Dan Hartung, in a 10-26-00 post to his weblog Lake Effect, was one of several who only grudgingly accepted my distaste for Ira Glass (grin). I’ll concede — when I ranted about Glass, I did neglect to mention that I essentially agree with Dan’s point: if you separate out Glass’ presence, This American Life can be of interest because other people do tell interesting stories. Thanks, Dan, for throwing me this bone in finishing:

Eliot, however, may enjoy this 1998 sour-grapes story of Glass’s

rejected partner from their Chicago show The Wild Room

before he was offered the chance to take his schtick national.

I actually read that story and thought about linking to it when Jorn Barger pointed to it in Robot Wisdom on 4-29-00 (probably because he follows Lynda Barry, the second of Glass’ “rejected partners” featured in the story).

While I’m thinking about it, thanks, Jorn, for the wonderful page of Blake quotations, especially your selections from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. “If others had not been foolish, we should be so.”

Don’t Vote — It Only Encourages Them:

There was an anarchist slogan in the 1960s: If voting could change anything, it would be illegal.

Some 20 years ago, my union local held an election. I read the many campaign mailings. When I

received the ballot, I voted only for those candidates who had sent no literature and of whom I

knew nothing. Unlike the others, they hadn’t proven themselves idiots…

I find two honorable arguments for not voting: the philosophical and the immediate. The first is

nearly as old as the Republic and premised on the common law. As advanced by Josiah

Warren, Lysander Spooner, Voltairine de Cleyre and Benjamin Tucker, no person can ethically

occupy a position of power over another without that person’s consent. … In 1890, De Cleyre explained her moral opposition to political office and the process of voting

thus: “A body of voters cannot give into your charge any rights but their own. By no possible

jugglery of logic can they delegate the exercise of any function which they themselves do not

control. If any individual on earth has a right to delegate his powers to whomsoever he chooses,

then every other individual has an equal right; and if each has an equal right, then none can

choose an agent for another without the other’s consent. Therefore, if the power of government

resides in the whole people and out of that whole all but one elected you as their agent, you

would still have no authority whatever to act for that one.”

…If one does not reject the state, however, the immediate argument for not voting remains: the

men on the ballot. “If the Gods had meant us to vote,” Jim Hightower has written, “they would

have given us candidates.” New York Press

Happy Halloween from the Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Support for a Moratorium in Executions Gets Stronger New York Times

The Fake to the Left: Michael Kinsley’s finger-pointing starts now

It is striking that in this election both candidates pretended to be further left than they really are. In George W. Bush’s case, it’s sort of a double-bluff: a man with no real interest in policy or ideology pretending to be a committed conservative who then pretends to be a sort of neoliberal moderate government reformer. Trouble is, the first bluff is a life strategy while the second bluff is a political convenience. Only the second bluff is likely to be discarded after the election.

In Gore’s case, there is real, traditional left-wing populism in his bloodlines (his father). But it was never a note he struck much himself until his convention acceptance speech two months ago. Throughout his career, he was almost exactly the neoliberal moderate his opponent is now pretending to be. Gore has sold this stock just as Bush was buying. One of these two has made a terrible mistake.

It’s dispiriting that both candidates chose to fake who they are, though from a liberal perspective, it’s encouraging that both candidates chose to fake left (and did so before Ralph Nader became a serious threat). But in Gore’s case, it’s also puzzling. Bush, at least, was following the conventional strategy of appealing to his party’s base during the primaries and then reaching for the center during the general election. What did Gore think he was doing by making a sharp left turn the very night of his nomination?

It’s especially puzzling in a campaign where your strongest asset is record-breaking prosperity. Gore’s message was: “You’ve never had it so good, and I’m mad as hell about it.” Slate

More for Halloween: the Carfax Abbey Horror Films and Movies Database includes best-ever-horror-films lists from Entertainment Wekly, Mr. Showbiz and Hollywood.com. I’ve seen most of these; some of their choices are not that scary, some are just plain silly, and they give extremely short shrift to my real favorites, the classics of the ’30’s and ’40’s — when much eeriness was allusive and not explicit. And here’s what claims to be a compilation of links to the darkest and most gruesome sites on the web. “Hours and hours of fun for morbidity lovers.”

A rogues’ gallery of Vultures and Condors. Some only a mother could love, others oddly beautiful, many endangered.

A pathologist’s detailed description of The Routine Autopsy. “The procedure related in narrative form: a guide for screenwriters and novelists.”

Chicago News Experiment Is Calling It Quits. The high road was a dead end. New York Times