ABCDE OUTLOOK sunday, august 8, 2010 INSIDE
AfPak, meet AfPInd Why the Afghan war needs a new nickname. B4
A reminder for Congress Try investigating some stuff. B2
BOOK WORLD, B6-8 In the Navy A history of Annapolis, featuring mutiny, reburials and a contrary curriculum. B6 Weather man Could Osama bin Laden use global warming as a recruiting tool? B6 Surf’s up Three books on the pleasures, stories and images of riding the waves. B7
5 The twilight of the
who-cares gossip — the past two sum- mers have been filled with vitriol. Last year we had town halls gone wild, fueled by the threat of death panels pulling the plug on Grandma. This year, us-vs.-them controversies are proliferating, linked by a surge in xenophobia. This is our sum- mer of fear. So far, the summer of fear has featured
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a charge, led by Newt Gingrich, Sarah Pa- lin and former New York congressman Rick Lazio, to block the construction of the Cordoba House Islamic cultural cen- ter (which is to include a mosque) a few blocks from the site of the World Trade Center. Meanwhile, with frightening speed, we’ve gone from discussing the prospects for comprehensive immigra- tion reform to watching congressional Republicans call for hearings to recon- sider the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of citizenship to anyone born in the United States. Many liberals think they spy simple
Goodbye, industrialists. The new tycoons are carbon-free. by David Callahan S I
o the blown-out oil well in the gulf has finally stopped gushing, plugged with heavy mud and awaiting the ultimate “kill” by a relief well. Yet, even with the largest oil spill in the nation’s history in the background, what seems to have been killed much more quickly is Washington’s will to take meaningful action on the environment. After axing climate- change legislation in late July, the Senate is now taking up a modest energy bill — and even that effort may go nowhere. Hopes for a pivotal BP-driven eco-moment — remember President Obama’s call in June for a new “national mission” to
get America off fossil fuels? — have dissipated, seemingly confirming the common view that powerful energy firms, and corporate America more broadly, stand as the sworn enemies of any bold new environmental rules and that they have the clout to get their way. Except that old view is no longer quite right. In fact, big business is more divided on energy and the environment than ever be- fore, and the growing rift reflects major power shifts in the economy. On one side are business leaders and shareholders who de- rive their wealth from resource extraction, fossil-fuel-based power generation and energy-intensive manufacturing — they are the “dirty rich.” On the other are business leaders who run knowledge or service companies that generate very little pollution — the “clean rich.” The dirty rich are dying off, and the clean rich are coming of age.
dirty rich continued on B4 David Callahan is a senior fellow at Demos, a nonprofit public policy group, and the author of “Fortunes of Change: The Rise of the Liberal Rich and the Remaking of America.”
election-year opportunism. And of course, where there’s an election, there’s opportunism. But these prominent Re- publicans wouldn’t be doing any of this if xenophobia weren’t playing well politi- cally. Politicians are making hay out of the mosque only because public opinion seems to oppose it. They are reflecting, as well as stoking, a groundswell of pub- lic hostility toward outsiders. This hostil- ity is not about the midterms; it is a con- sequence of the economic downturn, ev- ery bit as much as foreclosures and layoffs. When personal incomes stop growing, people become less broad- minded, and suspicion of foreigners and other ethnic groups grows. We have seen this time and again, in this country and in others. Fear, in essence, begets fear. The loss of a job, or the worry that one might be lost, raises anxiety. This often plays out as in- creased suspicion of people who look dif- ferent or come from different places. While times of robust growth and shared prosperity inspire feelings of intercon- nectedness and mutual gain, in times of worry, the picture quickly re-
fear continued on B5
Matthew Yglesias, a political blogger and fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, is the author of “Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats.”
Don’t turn Ground Zero into a battleground. B5
myths B DC MD VA B
about the ‘tea party.’ B3
Welcome to the
summer of fear
by Matthew Yglesias
olitics always seems to get a bit off-kilter when the temperature goes up. But instead of the fa- miliar silly-season stuff of years past — made-up scandals and
BOOK REVIEW In ‘Obama Diaries,’ self-absorbed musings by Steven Levingston
f you believe Laura Ingraham, Presi- dent Obama could use a few lessons in humility. And she’s got the goods to prove it. After her weekly pedicure — “forty-five minutes of sheer unin- terrupted bliss” — she returned to her car in the Watergate parking garage not long ago to discover a thick manila envelope on the hood. From the shadows came a bari- tone voice instructing her to read every- thing inside — she’d know what to do. The mystery man then “vanished faster than Obama’s high approval ratings,” Ingraham writes. The package contained pages and pages of private diaries: the musings of Barack
Obama, first lady Michelle, Vice President Biden, first grandmother Marian Rob- inson and others in the inner circle. Com- pelled by her duty to the nation, Ingraham divulges their secret ruminations in “The Obama Diaries.” The diaries, of course, are fictitious —
THE OBAMA DIARIES By Laura Ingraham Threshold. 373 pp. $25
crafted by Ingraham to convey her satiric vision of Obama and his policies. Satire by nature is nasty and crude, its goal to de- flate the powerful; Ingraham, a popular talk-radio host and Fox News Channel reg- ular, holds nothing back. She lacerates Obama, his administration and his family for failures in government spending, for- eign policy, business, education, immigra- tion, morality and faith. Even the White House dog, Bo, gets a clipping. The savagery will outrage Obama’s ad-
mirers, but in the long tradition of Amer- ican satire, try to name a president who has escaped a literary — or in today’s world, a Jon Stewart — spanking. The par- ty affiliation of the spanker is irrelevant. The only meaningful measure is this: If the satire amuses or pleases, it succeeds. As these hilarious, self-absorbed reveries demonstrate, Ingraham has a gift for acer- bic expression. Her takedown of the 44th president is always entertaining, and at times brilliant. With “The Obama Diaries,”
diaries continued on B2
Steven Levingston is nonfiction books editor of The Washington Post and edits the blog Political Bookworm.
A sobering thought for Lindsay Lohan: Rehab doesn’t help. B3
by Bankole A. Johnson
MATT DORFMAN
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