Less Deceived

Michael Wood considers Philip Larkin's comments on desire in his poem "Deceptions":

Larkin’s gloss on this poem—called “The Less Deceived” until he used the title for the volume the poem appeared in—is both lucid and moving. He said in a letter that he was not making “any claims to policy or belief,” but thought readers “might grasp my fundamentally passive attitude to poetry (and life too, I suppose) which believes that the agent is always more deceived than the patient.” The girl, he then implies, was not really less deceived but beyond illusion, because “there is positively no deception” about suffering. As Larkin says in the poem, this is not a consolation, but it is for him a melancholy truth about desire, which “comes from wanting something we haven’t got, which may not make us any happier when we have it.” What his poems suggest, as a kind of refinement of this idea, is that we scarcely know how to want anything without being afraid of our own wanting, and that we can nearly always make sure that what we get is not what we desired—not because we are unfortunate, but because we are devoted to our disappointing scenarios. Our “fundamentally passive attitude” conceals quite a bit of psychic scheming.

Not familiar with Larkin? You're in for a treat.

(Image: Larkin, pictured in 1966. Via the Telegraph.)

Does It Matter Why Women Have Abortions?

It's complex, but I think I sympathise with Emily Douglas' view that, actually, we need to have some idea of why people have medical procedures:

There’s a danger that seeking to understand more about the circumstances of women’s abortion choices reiterates the same power dynamic we’re fighting against: that a broader public is entitled to know why a woman is getting an abortion, find out all about her life, and make up their minds about her decision. And I’m not convinced that even if they do understand the real and complex reasons behind a woman’s decision to terminate a pregnancy, anti-choicers will see how heartless and fantasy-based their belief system is. But those of us who support women’s autonomy, in all circumstances, can’t let our commitment to non-judgment interfere with getting a fuller picture on the lives of women who have sought abortions. As anyone who has been to an abortion speakout knows, there’s a lot to learn.

Little Face Mitt

There's an entire Tumblr of these. The most disconcerting thing you'll see all day...

Why We Need Real Critics, Ctd

Michelle Dean, commenting on the recent debate over "niceness" in online literary criticism, says that harshness is a moving target, and something that means very different things to different people. And one of the diving lines is gender:

In retrospect, that a call for being "less nice" would begin with a male critic isn't so surprising: There's a certain male tint to the perspective that life happens on a level playing field, where reason is always triumphant and a hint of bias is a slag on a good man's word, so why can’t we go mano-a-mano and all just have at it? Women, for better or worse, don't have that luxury. They know that the unconscious bias is always there.

Earlier in the thread here.

Terrorism's Expert Industry

Glenn Greenwald pans a clique of Washingtonians he deems "sham terrorism experts." He claims they have built careers on fear-mongering over Islamic terrorism, and that their relevance can only survive as long as the fear:

They’re employed at think tanks, academic institutions, and media outlets. They can and do have mildly different political ideologies — some are more Republican, some are more Democratic — but, as usual for D.C. cliques, ostensible differences in political views are totally inconsequential when placed next to their common group identity and career interest: namely, sustaining the myth of the Grave Threat of Islamic Terror in order to justify their fear-based careers, the relevance of their circle, and their alleged “expertise.”

Forgiving Todd Akin

Listen closely to the language:



Take particular note of phrases like "As the father of two daughters," "I have a compassionate heart," "I pray for them [the victims of rape]," "I ask for your forgiveness." Sounds kind of like penance. And it's a little alarming that after such a mega-gaffe, the best he could do was an apology for the words he used, not the sincerity of his statements. Maybe a full retraction, short only of withdrawing his views on abortion entirely, would have been more appropriate.

Brad Hirschfield is all for forgiveness, but thinks this fails as an appeal:

I am all for forgiving those who genuinely seek forgiveness, but part of that search must include a clear understanding by the wrongdoer of the nature of the misdeed. On that score, Akin falls short. In fact, his stubborn desire to stay in the race, despite the best expert advice he is getting from inside his own party, smacks of the same stubborn intellectual ignorance which lead him to subscribe to the junk science and ugly theories that informed his thinking about rape and human conception.

More coverage here and here.

How Helen Gurley Brown Sold Sex

Sady Doyle would like us to know that the late Cosmo editor's legacy isn't feminism:

Gurley Brown’s single girl was no less exclusively focused on nabbing a man than the good girls hoping to catch a husband; the difference was that she took a market-driven approach in dating as in work. She saw herself as able to buy and sell various men as their stock went up and down. Financial independence simply allowed her the freedom to attain or discard those relationships. In Gurley Brown’s vision, women were not empowered sexual agents—if they were, their habits might be less exclusively man-pleasing and heterosexual—they were sexual capitalists, appropriating the fruits of male economic privilege with their sexual wiles. Although the single girl was not supposed to take, sponge or depend, accepting furs or jewelry from a wealthy man in exchange for sex was none of those things. It was a paycheck for a job well done.

Macho Critic

Morgan Meis eulogises Robert Hughes:

Todd Akin's Wisdom

The guy who actually proposed the notion of "legitimate" rape was a man named Dr. John Willke. According to him, legalising abortion doesn't make it safer, and other fun 'facts':

As Willke told an Associated Press reporter in a 1989 interview: “If, in fact, the elimination of illegal abortion eliminated back alleys, there should have been a perceptible drop in the number of women dying. That didn’t happen. The line didn’t even blip from 1967 to 1973 and 1974. ... It just kept going down at the same slow rate. There was no evidence of a decline in mortality from legalization.”

Ah...science!

Parsing Ferguson

BREAKING: After conducting a compelte fact check of Niall Ferguson's Newsweek cover, Newsweek has renamed the magazine "Week".
— Will McAvoy (@WillMcAvoyACN) August 20, 2012

Certain corners of the blogosphere are getting testy:

He is merely absurd, or simply evil, I can’t decide which. He has made a fool of himself, of course, but his performance doesn’t deserve the dignity that would derive from this designation. He’s not a Joker, he’s a Thief. He remains a moron, in any case.

Probably taking things a tad too far. Ferguson is, generally speaking, an academic with a history of fine scholarly writing behind him. He has produced a number of excellent books and documentaries, and deserves respect for his standing in the academic community. I don't by any means agree with Matthew Yglesias in saying that he has crossed from the realm of respectability to a kind of "kitchen sink" cheap punditry. I just think he's wrong. But in any case, he's certainly presented a far more persuasive and convincing case for Romney than anyone on the Right — and that includes Romney himself.

What irks me more than anything else in Ferguson's piece is the way in which he wrongly picks up the thinking that this election is somehow an assessment of Obama's report card. Even Ferguson himself admits that Romney is "not the best" candidate he can imagine. His love of Romney's campaign is instead the product of his being so very, very enamoured of his running mate. Ferguson writes of being "blown away" by Ryan. " On meeting him:

Ryan blew me away. I have wanted to see him in the White House ever since.

There's a very good reason why Paul Ryan is a dangerous choice for Mitt Romney, and it's because Ryan makes people very nervous. Ferguson says that Paul Ryan is most unlike Obama in that he has a plan and not a "narrative" for the country.

But of course Ryan does have a narrative, and it's one based on a strict set of conservative ideological rules. You might remember when, in 2004, Ryan persisted with a plan to privatise social security. As a conservative measure, it made no sense in any vein other than an ideological one. It wouldn't have in any way reduced government debt, as was frequently claimed, since it was simply a plan to shift money from one place to another, privately-held place, and at a cost of two trillion dollars in transition expenses. But, naturally, such details didn't much matter: Ryan's plan was not so much about sincere conservatism but instead about making a strident ideological statement about what he perceived to be the proper relationship between Americans and the federal government. Ryan's narrative, and the plan that is derived from it, takes its cues from pre-determined Randian philosophy.

Never mind the details.

Paul Ryan's Ayn Rand Worship, Ctd

Beverly Gage says that the lack of a liberal Ayn Rand, for example, whom Paul Ryan adores (whether he's prepared to admit it or not), contributes to an imbalance between the two sides. According to the author, it's an indication of the overall weakness of the American Left. Furthermore, she warns, "liberals fail to take up the intellectual challenge at their peril." I dissent here on every level, including the implied notion that the work of Ayn Rand is in the slightest sense intellectual, or, for that matter, a challenge.

(Speaking of Ayn Rand, this essay on her makes for excellent reading.) Obviously in a sense she's right: Leftists have a slew of Marxist and Trotskyite texts, whereas the group that Gage identifies as mere 'liberals' have no literary tradition to speak of whatsoever. But having a required reading list for prospective liberals would be antithetical to the flexibility of most liberalism, whose greatest strength, in a sense, is that its not a creed, and can change and evolve according to the needs of the society in which it finds itself.

Besides, the holy texts of conservatism tend to be dreadful. Atlas Shrugged is not only a vast tome of thinly-veiled objectivist propaganda but in many ways better than a sleeping pill, befitting of that wonderful phrase, "chloroform in print."

Liberalism is far too abstract a political alignment to have texts as conservatism does. In a sense, the texts of liberalism are essentially the rest of literature. And having pseudo-philosophical political comment in the context of fiction is probably a bit dishonest — and besides, really dull. Conservatism needs its own canon because it doesn't feel the rest of literature speaks for it. Just as any discussion of the mainstream media on the Right is inevitably undertaken using a very distinctive tone of indignation.

The Unconstitutional War on Voting

Garrett Epps says Pennsylvania's voter ID law is unconstitutional:

A state can't abridge important rights just because it feels like it. If the right to vote is important, then the state's justification is as sinister as if it decided to cut back on free speech because bureaucrats prefer the quiet. The key issue in voting-rights cases is what "standard of scrutiny" the Constitution requires for burdens on the right to vote -- that is, new rules that make it harder to cast a ballot without entirely banning any individual or group from voting. If the right to vote is fundamental, then the standard should be "strict scrutiny"; that means the government must show a very important reason before it is allowed to burden the right. "Security and integrity" might meet that test -- but only if they face an actual threat. The state would have to produce evidence that fraud is actually likely to be a serious problem.

This is mostly in response to the law being upheld in the state. At any rate, though, the US has a long history of such laws.

A Change in the Weather

It's quite clear that something is happening:

Extreme events like the Nashville flood—described by officials as a once-in-a-millennium occurrence—are happening more frequently than they used to. A month before Nashville, torrential downpours dumped 11 inches of rain on Rio de Janeiro in 24 hours, triggering mud slides that buried hundreds. About three months after Nashville, record rains in Pakistan caused flooding that affected more than 20 million people. In late 2011 floods in Thailand submerged hundreds of factories near Bangkok, creating a worldwide shortage of computer hard drives.

It’s not just heavy rains that are making headlines. During the past decade we’ve also seen severe droughts in places like Texas, Australia, and Russia, as well as in East Africa, where tens of thousands have taken refuge in camps. Deadly heat waves have hit Europe, and record numbers of tornadoes have ripped across the United States. Losses from such events helped push the cost of weather disasters in 2011 to an estimated $150 billion worldwide, a roughly 25 percent jump from the previous year. In the U.S. last year a record 14 events caused a billion dollars or more of damage each, far exceeding the previous record of nine such disasters in 2008.

So are these events evidence of a dangerous, human-caused shift in the earth's overall climate, or is this merely the consequence of bad luck? The answer, in short, is probably both:

Oscar Wilde's Day Job

Dearest Oscar's only ever office job was as the editor of a fashion magazine comparable to today's Vogue. The whole article is worth reading, but small insights like this one are the most entertaining:

One great problem with his new job was that Wilde was not allowed to smoke in the office. This was profoundly irritating for the man who stated that "a cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied." But there was nothing against spending a day conversing with authors in a comfortable office chair. He seemed to have enjoyed his privileged position immensely, at least in the beginning.

If you're a fan, like me, you'll be pleased to know that you can peruse a digitised archive of the magazine here. 

Quitting Coke

Of the diet beverage variety, naturally. Annakeara Stinson is putting a great deal of effort into trying to kick her Diet Coke habit. Though I wouldn't go quite so far as to call mine an addiction — I can and have gone without it in the past — my affinity for Coca-Cola is a little shameful. But in general, it's easy to forgo. (And if forced to choose between coffee and coke, I would always, always choose the former.) That said, I can appreciate that it must be difficult if you life in a country where drinks like Coke must have a kind of ubiquity. When I visited Japan earlier this year, one of the things that struck me was the enormous number of vending machines. Indeed, any attempt to curtail cola intake was mostly in vain.

Put the Seat Down!

To convince men, a mathematically-based argument. 

Flying the Confederate Flag

Its use throughout the twentieth century means that it has had a longer shelf life than merely the duration of the Civil War. During the Civil Rights movement of the fifties and sixties, it became a standard for those wishing to stage some kind of simple-minded stand against what they saw as corrupting civil rights progress. But though it remains part of modern symbolism, its presence is fading:

In fact, over the past few years, white and black southerners have become less tolerant of the public display of the flag, which has relegated its supporters to the sidelines and a much more defensive posture. Last year, the city of Lexington, Virginia, banned the flying of the flag from public fixtures. This past spring, the Museum of the Confederacy opened a new branch at Appomattox that did not include the display of the flag outside its doors. Finally, late last year, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond removed Confederate flags flying on the grounds of the Confederate Memorial Chapel, which the museum oversees.

(Image: Reuters, via The Atlantic)

"Paul Ryan Is the Embodiment of the Machine Our Music Rages Against"

This little nugget from a recent NYT profile of Ryan:

The nation’s first Generation X vice-presidential candidate, he is an avowed proponent of free markets whose family has interests in oil leases. But he counts Rage Against the Machine, which sings about the greed of oil companies and whose Web site praises the anti-corporate Occupy Wall Street movement, among his favorite bands.

Tom Morello, the band's guitarist, raged against his unlikely fan:

I wonder what Ryan's favorite Rage song is? Is it the one where we condemn the genocide of Native Americans? The one lambasting American imperialism? Our cover of "Fuck the Police"? Or is it the one where we call on the people to seize the means of production? So many excellent choices to jam out to at Young Republican meetings!

Don't mistake me, I clearly see that Ryan has a whole lotta "rage" in him: A rage against women, a rage against immigrants, a rage against workers, a rage against gays, a rage against the poor, a rage against the environment. Basically the only thing he's not raging against is the privileged elite he's groveling in front of for campaign contributions.

Oh, my. This is uncomfortable.

Niall Ferguson's Incoherent Critique of Obama

Yglesias deemed the attempted takedown so comprehensive it's incoherent, and indeed there are plenty of reasons why the Newsweek cover-story by the economist Niall Ferguson, whom in a sense I admire, is flawed. But let's start with this bit:

The failures of leadership on economic and fiscal policy over the past four years have had geopolitical consequences. The World Bank expects the U.S. to grow by just 2 percent in 2012. China will grow four times faster than that; India three times faster. By 2017, the International Monetary Fund predicts, the GDP of China will overtake that of the United States.

Richard Green takes issue:

Niall Ferguson is horrified at the prospect that total Chinese GDP will catch the US in 2017. Let us leave aside for a second the fact that if China's total GDP matches the US', its people will still be less than 1/4 as affluent, or the fact that maybe it would be a good thing if the most populous country in the world had living standards comparable to ours. So far as I can tell, his 2017 projection comes from assuming growth in China will continue over the next several years at the same pace it has experienced since 1989. Such projections are always problematic.

Matthew Yglesias says that the graphic I've included at the top of this post, which appeared within the article, tells you everything you need to know about the "kitchen sink quality" of his argument:

Ferguson is implicitly making two points with this graphic and it's difficult to know which of them is more absurd—the idea that Obama is responsible for rapid economic growth in China or the idea that if he were responsible that would be blameworthy.

Therapist, Know Thyself

When a family and marriage counselor goes through trouble herself, things can get pretty awful. Janeen McGuire Nelson says that for therapists, there's the expectation that they'll put up a front of perfection:

The hidden covenant of being a marriage and family therapist is that we must allow our clients, as well as the general public, to hold on to their delusions that we are omnipotent and almost perfect. It could be considered the Mary Poppins Rule: Therapists are practically perfect in every way, and we never explain anything. The Mary Poppins Rule is passed down to us from our teachers and mentors in the form of osmosis because it is against the unspoken rules to speak of it.

Trapped in Putin's Time Machine

Masha Gessen gives her take on Pussy Riot. She talks about what it's like to even listen to their songs:

I suddenly realized these texts sounded better in English than they do in Russian. It wasn’t that the translators had improved the quality of the writing: the originals, which I had read in Russian, had been clear and cogent and surprisingly erudite for three very young women—they range in ages from 22 to 30—who had been known for staging radical actions, not for writing political commentary. The problem with the writing in Russian was that the women were speaking the language of the modern world in a country that is rapidly traveling backward in time....Those of us who live in Russia often feel like we have been forced into a time machine. Now the rest of the world has seen it happen: three women shaped by 20th-century thought tried by a 17th-century court.

(Image: "Protestors gather outside the Russian Consulate General building during a demonstration of support for the female Russian female punk band Pussy Riot in Edinburgh, Scotland August 17, 2012. A Russian judge found three women from the punk band Pussy Riot guilty of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred on Friday for staging an anti-Kremlin protest on the altar of Moscow's main Russian Orthodox church." David Moir / Reuters)

Everything is Fiction, Ctd

We spin stories in order to make sense of the world:

In truth, when we set out to explain our actions, they are all post hoc explanations using post hoc observations with no access to nonconscious processing. Not only that, our left brain fudges things a bit to fit into a makes-sense story. Explanations are all based on what makes it into our consciousness, but actions and the feelings happen before we are consciously aware of them—and most of them are the results of nonconscious processes, which will never make it into the explanations.

What's the Deal with Todd Akin's "Legitimate Rape" Comment?

I suspect you may be like me, and have to watch that several times in order to absorb the full blow of its utter stupidity. My first reaction, having recovered from that, was that it seems like a reiteration of Michele Bachmann's vaccination comments, in which a GOP candidate for office decides to apply his or her own imagination to science. (Bachmann's creative repertoire also extends to history.) And even though this will be less harmful — even if some are bound to be convinced — the pseudoscience still reveals a wider ignorance within the GOP. I was particularly scared at the way in which he attempted to recast abortion as an easy ethical problem, a mistake made by both liberals and conservatives, and proceeded to rewrite established medical knowledge while he was at it.

Nate SIlver is predicting that the blowout from the whole fiasco could swing the Missouri race by a big margin. It seems likely. Romney's side has taken the politically astute move of siding with basic decency, and has confirmed that a Romney-Ryan administration would not oppose abortion in instances of rape. Maybe sensing that this had not gone far enough to cut the cord with the odious Akin, Romney on Monday in the pages of NRO said that the remarks were "insulting, inexcusable, and, frankly, wrong."

Amy Davidson considers it indicative of wider ignorance:

Why We Need Real Critics

Jacob Silverman recently complained that people who write about books online, be it on social media sites or on their own blogs, are simply too nice. The 'epidemic of niceness', he says, has created a digital mutual appreciation society, in which the absence of real, honest criticism has done great harm. Dwight Garner, himself a critic, made what he called "a critic's case for critics who are actually critical," and a plea to end the epidemic. Money quote:

The sad truth about the book world is that it doesn’t need more yes-saying novelists and certainly no more yes-saying critics. We are drowning in them. What we need more of, now that newspaper book sections are shrinking and vanishing like glaciers, are excellent and authoritative and punishing critics — perceptive enough to single out the voices that matter for legitimate praise, abusive enough to remind us that not everyone gets, or deserves, a gold star.

Learning How to Eat Like Julia Child

PBS just keeps churning these out:



Tamar Adler thinks that aside from the obvious cooking, there are more basic lessons to be learnt from her about how to eat:

Julia learned how to eat. She did not preserve and shelter her plain, perfectly good Pasadena palate by moving to France and then cooking there, then writing books. She let herself taste and smell differently. She took seriously the smells and rhythms around her, and noticed how they changed her perception—and she came to like them. That process was what started it all. It’s right there in the first pages of her memoir, and it’s at the heart of her mastering something enviable and unique, becoming someone who cooked well but not perfectly, whose tastes ran the gamut, and who didn’t make exceptions or put foods into categories according to what she was supposed to like but didn’t, or what was theoretically “good” but in some way “bad.”

Isolationism's Contradictions

In one sense, it's dead, but pockets of it remain:

[D]ifferent strains of isolationism persist. Newt Gingrich has argued for a policy of total “energy independence” (in other words, domestic drilling) while fulminating against President Obama for “bowing” to the Saudi king. While recently driving through an agricultural region of rural Colorado, I saw a giant roadside billboard calling for American withdrawal from the UN. Yet in the last decade, the Republican Party, with the partial exception of its Ron Paul/libertarian faction, has veered into such a belligerent unilateralism that its graybeards—one of whom, Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, just lost a primary to a far-right challenger partly because of his reasonableness on foreign affairs—were barely able to ensure Senate ratification of a key nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia. Many of these same people desire a unilateral war with Iran.

And as the author of the article points out, this doesn't just apply on the Right. Drone attacks under the Obama administration have greatly increased, all while that uniquely American emphasis on homeland security has intensified to a pitch of fear that in a sense echoes the former sentiment, isolationism.

Quote of the Day

"Why does the media go after this idea he's so gutsy and he's so bold? What's so gutsy about this plan? And why is he the intellectual of the Republican Party? He has, from what I can see, two ideas: one, let's stop having rich people pay taxes at all, and poor people should [have to] look for food in the woods. This is the intellectual? He's a step up from Sarah Palin? Actually, you know, he's more articulate than Sarah Palin. Tell me one area where he and Sarah Palin would disagree. I cannot find one area. So somehow he's the smartest guy in the Party and she's the stupidest woman on earth, but they agree on everything," — Bill Maher, on Paul Ryan.

I've never been a huge Bill Maher fan, but this is just too good to pass up. It's true that while Ryan may be more articulate and, yes, smarter than a disgraceful political opportunist like Sarah Palin, he's still no intellectual. Just as people (and by that I mean the MSM) have bought the idea without hesitation that Newt Gingrich is some kind of GOP philosophy king, when in fact he couldn't achieve tenure at a not-very-prestigious university, they've adopted the same kind of image for Paul Ryan. Someone needs to say, Well actually, this guy isn't as smart as we think he is.

Takes a comedian to point these things out. (Video of Maher's interview after the jump.)

Who's the Worst at Creating Jobs?

According to the raw data, Obama and Bush:

Since President Obama took office, fewer jobs were created than were lost. Actually, some 300,000 fewer Americans are employed then when the president took office. That’s mainly because a large number of jobs were lost during 2009 and the so-called recovery is the slowest one of all time, with very meek monthly job creation and weak economic growth.

Relevant chart here.

Writing about Writers

Martin Amis thinks the flowering of interest in literature and its creators is, in his words, entirely media-borne:

To put it crudely, the newspapers had been getting fatter and fatter (first the Sundays, then the Saturdays, then all the days in between), and what filled these extra pages was not additional news but additional features. And the featurists were running out of people to write about—running out of alcoholic actors, ne’er-do-well royals, depressive comedians, jailed rock stars, defecting ballet dancers, reclusive film directors, hysterical fashion models, indigent marquises, wife-beating footballers, adulterous golfers, and rapist boxers. The dragnet went on widening until journalists, often to their patent dismay, were writing about writers: literary writers.

Ouch

This is ancient by internet standards, but new to me. Dawkins on Romney:

Romney confuses Sikh with Sheikhbit.ly/N2Xh5z. Also confuses "Prophet" with "convicted conman using magic hat to read gold plates"
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) August 8, 2012

Reviving the War on Women?

Limbaugh victim Sandra Fluke recently penned a post in support of Obama on the HuffPo:

When I was verbally attacked earlier this year, I was heartened by the many Americans who reached out in support, regardless of their politics. President Obama was one of them....Mr. Romney was not. When Rush Limbaugh called me a "slut" and a "prostitute" for speaking about medical needs for contraception, Mr. Romney could only say that it "wasn't the language [he] would have used." If Mr. Romney can't stand up to the extreme voices in his own party, we know he'll never stand up for women and protect the rights that generations of women fought so hard to ensure.

Alana Goodman yawns:

Is Fluke really still trying to cash in on the Limbaugh controversy? It wasn’t a nice thing for him to say, but come on. It’s been six months. 

I have to say that my reaction was similarly dismissive. But Fluke makes a decent point in spite of her irrelevance as a public figure: that Romney's failure to speak out against Limbaugh's vitriol is no mere political fumble. Try if you will to forget that the author of the excerpt above is a current affairs has-been and consider what she's trying to say. She has a point, no?

(Image: "Sandra Fluke, a third-year law student at Georgetown University and former president of the Students for Reproductive Justice group there, testifies before the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee Feb. 23, 2012 in Washington." Getty, via Time)

Hope in Clintonomics

Obama has said, "My theories have been tested. The last time they were tried was by a guy named Bill Clinton. And we created 23 million new jobs, went from deficits to surplus, and we created a lot of millionaires to boot." Clinton is also set to play a major part of the Democratic Naitonal Convention next month. But is Obama right to have so much faith in Clintonesque policy? We should be sceptical:

Even if a budget akin to Clinton’s 1993 package were passed, the U.S. economy isn’t necessarily poised to reap the same benefits, at least in the short term: Interest rates are already at rock bottom, and they still haven’t encouraged the kind of borrowing that low interest rates spurred during the 1990s. What’s more, the other big factors that fueled 1990s growth had little to do with Clinton’s White House. “We had a period of rapid technological innovation, that was really when the Internet came full force as an economic event,” says [economist Mark] Zandi. What’s more, the US was still reaping the gains of former Fed Chair Paul Volcker’s successful battle against inflation in the 1980s, as interest rates were already on their way down when Clinton came into office, Zandi adds. 

Bruce Bartlett takes a different approach.

Protest by means of Withdrawal

Jeet Heer reviews a book which collects the most controversial New Yorker covers:

Mouly and Spiegelman were hired at The New Yorker in 1993 by Tina Brown, then at the start of her brief, contentious reign at the magazine. Brown herself was, if not exactly a radical (she hailed from the high-glitz world of Vanity Fair, after all), at least a provocateur, and she arrived with a mandate to revitalize the literary institution after her immediate predecessor Robert Gottlieb had failed to shake off the interminable torpor produced by William Shawn’s editorial dotage of the 1970s and 1980s. There were worse places to start than the cover. Characteristic of his perverse late-life preference for producing a sleep-inducing publication, Shawn once said that he wanted New Yorker covers to provide a “restful change” from the more eye-grabbing images offered by other magazines. As John Updike once noted, the tumultuous year 1968 — a time of assassinations, street protests, and international turmoil — was marked by New Yorker covers that showed

A world at peace with itself, of blooming trees and sleeping dogs, of students studying in libraries and voters lining up in docile multitudes at the democracy’s gigantic voting booth […] It is almost as if, during these troubled and contentious Sixties and Seventies, The New Yorker protested, on its covers, by means of withdrawal.

The magazine’s covers, as Shawn himself explained, “tend to be more aesthetic and the subject matter for the most part is New York City or the country around New York City. The suburbs, the countryside. Sometimes it’s just a still life of flowers or plants. It’s not supposed to be spectacular.”

Also, you might have heard about Jonah Lehrer fabricating Bob Dylan quotes. This isn't the first time such a thing has happened, we mustn't forget. And while we're on the topic of falsities and fact checking, here's an interview with the editor of the late Gore Vidal.

"Pure Style"

Paulo Coelho thinks James Joyce's Ulysses has been harmful for literature.

More Reasons to Hate TED

Yet another critical article:

In the world of TED—or, to use their argot, in the TED “ecosystem”—books become talks, talks become memes, memes become projects, projects become talks, talks become books—and so it goes ad infinitum in the sizzling Stakhanovite cycle of memetics, until any shade of depth or nuance disappears into the virtual void. Richard Dawkins, the father of memetics, should be very proud. Perhaps he can explain how “ideas worth spreading” become “ideas no footnotes can support.”

Previously on the Report here, here, and originally here.

Wrestling the Troll

Sam Harris confronts internet trolling, particularly in blog comment threads, in the context of his spat with PZ Myers:

Having a blog and building a large community of readers can destroy a person’s intellectual integrity—as appears to have happened in the case of PZ Myers. Many people who read his blog come away convinced that I am a racist who advocates the widespread use of torture and a nuclear first strike against the entire Muslim world. The most despicable claims about me appear in the comment thread, of course, but Myers is responsible for publishing them. And so I hold him responsible for circulating and amplifying some of the worst distortions of my views found on the Internet.

I don't have comments on this blog, but I do receive tweets and emails from readers. And I generally enjoy the feedback. But that's mostly because, I suspect, the extra effort required to respond acts as filter for the nastiness, which is generally done in haste and without thought. And the lack of an audience (emails are just between me and the reader, and most of the time so are tweets) reduces the reward for a narcissist looking to venture some snarky, snide comment. But in all seriousness, keep those responses coming.

Everything is Fiction

Keith Ridgway loves hearing people say they have no time for fiction:

When you tell yourself the story of your life, the story of your day, you edit and rewrite and weave a narrative out of a collection of random experiences and events. Your conversations are fiction. Your friends and loved ones—they are characters you have created. And your arguments with them are like meetings with an editor—please, they beseech you, you beseech them, rewrite me. You have a perception of the way things are, and you impose it on your memory, and in this way you think, in the same way that I think, that you are living something that is describable. When of course, what we actually live, what we actually experience—with our senses and our nerves—is a vast, absurd, beautiful, ridiculous chaos.

Conservatives and the State

Deep distrust of the state has always been a key component of American conservatism, and indeed American exceptionalism. But, as Francis Fukuyama points out in his column on conservatism in the US, the Right has taken this notional idea to a dangerous extreme. All too often, their vision of the ideal future confuses limited government with weak government. The problem with libertarians is that they are terribly concerned with the dangers of big government, but not at all concerned about the dangers of big business. Their ideological aversion to the very concept of government, if actually instituted, would probably help them see that the state is necessary but, admittedly, in need of reform:

Private sector companies have undergone huge changes in recent decades, flattening managerial hierarchies, upgrading workforce skills and experimenting ceaselessly with new organizational forms. American government, by contrast, seems trapped in a late 19th-century bureaucratic model of rules and hierarchy. 

The Moral Case for Drones

The philosopher Bradley Strawser has been making a bit of a stir lately over his comments regarding the morality of drone strikes, and that they should perhaps be regarded as morally permissible, or even ethically obligatory. In short:

The use of drones is ethical, both because they reduce the risk to the "just war fighters" involved in operating them and, as important, lower the number of innocent civilians killed in strikes compared with other forms of attack. Specifically: "Other things being equal," he writes, "using such technology is, in fact, obligatory," if it can reduce the risk to the person on the "just" side who is controlling the vehicle. In other words, if you can avoid putting a soldier or pilot at risk by using a missile fired from a ship or drone that would have the same effectiveness as one fired from a plane overhead or the ground nearby, you have a moral obligation not to put the soldiers in harm's way.

The article quoted above, by Mark LeVine, is not without its own flaws. And besides, after a little while it gets a bit weird (and funny):

Thankfully, the use of drones - whether based on facts or merely evidence of supposed wrong-doing (or thinking about wrong-doing, or just playing the wrong first-person shooter video game, which the NSA apparently determines is evidence enough that you want to harm the US) is, at least for now, not an option for most people. But soon enough, the same people who refuse to leave their homes unarmed will be travelling around with armed drones hovering over them or their cars, ready to attack anyone who unexpectedly comes to close to or raises its owner's pulse or blood pressure. Think George Zimmerman versus Trayvon Martin in the outer ring of the seventh circle of Hell, and you will have an idea of what life will be like, not in Afghanistan or Yemen, but in Texas or Colorado, once weaponised drones become only slightly more expensive than the remote controlled helicopter your child keeps bothering you to buy.

(Image: "Drones cause uproar everywhere they are used, and among the world's ethicists and lawyers." Gallo / Getty, via Al Jazeera)

An End to Catholic Ireland?

Irish people are ditching Catholicism faster than almost any other country:

An overwhelming 69% of Irish people declared themselves to be "a religious person" in the last survey conducted in 2005, but this has now plummeted to 47%. Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Catholic Communications Office said faith was not a "numbers game". And it said the latest survey contrasted sharply with last year's census in the Republic, which found that 84% described themselves as Catholic, and just 5% said they had no religion. But according to the latest research, the Republic is now in the top 10 for the number of people declaring themselves to be "a convinced atheist".

Mary Kenny is doubtful, and in an Irish context is sure to make a distinction between 'religion' and 'faith'.

Quote of the Day

"Romney is as bad as anyone can be. He's a dangerous man. He's a cruel man. He's a perfect creation for what the Republican party is all about. And that is to say, a rapacious capitalist. Anyone who ran Bain Capital is not your friend. All they're going to do is rape and pillage the land. That's what he did at Bain Capital and that's what he's going to continue to do. Plus he can go around and in this guise of being a good buisnessman, which he's not .... and this face – with the big grin and everything – is jovial, but hollow. And it's outrageous if you analyse what he's saying, because he'll say one thing and do the opposite," — Ry Cooder, in an interview with the Guardian.

Voting Is Not a Privilege

It's a right, and the GOP's odious effort to suggest otherwise are damaging American democracy:

All citizens are presumed to be equal in their right to vote. Yes, most felons do forfeit their right to vote, at least temporarily. (We argue about whether permanent forfeiture is legitimate, even after felons have “paid their debt to society.”) But if we take the equal right to vote seriously, we must not pass laws that implicitly treat voting as a privilege some are fitter than others to enjoy. To confuse that right with a privilege is to change the understanding of American citizenship, and not for the better.

Paul Ryan's Ayn Rand Worship

From the Lizza profile of Ryan I've been talking about today:

Like many conservatives, he claims to have been profoundly affected by Ayn Rand. After reading “Atlas Shrugged,” he told me, “I said, ‘Wow, I’ve got to check out this economics thing.’

Apparently he was very keen to have the staff in his congressional office read the work of the Russian emigre, from whose resolute atheism he is quick to distance himself, and was even known to make Christmas gifts of 'Atlas' for his young interns. He has given speeches to groups like the Atlas Society, a group for Randian devotees and ardent Objectivists, and has even gone so far as to say that "what’s unique about what’s happening today in government, in the world, in America, is that it’s as if we’re living in an Ayn Rand novel right now." Yep. That's what he thinks. "I think Ayn Rand did the best job of anybody to build a moral case of capitalism, and that morality of capitalism is under assault."

I've always aligned myself with the Hitchens line on the subject, which was that there's really no need to have writing advocating selfishness among human beings. "Some things require no further reinforcement." What's more, it seems not only unnecessary for individualism to have an apologist but downright absurd.

For Ryan to characterise democratic capitalism as moral is one thing. (Okay, you might say that. It would be more accurate to say that it's an imperfect but best-fit system, but then some apparently think it's fantastic.) It's quite another for him to openly advocate the work of a person whose main objective was to promote sole interest in oneself to the status of a virtue.

But now it seems Ryan has distanced himself from her in other senses too, not just her views on the divine, dismissing any liking for her as a youthful eccentricity. Now, apparently, Rand's atheism means her worldview is totally opposed to his own. "It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts," he said. "It is antithetical to my worldview." A smart move for someone who needs to court the Christian Right. Ryan's adult Randian streak is disturbing in itself, but his clumsy pivot on the subject to appease Christian voters implies more than an undertone of disingenuousness and insincerity. Take note of Romney's introduction, in which the obsequious Willard took pains to stress the "faithful Catholic" attribute of his potential Vice President. Apparently being called credulous is a compliment. Only in America.

Olympic Arms Race

Ian Johnson on the secret to national success at the Games:

The Death of Book Covers

It's being accelerated, naturally, by the arrival of e-books.

Chatroulette Me Maybe

This surely has to be the parody to end all Carly Rae Jepsen parodies:

Forrest Wickman attempts to pin down its strange appeal:

The reason this video makes Powers’ point so well—and the reason it’s so winning—is how happy so many of these random Chatroulette users become when they realize what’s happening. Even though several are shirtless dudes seemingly looking for something (don’t worry, the video is safe for work), some still can’t help but crack up and even sing along. There are exceptions—see the horrified face about 10 seconds in—but most smile and join in, with heartwarming results. If part of the appeal of Chatroulette is to get the view from the world’s computers, the view from here, at least, is pretty good.

The Case for a Maximum Income

François Hollande’s new proposed 75 percent tax bracket on income over $1.23 million sounds like a ridiculously good, if slightly freedom-curtailing idea. But before you balk at the thought: trust me, there's a reasonable case to be made for it. And Hamilton Nolan makes it:

Let's have a maximum annual income of, oh, $5 million, pegged to inflation. All income above that would be taxed at 99 percent. Our precious national sports stars, celebrities, and corporate executives could still be fabulously wealthy. The daydreaming poor could still have a nice big number about which to hopelessly dream. Five million dollars a year. Five million! Anyone with $5 million can invest it conservatively enough to earn 5 percent a year and still be making $250K per year without lifting a finger. In other words, $5 million provides you with the means to live as a member of the one percent without ever touching the principal. It's everything that any reasonable person could ask for, financially speaking.

Dylan Matthews points out the obvious economic problem with such a policy:

What Does the Ryan Pick Mean? Ctd

Historically, support for presidential candidates is assisted by the selection of a good running mate. That said, it was the Palin pick that disqualified McCain in the eyes of responsible voters. In some cases, the effect can be quite significant:


Nate Silver is doubtful that the addition of Ryan to the ticket will shift the polls in any meaningful sense:

Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan will get a lot of free exposure in the news media, and Republican voters will be excited by the pick and perhaps become more likely to respond to pollsters. In short, Democrats should probably not worry too much if the polls move slightly toward Mr. Romney over the next week or two. For that matter, Republicans probably should not worry much if the polls fail to move toward Mr. Romney, because of the circumstances of the pick. (What if the polls actually move discernibly against Mr. Romney? Well, that might be a bad sign for him.)

I'm coming round to the opinion that Romney really needs Paul Ryan. Not only as a substantiative tonic to his empty grandiloquence but as someone who can make the GOP candidate something more than an anti-Obama vote. Up until this point (and, part of me still suspects, for the rest of the campaign) the Romney campaign has relied upon the fatal assumption that this election is all about assessing the president's performance: a vote for Romney being a vote against Obama. The policy differences until now have been immaterial, as I've said before. And what Ryan really brings to the Romney package is a Washington background to an executive front. (Isn't it strange that Romney constantly touts his business experience as a 'must-have' attribute for public office, and then elects to choose a Washington wonk for a running mate?) Lizza was right.

(Image: WSJ)

Define "Armed Forces"

Rosa Brooks says the line is blurring even further between civilians and the military:

Complicating matters even more, the decline in the military's tooth-to-tail ratio has been paralleled by a rise in civilian organizations (public and private) engaging in what look suspiciously like traditional military activities. The CIA has gone kinetic, for instance, with paramilitary forces that engage in direct action, often working hand in hand with military special operations forces. And for-profit private military companies increasingly place civilian contractors in jobs that resemble combat positions in all but name.

Mandatory Olympic Enthusiasm

Hosting the Olympics has left many Brits rollings their eyes. Norman Geras engages in some counter-eye rolling:

The truth is that if you don't like it, you can shut it out, and it's no more than weak will or a failure of personal discipline to complain about stuff others are pressing upon you, when you can simply switch off, not read, do something else. If I may cite my own case as an Olympics now-and-againer: I've enjoyed quite a few events - the ones that interest me and some odds and ends casually watched - and ignored everything I didn't want to see or didn't have time for; I've read almost nothing from the daily press coverage. Just like that. Anyone who pleads they're overwhelmed by the hype is someone wanting to be annoyed.

And the NYT is surprised at the enthusiasm. Though someone should really tell them that the whole 'stiff upper lip' thing doesn't really exist.

The Physics of the Perfect Dive

There's a tumblr dedicated to "celebrating the fluid dynamics of sport." From the entry on diving:

Divers twist and spin gracefully in the air, but the highest marks come when they enter the water with little to no splash. This rip entry—named after paper-ripping sound characteristic of such a dive—is possible thanks to fluid dynamics. Any time a solid object enters a still liquid, it tears a cavity into the liquid. The smaller this cavity is, the less the liquid will rebound and splash when the cavity gets refilled. In diving, achieving a small splash requires a couple items. First, the diver will grab his hands over his head to form a flat surface. This will create the initial small cavity through which his body follows. When entering, the diver will keep his body straight and rigid, with arms pressed against his head; this adds stability to keep the diver from letting the force of striking the water at 35 mph affect his body’s form and create splash. Finally, the perfect dive enters vertical to the water surface. This ensures that all of the diver’s body finds its way into that cavity created by the hands without striking any undisturbed water. Once under the water, divers often extend their arms to generate enough drag to slow down quickly. All in all, the rip entry minimizes the cavity size and thus the splash, adding a great exclamation point to a beautiful dive.

(Image: "Tom Daley of Great Britain competes in the Men's 10m Platform Diving Final on Day 15 of the London 2012 Olympic Games." Al Bello / Getty)

What Does the Ryan Pick Mean?

Democrats seem to be just as pleased by the pick as conservatives. As Ryan Lizza points out in his profile of Ryan in the New Yorker, he brings a solid policy base to a GOP side in which concrete policy proposals have been conspicuously lacking. Even the White House embraced Ryan's budget plan as indicative of the wider Republican philosophy, so that they'd actually have something to critique. In response to the budget, Obama said pointedly, "I believe it paints a vision of our future that’s deeply pessimistic. There’s nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending a trillion dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. And I don’t think there’s anything courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don’t have any clout on Capitol Hill."

The takeaway line from Lizza's essay about the rising star was pretty simple: "To envisage what Republicans would do if they win in November, the person to understand is not necessarily Romney, who has been a policy cipher all his public life. The person to understand is Paul Ryan." Indeed, this a pick which brings not only a second, possibly more endearing face to the Romney product but actually much of the substance. Ryan is being relied upon to inject not only Palinesque energy but a sense that there's some specificity to be found among all of Romney's vague, moist — and above all, emotive — rhetoric.

Although both sides of the spectrum are rejoicing, John Dickerson is probably right to say that the Democrats shouldn't be:

Perhaps Romney can take a vision graft from Ryan. He'll have to, because voters won't be lured by Ryan's ideas unless the man at the top of the ticket makes the case for them. But for all of the talk of a new emphasis on policy specifics, this is still going to be a campaign deeply connected to American values. When Ryan spoke on Saturday, he talked about the threat Obama poses to the American way of life. Underneath every policy debate will be the argument that when tough choices have to be made about the federal government, you're going to want candidates who share your values when they're doing the awful math of scarcity.

The Romney choice represents a significant adaptation from the plan that the campaign had been running before, which relied mostly on keeping the campaign focused on Barack Obama's record. By picking Ryan, who comes with a very detailed set of ideas and proposals, Romney has embraced the view that he needs to run a campaign that offers bright alternatives to Obama's vision. Even the Romney bus sends this message. It has been redesigned on the outside to read "The Romney Plan."

For the first time, it seems as though a vote for Mitt Romney won't simply be a vote against Obama.

Veepstakes: And the Nominee Is...

Paul Ryan, according to Weigel and a number of others.

Marilyn's Immortal Appeal

Maureen Dowd devoted her column to the enduring icon last week, fifty years after Monroe's death:

Wherever I travel in the world, I run across the luminous image of the heartbreaking and breathtaking sex symbol who was smart enough to become the most famous “dumb blonde” of the 20th century. Marilyn, her white pleated halter dress flying up over the New York subway grate, is as deeply etched in the global imagination as Audrey Hepburn in a black Givenchy dress at Tiffany’s.

David Thomson attempts to unravel the mystery surrounding her death, and, come to think of it, her life:

Monroe escaped the real lust of Norman Mailer but reduced the more kindly Arthur Miller to despair; she was a great actress thwarted by an unkind system, or she was a knowing sexpot who worked very hard on her looks and her voice to play the dumb blonde stupid men expected. She longed to play O’Neill or Chekhov, or was she in her element doing Sugar Kane in Some Like It Hot? She was an Actors Studio tragedienne, or she knew that her career lay in movies that made dirty jokes behind her back. Keep all of those scenes, and what does it amount to—the plausible and human possibility that she was a mess who never worked her life out?

The Semantics of Feminism

Caitlin Moran, whose book was covered briefly on the Report here, posits that every woman in this century is a feminist by default:

Prosthetic Advantage, Ctd

So if it's okay to compete in both the Olympics and the Paralympics, as Oscar Pistorius is, then there's a case to be made for scrapping the latter altogether in the interest of disabled athletes:

In a combined event, medals won by para-athletes would contribute to their nation’s medal count. That would perhaps be the most meaningful change of all—one that already makes a difference at the Commonwealth Games, according to David Grevemberg, CEO of the 2014 event. With patriotism in play, the best physically challenged athletes would develop a fan base.

Where Is Romney's Actual Policy?

You may have noticed that when it comes to policy, Romney is rather vague. While the style over substance charge is generally directed at the president (whose emotive speeches captured voters' collective enthusiasm in 2008), it's probably Romney who should be getting the flack. With regard to the lack of any concrete details on economic policy in particular, the gap can be summarised succinctly: Obama has proposed policies — real policies. Romney hasn't. Ezra Klein on the massive 'policy gap' between the two:

You might say that this is the natural result of an incumbent running against a challenger. Obama, by virtue of being president, has to develop detailed policies, and he oversees a massive bureaucracy able to help him get specific. Romney, by virtue of his not yet having Obama’s job, does not.

But in 2008, John McCain ran on a far more detailed policy platform than Romney. To name just one example, like Romney, McCain promised to end the tax code’s discrimination against health insurance bought by individuals. But he told us how he would do it: by taxing employer-based insurance and using the savings to give families a $5,000 tax credit to put toward buying health insurance. Nor has Romney released anything that matches “Renewing America’s Purpose,” the 457-page policy book that George W. Bush released during the 2000 election. Romney’s vagueness is unique among modern presidential campaigns.

He recently elaborated on the disparity, saying that it isn't Romney's personality that's to blame for the lack of specificity:

Can You Fake Mental Illness?

In the case of accused killers like James Holmes, it's considered a matter of debate whether or not their apparent insanity is put on or genuine. It seems as though it might be relatively easy for a good actor to build a case around insanity where, in fact, they're mostly sound. But, as it turns out, forensic psychologists can generally tell if someone's insanity is purely an act:

Malingerers often exaggerate their symptoms and ignore common, subtle signs such as the blunting of a mentally ill patient’s emotions. Some fakers say one thing and do another. They might feign confusion to the psychiatrist but later converse easily with cell-mates, or claim to be paranoid while sitting at ease. Some combine symptoms from different conditions, such as hallucinations of schizophrenia and obscene outbursts found in Tourette’s syndrome. The forensic psychologist may suggest an outrageous delusion during the interview, such as, “Do you believe cars are part of an organized religion?” Fakers might latch onto this bait and perhaps even run with it. Real schizophrenics would say no.

(Image: "Colorado shooting suspect James Eagan Holmes attends his first court appearance in Aurora, Colorado." Reuters)

Media Critic-in-Chief

An indication of Obama's media diet:

A writer before he was a politician, Mr. Obama is a voracious consumer of news, reading newspapers and magazines on his iPad and in print and dipping into blogs and Twitter. He regularly gives aides detailed descriptions of articles that he liked, and he can be thin-skinned about those that he does not.

Even though George Bush is known to be widely-read, his frightening/hilarious remark about 'reading the headlines' only perpetuated the (at least partly accurate) perception of him as a president who is uninformed, incurious, and apparently quite proud of both qualities. But it contrasts even better with Sarah Palin's response to a reporter who asked which newspapers she read. She seemed to think it was a trick question.

Let's Get Bigfoot!

The latest trend in documentary television.

Prosthetic Advantage

Olympic runner Oscar Pistorius has been the subject of discussion in the scientific community of late. Some say his carbon fibre blades give him an unfair advantage:

One of the biggest points of contention is limb-repositioning time. The average elite male sprinter moves his leg from back to front in 0.37 second. The five most recent world record holders in the 100-meter dash averaged 0.34 second. Pistorius swings his leg in 0.28 second, largely because his Cheetah's are lighter than a regular human leg. Pistorius's rivals are swinging a lower leg that weighs about 5.7 kilograms, whereas his lower leg only weighs 2.4 kilograms.

But most of the evidence would suggest otherwise:

Once Pistorius is off the blocks, he faces two distinct obstacles: navigating the two turns of the 400-meter race without an ankle, and compensating for the relative lack of energy generated by his strides. The Cheetah works like a basic spring, compressing when it hits the ground and storing potential energy, which it then releases as kinetic energy as the blade returns to its natural position. But the spring only returns about 90 percent of the energy generated by a runner's stride, according to a study released by Ossur. An able-bodied leg and foot, on the other hand, can return as much as 240 percent.

Some scientists continue to argue that Pistorius gains a degree of competitive advantage with the Cheetahs, a debate chronicled in a comprehensive Scientific American article. They reason that Pistorius' blades are much lighter than a human foot, which allows him to swing the blades faster and generate more force with each stride. But when the people who actually make and test the Cheetah say there is no competitive advantage for blade running over biological foot running, the naysayers' arguments lose a lot of credibility.

(Image: Reuters)

Progress Here, Regress There, Ctd

Remember the reaffirmation made by the Boy Scouts of America with regard to their ban on gay people? Describing it as a policy we should oppose, as Obama did via a spokesperson, would almost certainly be an understatement of the highest order; we shouldn't just oppose it, we should be vocally appalled by it. In a statement given to Metro Weekly, White House spokesman Shin Inouye said that Obama believes the Boy Scouts of America, an organisation of which he is the honorary president, is a "valuable" one "that has helped educate and build character in American boys for more than a century."  The president, Inouye went on to say, opposes discrimination in all its forms, including on the basis of sexual orientation.

I happen to think that if Obama really wanted to make a bold statement in support of the rights of LGBT people — especially youth — then it would require a great deal more than a hesitant backing of gay marriage and some timid, vicarious criticism of what is in essence an openly-discriminatory, anti-gay institution. Something tells me it's far from good political practice, let alone good moral practice, for the president of the United States to be the figurehead of such a group.

Given how long it took him to come around to equal marriage rights, it would be awfully disappointing if he were to fall short of publicly denouncing bigotry like this. And it's denunciation that this kind of blatantly discriminatory thing needs — that is, if we're to realise a few very basic rights for all people (one of which is freedom from discrimination).

When the Olympics Gave Out Medals for Art

Joseph Stromberg mulls over the Olympiad's forgotten art events:

For the first four decades of competition, the Olympics awarded official medals for painting, sculpture, architecture, literature and music, alongside those for the athletic competitions. From 1912 to 1952, juries awarded a total of 151 medals to original works in the fine arts inspired by athletic endeavors. Now, on the eve of the 100th anniversary of the first artistic competition, even Olympics fanatics are unaware that arts, along with athletics, were a part of the modern Games nearly from the start. 

Does Romney Belong to a Cult? Ctd

Adam Gopnik confronts the question in his examination of Mormonism and its meaning:

All of which leads to the inevitable question: To what degree is Mormonism responsible for Mitt Romney? Is there a thread, dark or golden, that runs from Moroni to Mitt? Garry Wills has argued, after all, that Irish Catholic ideas about sin—that sin is negotiable currency, to be practiced, done penance for, forgiven—allowed John Kennedy some serenity as he screwed his way through the White House typing pool, just as the habits of Protestant Evangelical belief, in forgiveness and temptation and forgiveness, in a never-ending cycle, helped Bill Clinton find a common language with working-class people.

Subversive Superstition

Concern over magical thinking was mostly because it was considered a threat to the authority of the Church, and because magical belief offered a life outside its carefully-cultivated hierarchies:

Little had changed; people still felt powerless in the face of nature, but now instead of turning to magicians, they blamed them. The Church, after all, rarely attacked sympathetic magic on the grounds that it was empirically fallacious or ineffective—rather, it was a rival source of power. Among the many scandalous aspects of witches’ sabbaths as they were popularly depicted was the commingling of social classes: women—and increasingly men—of all walks of life, from peasants to the aristocracy, all were equal at the Midnight Mass. This vision of a dark Utopia was as threatening—if not more so—than any of the black rites practiced therein.

The passage is from Colin Dickey's piece on superstition in Lapham's. In the final few paragraphs, he essays an explanation for why we still in various forms cling to irrational thinking, even in this age of "hyperrationalism." Furthermore, he quotes Joan Didion, whose book The Year of Magical Thinking examined her irrational response to the death of her husband John Dunne. Both are worth reading.

(Image: "Black Cat Auditions In Hollywood, 1961." Ralph Crane, via LIFE)

Olympic Conspiracies

"The Opening Ceremony Was a Satanic Illuminati Occult Ritual" and other fun tales.

Prideful Hate

In response to the Chick-fil-A controversy, you get this. And those were some of the milder and — okay, I'll allow myself this — less misspelt tweets on the subject. It was the company's president, Dan Cathy, who said, "I pray God’s mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to define what marriage is about." Jesse Bering predicts that the whole event will do untold harm, especially to teenagers:

It is society that is sick, not the sexual minorities. Yet the most tragic thing about this admittedly odd cultural flare-up involving a chicken chain and gay rights is that there are countless—and I mean that quite literally, since I suspect many will be inspired to retreat permanently into their closets after an incident so vile as this—gay teenagers and young adults who have been watching in silent terror as it has all unfolded. For them, every single body on proud display at the “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day,” not to mention those leaning out of their car windows to scream “faggots!” and “dykes!” at gay couples milling about or kissing, was a tangible reminder of just how much they really do have to fear in this country. (Meanwhile, we’re trying to convince them that “It Gets Better.”) So know this: From the unspoken perspective of all the petrified, closeted 15-year-olds out there (I used to be one myself, after all), it makes absolutely no difference, none whatsoever, what your motives are in rallying behind Chick-fil-A. All they see is your raw hate.

Earlier post here.

Quote of the Day

"It’s not class anymore. It’s money. And for very good reason. Money is a much more fluid medium than class, and much more measurable, too, than class. It was a protest, if it was that, to any extent, against privation. It is the sort of society where—it’s not very rational—people look at fame and feel deprived if they haven’t got it, feeling that this is a basic, almost a human right—a civil right. And also feel the same way about wealth, I suppose—Why haven’t I got it? And plenty of people have got it who don’t deserve it. It’s as if it’s all up there for grabs, but it isn’t coming their way," — Martin Amis, when asked about the role of class in his new novel.

"Mrs. Assad Duped Me"

Joan Juliet Buck tells the story of her infamous interview with Syria's first lady. (The article in question, incidentally, seems to have been made impossible to find online by Vogue, the magazine which both commissioned and published it.)

The Merits of Hitchcock

Vertigo came out on top of Citizen Kane in Sight and Sound magazine's hit parade of the greatest films of all time. Armond White thinks the de-throning of the classic Kane in favour of Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece reflects a cultural desire to be different:

Perhaps Vertigo’s victory frees us from traditional authoritarianism (we should learn to develop our own taste, ignoring fashion) but it ushers in another tyranny. It is the triumph of “smartness” whereas the very nature of Kane’s prodigious exercise of cinema’s potential was actually a celebration–like the 1952 Singin’ in the Rain (which also fell off Sight & Sound’s top ten list). Recognizing the art of cinema as popular pleasure is frowned upon in fashionable criticism. A movie that impacts the culture like Kane always did provides a foundation for wider experience; a film that doesn’t, doesn’t.

James Wolcott agrees:

Between Austerity and Growth

When it comes to Europe's economic dilemma, it's easy to incorrectly think of it as a binary choice:

If Europe, and especially its periphery, were to build on the structural growth agenda that it has already begun, it could pursue growth even as it implements needed budget discipline. The combination would avoid fiscal profligacy as well as the vicious cycle that comes from a single-minded focus on austerity. If the initial lift from structural reform cannot counteract all the immediate contractionary effects of austerity, it could surely ameliorate them—and lay the groundwork for a more impressive and lasting recovery.

Paging All Undecided Voters

Ross Douthat puts Obama's strategy thusly:

If you’re an undecided, stuck-in-the-middle kind of voter, the president isn’t meeting you halfway on the issues, or pledging to revive the dream of postpartisanship that he campaigned on last time. He’s just saying that you’ve got no choice but to stick with him, because Romney is too malignant to be trusted.

He goes on to explain that by taking this position, the president is putting himself at odds with the logic of lefty bloggers and MSNBC contributors, who seem to think that a stronger, more ideologically-driven liberalism would be a politically beneficial. But it's the president's logic that makes sense here. As Douthat puts it, the "undecided, stuck-in-the-middle" people are the ones to win. Those to whom greater liberalism is desirable aren't going to vote for the conservative if their incumbent liberal isn't liberal enough.

I think you get my point.

Contrary to the Romneyland logic, winning over the undecided voters won't be a simple matter of convincing the public that their president is an underperformer who hates small businesses. They'll have to combat the Obama-projected image of their candidate as a Mormon Scrooge with a penchant for outsourcing and a perverse affinity for tax-evasion. At its most practical level, this election like almost any other is really about persuading the persuadable. And there are many more such people than you might suspect:

Eliot's Letters

David Collard reviews a new collection of T.S. Eliot's correspondence:

Was he a great letter writer? Not on the evidence gathered here - although we are offered a vivid picture of the single-handed daily management of a high-minded literary magazine. Few of the Criterion letters are riveting or revelatory, and are couched in a scrupulously courteous register that becomes wearisome when read in quantity. But the dazzling roster of correspondents makes even the most humdrum exchanges of interest. The big names - Wyndham Lewis, Ezra Pound, Virginia Woolf and W B Yeats - are well represented, along with an illustrious cast of literary worthies from Auden (his first appearance in the letters being a courteous rejection note) to Gertrude Stein (another rejection, rather less courteous), Robert Graves (a quarrel) and Thomas McGreevy, Criterion contributor and close friend of Samuel Beckett, whose recently published letters vie with Eliot's as essential purchases for anyone with an interest in modern writing.

Gay and Proud in Uganda

Alexis Okeowo went to see the first gay pride parade in Uganda, which, based on its appalling record on LGBT rights, is widely panned as the worst place to live if you're gay:

People swam, drank, and danced as a D.J. played loud music. I met people like Akram, who operates a “gay-video library.” Activist Frank Mugisha, who appeared dressed in a sailor’s costume with a rainbow sash and called himself Captain Pride, told me, “I just wish I had a switch to turn on that would make everyone who’s gay say they are gay. Then everyone who is homophobic can realize their brothers, their sisters, and their aunts are gay.” He confessed that he was shocked to see so many people in attendance.

More on Uganda's shameful gay rights violations here.

Demanding Gun Control

A campaign has been launched by victims of the Tucson shootings to advocate a plan to end gun violence:

More than 48,000 Americans will be murdered with guns during the next president’s term. That’s why I’m calling on you to step forward with a substantive plan to end gun violence. What we need from our nation’s leaders is more than just a moment of silence -- we need a moment of courage.

Songs in the Key of Death

It turns out that America's morbid funeral industry relies largely on one man for its ambient mourning music:

But mourners don’t simply want “Scarborough Fair”—they want “Scarborough Fair” through a David Young filter, what the advertisement for Young’s music describes as “semi-spiritual.” The spirituality is “semi” in that it lends itself commercially to distribution agreements with corporations who manufacture embalming chemicals, but is still moving enough to preserve the emotional sanctity of our rituals for death. In a church funeral, hymns and music at prescribed moments bring on a wave of grief we desire and expect, and one that swells and then—crucially—subsides as the music ends....David Young’s music, when it shows up at a funeral home, doesn’t ask much of a listener in terms of attention, reverence, or devotion. The spirituality comes easy, and so do the emotions—if they come at all.

Rahm Emanuel's Good Intentions

Glenn Greenwald characterises Emanuel's Chik-fil-A decision as a dangerous attack on free speech:

If you support what Emanuel is doing here, then you should be equally supportive of a Mayor in Texas or a Governor in Idaho who blocks businesses from opening if they are run by those who support same-sex marriage — or who oppose American wars, or who support reproductive rights, or who favor single-payer health care, or which donates to LGBT groups and Planned Parenthood, on the ground that such views are offensive to Christian or conservative residents. You can’t cheer when political officials punish the expression of views you dislike and then expect to be taken seriously when you wrap yourself in the banner of free speech in order to protest state punishment of views you like and share. Free speech rights means that government officials are barred from creating lists of approved and disapproved political ideas and then using the power of the state to enforce those preferences.

(Image: "Graffiti is painted over on the exterior wall of Chick-fil-A restaurant in Torrance, Calif., on Friday. Gay rights activists held kiss demonstrations at Chick-fil-A stores Friday, just days after the company set a sales record when customers flocked to the restaurants to show support for the fast-food chain owner's opposition to gay marriage." Via the AP)

Our Debt to the Greeks

Epicurus reflected rather self-righteously that "vain is the word of that philosopher which does not heal any suffering of man." Brendan Boyle points out that by that measure, contemporary philosophy seems pretty vain:

Does Romney Belong to a Cult? Ctd

I feel as though Walter Kirn is directly addressing me in this bit of his essay, "Confessions of an Ex-Mormon":

I’d never been a good Mormon, as you’ll soon learn (indeed, I’m not a Mormon at all these days), but the talk of religion spurred by Romney’s run had aroused in me feelings of surprising intensity. Attacks on Mormonism by liberal wits and their unlikely partners in ridicule, conservative evangelical Christians, instantly filled me with resentment, particularly when they made mention of “magic underwear” and other supposedly spooky, cultish aspects of Mormon doctrine and theology. On the other hand, legitimate reminders of the Church hierarchy’s decisive support for Proposition 8, the California gay marriage ban, disgusted me. Deeper, trickier emotions surfaced whenever I came across the media’s favorite visual emblem of the faith: a young male missionary in a shirt and tie with a black plastic name-badge pinned to his vest pocket. The image suggested that Mormons were squares and robots, a naïve, brainwashed army of the out-of-touch. That hurt a bit. It also tugged me back to a sad, frightened moment in my youth when these figures of fun were all my family had.

You can see why here.

Mitt Romney's Wimp Problem

Michael Tomasky thinks Romney has been awfully wimpy lately — over tax returns, answering questions from reporters, and so on — and may actually be a wimp. He wonders how the 'insecure' Romney will cope in the company of swaggersome Dubya and Reagan:

A good-looking guy doesn’t have to walk around saying, “Hey, look at me!” He knows everyone’s looking. And a rich guy doesn’t have to remind us he’s rich. When he does, something’s off. It looks insecure. Romney is the genuine article: a true wimp. Oh, there are some ways in which he’s not—a wimp lets himself get kicked around, and Romney doesn’t exactly do that. He sure didn’t during the primaries, when he strafed Rick Perry and carpet-bombed Rick Santorum (but note that they were both weaker than he). In some respects, he’s more weenie than wimp—socially inept; at times awkwardy ingratiating, at other times mocking those “below” him, but almost always getting the situation a little wrong, and never in a sympathetic way.

I think 'wimp' might be taking it a bit far, but Tomasky's right about the insecurity, the social ineptitude, and the fawning obsequiousness. Romney tries too hard, laughs awkwardly in uncomfortable situations, and rarely gives the 'straight' answer. Maybe Tomasky's right: he is a wimp.