It seems vot­ers reject­ed anti-immi­grant vit­ri­ol when it spewed from the mouths of can­di­dates, but when that same rhetoric came in the face­less form of cit­i­zen’s ini­tia­tives that mixed fis­cal aus­ter­i­ty with xeno­pho­bia — vot­ers swal­lowed the bait. Why should your tax dol­lars go to ser­vices for ille­gal immi­grants? This was the mes­sage that anti-immi­grant forces took to Ari­zo­nans. It was clas­sic Lou Dobbs, class vs. race, and it worked.

Richard Kim exam­ines the new face of Demo­c­ra­t­ic pop­ulism. It’s not pretty.

[Con­verse­ly, John Nichols exer­cis­es his right to wish ful­fill­ment. It’s fair to set aside trends in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty since say 1984, but what­ev­er! I mean, if you ignore Murtha and Ford alto­geth­er, his the­sis is, well, com­plete­ly implausible!]

For all the sixth bor­ough talk that’s gone on in the past year, there’s one thing that’s unde­ni­able: Philadel­phia is a city with­out film cul­ture. Apart from what’s curat­ed at Inter­na­tion­al House or appears hap­haz­ard­ly at local col­leges, there’s no inde­pen­dent or reper­to­ry cin­e­ma to speak of. The two Philadel­phia film fes­ti­vals are spot­ty at best and run so late in the fes­ti­val sea­son that many offer­ings have already screened well in advance of the fes­ti­val. Despite the heavy lift­ing of sev­er­al good local crit­ics, there just isn’t much “there” there. It’s not hard to see why Net­flix has tak­en off in cities like ours [or, as the case may be, the films aren’t in print, in which case Rosselli­ni may as well be a unicorn.]

Meme alert! R.E.M. ver­sus U2 cropped up every­where last week. It’s not a new argu­ment, but the revival of this debate is apro­pos of, well, noth­ing. But last week there were arti­cles in Sty­lus and Slate, fol­lowed by com­men­tary at Rolling Stone. My per­son­al favorite is a head­scratch­er, but try­ing to choose between Achtung, Baby and Mon­ster on their mer­its is kind of fun. Viewed dif­fer­ent­ly, it’s try­ing to fig­ure out who fared bet­ter with his mid-life cri­sis, ver­sion 1.0.

[I pre­fer Mon­ster. It’s R.E.M. at their most reac­tionary and obnox­ious. The album takes as a fait accom­pli that Nir­vana and Son­ic Youth were rock­’s purest, nois­i­est, most rebel­lious con­ceit and that this expres­sion of cock­sure idol­a­try would get the point across. It makes a great trib­ute record, an ode to the nineties, etc. etc. When you fac­tor in that Max­im hat­ed it, list­ing Mon­ster num­ber 5 among the 30 worst records of all time, it begins to make a lot of sense that sen­ti­men­tal mallpunks would latch on to it, then and now. In any case, I guess “Tongue” would’ve freaked out their read­er­ship anyway.]

Rums­feld’s res­ig­na­tion comes about two and a half years too late. But if per­cep­tion is greater than real­i­ty, by cre­at­ing a soft­er image of com­pro­mise and rea­son, Bush gives a sop to Democ­rats eager to feel as though they’ve influ­enced some­thing and gal­va­nizes a con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment thirst­ing for mar­tyr­dom. This is the stuff that helps pre­serve the sta­tus quo in the guise of reform. In oth­er words, a kinder, gen­tler war.

Cel­e­bra­tion plays The Troc tomor­row night. How they end­ed up on a bill with Blood Broth­ers and And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead is beyond me.