BeldarBlog

Revisionist history re Dean's "I Have a Scream" speech

I can well understand why, and even somewhat sympathize with, Dean supporters' bitterness at the public fascination with his "I Have a Scream" speech. And Gov. Dean has given various explanations for it (none nearly so good as the one Hugh Hewitt suggested) — usually that he was "just having fun," or trying to recognize and energize his troops after a tough loss. But this rationalization, from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, is just silly:

"The coverage of that speech was a lie," said Bagley, a retired bread truck driver. He was referring to Dean's much-debated Iowa concession speech, in which Dean yelled partly to be heard in a noisy hall.

Yes, the hall was noisy. Yes, Dean was tired and his voice was frayed and he was bellowing. But he frequently speaks to noisy crowds, and he bellows more often than not. Under no possible interpretation of the facts can the bizarre noise that he made that night be explained "partly [as Dean trying] to be heard in a noisy hall."

Gov. Dean concedes that "the scream" was "unpresidential." He should just leave it at that. In fact, he should just leave it. Neither he, nor friendly reporters like the one who created the above-quoted rationalization, does the struggling Dean campaign any favors by offering up this kind of obviously bogus excuse.

Best line I've read today

Jonah Goldberg, writing in NRO about the Dems' new enthusiasm for John Kerry:

The Democrats seem to have succumbed to a terrible bout of wishful thinking, like Michael Moore bringing a condom in his wallet to a Sports Illustrated swimsuit-photo shoot.

Tuesday Morning Quarterback's revenge

Per the New York Daily News,

The curtain's coming down for Michael Eisner.

That was the word from Wall Street yesterday after Comcast launched its $54 billion hostile bid for Walt Disney.

Corporate governance law expert Professor Stephen Bainbridge of UCLA, long a critic of the imperial reign of Eisner, has a perceptive writeup of the story, its causes, and its implications:

Bad management is just another form of information that efficient markets are able to process. When a declining market price signals shirking by directors or management, among those who receive the signal are directors and managers of other firms, who possess the resources to investigate the reason for the potential target's deteriorating performance. Sometimes it will be something that is beyond anybody's ability to control, such as where highly specialized assets are languishing because of a permanent shift in consumer demand. Sometimes, however, it will be due to poor management, which presents real opportunities for gain if the personnel or policies causing the firm to languish can be corrected. A successful takeover gives the acquirer the ability to elect at least a majority of the board of directors and thereby control personnel and policy decisions. The resulting appreciation in value of the acquired shares provides the profit incentive to do so. It is partly for this reason that we refer to the takeover market as "the market for corporate control."

Michael Eisner's Disney looks like a ripe candidate for a disciplinary takeover....

The long-term problem at Disney has been that virtually every mechanism we have for holding boards accountable has failed. Director independence failed because the board has been comprised of nominally independent folks who in fact were cronies of Eisner or know-nothing ceremonial directors. Shareholder activism failed because it never made a serious dent in the board's complacency. Litigation failed because the board was willing to pay zillions to Ovitz, Katzenberg, etc.... SOX and the other post-Enron reforms failed because Eisner is so good at boardroom politics that he was able to use even those reforms to further entrench himself.

There is one tool left: Have somebody buy the company and fire Eisner.

Driving home last night, I heard some "expert" on NPR question whether potential acquirer Comcast, a large cable TV company that "brings sex, nudity, and violence into people's homes," was an appropriate candidate for acquiring Disney. I thought that pretty ironic. It was, of course, TMQ Gregg Easterbrook's attack on the gratuitous violence of a Quentin Tarantino film from Disney's Miramax subsidiary that not only got Easterbrook fired from his spot as a columnist for Disney subsidiary ESPN, but also got everything that Easterbrook had ever written for ESPN "disappeared" from its website in a twenty-first century retaliatory act of "nacht und nebel." Eisner's spinmeisters spun some unfortunate loose language of Easterbrook's as being "anti-Semitic" as their purported grounds to fire him, but I doubt they'll be able to make such a claim to fend off Comcast's takeover bid.

Disciplinary takeover. Heh. Easterbrook, who also writes a blog for The New Republic and whose TMQ column has a new and better home at NFL.com, has to be enjoying this. I know I am. Easterbrook is probably cackling like Rafiki did when Simba returned to cast out Scar in "The Lion King." And if by chance his employment at ESPN left Easterbrook with any Disney stock, I'll bet he'll enjoy tendering it into Comcast's bid.

Colin Powell smites moonbat

In Congressional testimony yesterday from Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, " a retired four-star general known for his even temperament":

Powell, however, became testy when [Rep. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), a 12-year veteran of the House] said, in a reference to questions about whether Bush completed his National Guard service: "You are one of the very few people in this administration that understands war. We have a president who may have been AWOL" from duty.

"First of all, Mr. Brown, I won't dignify your comments about the president because you don't know what you are talking about," Powell snapped.

"I'm sorry, I don't know what you mean, Mr. Secretary," Brown replied.

"You made reference to the president," Powell said.

"I say he may have been AWOL," Brown repeated.

"Mr. Brown, let's not go there," Powell retorted. "Let's not go there in this hearing. If you want to have a political fight on this matter, that is very controversial, and I think is being dealt with by the White House, fine. But let's not go there."

Bully for General Powell! Bully, I say! And hie thee back to Atrios where ye belong, Congressman!

Clark quits

We won't have a chance to see if Wes Clark could become the twenty-first century's George McClellan.

I'm glad. "Little Wes" genuinely scared me — not because I'm a Bush supporter and a Republican, but because I'm an American, and Clark is a nut.

Optimus Prime for Prez

Prompted by Dubya's appearance today on Meet the Press, Michelle of A Small Victory eloquently expresses the views of those of us American parents whose worldviews, and consequently whose politics, have been rather forcefully clarified by 9/11 in this post, which I highly recommend.