Sam Rosenfeld

MIXED MESSAGES. It would seem that the U.S. military’s new mockery campaign against Abu Musab al-Zarqawi cuts two ways. (See the outtakes the military released, showing Zarqawi looking all bumbling and incompetent trying to fire a gun, here.) They unrolled the new footage at a Baghdad press conference, and to the extent this is actually […]

REGARDING STALINIST AESTHETICS. Of course Noam Scheiber‘s all wrong about Stephen Colbert‘s performance on Saturday, but his invocation of “Stalinist aesthetics” provides the pretext to discuss another burning politico-cultural issue: Neil Young‘s new album. I’ve been having this argument offline with my cubicle-mate Fast Leon ever since he plugged the album on Tapped, and had […]

DEAD RIGHT. As I believe Matt and others have noted before, David Frum could be a candid and sharp conservative political observer before he descended into Bush hagiography and addled foreign policy nuttiness. His new online Cato essay on the death of small government Republicanism is good and worth reading (and not merely because it […]

THE DOUGHNUT IN THE OINTMENT. This Hill article, citing recent poll numbers showing that a majority of seniors are satisfied with their prescription drug coverage, questions whether Democrats will be able to make political hay over the “drug bill debacle” in November. I don’t actually think that’s a totally dumb question to ask, and only […]

LIES AND THE LYING LIARS WHO TELL THEM. I believe I mentioned the $100 rebate plan on this fine blog yesterday. Matt might consider reading Tapped sometime. I will agree with him, however, that the current collapse of the Republican juggernaut is rendering the liberal blogging game mighty difficult. The post where I mentioned the […]

JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH. See Max Sawicky‘s post for some brief thoughts and a great early round-up of links to comments across the internets. On top of his many, many, many other accomplishments, Galbraith was a founding sponsor of this magazine — and the Prospect‘s core ideological mission certainly owes a great deal to the man […]

MESSAGE DISCIPLINE! Remember the Republicans’ once legendary capacity for staying collectively on-message and coordinating their talking points? Yesterday, Bush administration officials and GOP senators hit the Sunday chat shows to talk up the party�s bold new steps to address rising gas prices. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman showed up on Meet the Press and, in nearly […]

A MATTER OF TASTE. The minor fracas over Stephen Colbert�s very funny, very tough routine at Saturday�s White House Correspondent Dinner is predictable but still noteworthy. One anonymous attendee observed to Editor and Publisher that, unlike past years� routines that targeted the White House and the press corps equally, �[t]his was anti-Bush�Usually they go back […]

RIGHTS-BASED LIBERALISM RUN AMOK. Some serious and trenchant criticisms of Mike‘s “common good” essay are starting to stream in, and are worth a look. Somewhat less seriously, but in the spirit of pushing back against the Bossman’s critique of identity politics and group-rights liberalism — and maybe even of pushing the envelope of rights-based liberalism […]

REBOUND. In a last minute turnaround, House GOP leaders struck a deal with rebelling appropriators late yesterday and narrowly revived their lobbying reform package. A vote is set for next week. Leaders won over the Appropriations Committee members by assuring them that an extension of earmark reforms to the authorizing and tax committees would be […]