Post-impressions.

Today was an incredibly busy day, beginning with that 8 a.m. "Week in Review." Around 1, I went in to the law school to record an episode of BloggingheadsTV, and I had a nice encounter with an individual who was turning a humble whiteboard into a work of art:



My questions -- are you a pointillist? and do you like Seurat? -- did not get much of an answer, but nonetheless... who will dare erase the whiteboard?

So... on to the Bloggingheads. It's not up yet. But I'll just tantalize you with my notes, which I drew on during the hour+ that we recorded:



(Enlarge.)

I hope I'm a decent docent.

I've never been a docent before. I've gone on a lot of architectural tours, and I was going to go on this one anyway, but somehow, I ended up getting to be a docent... at a little place called Penwern AKA the Fred B. Jones Gatehouse. Frank Lloyd Wright 1901-03. Me, a docent. I'll still do the whole tour, and I'll only be there for a 2-your slot. But I feel really awed by it. Frank Lloyd Wright!

Architects may come and
Architects may go and
Never change your point of view.
When I run dry
I stop awhile and think of you

"Mom, Mom, Mom.... It's not right."

Paris Hilton sent back to jail.

Ryan Grim live-chats his way through the big dustup he started by asking me about my "biggest dustup."

You know... all that Clinton-lunching-with-the-feminist-bloggers stuff. Excerpt:

12:12 PM kentucky: I don't understand why Jessica is so defensive about what you said in your profile of Ann Althouse. I personally don't think her chest was the focal point of the photo, but you, as a young man, are welcome to that opinion. So why does holding that opinion mean that you think she was flaunting her secuality [sic], or however she described it?

Ryan Grim: I bought Valenti’s book the other day and am about halfway through it. The title, Full Frontal Feminism, is an obvious play on Full Frontal Nudity, a porn term that let’s folks know how much they’re about to see. And then there’s the cover, splashed with a nude woman’s midsection. And then there’s the content: a steady theme of the book is sexuality, getting into specifics like oral sex and masturbation.

On the Colbert Report the other night, she said, "Nothing says feminism like a naked woman's body." Okay, fine.

I don’t care one way or the other what Valenti writes about. But to pick that subject matter and then object to me saying that she’s “not shy with her body” strikes me as a double standard. A woman can talk about sexuality but a man can’t then say that she’s comfortable doing what she’s doing? And why would anybody object to that characterization? What’s wrong with not being shy?

Thanks to several women who have discussed that very question to me, I now (think I) know why she objects to that. When she says “everyone knows” what I meant, she’s saying that I was using coded language to call her a ‘slut.’

Now, if you take the line I wrote completely out of context, I can agree that such an interpretation is possible, though it’s a stretch. But I can also say that that interpretation couldn’t be farther from the truth. What purpose on Earth would it serve either me or the story to call someone I never met a slut?

Not only wasn't intended to be offensive, the line wasn’t even remotely intended as a criticism. What could possibly be wrong with not being shy about one’s body? A lot of people aren’t and, I would think, that’s a trait shared by mature individuals.

I think there's something really incoherent about the Third Wave/pro-sex feminists. They continually use sexuality for self-promotion, but if you want to examine issues of sexuality from any dimension other than the one they control, they slam you as a misogynist or some such thing. You know, my biggest problem with them is that they are boring. There's no possibility of an interesting discussion about anything.

This adds to my sense that they are incoherent. They don't want to engage, because they can't deal with the flaws that can be pointed out by anyone who is not fully submissive to their ideological discipline. Note that Ryan invited Jessica Valenti to interact with him in the chat, and she wouldn't do it. She just insisted on an apology and a retraction. Even when you're sure you're right, why don't you like discussion, debate, and analysis? How utterly tedious... and suspicious.

ADDED: Bad link fixed.

Fill up with a big, gelatinous blob.

And lose weight.

ADDED: Wouldn't it be waaaaaay easier to just drink a large glass of water (or 2 or 3) before meals?

"Reminds me of those radical feminists who insist that their reasons for censoring pornography are completely different from Pat Robertson's."

"No they're not." Says Mickey Kaus, debunking "Bogus Meme #2" about the collapse of the immigration bill.

On the radio.

On momentarily, as indicated here.

UPDATE: You can stream the show at the archive here. (The 8 a.m. show.) It starts off a little slow -- about the G8 conference -- and gets really heated up midway about Iraq. I say some kind of mean things about Tommy Thompson. And we end by talking about "The Price Is Right."

"I couldn’t take the personal interaction of people walking in my house and making nasty comments."

That's how one Madison home seller justified paying a realtor's commission, but traditionally people have accepted the argument that the realtor will get you a higher price, and you'll actually come out ahead. But there's a front-page NYT article reporting on a new study, based on house sales in Madison, showing that the for-sale-by-owner -- FSBO, pronounced FIZZ-bo -- approach puts the seller ahead.

Now, Madison is kind of special:

FSBOMadison.com, the subject of a January 2006 article in The New York Times, charges $150 for an ad on the site and a yard sign. Taking advantage of antiestablishment sentiment in Madison, which has a highly educated and liberal population, it quickly grabbed a market share of roughly 20 percent. That made it among the most successful challengers in the country to real estate agent domination of home sales.

That scale, along with the cooperation of the site’s owners and of the local Realtor group, made the economists’ study possible. “We don’t have national data,” Mr. Nevo, one of the authors, said. “FSBOMadison is unique.”

So Madison is special -- don't we know? -- because of FSBOMadison.com and because of our "highly educates and liberal" "antiestablishment" culture. Does that make us resist professional help and think we can do better? Personally, I just can't picture myself interacting with all manner of strangers and ushering them around my house.

Can we get creative with the debate format?

A couple days back, my son John IM'd me -- from his bar review class -- a question he had about the presidential debates. Why do they keep the Democrats and the Republicans separated? After I gave my instant reaction -- because we're at the stage where people need to pick one from each group and because the top candidates wouldn't agree -- I made a post about it to see what people would say.

One of our regular commenters XWL said he'd written something along those lines a few weeks ago:

[I]nvite four candidates from each party to bi-weekly debates....

Have each candidate be the "host" for ten minutes at a time, asking questions to the four opposing party candidates. Have a moderator ensure that they don't use their time to ask 9 minute questions full of their own campaign talking points, but instead reward candidates for engaging the other side directly....

By forcing the two sides together as early as possible, that would change the tone of these debates from monologue to dialogue. It would be up to each candidate to decide whether that dialogue should be shrill, informative, cooperative, or combative. This would give the primary voters real information on how these folks would perform come general election time, and it would generate far more interest amongst that big group of independents who sit these things out till the last minute usually.

XWL has another post today, and he notes that Patrick Ruffini just wrote:

With candidates trying to shore up their general election creds, who will be the first to challenge a debate across party lines this year? ... It would be a risky move, and a gutsy one. Think of the huge earned media moment it would be, giving us the excitement of a general election slapdown a year early. It would be a make or break moment for a candidate a few points back looking to roll the dice. If you were looking to mess with the other party's frontrunner by elevating a top-tier challenger, this would do it. And it would teach the voters vastly more about those candidates than the current debates joint appearances can.

That seems to make it pretty obvious that frontrunners won't do it.

XWL has another idea: Have the candidates "send their 'policy experts' and 'advisers' out into the internet to have debates with each other."

When we pick a President we aren't just picking a single person, we are picking a team, and I want to know as soon as possible what the make up of that team will look like. A Bloggingheads type format would be perfect, with dingalinks, and a relatively unstructured time frame. Would Clinton have beaten Bush in 1992 if we had known it would have been a bunch of dweeby munchkins, a few crusty Carter leftovers, and heavily favoring academic over real world folks? Likewise, in 2000 if folks had known Bush was skipping past his father, and even Reagan to pick folks with experience in the Nixon and Ford years, would Gore have won more than the popular vote (although in this scenario I think he would have had a stable of far lefty policy wonks that would make Hillary look like Ayn Rand, so he probably would have lost resoundingly, even against the Bush/Ford/Nixon team).

Could any of the Republicans get Colin Powell to speak on their behalf? Would Clinton be crazy enough to dust off Albright? Does anyone know who Obama's people are or what his cabinet would look like? Does McCain have any friends (aside from a few in the media)? Would Rudy look past the five boroughs for advisers?

Any more creative ideas out there... and good arguments for getting the candidates to submit to them?

What killed the Senate immigration bill?

Jack Hawkins says he has the inside story.

And here's the NYT report:

The outcome, which followed an outpouring of criticism of the measure from core Republican voters and from liberal Democrats as well, was a significant setback for the president. It came mainly at the hands of members of his own party after he championed the proposal in the hope of claiming it as a major domestic policy achievement in the last months of his administration.

We're down to the "last months" already?

Radio alert.

I'm going to be on "Week in Review" at 8 AM, Central Time, tomorrow. You'll be able to live-stream it here, and there will be an archived version that I'll link to later. This is the show where we go over the week's news stories, with commentators from different sides of the political spectrum, and me counting as the conservative -- as I am, by Madison standards. It's a call-in show, so think up a question and call in.

UPDATE: You can stream the show at the archive here. (The 8 a.m. show.)