Bloodless Coup

One word: "Secretary"

(Well, two words, really, the other one being "Maggie", but whatever.)

Well as much as I liked him in his Bad Influence, Storyville, True Colors, Wolf period (a little later on), I've got to say my favorite James is still "Steff" James - stylish, cutting, good-looking, mid-twenties ... huh, I guess this will come as a surprise to no one.

Hah. No one is commenting on the free speech rant. We are a shallow bunch.

Well, there's not much to debate with respect to his rant, is there?

Hmmm - you want us to focus on politics and not hotness of a more alluring variety? OK, if we must - it's a good speech, but I don't necessarily think disagreeing with what the government is up to is a strong excuse for not paying your taxes.

i'm with armand on this. the whole thing is facile. filed under be careful what you wish for, just as the right ought to be more worried about what all this executive power is going to amount to when a dem is in the white house, so should we be when we decide to applaud (even) the (fictional) withholding of one's legal obligation to pay taxes because one doesn't approve of this or that federal policy.

also, there's a not-so-buried premise in the speech that i reject: this so-called (or insinuated) golden age of free speech, when americans marched and spoke truth to power and power sat idly by and listened is a joke. it never happened. you give me free speech zones? i give you time place and manner restrictions, which are constitutional and have been employed forever and anon. in the fifties and sixties thousands upon thousands of people were more than happy to be arrested. that's what civil disobedience is. bitching about unfavorable laws is simply an argument for the right to civilly obey, which never convinced anyone of anything outside the status quo. what was so powerful about the golden age of activism was the atmosphere of sacrifice in the name of principle. if fifty thousand people surrounded one of those members-only bush events, it would be ugly but it also would be far more effective than sheehan in a t-shirt. i agreed with spader right through the part about being shocked that the people didn't rise up. but i'm not impressed with the abdication of our own complicity in all of this: there's far more we could have done to scare the snakes out of the grass. too bad we're all too busy watching american idol, and preaching to the choir in the blogosphere, to get out there and let a stormtrooper bloody our noses in the name of security, and then hold up our bloody palms for the cameras. that's the real shit.

"you want us to focus on politics and not hotness of a more alluring variety"

Actually, no, I just thought you'd come up with some withering snark, rather than actually say that Spader was hot at all.