a time line of events is difficult. Even while I was at work, I was not well, though it is difficult to pinpoint exactly what was wrong. The rumbliness in my tumbly may have been a direct result of lunch, after all. The aches in my joints may have simply been indications I wasn’t stretching enough. The fact I couldn’t concentrate may have been because I had been at work every day since September 9. While watching the News Hour, though, I couldn’t finish dinner, and the rest is foggy. I laid on the futon; I laid in bed. Cats came and went; the dog came and went. I barfed up dinner. I tossed and turned in bed; I tossed and turned on the futon.

Much of this morning I spent in bed, too, but since about 11:30 things have looked up.

During the presidential debate last night, I realized that the reason Sarah Palin stuck so long with the story that she has foreign policy experience because she can see Russia is because that claim counts with John McCain. Sure, McCain’ emphasis on travel is a rhetorical representation of his deep experience, but I believe his words reach deeper than that: McCain believes that to witness a region in person is the most important way to locate his positions on policy. So he goes to Iraq, walks through an empty neighborhood in a Kevlar jacket, talks to General Petraus, and witnesses a reenlistment ceremony, and that becomes the foundation of his Iraq policy. So he goes to Georgia and talks with Sakashvili and walks the hills of eastern Europe, and that undergirds his whole-hog support for all regions that have broken away from the former Soviet empire. So he asserts that Obama’s not having traveled much is a character flaw that reflects poorly on Obama’s ability to understand the world. The argument can be compelling, but it is also limiting: his personal experience is his most compelling argument in favor of himself, but it severely limits his perspective. One gets the impression that, as experienced as he is, McCain’s world is not much bigger than himself.

It would be a mistake to reject outright the value of travel and personal witness, but I would like to hear an argument explaining why either should represent the best way to make policy about the world.

When I was a boy growing up in rural Arkansas, there were only two lessons dogs needed to learn. First, do not chase livestock. I once had a puppy—I forget its name because I did not have it long—that killed chickens and consequently, I think, was ruthlessly shot by my grandfather. (They did not tell me they shot him; one day, I remember, he was just gone.) The second lesson was not to follow, which for some years I believed was best taught by shouting “Go home!” and launching a barrage of rocks directly at the dog’s haunches. Sometimes my dog would turn back, tail tucked between her legs; just as often, she would follow just out of reach of my throwing arm. I think on it now, and I am amazed at how much misplaced trust I put in those rocks to teach what I wouldn’t!

In the midst of today’s Times exposé of Sarah Palin’s career-long campaign to make local and state government more like high school, I learned that

for years, social conservatives had pressed the library director to remove books they considered immoral.

“People would bring books back censored,” recalled former Mayor John Stein, Ms. Palin’s predecessor. “Pages would get marked up or torn out.”

Librarians, does this happen in your libraries often? If so, you should totally write about it on your blogs. What is the best vigilante censorship you’ve seen yet?