THIS MODERN WORLD

In a little over 24 hours, Mr. Gibson’s arrest and subsequent behavior in Malibu had already prompted talk of a claimed cover-up, an exposé, worldwide news coverage, an apology and then a full-blown push for alcohol rehabilitation, even as his representatives and executives at the Walt Disney Company rushed to catch up with the event’s effect on the filmmaker’s movie and television projects with the company.

On Monday, Hope Hartman, a spokeswoman for Disney’s ABC television network, said the company was dropping its plans to produce a Holocaust-themed miniseries in collaboration with Mr. Gibson.

Story.

… More here. You really have to wonder how this project ever got the green light …

Compare and contrast. Via Billmon, who is, as always, in a league of his own:

“Until civilians — frankly, I’m not sure how many of them are actually just innocent little civilians running around versus active Hezbo types, particularly the men — but until those civilians start paying a price for propping up these kinds of regimes, it’s not going to end, folks. What do you mean, civilians start paying a price? I just ask you to consult history for the answer to that.”

Rush Limbaugh
On the Qana Massacre
July 31, 2006

“We declared jihad against the US government, because the US government is unjust, criminal and tyrannical. It has committed acts that are extremely unjust, hideous and criminal . . . As for what you asked regarding the American people, they are not exonerated from responsibility, because they chose this government and voted for it despite their knowledge of its crimes in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and in other places.”

Osama bin Laden
On His Fatwa Against America
March 1997

The attempts to paint Lamont as a raving lefty are fairly silly; he’s clearly a liberal-leaning centrist. It’s just that next to Lieberman, any liberal-leaning centrist looks like a raving lefty (see below). Not that there’s anything wrong with raving lefties — some of my best friends, etc. — but that’s not even remotely what this race is about, despite media narratives to the contrary.

At any rate, as Lamont said on Franken’s show today, this is a rare instance in which every vote really does matter. I live in CT., and on August 8 I plan to head to my local polling place bright and early to cast my vote for a mainstream centrist who reflects the growing mainstream consensus of the people of Connecticut, and of America — that this president and his war have been complete unmitigated disasters. If you live here, I hope to see you there.

… more, from Digby:

This isn’t about a 60’s style liberal “anti-war movement,” which was a massive youth movement built around the draft coupled with huge social and cultural upheaval. This is just people trying to elect representatives to national office who represent their views. Despite all this blather about “congenial bipartisanship” the Republican Party went so far right they went off the cliff — people are doing the predictable (and responsible) thing and pushing back. Many of them care passionately about their country and are frightened of the direction in which it’s going. They are trying to do something about it. Is that really so scary?

This is just plain old politics, nothing unusual about it except we organize and talk over the internets. America hasn’t heard much from liberals in a while but we’ve been out here the whole time — and our policies have remained popular in spite of all the vilification we’ve endured because of the pathological fear of hippies that permeates the Democratic establishment.

Also this:

I’ve heard this quite a bit. The Lamont challenge is seen as a possible threat to lose the seat. But I don’t see why that is. The state regularly elects Chris Dodd who is a liberal. It’s a state so blue that the moderate Republicans in the House are in trouble this time and the Republican party has had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to even find pedophiles and gambling addicts for the Senate seat. The only scenario by which anyone actually sees a Republican taking the seat is if Lieberman runs as an independent and he and Lamont split the Democratic and Independent vote.

Perhaps that will come to pass, although I sincerely doubt it. But let’s say it does. Why would this be considered Lamont’s fault? He’s not the one who would be launching a third party candidacy when he failed in the primary.

It’s Joe Lieberman who would be playing the Ralph Nader role in this scenario, not Lamont. Everybody needs to keep that straight in their heads after August 8th if Lamont wins. The spoiler is the guy who runs the third party race, not the guy who gets the party nomination.

That’s exactly right. The Republican in this race is a complete joke. The only, and I do mean only, real risk of throwing this seat is if Lieberman loses the primary and runs as an independent.

From Salon:

Lieberman’s years in public life have been a steady drumbeat of disappointment for Connecticut Democrats, a liberal lot who do not share his often conservative views. End-of-life issues are just one example. In 1992, the state’s Democratic voters picked Jerry Brown over Bill Clinton in the presidential primary. Lieberman, meanwhile, spent the 1990s joining cultural conservative Bill Bennett in a kind of Sherman’s March through American culture, handing out Silver Sewer awards for sex and violence and denouncing such pornographic abominations as “Married … With Children.”

Tag teaming with Bennett was one of the senator’s early experiments in what he calls “bipartisanship,” which often entails adopting Republican positions without leveraging any concession from the other side. Tell me how Bill Bennett moved toward the middle to accommodate Joe Lieberman. Pretty much the way Bush and Cheney moved to the center to meet Democrats on Iraq. Not at all.

… Long before there were those TV love fests with Fox’s Sean Hannity that so enrage lefty bloggers there were earlier love fests with none other than Pat Robertson. On the apocalyptic evangelist’s “700 Club,” Lieberman complained about moral relativism, said there was too little religion in public life, and said he was pleased that people of faith were taking their principles into the political arena. In 2003, Connecticut political writer Paul Bass chronicled the scramble by the senator’s staff to scrub his image from a fundraising infomercial (also starring Robertson and Jerry Falwell) for a conservative religious group with which he had been involved. His 2004 campaign for the presidential nomination was so pitched toward the conservative, moralistic, Southern elements of the party that I jokingly suggested the slogan: “He may be a Jew, but he’s a better Christian than you are.”

… Covering Lieberman is a good way to understand how misleading a voting record can be. (Are you listening, Courant editorial board?) Most members of Congress vote with their parties the preponderance of the time. There are other questions to ask. Did he vote differently on a much-more-important earlier amendment or cloture motion? Did he wait until it was clear his vote wouldn’t hurt the other side? Are his public pronouncements strangely different from his votes?

Consider Lieberman’s behavior during the confirmation of Clarence Thomas 15 years ago, well documented in this article from the political newsletter Counterpunch. Lieberman spoke avidly on behalf of Thomas and disdainfully about Democratic colleagues whose opposition was, he thought, too political. He was pretty much the last senator to commit to a nay vote, and only when his vote didn’t matter.

Mr. Soul, from a 1992 performance: