Every so often we get a Lady GaGa.  That is to say, we get a self-aggrandizing little pop twerp with a giant head and pretensions toward being an artiste.  Lady GaGa types aren’t content with riding high on the Billboard charts and annoying the shit out of me while I’m enjoying my weekly lunch in the Mexican district around 79th and Michigan (explanation: “Poker Face” is currently enjoying great popularity on Mexican pop radio, and there’s a lot of that playing in certain of Indianapolis’s many taquerias.)  No, they also have to claim to be contributing something of large and lasting value to the world, in the form of capital-A Art.

Pardon me while I cough up some stomach lining.  …There, that’s better.

Lady GaGa makes dance music.  It’s reasonably OK pop fluff, but it doesn’t really aspire to be anything more, not even SUPERIOR fluff.  Her sound is equal parts Britney factory hits like “Toxic,” and Cher revival tunes such as the vocoder-reviving, briefly ubiquitous “Believe.”  There’s a throbbing disco beat, some buzzingly overdriven synth lines playing snaky minor key melodies, and of course the Lady herself singing nonsense about bluffin’ with her muffin… whatever that means.  This song and dance isn’t new, and the craft behind it isn’t anything astonishing.  I cop to the fact that I am a more-than-ordinarily cynical musician and a jaded consumer of prodigious amounts of music; so I suppose that I am admitting to being exactly the kind of person that Lady GaGa isn’t making music for.  But I like my funk.  I like a little bit of disco.  I think “Toxic” is a very well-written song (naturally Britney had nothing to do with it; she barely sung the damn thing) and “Believe” isn’t ear-gougingly bad.  I believe I’m qualified to call GaGa out on her subterfuge.

So that I am not accused of setting up a pantsless strawman, let me supply a few relevant GaGaisms:

“Right now the only thing that I am concerned with in my life is being an artist.”

“You can say the philosophy of GaGa is fashion-music-technology-performance art. It’s an interactive experience for the audience, I design everything together and New York is the nexus of my inspiration. I was born and raised in New York City. I am inspired by street fashion and the attitude. Andy Warhol is a huge inspiration of mine and I have a lot of Pop Art elements in the show. I am so passionate about my music.”

“If somebody said to me, ‘What you do isn’t art,’ I would say, They’re right. Yes it is, no it isn’t, absolutely, perhaps, it’s irrelevant, it’s important…that’s what this is all about, really.  For me, more than anything, I want to do something important. It’s gotta be important.
If it’s coming out of my mouth, if it’s going on my body, if it’s going on TV, it better be important.”  (Wha..?)

“GaGa is the greatest creative journey of my life.”  (Gag.)

What is GaGa, in reality?  Musically, GaGa is catchy trash.  This version of “Poker Face” was making the rounds on the internet, impressing people left and right with its “musicality.”  What this actually is: 1. barely a version of “Poker Face,” since the chord progressions and melodies through the majority of this performance bear no resemblance to the hit song of the same name; 2. incoherent, overcooked lounge hoo-ha; and distant number 3. reasonably but not amazingly well-played and well-sung.  The main thing this performance does is preserve the icy, sexless legal separation between verse and chorus in the original dance version of the song.  GaGa isn’t a good songwriter, at least not based on this example.  She’s a good PERFORMER.  Not the same thing.

Visually, GaGa is David Bowie (the face painting) mixed with Madonna (the pantlessness and much of the other accoutrements) mixed with various other pop art icons, finished off with a splash of good old-fashioned burlesque show.  As a visual artist, she crushes the musical version of herself.  I give her that.  But none of it is strikingly original.  It brands her as a quintessential post-modern fashion artist, making something “new” from recombinant DNA.  In our post-hip hop, post-Danger Mouse world we are perhaps as well-primed to accept this form of creativity as we will ever be.  I am no exception to that – my CD racks are filled with sampling-based albums, and my iTunes library has at least a few mash-ups in it.  Hell, I was responsible for one.  So even though I see a dearth of truly new ideas in the clothes and stage show wrapped around the GaGa burrito, I can appreciate what she’s up to.

But ultimately it amounts to smoke and mirrors.  Our Lady isn’t selling clothes (at least not as her principal gig) or putting on blazing stage spectacles in Vegas unto eternity.  Her primary product is music.  The thing she talks the most about in interviews is music.  And while she has produced a few nagging earworms, thus far she hasn’t produced any art that demands more than a passing glance.  Nor do I expect her to, on the evidence of everything I’ve heard so far.

It failed to surprise me when in a recent Rolling Stone piece it was revealed that she has somehow aligned herself with Marilyn Manson.  Manson is a perfect GaGa predecessor.  His music was shoplifted and threadbare Trent Reznor with little to recommend it, but he got over with imagery and “attitude” and a generally well-designed package.  He, like GaGa, knew how to sell the sizzle and not the gristle-choked, over-aged steak.  And where is Manson today?  Slobbering after Lady GaGa (seriously – at least if Rolling Stone is to be believed) and being forgotten by the rest of the world.  On a good day, I can remember one Marilyn Manson song – his shitty, thuddingly obvious, embarrassingly “evil” rendition of the Eurythmics hit “Sweet Dreams.”  His most memorable song is a bad cover.  He is further fading into the twilight of irrelevance even as I type this sentence.

And there, God willing, will go GaGa.

In other news, I’m happy to introduce the second of our two new regular blog writers.

Have you, like me, long thought that Porch Dog was short on thoughtful analysis of the racist implications of Scandinavian black metal, rants on Hollywood’s severe lack of good judgment and new ideas, and lists of stuff? I know you have!

Special Agent Dale Cooper, as his name implies to those who remember his fictional namesake, is a slightly offbeat intellectual tough guy. He’s the kind of guy who likes a good piece of pie, long bouts of hanging upside down, and learning about things by throwing rocks at them. He’s also everything you want out of a pop cultural blogger and occasional social critic. And also football. Yeah, football. It’s not the most coherent introduction, but if you need more, you should check out his back catalog at his Wordpress blog.

I haven’t read his first post which should be up later today but if he wasn’t misleading me it should be a gray lament at the existence of Lady Gaga.

Thanks to SADC for joining the site.

Gawker

But he was a freak and most likely a child molester and while I generally try to separate the man from his art, in Jackson’s case it’s very hard. I can’t explain why. As a result, I’m finding it hard to reconcile the sadness I feel for the death of the man who made Thriller and Off the Wall and the apathy I feel for the guy who was multiply accused of sexually assaulting prepubescent boys.

I leave that personal struggle personal.

And as a result for today’s Beer Friday I give you Sam Calagione–rockstar president and owner of Dogfish Head remembering the late Michael Jackson–not the pop star, but the notorious Beer Hunter. If you’re a beer fan, you know who I’m talking about.

The story that Sam remembers here is also told here from Michael Jackson’s viewpoint.

According to The State they received the email anonymously back in December, put a smattering of effort into verifying them and came up empty handed, thus sat on them until the affair could be verified, which it was with the governor’s mysterious absence followed by his return from Argentina and his subsequent admission of an affair.

It seems to me that if The State had run with the email (verified or not) back in December they would have been accused of kowing the pressures of an increasingly tabloid-hungry populous. Moreover they would have been inundated with complaints of “why should we care?” much as follows any one of these stories. Indeed, adulterous politicians (and especially adulterous Republicans) is old hat by now. The only reason we should care about this particular affair more than the others is that this one included a week long absence by the state’s chief executive–a flagrant dereliction of duty.

It’s not that I think The State had great intentions in sitting on the emails, Tomasky is probably right that they did so so as not to stir the pot over what may have been an instance of small potatoes, especially back in December what with the economy falling to pieces and all those ads they had to run to help out the tanking retail sector at the height of the holidays (”Christmas.” Sorry SC Christians). But since I would really like it if American political discourse just began to accept the fact that politicians like to have sex with people other than their spouse and started caring more about substantive issues, I’m totally OK with the fact that they sat on the story. I would be more than happy if the only affairs that were reported were on politicians that have specifically voted or spoke out in favor of traditional family values or the dignity of the institution of marriage–but even then only because they should be shamed for their hypocrisy and their willingness to deprive others by law of that which they indulge themselves.

It would of course ease my conscious a little if there was some evidence that the South Carolina periodical would extend the same deference via apathy if the politician in question was a liberal. I guess we’ll see….one day.

On a related note–people keep asking how secret this was and how effectively The State kept it quiet and whether or not the paper received the emails as part of move to embarass or blackmail the governor. Am I the only who can count all the fingers of one whole hand? Is it mere coincidence that The State received these emails in December and Sanford’s wife admits to knowing about the affair “for the last five months?” It seems to me that someone had malicious intent in mind and their motivations and followthrough are at the heart of this whole saga. At the very least the governor somehow found out that gig was up.

My question is not “If” but “Who?” That’s the real story as far as I’m concerned and it should be The State’s major concern too, because whoever it is shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the levers of power in South Carolina. It’s one thing to out the governor in his affair, even if to score political points. It’s another thing entirely if there was a blackmail attempt along the way.

I’m writing for Porchy today because, as recent events have shown, technology is by nature political. Access (and lack of access) can have a profound affect on people all over the world.

This is nothing new. From the very beginning of mass communication (radio) the United States government saw that it was in the public’s best interest to ensure that radio was accessible to as many as people as possible. We also thought that it should follow some ground rules that would make it serve the general public good.

So we carved up the spectrum into organized pieces to prevent broadcasters from overlapping and crowding the available space. In return for use of the public airwaves, we required broadcasters to participate in things like disaster warnings. We made some rules about how they could cover elections, and what sort of content was acceptable over the public airwaves. We even made a portion of the spectrum available for public use.

This is all a vast oversimplification, and you may or may not agree with everything the FCC does (I certainly don’t). But from the start we knew that this new technology had to serve the public good.

Now, of course, it all seems rather quaint. The internet is our main communications medium (its reach even extends into the traditional radio spectrum thanks to the wireless router your cable internet company sent you when you subscribed). It is fast eclipsing everything else, and is by design practically impossible to regulate. It offers users the means to communicate with the rest of the world in practically unlimited ways.

Which brings us back to Twitter and Iran. There’s a mildly (but persistently) troubling side of this story that I’m not seeing discussed.

You know how it went down. Last week, at the behest of the U.S. State Dept., Twitter changed its backup schedule to help out some grassroots protesters in Iran. The normal backup schedule would’ve shut down the service during a time when Iranian protesters would’ve needed it most.

The cause was just, and Twitter’s service was helping them get the word out to the outside world. If news reports are to be believed, it is largely because of Twitter that we even know about many of the human rights abuses that the government of Iran is committing.

Fair enough. It was a fine thing to ask and a fine thing to do. Much good came of it. It was the right thing to do, and they did. Still, I feel troubled. Like when Yoda first met the cute little kid who would become Darth Vader. The idea that one company can wield so much power over people that their backup schedule might change the political situation in the real world… troubles me.

Twitter is so new that we don’t even have a word for what Twitter lets you do that doesn’t include the company’s own branding (tweet). It’s not exactly an instant message client. It’s not exactly a blogging tool. It’s not exactly a texting client. It’s not exactly a social network. It’s a little like all of those things and a lot like none of them.

Also, it is the only one of its kind.

Every other important communications medium on the net has a competitor – most have innumerable competitors. Don’t like Hotmail? Switch to Gmail. Better yet, roll your own email server if you have broadband access. And speaking of broadband access … don’t like Comcast? Switch to Verizon. Don’t like MSN Messenger? Switch to Yahoo! Messenger. Better yet, download Pidgin and use all of the available Instant Message services at once. Even better than all that, use Jabber to run your own IM service without going through any centralized service. Don’t like your T-Mobile cell service? Switch to AT&T. Unsatisfied with MySpace? Sign up for Facebook. Not finding your page on MSN Search (ahem, Bing)? Try Google.

Twitter is somewhat unique on the Internet in that it is a monopoly, and every monopoly has the potential for abuse.

It is not difficult to imagine a different conversation between Twitter and their new friends in the State Dept: “Our man in Third World Country X is having trouble getting re-elected. Could you, you know, do your backup thingy a day early so that his grassroots opposition won’t be able to get as many people to the polls?”

And it isn’t as if Twitter hasn’t shown signs of abusing their monopoly status already. They openly sell your personal information to marketers (it’s right there in the Privacy Policy). They have been credibly accused of selectively enforcing the harassment policy laid out in their own terms of service. None of this is particularly encouraging when examining their already spotty security record.

Still worse, since their service is a closed, centralized service – nobody knows exactly how it works. They aren’t alone in that. Most complex web services don’t share their internal workings with the world. But Twitter’s monopoly and growing political power provides an example of why that is unacceptable. We should avoid using services that are closed, proprietary, monolithic, and therefore unaccountable to users.

Even more frightful, I imagine that Twitter’s owners are likely to be shielded from competition by several high profile software patents. These would be intended to prevent anyone from setting up an alternative service that resembles Twitter.

And that’s bad too, because I’m not calling for an end to Twitter. Rather, I’d like them to have a viable competitor. A Facebook to Twitter’s Myspace.

And the ideal competitor to Twitter would be a decentralized mass “tweeting” system – one that doesn’t rely on a monolithic, centralized server to store user information and deliver messages. One that can be run by anybody anywhere, on any kind of hardware – with open specifications and open software. And before you dismiss it, that very thing has happened before.

Nowadays we call it the Internet.

TheMCP’s first post, which will show up later today is on the politics of Twitter which is a perfect way for him to segue his technological expertise with the current political frame of this space. It will not always be this way, or at least I hope not. His opining on sexism in the video game industry and his forays into narrative devices in gaming make exceptionally thought-provoking reading. Hopefully some of that will show up here as well.

Which is to say that this will cease to be a wholly political site and begin to resemble some of the sites I respect the most, that balance the political with their other interests. It will also look a lot more like what I said this site would be when I started it two and a half years ago: a space where anything could and would be discussed but always in a consistently thoughtful and open manner.

Thanks to TheMCP for agreeing to join the site.

I now it sounds like I’m being condescending but I’m not–I’m sorry, that’s just how I talk. Many of the best lessons that have snuck their way into Western culture from Buddhism and Taoism via the lunatic fringe of Hippiedom–sound very simple but are in fact lifelong exercises in patience, humility, and acceptance.

Take for example simple meditation–correct breathing. It sounds simple enough, and yet, it is very difficult to get right. But at the same time, if you overthink it, if you make it too hard, you’re doing it wrong. It’s the exact same balancing act you learned when first riding on two wheels. It’s very simple and very hard at the same time.

Or quieting the inner monologue. All of us think in our heads in something that we might call “our voice.” That is, we think in words that we pretend to hear even though the “voice” is already in our heads and doesn’t pass through our ear drums. Don’t think about this too hard at work or you won’t be able to stand yourself. It gives me phantom pains in my ears as they strain to hear the voice that isn’t there. What we fail to notice is that this inner monologue runs virtually nonstop and if we try to stop it from “talking”–one of the goals of meditation–it tends to start talking about how it isn’t talking. It may even congratulate us for being able to stop it so quickly. We’re so accustomed to hearing this voice we may chat at ourselves for several minutes in this way before we realize the trap we’ve fallen into.

The mantra is supposed to help with this. By forcing our inner voice to repeat one word or phrase over and over again we prevent  it from chatting about whatever it wants. But the mantra is a trap too. Once we’ve trained the inner voice to say just the one thing, we are supposed to let go of the mantra and say nothing. Good luck with that. Certain teachers have said if any of us could really do this for just one second, we’d be enlightened.

And of course, living in the present is incredibly difficult. No one ever teaches us how to do this. They do teach us to use our imagination. And living in the past and in the future is really just a variation on a theme. The past and the present are both fantasy worlds created from certain prompts. The past is recreated from the limited data we took in at the moment from the single vantage point we had; and it is flavored by the interpretation we gave those events at the time, the things we’ve learned since then; and it is tarnished from all the things we’ve forgotten in the meantime. The future is built from our current understanding of things which will change as we learn more things and as we reinterpret our and others’ pasts.

But how do live in the present? Since nobody I knew growing up had any idea, nobody could teach me. How does it feel? What signs do I look for to know if I’m doing it right? If I’m especially gifted can I make a facsimile of living in the present merely be living in the past of one second ago? It’s still the past, but the past of extremely recent vintage. Is that all that’s meant by living in the present? Can I actually–physically–do better than one instant ago? Or is it a spiritual leap to move from one instant ago to the elusive Now?

This is all to say that a lot of the advice one reads on how to do this involves doing one thing as an end unto itself, immerse yourself in it, do not intellectualize it, do not remember it, do not remember previous instances of that single act, do not rush to the next act while in the process of performing the current act. Just do this one thing and that is living in the present. The purpose of doing this, we are often told, is that if we do not, if we sort of zombie through our lives, unconsciously participating in the humdrum, then we never enjoy anything. The implication of course is that the purpose of living in the now is to enjoy everything more.

The trap is sort of self-evident at this point, isn’t it? If we wash the dishes for the purpose of enjoying washing the dishes, then we are not washing the dishes as an end unto itself, but seeking enjoyment in the mundane.

Moreover, why one act? No act of living is ever done in isolation. Why do I enjoy going to the cinema–a very immersive experience? It’s because I enjoy watching a movie while at the same time sitting in a theater–and yes, the Buddhist have no problem recognizing “sitting in a theater” as an act I can do, immerse myself in, and enjoy.

Walking on the beach is not the same as walking in the woods, two different acts I enjoy immensely. When I walk–on the beach, let’s say–I enjoy the walking and I enjoy the iodine breeze, I enjoy the hot sun, I enjoy the sweat that rises and dries on my arms and back, I enjoy the cry of gulls, and all the rest.It could be argued that I enjoy them all as one experience and that’s why I enjoy it as an experience distinct from walking in the woods. But to think that walking along the beach is a totally different experience is to deny a lot of similarities: the walking, the call of birds, sweat, wind.

This is all a lead up to this: The Zenist especially like to emphasize the solitary joy of a cup of tea. This is something we can and should slow down to enjoy as a singular instant in time. And it’s true the best teas are subtle and demand contemplation to really enjoy. But I quite like the immersive experience of drinking coffee while reading the news. I could do either thing and try to live in the now with just that act, but I would enjoy each act slightly less than I enjoy them together. And for that matter, while enjoying a cup of coffee is something I could reasonably do as and end unto itself, reading the news is not.

Reading the news is a ritual act of the material world. It has only practical and not spiritual ends. I certainly can read the news to understand what others are going through in the world, to extend my empathy and to rehearse the human experience as part of a process of maintaining and perfecting my humanity–but I think this is something that happens rather than something I do. And I can get the same experience through novels and poems which are easier and more fun to read as well. But I read the news because I think it’s important–which is a distraction from the life the Zenists want me to lead.

One of the peculiarities of Zen, and a lot of the other Eastern liberation philosophies, is that all the advice ultimately collapses into something like “live your life.” All of Buddhism follows simply and directly from the Four Noble Truths which are, although controversial, indisputable (except perhaps the fourth, but that’s for a different day). Being in the Now; quieting the inner monologue (”the inner critic,” some people say); breathing properly; not getting too wrapped up in culture, objects, or other peoples’ lives. These things characterize your life and it is that which you must learn to live. Thou art that, Aldous Huxley recognized as a principle concept of most world faiths.

As a result of the continual collapse of Buddhist advice, Buddhist literature becomes horribly redundant and uninteresting. At the same time, reading and re-reading the experiences of people learning the truth of the Four Noble Truths is an important process of the contemplative life that leads to a cessation of suffering. It’s like having to relearn riding a bicycle everyday, easy becomes hard becomes easy becomes hard. Everything is a trap, everything is escape.

I try to keep my blogging on things political. But I don’t see any reason not to take a breather and try to keep all this in perspective. There’s no reason you have to give yourself over to New Ageism to appreciate what the Zenists are offering here.

As part of Italianfest a couple of weeks ago I attended a Catholic mass which very much reminded me of the few masses I attended with my grandparents when I was a kid (for them though there was less Italian and more Latin readings). The sermon on that day was on the importance of using mass as a part of the week to quiet the inner monologue, to think not of ourselves but of universal Truth and universal Love. Of course the priest was talking of a Christian concept of God but that doesn’t make his advice dismissable from other perspectives. Truth and Love, to the extent you can separate them, are important things to think upon and doing so helps us to shed the pettiness that can creep into our lives–the nitpicking and the judgment that we turn into Very Important things–dramas in which we can take on a role. When someone is doing something that is worthy of Judgment, we can be Offended. These things make us feel important like we are doing something. They are imagined facsimiles of “living our lives” but worse than living in the past or the future because they manifest a  patina of the Now. We are offended now, so we must be living in the now. But judgment, like analysis in social science, does not derive from facts, but is built on secondary assumptions, they are synthetic creations of our imagination. They are pretend truths we can talk to others about or write papers about but ultimately they are not real.

Which is why it’s good practice as observers of the world, to think on the universal–whatever that means to you–because that is truly large and reduces everything else to identically small motes of dust. This is the kind of humility that renders judgment useless, petty, and ridiculous. The removal of the “I” — a central component of the Buddhist philosophy, was also the central message that day in Mass.

If having a cup of tea (coffee) is the kind of spiritual practice we can use to keep our mind focused on the universal, then I see no contradiction in doing so while I’m reading the news. As a matter of fact, I feel obliged to combine the spiritual with the pragmatic. It’s the kind of holistic contrast wrapped up in the Yin-Yang symbol that certain classes of people feel compelled to tattoo on their lower back. Both Christianity and Buddhism as a matter of philosophical truth consider mankind as liminal figures living out their lives neither wholly physical nor spiritual. Why should we ever deny one of our realities for the other?

So I say, as you’re bouncing around the internets today, reading the news, reading dirty jokes, watching You Tube videos and whatnot, be sure to have a cup of tea. Think of it as your duty to your brothers and sisters. Or do not think of it at all.

First, we need to be clear on the facts — not the media speculation:

– Sanford did tell his staff and family where he was going.
– Because he was traveling without a security detail, it was in his best interests that no one knew he was gone.
– His political enemies — Republicans at that — ginned up the media story.
– When confronted by a pestering media, things went downhill.
– Again though, at all times there was no doubt that Sanford’s staff and family knew where he was.

[via TPM]

What I find most annoying about this is the very first sentence…and then all the ones that follow it. How is it that Erickson knows as fact that Sanford told his wife and his staff anything?

The answer of course is that he simply does not. Now, I could be accused in Chuang-Tzu fashion* of stating something as fact that I do not know as fact, but I’ll do something that Erickson didn’t do. I’ll state some evidence.

The facts are that the governor’s staff said that he’d gone somewhere. Then they said he’d gone hiking on the Appalachian Trail. Then the governor returned from Argentina and when asked why his staff said he’d been hiking the AT he did not say “To protect my whereabouts.” He said, “I don’t know.” Those are facts and they are facts that indicate that the governor’s staff did not know where he was. Now, I won’t say that they didn’t know but it really seems they didn’t.

To add credence to this line of thinking, it turns out that the governor was down there with a woman he’d had a longtime affair with. Is that where he told his wife he’d be? I mean, even if she knew that he was in Argentina, she would really have only known “where” he was in a strict semantic way. Or, since she’d know for some five months, maybe it was all planned in advance. But if that was the case, why not resign first and then go take care of that particular bit of business, when it really wouldn’t have been anybody’s business?

But Erickson was OK conjecturing a, to be fair to him, reasonable string of actions. But just because what Erickson says happened sounded reasonable, there’s no reason to go around saying that those things were facts. That’s just 1) irresponsible and 2) er…lying.

The truth is that it would be better for the GOP if they had one less looney tune adulterer in elected office so, sure, it would benefit Erickson’s RedState constituency if Sanford hadn’t pulled a Chappelle. But wishing real hard won’t turn conjecture into facts. A good lesson for anybody to learn.

^{* From teh Wikipedia:}

^{“The Happiness of Fish” (???, yúzh?lè). The names have been changed to pinyin romanization for consistency:}

^{Zhuangzi and Huizi were strolling along the dam of the Hao Waterfall when Zhuangzi said, “See how the minnows come out and dart around where they please! That’s what fish really enjoy!”
Huizi said, “You’re not a fish — how do you know what fish enjoy?”
Zhuangzi said, “You’re not me, so how do you know I don’t know what fish enjoy?”
Huizi said, “I’m not you, so I certainly don’t know what you know. On the other hand, you’re certainly not a fish — so that still proves you don’t know what fish enjoy!”
Zhuangzi said, “Let’s go back to your original question, please. You asked me how I know what fish enjoy — so you already knew I knew it when you asked the question. I know it by standing here beside the Hao.” (17, tr. Watson 1968:188-9)}

Prior to the recent admission of blatant electoral fraud we simply did not know the extent to which Ahmadinejad had tampered with the votes. It now appears of course that the fraud was not only widespread but of an incredibly grand scale. Of course we still do not know what the results of the election would have been if there had been no tampering at all, but I’ve said my peace on that.

But there’s more to this cloud of ignorance that prevented me from jumping on board. Much of America’s love of Mousavi has been based on their hatred of Ahmadinejad. Their hatred of the incumbent seems to have encouraged them to think of Mousavi as the White Hat to Ahmadinejad’s Black Hat. But as anybody who has seen A Fistful of Dollars can tell you, you might be watching a drama play out between a bunch of Black Hats.

For that matter, watch a mafia movie. When one mob boss is killed by another, do we naturally assume he was working for the Good Guys (whoever they might be)?

Of course Mousavi said he was a reformer. But even a 12-year old knows that that’s what you say when you’re running against an incumbent. Conservative bloggers may be shocked to be reminded that in 2000 Bush ran on a platform of change while Gore ran on a platform of continuing Clinton-era economic success. In 2004 Kerry ran on “change;” and in 2008 Obama did. It’s not because Republicans used to be the party of change and then the Democrats took it over. It’s because whichever party is not sitting in the seat of power by necessity, is running on change. Trust, in 2012 Romney will be running on “change.”

So, here we have a few highlights from Mousavi’s previous career as a proponent of “change” when he supported the clerical revolution in 1979 (which was not only anti-American but is the dictatorship currently murdering protesters in Tehran). He also seems less than disgusted with the hostage situation there at the time.

Sure, sure, people can mellow as they get older. It happens all the time.

I’m just saying that it’s hard to get behind the man here. Certainly there are more important things to consider than individual personalities: Democracy, the people being heard, free and fair elections and whatnot. Let’s just not pretend that in supporting the protesters we’re also fighting to get an Iran that will necessarily suddenly fulfill all of our national security needs in the region. The People, after all, should be allowed to elect the dictator of their choice.