The New Republic

"The Plank Spilleth Over"

This is why TNR is indispensible.  You people are the best.

- Kolya

[comment from Bukharin reposted]

- tnr1.com

March 18, 2008 at 6:49pm

Thanks to "The Plank" (and tnr.com) for being the best spot on the net to keep track of the campaigns.

Limbaugh outdid himself today, by responding immediately to Obama's speech with a particularly vile tape that combined clips of Obama's speech, bites of Wright's worst statements, some tasteless musical parody, and his own scummy thoughts. What a commentary of our times that this piece of trash has a huge audience in 2008. Can't anything be done about him?

- fougasseu

March 18, 2008 at 6:59pm

Rush is going to wheeze to a stop pretty soon if he doesn't watch out. He appears to have been eating his way out of his pill addiction. At least that's the first impression I got when I saw a clip of him today. I haven't been watching this whole time, so the change seemed pretty drastic to me, when it might have been a gradual buildup. Still it looked pretty Jabba-the-Hutt-y, and his voice is different.

- psantillana

March 18, 2008 at 7:09pm

Great content. Atrocious website.

I mean, really, look at the user interface. You have a dozen or more different threads, all of them silo'ed ie separate from each other, dealing with exactly the same topic. This is the equivalent of a  party in which each guest sits like an inmate along a corridor, each in a little cell with an opening at the ceiling to allow little paper airplanes to be tossed over the wall.

Get someone on your IT team who knows AJAX. Create ONE PAGE where all the Obama Speech conversations can be seen, at one glance, probably in a grid format. Enable some social functionality to allow users to respond to each other directly, OUTSIDE of these ridiculous little compartmentalized unidirectional threads.

I mean, really, it's 2008. Your site and the UE are stuck in 1999. FIX THIS

- teplukhin2you

March 18, 2008 at 7:12pm

NO NO NO NO!  Good God, tep, the last thing TNR needs is some sort of buzzword-intensive web 2.0 site redesign.  The blog format is well established and works -- don't mess with it.  There are lots of things wrong with the new TNR site, but the overall structure of the Plank isn't one of them.  And anyway, is TNR supposed to remake their website every time Obama gives a major speech?

Next you'll be telling us TNR needs an service oriented architecture with an enterprise service bus and XML meta-data.  I get enough of that at work!

- ratnerstar

March 18, 2008 at 7:49pm

No, just something as simple as what Netvibes or Pageflakes or any other simple hack created by a talented programmer in his basement has achieved. Nothing fancy. This stuff is pretty basic.

- teplukhin2you

March 18, 2008 at 8:18pm

And yet, no March Madness blog!  At least join the "TNR Talkback" group in ESPN's Tourney Challenge (I hate the monster in Bristol, but they have a good setup.)  It's a private group, with the password billyard, after our esteemed humorist.  

Build your bracket here:  games.espn.go.com/.../frontpage

Who knows, maybe if the mag picks up on it, winner gets a free subscription or some other TNR swag.

- Crock1701

March 18, 2008 at 8:19pm

This particular thread should be called The Plank for dummies.

Hey the electorate ain't stupid and if Obamas non mea culpa speech isn't being appreciated by the unwashed masses, that's a sign that the speech wasn't very convincing.

People were waiting for an explanation but all they got was a history lesson, sort of, and a lecture.

it would have been better if Obama had held a news conference on the issue and allowed reporters to grill him on the Reverend Wright.

- jacksondyer

March 18, 2008 at 9:44pm

jacksondyer,

You're right that Obama's speech wasn't a mea culpa. But neither was it exculpatory. What made it so powerful was that it challenged us to understand rather than demonize *or* excuse. That went for America as well as for Rev. Wright. It was nothing but an explanation--an extended, eloquent explanation that challenged us to complicate rather than simplify our understanding of Wright but also of race and America. Whether Obama wins the nomination or the general, today's speech deserves to outlast the election.

- Nippers

March 18, 2008 at 10:25pm

"What made it so powerful was that it challenged us to understand"

Which is why I fear it may not work. Still, I don't think he could've done anything else.

I listened to it on YouTube and Obama seemed very thoughtful, very reasonable, and very honest. Sure, there was some standard liberal boilerplate in there (and those lines got the most applause) but above all, it was a call to understanding...for resentful working-class whites to understand black grievances, for angry blacks to understand that the country has changed, and - most surprisingly - for the black population and perhaps elite white liberals as well (i.e. the very groups the Obama campaign is based on) to understand and respect working-class whites' resentments of black grievance. All in all, it was an excellent speech and one that, I thought, even the NROites who'd been portentiously predicting Obama's doom would have to tip their hats to in perhaps grim respect.

Instead, I found the Corner brimming with smug weariness of the "oh, you won't reject and denounce Rev. Wright? Soooooo typically leftist. Guess you're not such a uniter after all, huh? Yawn" variety. We get indignant tropes about how he threw his grandmother under the bus; sniffy refusals to grant him any wiggle-room in making complex distinctions between his rejection of Wright's sentiments and acceptance of the man; and indignation that he dares to ask anything of white Americans and doesn't completely condemn and disassociate himself from members of his race who are angry and resentful.

God, these people are arrogant. Why do they get to define the terms by which black people are and aren't allowed to express allegiance to their country? What did they do to earn the right to scold a segment of the population with a unique and unfortunate history for not acting in a fashion after their own hearts? And how dare they criticize Obama for situating his speech in a liberal context when Reagan -- whose speeches they exalt -- always included even more strident ideological aims. The point is not that they preferred that context to Obama's but that somehow his speech is deemed inauthentic for containing any policy presumptions with which they disagree. And they wonder why the black population overwhelmingly supports the other party? Could it be that the GOP doesn't bother to ask them what they bring to the table? Yeah, yeah, I know, you guys colorblind, just like Colbert. Funny how that colorblindness makes everything seem white.

OK, I know the National Review isn't especially indicative of voters' sensibilities but it does cause me to think that maybe most people don't have patience for the kind of intelligent, nuanced viewpoint Obama expressed today. I have some conservative instincts and a fair amount of impatience with mealy-mouthed liberal caveats and vacillations but when someone is as genuinely forthright and thoughtful in his analysis of a situation as Obama was today, I sit up, listen, and give my respect.

- CharlesFosterKane

March 19, 2008 at 1:15am

To put it more succinctly there's something very McCarthyist about the Right's attack on Obama.

It wasn't enough for leftists and former leftists to renounce communism, they had to betray friends and renounce them before the Inquisition. Obama likewise must throw any wrong-thinking person connected to him through friendship or even race under the bus, and then kowtow before the white gods while flagellating himself and wailing apologies. Disgusting.

- CharlesFosterKane

March 19, 2008 at 1:34am

Nippers said: "jacksondyer, You're right that Obama's speech wasn't a mea culpa. But neither was it exculpatory. What made it so powerful was that it challenged us to understand rather than demonize *or* excuse."

Nippers, I don't need to be "challenged to understand." I do that automatically as I suspect many more people do than you think.

- jacksondyer

March 19, 2008 at 10:24am

If Obama were to give a truly honest speech, he would say what we already know is on his mind: "Of all the churches in the Chicago area with which to establish my credentials as a community organizer, I had to pick this one.!"  I suspect that the reason Hillary has toughed it out through months of adversity is that she figured that it was inevitable that the you-know-what would hit the fan.

- nbarry

March 19, 2008 at 10:48am

Nippers - I understand it perfectly well. Wright is a type, the loudmouthed tribal rabble-rouser  and conspiracymonger who battens on his tribe's hatred, fear and paranoia. Every tribal group in this country has a few characters like Wright. They all seek out a podium, a pulpit, a mike or a printing press from which to retail their mind-junk.

The other obvious story here is that a young ambitious politician focused on making his name among a constituency that is dominated by people disposed to support the tribalist rabble-rouser, or to not support his detractors, will have to suck up to him if he wants to get elected to anything. That's what Obama did, for many years. We get it, it's not shocking, we've seen it before in South Boston and the Deep South and the West Bank and the North of France and, hell, in every electoral district on the planet. That's what politicians do.

Had Obama said as much and then changed the subject-- instead of giving us The History Channel and biblical exegesis and lessons on all that befalls Man of Woman Born-- my respect for him would have increased, significantly. Instead, we get more gas, and tears from John Judis.

Enough, already, with the BS.  

- teplukhin2you

March 19, 2008 at 1:24pm

"Had Obama said as much and then changed the subject-- instead of giving us The History Channel and biblical exegesis and lessons on all that befalls Man of Woman Born-- my respect for him would have increased, significantly. Instead, we get more gas, and tears from John Judis.

Enough, already, with the BS." - tep

LOL tep!   Good to see you are packing heat today!!  Once again as I indicated else where yesterday - ??????, ??????? Tep!

- Bukharin

March 19, 2008 at 3:29pm

????? ?????? ?????????? ?????!

- teplukhin2you

March 19, 2008 at 4:58pm