Feigned Outrage

And My Adopted NHL Team Is . . .

2011-06-26T20:54:00.005-04:00

PHUTATORIUS
[wait for it]

[wait for it]

now click the "More..." button for the reveal . . .
More...
. . . the New Winnipeg Jets.

This had to happen, for a number of reasons. To this point, I never felt any compulsion to sign on as a fan of any particular hockey team. Obviously, there is no Cleveland-based team at hockey's top level. It might be said as well, at least arguably, that there is no Cleveland-based team at the top level of any sport, but hockey is distinctive in the respect that there is not actually a team in the NHL that plays its home games in Cleveland.

And so, lacking any family rooting tradition growing up, I wrote off professional hockey. I can't claim any memories of my father listening to hockey games on the radio in the garage, or in the car as we sat in the shopping mall parking lot waiting for my mother to get her fill of J.G. Hook, Evan Picone and other department-store designers. But I feel now a compelling need to pick a hockey team — and pick one fast — because over the last couple weeks I caught myself, once or twice, pulling for the Boston Bruins. And this gravely concerned me.

I've lived in Boston for some thirteen years now, and I wear my disdain — no, let's run with it: my abhorrence — of all Boston sports teams as something of a badge of honor. The '99 Indians playoff losses at Fenway (which I attended) got me started, Manny Ramirez's November 2000 departure overshadowed in my mind the constitutional crisis brought on by the deadlocked Presidential elections, and as much as I supported the Sox in their 2004 bid for the World Series championship, the unspeakable events of November 2007 left me about as embittered and resentful as any Bay State resident can be toward his neighbors. The Celtics recently thwarted the Cavs, the Patriots are the Patriots (and yet somehow the least offensive to me of the Hub's three big-time, non Versus-channel sports franchises), and I've heard enough from Boston fans — on sports talk radio, in Fenway, Gillette, and the Gahden — to want them to know no fan experience other than those associated with defeat, degradation, and demoralization. And the worst thing about it is, of course, that these days the Boston teams do nothing but win championships.

All that said, I have to say I got caught up in the Bs' Stanley Cup run. It helped that the Canucks played like a bunch of thugs, but even so, there remains the fact that the 2010-2011 Bruins were an exceedingly likable team.

I don't like feeling this way. I don't like it at all. And I think I've been vulnerable to suggestion here, and to the undue influence of my the local subbacultcha as well, precisely because as far as hockey goes, I have no overriding loyalty to another team.

Um, let's fix this now. And to do that, let's start with first principles: the default rule in sports fandom is to pick the team that sits geographically closest to your hometown. That won't happen here. The very suggestion that I might support a team from Pittsburgh, wearing black and yellow, sets my stomach abroil and my guts churning. Next closest is Detroit, but there are lines I do not cross, and the Ohio-Michigan border is one of them. Consider, too, that both teams have been historically, as well as recently, successful. Selecting either of them doesn't feel right to a Cleveland fan. It seems too cheap. Too easy. The Blue Jackets might be an option, but to tell the truth, I flat forgot about them until I went back to proofread this paragraph. That's not a good sign.

I suppose the fallback rule, when strict application of the Hometown Rule would sicken you, is to adopt the team that resides in the town you live in now. And that brings us back to D'oh! The whole point of this project is to resist the siren song of the Boston Bruins. No, I will not be governed by rules here. I've had the Indians, Browns, and Cavaliers inflicted upon me. Over this I had no control. In this single instance, I arrogate to myself the right to choose a sports team. And there's nothing for this Cleveland fan not to like about the New Winnipeg Jets.

First, you've got to love a hockey team that moves to Canada from Atlanta. This is a sign of the natural order of things reasserting itself.

Second, some time ago Winnipeg lost its first set of Jets. Now a new team arrives in town, and resisting the impulse to "start afresh" with a new team name and jazzy branding — like Washington did with its "Nationals": seriously, why not just name your team the Washington Adjectives? — the city of Winnipeg goes right back to its Jets of old. Where have we seen this scenario played out before? Let this be a sign unto you, fellow Clevelanders.

Third, what I do know about hockey derives almost entirely from the three years I spent in college playing EA Sports' NHL Hockey series on the Sega Genesis. The 1993 NHLPA version of the game was to my mind the strongest, and the most bitterly contested in the dorms. For reasons I don't really remember, the team I played with — and mastered — was the Winnipeg Jets. Yeah, I flirted with Lemieux's Penguins, but it made me feel dirty (see above). I played with Washington ("Shingtonwa," we called them) and the Rangers, too. I saw my share of Rangers games when I lived in New York, and if I can be fairly said to have an All-Time Favorite Actual Hockey Player, it's Mark Messier.

But more important to me and my daily life as a college student was my All-Time Favorite Sega Hockey Player, who wasn't Messier (although he was a beast). My ATFSHP was Old #6, defenseman for the Winnipeg Jets, PHILIP FRANCIS HOUSLEY. Phil Housley was a frickin' awesome Sega hockey player, and I daresay he and I had a kind of chemistry that made him an even better player, even more unstoppable in defense and in the attacking zone, when my two thumbs were on the controller. I can't say for sure this was true, but there was just something there. And I gather from the Internets that Housley also existed and flourished in real life. Go figure.

Fourth, I'm conditioned to root for the underdog. Now gentle citizens of Winnipeg, please forgive me if, lacking anything close to full knowledge of your city's resources and the team roster you've inherited from the erstwhile Atlanta Thrashers, I should peg your new hockey franchise as a small-market underdog. You are located in frigid, sparsely populated Manitoba, after all. You're north of North Dakota. And that means something to me.

Fifth, and finally, I have a good friend from Winnipeg. He's told me what the Jets meant to his hometown and what it means to have them back. And he lives in Boston, so we'll have one another's back when our newly beloved team skates into the Garden next year.

Yes, this just feels right.

The Boston Herald Pitches a Fit

2011-05-19T09:41:00.009-04:00

The Boston Herald reports that "Outrage Builds [at the Boston Herald] over Obama Snub of . . ."

— wait for it —

". . . the Herald." Howie Carr likens the snub, described elsewhere by the Herald as a "freezing out" of "full access" to cover the President's visit to Boston, to inclusion on President Nixon's "Enemies List."

And one sees straightaway why the Obama Administration is disinclined to extend to the Herald the full array of access privileges available to serious journalists.
More...
Let's be clear: this isn't a First Amendment issue. Denying "full access" to the President isn't censorship, even if, as it appears, the decision was made at least in part because Obama's aides think the Herald has not treated him "fairly." There is a press pool. It's crowded, there is limited space, and it sits amply within the Administration's discretion to decide how to allocate that space.

Is a review of a paper's previous coverage for "fairness" an appropriate consideration in allocating that space? To be sure, the Administration's decision sounds punitive. White House spokesman Matt Lehrich explained his thinking as follows:

I tend to consider the degree to which papers have demonstrated to covering the White House regularly and fairly in determining local pool reporters. . . . I think (the Romney op-ed) raises a fair question about whether the paper is unbiased in its coverage of the president’s visits.

Now I don't think anyone can deny that Lehrich made a poor tactical decision writing all this down in an email message for the Herald to reprint. And I'll admit, too, that claims of bias are tiresome and we all should be "troubled" whenever a government figure takes action against a reporter based on what he writes. But let's pause to consider what that action was: "freezing out" of "full access" to the President's visit to the Hub. Not exactly jack-booted thugs kicking down a door and shooting up the Herald's printing press. And with a reporter from Human Events currently holding a chair in the White House briefing room, I'm pretty comfortable that the White House isn't excluding contrary viewpoints.

But that said, a decision to deny the Herald "full access" is entirely consistent with an important theme that the President himself continues to articulate: in recent years our politics have deteriorated to the point where they severely inhibit our ability even to identify seriously problems, much less work together to solve them. And the President is not wrong to assign to the media a share of the responsibility for the deterioration of our politics.

One look at Carr's gagged-up slurry of petulant populism (yeah, Howie: it doesn't take a genius to write this way) — which of course wouldn't have been complete without references to the President as "Hussein" and descriptions of Globe reporters as "spayed" and "neutered" — makes it quite clear that the Administration wasn't wrong to conclude that maybe someone other than the Herald deserved one of the coveted "full access" slots.

Carr writes:

The Herald is for people who didn’t move here from New York to look down their noses at everyone who has calluses on their hands, who aren’t consumed by guilt about the trust funds that support them in their leisure.

Yes, fine, Howie. But I think the President's point is that the folks with calluses on their hands are owed something better than what you and your colleagues give them every day. You can have your tantrums, Boston Herald, and you can forgo actual news to devote no fewer than 5 stories and columns in today's paper to your trumped-up incident of press martyrdom and "we speak truth to power" meme. Nobody's going to shut down your press. But we don't have to take you so seriously as to put you on the White House bus. And we don't, either, need to accept your strained Nixon analogies, which would make you who? Woodward and Bernstein?

Please.

WikiLeaks, Subprime Lenders, & "Government Pressure"

2010-12-10T12:53:00.014-05:00

Anyone following the WikiLeaks story knows that the website itself has been as much on the run as its principals — and now, with Assange in the custody of the British authorities awaiting extradition to Sweden, perhaps even more so. Amazon recently gave WikiLeaks.org the boot, the site recently lost its .org domain name, and if you're interested in supporting the WikiLeaks organization, PayPal, MasterCard, and Visa can't help you.

These results have generally been attributed to "pressure" from the United States government, and depending on where you sit politically, your reason to cry foul might range from the thoughtful ("This sort of extrajudicial pressure is undemocratic.") to, you know, hers ("C'mon, Obama: deploy the snipers, already.").
More...
Let's put aside for the moment protests from the State Department and DOJ that they have not, in fact, been working the phones with the credit card companies.

If you are a cardholder calling about abusive finance charges, press 1. If you are Hillary Clinton, and you're calling about WikiLeaks, press 2 . . .

Even taking State and Justice at their word, the U.S. government has — ahem — other instrumentalities that can do this sort of behind-the-scenes work. And for that matter, the government can apply pressure on WikiLeaks's corporate contractors without contacting them directly. The nationally broadcast rumblings from a certain U.S. Senator against the New York Times, word from DOJ that it is continues to consider its criminal enforcement options against Assange — this sort of thing raises red flags for the legal and PR departments of large corporate institutions. Talk of government action against WikiLeaks and, more importantly, another large corporate institution that has had dealings with WikiLeaks, might certainly be enough to give Amazon pause to think about how important its hosting relationship with WikiLeaks really is.

But of course, I'm speculating. And herein lies the problem in judging the actions taken by the government to date: we really don't know what the government has been up to, and we don't know what role it's played in prompting the Amazon takedown and the credit card kissoffs. It seems plausible, by which I mean "obvious," that these results are attributable at least in part to direct or indirect government (as opposed to public) pressure. But absent any of the deets, we're stuck with that exceedingly vague word: pressure.

When I hear complaints about unelaborated "government pressure," I'm put in mind of the 2008 election, when the American right, put to the task of trying to explain how the financial crisis was entirely the fault of the American left, complained that the government "pressured" banks to make the lousy subprime loans that, in the end, precipitated the destruction of our economy. (Here's a post-election rendition of that argument, from a predictable source.) And as a right-minded Obama supporter, I raised the appropriate objections, one of which focused on the term "pressure," which the argument's adherents seemed to have left deliberately vague. What does "pressure" mean? Something short of force, presumably, but other than that, no details. Can it really be said that a financial institution, in the modern U.S. of A., will ever succumb to "government pressure" and take on business it doesn't want to have? In the end, of course, it was the banks that issued the loans, and just as emphasis on the alleged government pressure did the rhetorical work of lifting agency from the banks, we risk letting Amazon et al. off the hook here in the same way. And we shouldn't, necessarily.

More importantly, government exerts pressure on corporations in all sorts of ways, some of which are more benign and democratic than others. Perhaps President Obama works the bully pulpit to prompt improved remedial action from BP, or the aforementioned Senator wanders into a cable news studio and calls for federal investigation of the Times. We might be inclined to critique either of these undertakings, based on our feelings about the speakers and corporations involved. But these surely do not constitute the sort of government pressure that undermines our democracy. After all, public officials have always been entitled to leverage their power over corporations through speech, and this is a tradition we should continue, given that corporations are, we're told, very much entitled to do the converse.

Contrast a species of pressure that I think would indeed be sorely troubling, as a democratic matter: imagine that DOJ did contact Amazon and threaten to charge its principals under the godawfully vague espionage laws still on the books, if it didn't give WikiLeaks.org the boot. In theory DOJ could have brandished similar charges at the payment processors, on an aiding and abetting theory. And if/when WikiLeaks ever finds itself listed as a designated terror organization, PayPal and card companies could be charged for providing it with "material support." A considerably greater pressure would be brought to bear under these circumstances, and at its root is the monopoly on force. For that matter, if the government threatened or executed cyberattacks on the target companies, then I would agree that the government pressure would be inappropriately applied and of grave concern to our constitutional, democratic system.

The thing is, we just don't know what's gone on outside of the public view. We don't know what sort of pressure the government might have applied to Amazon, PayPal, and the card companies, and so we're stuck. Hm. If only there were somebody out there — some sort of organization — that could get hold of the details and pass them along to the public . . .

FO News Roundup: May 14, 2010

2010-05-14T15:38:00.005-04:00

Been a while, but we're alive and well. Well, I am.

Jennifer Aniston isn't -- repeat, isn't -- eating baby food. But her publicist is glad you asked. (P)
Another iPhone prototype leaked, and (presumably) another Apple employee publicly chastised . . . and privately patted on the backside for a job well done. (P)
Harvard College expels student for trying to hack into a computer to change his grade. Sounds like Harvard Business School material to me. (P)
Mr. President, I was willing to dismiss the White Sox cap as a lovable quirk. But this is downright offensive. (P)
"Mama grizzlies?" I guess "hockey mom" didn't have the legs we all thought it did. (P)
"Law and Order: Why It Was Important, and Why You Weren't Watching It." Answers in the questions, really. (P)
Hm. Why don't we just agree it's really frickin' big, definition entirely subjective, and get on with plugging the leak? (P)
And here I was wondering why Connie Selecca wasn't answering my letters. (P)

On Unintended Consequences and Happy Meals

2010-05-08T14:42:00.005-04:00

PHUTATORIUS
Supervisors in Santa Clara County, California participated in America's great experiment of "laboratory federalism" last week by enacting a law that prohibits restaurants from providing toys with children's meals, unless the accompanying food meets certain nutritional standards.

Wow.
More...
The regulation, which for the sake of shorthand we'll call "the Unhappy Meal Law," only applies in areas where the county supervisors are the sovereign local authority — i.e., only in those pockets of land in Santa Clara County that are not incorporated into a city or town (which of course can pass their own laws). Thus, rather than entirely beat back the hordes of junk plastic movie tie-in action figures past the county lines, the law only makes Happy Meal toys a little less ubiquitous in fast food restaurants in the county. This will, of course, cause great confusion and consternation among Bay Area five-year-olds, who absent access to a GPS device, a county map, and an understanding of California's principles of local government and jurisdiction, won't know on a given day whether, where, or why they won't be getting a Mermaid Barbie doll with their cheeseburgers. And it's just this sort of random arrangement of cause and consequence that, according to behavioral psychologists, leads to "learned helplessness" and depression.

But hey — at least our kids won't be obese. At least that's the thinking, as county supervisors, applying the "Joe Camel principle," have concluded that Happy Meal toys draw children to fast-food restaurants, where they become tracked into the habit of eating unhealthy food.

Needless to say, I have some thoughts on this subject. Four fingers of thoughts, in fact:

☞ McDonald's introduced the Happy Meal in 1979. I remember when this happened. My father took me to McDonald's every Saturday. It was one of my favorite things in the whole world. Then one day I got to McDonald's, I read the menu, and I realized that not only was I going to get a burger and fries for lunch, but I was going to get a toy, too. And McDonald's became even more awesome.

Because I went to McDonald's, as a child, both before and after McDonald's launched the Happy Meal, I can count myself as something of an authority on the drawing effect of Happy Meal toys. As I recall my state of mind in the Pre-Happy Meal Era, I always frickin' wanted to go to McDonald's for lunch. And of course, in the Happy Meal Era, I always frickin' wanted to go to McDonald's for lunch. Check my math, Mithridates, but as I calculate this, the net drawing effect of Happy Meal toys = 0. Zero.

☞ Whether or not I actually did go to McDonald's for lunch as a child was a question that turned not so much on what I wanted to do, but on what my parents wanted to do. And of course, now that I'm fully grown with children of my own, I'm the one who gets to make the call on whether my children get to go to McDonald's. So now that we've dispensed with the notion that Happy Meal toys make children marginally and meaningfully more interested in McDonald's, it seems worthwhile to cover the effect of the toys on parents' decisions.

OH MY GOD LET'S PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE GET RID OF THE HAPPY MEAL TOYS SO I CAN EAT MORE BIG MACS WITHOUT JUNKING UP MY HOUSE!!!!

[deep breath]

Yes, um, where were we? Oh, right: I always frickin' want to go to McDonald's for lunch. But if I'm with the kids, then they're of course going to come along, and that means I'm going to bring home more godawful nine-cent hunks of plastic that will, without fail, find their way into my bed, into my bathtub, under foot as I walk through the dark into the bathroom, between couch cushions for me to sit on. So yes, if anything, the Happy Meal toys actually reduce my interest in taking the kids to McDonald's. Seriously.

☞ Anyone who has actually given a child a Happy Meal knows that the accompanying toy actually reduces the amount of food the child will ingest. The logic is simple: if you give a kid a big pile of greasy, delicious junk food, he'll eat it. If you give the kid the same big pile of greasy, delicious junk food and a toy, he'll find himself torn between eating the junk food and playing with the toy. If you withhold the toy until the kid is done with his lunch, he will in most cases prematurely declare the lunch finished and actually allow you to throw out his McNuggets and fries so that he can get a crack at the toy.

I've seen this dynamic at work: just today I took The Boy to McDonald's. No toy, I said, until we got into the car. The Boy ate one McNugget and insisted that lunch was over. I told him that we were going to sit for a few more minutes ("for our digestion") before leaving. If he wanted to have some more lunch during that time, he was welcome to do so. The Boy ate two more McNuggets and a fistful of fries. Q.E. freakin' D.

☞ Finally, consider how McDonald's might respond to the Unhappy Meal law. If McDonald's accepts, as Santa Clara County does (and I don't), that Happy Meal toys make their restaurant more attractive to children, and therefore families, then they'll have to find some other way to market to children. Deprived of the ability to offer collateral inducements, they'll have to beef up (pun intended) their food offerings. And since it's axiomatic that food is more appealing when it tastes better, and that the worse food is for you, the better it tastes — well, McDonald's now has an incentive to make its food even greasy, junkier, and more delicious. And/or cheaper.

I could talk more about how a county restriction means city kids get toys and country kids don't, how the Unhappy Meal law seems entirely predicated on the suggestion that parents don't know how to say no to their children, and so on. But it ought to be enough to note that either the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors don't have kids and never were kids, or they just didn't think this one through.

Lieberman's Absurd Miranda Workaround

2010-05-04T21:50:00.010-04:00

PHUTATORIUS
Here we go again. Another terror arrest, another round of trumped-up hand-wringing from the right about having to "read rights to terrorists." Once again, it seems this "rights = soft on terror" concern is much more theoretical than practical, because the Times Square Rube Goldberg Smoking Car Bomber is talking.

Never mind all that, says Joe Lieberman: we need to strip homegrown terrorists of their citizenship. If we can do that, then we don't have to worry about all these rights, and we can do anything we want to these jerks:
More...

“I’m now putting together legislation to amend that to [specify that] any individual American citizen who is found to be involved in a foreign terrorist organization, as defined by the Department of State, would be deprived of their citizenship rights,” Lieberman said Tuesday.

This would be a clever answer to the Miranda "problem," if indeed (1) there were a problem, (2) this approach resolved the problem, and (3) it were clever. But Lieberman's whacked-out law doesn't meet any of these three conditions. Here's why:

We don't always know if a person is innocent or guilty.

The rights and protections we extend to criminal suspects and defendants are designed, among other reasons, to ensure that the state doesn't manufacture guilt. Folks in America don't disappear into black holes of detention — without access to attorneys, under conditions that allow law enforcement to extract forced confessions — not because we think criminals deserve kid-glove treatment, but because it would really suck to have that happen to you, if you weren't a criminal.

So let's imagine life in Joe Lieberman's World. You're sitting on a plane, on the tarmac at JFK. You're looking forward to your vacation. Tray tables are up, you've switched off your cell phone, and suddenly federal agents storm into coach and carry you off. They're thinking you tried to blow up a car in Times Square. Well, there's obviously some mistake; a quick call to your attorney will help clear all this up, except someone just declared that you're "involved in a foreign terrorist organization." No lawyer, then. You're back out on the tarmac now, but it's a military transport plane, and you're heading to Bagram, and not Barcelona.

How could this have happened? you ask. Well, it's frighteningly simple. You've been accused of terrorism. Terrorism is an awful, awful crime — so awful, in fact, that just being accused of it is enough to see you stripped you of your citizenship and all the rights that flow from that. Even if the rights bear importantly on the question whether you're a terrorist at all.

Ick. Nice one, Joe.

Of course, that's not the case here at all. Faisal Shahzad has freely confessed his guilt already. We know he tried to kill dozens, if not hundreds of innocent people, over some unspecified grievance that may have something to do with frickin' South Park. So yes, even this purported bleeding-heart liberal correspondent actually would love to see this guy beaten, waterboarded, and humiliated in public (Times Square seems an appropriate forum). And what the heck, when we're done with him, let's strip the guy of his American citizenship. I'm all for that. Screw Faisal Shahzad.

But do we have to strip folks of their citizenship before we know whether they're guilty of terrorism — for the express purpose of facilitating a finding that they're guilty of terrorism? That's the worst kind of legal bootstrapping. It's beneath America. Hell, it's even beneath Glenn Beck. It's just not beneath Senator Lieberman.

Joe, you, too, have the right to remain silent, and we well and truly wish you'd exercise that right a little more often.

Bush Wipes Hand on Clinton

2010-03-26T09:53:00.003-04:00

MITHRIDATES
Funny. You would think a good Republican would want to wipe his hand on a Haitian after touching the man whose lending policies caused the financial crisis and whose failure to pursue Al Qaeda led to 9/11, not the other way around.

Tiger's Texts: A Lawyer's Take

2010-03-19T10:44:00.005-04:00

PHUTATORIUS
If anyone wondered why "adult film actress" and reputed lover of Tiger Woods Joslyn James felt the need to go out and retain a big-time lawyer, the picture is getting clearer by the day. Here's my "lawyer's take" on what's going on:

Yeah, sure, Joslyn James was going to find herself in the glare of the public eye, and a lawyer can help manage the publicity and keep the press at bay (i.e., "That one's lawyered up, and Allred is something fierce. Maybe I won't try to break in Joslyn James's house and get pictures of her in the shower.").

But James isn't just in a defensive posture. Consider that she invited press to listen along beside her as she took in Tiger's self-serving soliloquy back on February 19. Consider, too, that when Tiger was finished, Ms. James took the podium and delivered her own tearful statement, demanding a direct apology from Woods. An awkward angle to try to work, this "I thought I was the only Other Woman" bit. But the statement was thick with shots across the bow of Woods's legal team: little tidbits of information that might add up to lawsuit against Tiger. She loves Tiger, and he made her promises. She had pregnancies that ended in miscarriage and abortion. She gave up her career at his request. Yeah, Gloria and Joslyn are laying the groundwork for threatening all sorts of legal claims. Lousy claims, but claims nonetheless, and the point isn't whether you can win or lose on these lousy claims; the point is whether you can get Tiger to pay you some money to make sure they don't end up in court to begin with. What Tiger will pay to settle these claims has very little to do with the value of the claims themselves. He's confronting a potential lawsuit, brought by his mistress, which will extend this scandal for another couple years well past the endpoint he'd hope to establish for it (with his apology speech) and vivisect his sordid personal life, laying it open for the world to see in public legal proceedings.

Which brings us now to the text messages that Joslyn James recently released to the press.
More...
This is hardball. Joslyn James earlier said that she has some 11,000 text messages from Tiger Woods. She released a small subset — only around 100 — of those messages. Release of the messages suggests what should have been obvious following Ms. James' delivery of her counterstatement on February 18: that Allred and Woods's attorneys are negotiating a settlement that will keep James from suing Woods and posting any more damaging information to the media. One of the following is true: (1) they're not close to a deal, or (2) they've reached a deal, and James released the texts anyway. Both scenarios are intriguing.

Scenario (1) suggests that Joslyn James has information far more damaging than what she released yesterday — and the texts she released yesterday were pretty darn damaging, describing Woods' interest in sadistic sex acts. No way no how does Gloria Allred let Joslyn James disclose the most lurid info she has. If this were the worst of it, Woods's attorneys would have no reason to bargain with her, as James couldn't hurt Woods any more than she has to date. We therefore have to assume that the ~100 texts that James disclosed yesterday were carefully selected to generate a modest amount of media buzz (thereby getting her back in the news) but not so much as to leave Allred without leverage going forward. We have to assume that there is something much worse in the rest of the 11,000 texts (or, theoretically, in some other explosive format: video?).

Moreover, the timing of the release was calculated: Tiger announced on Tuesday that he would return from his golf hiatus to play in the Masters next month. He's starting to get back into business as usual, and he's back in the news, too. James counters with the release of the text, which destroys any positive PR momentum he has.

Under Possibility (2), Woods and James have already reached agreement, and James has been already received a lump-sum payment of hush money. There is presumably an enforceable contract here, negotiated by attorneys: Woods pays James an unspecified amount (confidential, of course, per the terms of the contract), and James hands over any documentation of the affair for Woods to destroy. But of course, James could always surreptitiously keep a copy of her materials, to publicize after she cashes her check. This would be a breach of the contract, and Woods could sue her, but would he? If he did, well, there's that very public lawsuit again, and on top of all the other nastiness that would come out about the affair, there would be this new distasteful overlay: Tiger wrote a big check to keep this girl quiet, and now he's suing her over it. In theory, then, James could get paid both by Woods (to keep quiet) and by the press (to spill her secrets). Woods's lawyers, if they have any sense, would therefore have every reason to structure the deal to require payments over time — perhaps an annuity — so that they could preserve some leverage over James going forward, other than resort to the courts. We should assume that Woods's lawyers have quite a lot of sense, such that Scenario (2) is therefore the much less likely of the two here.

All of the above analysis is predicated on the assumption — and I think this is right — that James stands to gain more from Tiger if she withholds her information than she can get from anyone in the press if she discloses it all. The value of a "hot news" exclusive, in this day and age, isn't really all that. Once the texts are out, anyone can pick them up and run with them. It makes sense that Tiger would pay millions to James to keep her quiet; it makes much less sense that a media organization would pay a comparable amount to break this story five minutes before everybody else.

And of course another assumption is in play: that James isn't just an irrational "woman scorned" figure here, whose interest is simply to throw everything she has at Tiger, to hurt him as badly as she can, and damn the settlement offers. This seems to me unlikely. You don't hire Gloria Allred unless you want to work an angle, and Gloria Allred doesn't continue to represent you if you're delivering all your best stuff to the press in anger. And for that matter: ELEVEN THOUSAND TEXTS? James was clearly archiving these messages, either as keepsakes because she loved Tiger so much or rather to save for a rainy day — or a day of opportunity. Hm.

Jacko Lives! (Or So We Believe)

2010-03-16T21:08:00.007-04:00

PHUTATORIUS
Word came out today that Michael Jackson's estate just cut a $250 million deal with Sony Music. The quarter billion goes to Jacko, Inc. in exchange for "unreleased songs and older tracks recorded by Jackson" — in other words, all the dribs and drabs of music that the King of Pop committed to tape but failed to release before dying.

Not exactly the "reissue, repackage, REPACKAGE" phenomenon that the Smiths described in "Paint a Vulgar Picture," but we see today the value that premature death can bring to a pop star's career. A pile of master tapes deemed at least to this point unfit for mass distribution wholesales to Sony for $250 extra-large. Hm.

Anybody else believe that Michael Jackson isn't really dead?
More...
Just stop for a minute and consider the logic of it. At the time he "died," Michael was, by all accounts, some $300 million in debt. The plan he'd announced to bring himself back into the black? A ten-gig comeback stand in London, followed by three more years of world touring, if he delivered on the gigs in England. The very concept betrays how desperate he was: the guy was broken. Reclusive, narcissistic, zonked on painkillers. He was our generation's Howard Hughes, except in one important respect: he was broke. And to get out of debt he was going to take to the stage? Nope. Uh-uh. That was never going to work. It was no surprise that this last-ditch effort was falling apart. Dates were postponed, rumors were swirling about Jackson's health, and the tour promoters had to be poring over the fine print of the insurance policy they surely bought at the time they cut this deal.

At this point, Michael Jackson was a complete loss. He couldn't do public performances. He wasn't releasing new material. There's only so many times you can promote a back catalog. It wouldn't take a genius to run the numbers and conclude, with all the cynicism of Bialystock and Bloom, that on a going-forward basis Michael Jackson was worth more dead than alive. And of course subsequent events bore this out: Thriller and Off the Wall surging to the top of the charts in the weeks after Jacko's "death"; a slapped-together film release and accompanying soundtrack album; and now this nine-figure deal to release demos and B-sides that might never have sold on the merits, but now can be promoted as Michael Jackson's "final word" in the studio.

If you were a onetime pop superstar, world-renowned, critically acclaimed, but now broke, introverted, and slipping into cultural irrelevance — if you were desperate to square your accounts and just cash out — you might consider faking your own death. And if you had all the aforementioned characterizations and motivations, and you were at the level of Michael Jackson, well, faking your own death probably wouldn't be impossible to accomplish. The guy had resources — he had minders, bodyguards, publicists, personal physicians. We know, too, that Jacko wasn't exactly running scared of plastic surgery, which would surely be in order if he wanted to ensure that he could dissolve anonymously, into the general population.

It's not hard to imagine. You're in a rundown town, far away and off the beaten track — maybe somewhere in Southeast Asia, where sex trafficking isn't so much a crime as a local specialty — and you see a middle-aged man limping painfully along down a dirt road with a bag slung over his shoulder. The man's face is gashed and scarred beyond recognition. His frame is slight, and his skin bone-white. The sleeves of his jacket are pulled up over his forearms. Maybe the man's rocking gait seems a bit affected; if you look closely, you might sees flashes of a dancer's grace in this man's slumping stride. Now and again he reaches down with one hand, grabs hold of his groin, and gasps, as if he's in pain.

Just another drifter, this guy. Hard knocks, hard life. The man mutters, grunts, hoots, winces, as he passes you. It's nearly dusk, and as the sky darkens, it appears that the road seems to light up just a little as this man passes by. Surely that was a trick of the light, you think. Angles and reflections, from the setting sun.

Thailand II: Third Toilet

2010-03-01T12:00:00.003-05:00

MITHRIDATES
Thailand's a Third World country. By some definition of Third World. But who even knows what that means, anyway? India's a Third World country, too, but would you rather be reborn as an average Indian or an average Thai? This one's easy folks. Way easy. So since Third World doesn't really mean much these days, I've decided we desperately need a new way to classify countries.

To those foreign readers in the First World who are used to thinking of themselves at the top of the heap, be prepared to be offended. To those Americans whose idea of international travel is to stay in five-star resorts that could be anywhere, you'll have no idea what I'm talking about. As in, "we stayed at the Ritz Bali for a week. I thought the Indonesians were very advanced . . ."

The following refers to what you can expect in public places, restaurants, and the median home. This scientific analysis involved one person traveling to geographically clustered destinations, non-randomly sampling the facilities, and reconstructing the data based on memories ranging from one hour to fifteen years old.
More...
First Toilet: A 99+% certainty that toilet paper can be flushed without damaging the system. Guaranteed porcelain seating. Seats even at truck stops and train stations.

The United States sits atop the world in a class by itself. There's a reason they say American Standard on them. That means something. The First Toilet has a few defining characteristics: You can really only be certain of such luxury in the US and fifty miles or less into Canada.

I know some of our American readers are going through their life experiences and recalling some horror at a gas station or bus stop at some point in their life. But venture down the list a bit and be thankful for what we have here.

First toilet countries: US, Near Canada

Second Toilet: You're pretty safe here. Risk of disease is very low and things are likely to be clean, but you're only 90% guaranteed flush-able paper and less than 100% guaranteed a seat.

You arrive on the overnight train to Paris at 7am and the toxins from your three days in Amsterdam have finally caught up to you. You head straight for the first decent-looking café, order a drink and head right to the toilette. The closet size enclosure is clean all right, but there's no actual toilet. Just two foot pads and a hole in the spotless floor.

This is Paris!! In France! This is decidedly First World, they were once an undeniable super-power, and some people even now consider them friendly rivals with the US for the title of Greatest Nation on Earth. Yet at a café in their capital city you might actually have to squat to use the toilet! You might actually be able to perform, but there is this nagging shred of doubt in your mind. What if this isn't the toilet, after all? I mean really, what happens then? So you realize the nearby Musée D'Orsay is about to open, buy your ticket and head for the porcelain bliss of a hermetically sealed one-shooter on the first floor. The Monets never looked so good.

Second Toilet countries: France, Holland, UK, Ireland, Italy, Israel

Third Toilet: There's nothing pleasant about your average experience, but you're 90% successful and safe. You might have to shell out a few baht for entry at the bus station in Thailand, but if that keeps traffic to a minimum and pays for cleaning, you're more than happy to pay. It doesn't smell great and you're not inspired to crack open the paper, but you always leave in better shape than you came in. So despite the low GDP per capita, Thailand, perhaps through reliance on a booming tourist industry, actually maintains decent rest rooms. Even on the train itself, with things shaking around, a post-mystery soup trip to the can is uneventful, clean, and safe. What a country!

Third Toilet countries: Thailand, Ecuador, Greece

Fourth Toilet: You won't die, but you're willing to take a 10% or more chance of catastrophe rather the use the toilet found in the train station of the capital city.

You were out the night before in Madrid and are catching the morning train to Toledo (why again?). You and your brother make a desperate run to the train station facilities before your train departs as last night's Sangria and sausage are on the move. You put your pesetas in the coin-operated door. You brother says "Mine's broken." You open the door to your stall to see a seatless bowl covered in grime and paper. You consider how it might be done and nothing seems remotely acceptable. "Mine's broken, too," you say. You have no choice but to battle it out and hope the commode on the train is marginally better (which it is, thankfully).

Here we have a full-fledged Fourth Toilet country right in Western Europe. Wonderful country, great food, nice people, delicious wine, but the European Union needs to stop worrying so much about deficits and GDP per capita and start refusing entry to countries that can't maintain decent commodes.

Fourth Toilet countries: Spain, China

Fifth Toilet: The lowest designation refers only to those benighted places where proper precautions are necessary to ensure that you don't actually catch hepatitis or worse from going to the bathroom.

You're on a twelve-hour train ride in a second-class coach in India. Things are rolling around and you have to bite the bullet. The tiny compartment in the rear consists of a small hole, a filthy tin cup on a chain, and a rusty faucet.

Now suppose you manage to get the job done despite all the shaking and having nothing to hold on to. You still wonder how exactly you're supposed to make yourself more clean by filling up that nasty tin cup and splashing plague water around your nether regions. There's just no way.

Or take the public restroom at the train station. Mostly out of respect for the next person who might shake your hand, I believe you should wash with soap and water after handling your penis in the process of urinating. But what if your penis is the cleanest thing in the entire bathroom? What if there's a legitimate chance that your hands get dirty and diseased from touching the faucet and paper towel dispenser (was there one? You might be making up the dispenser).

Look, with all due respect there are probably filthier countries on the planet — this reporter just hasn't been there yet.

Fifth Toilet countries: India

All categorizations are subject to review. Please share your stories if you think any country has been rated too high . . .

FO News Roundup: February 27, 2010

2010-02-26T10:01:00.005-05:00

Special Weekend Edition!

You know, you try and try and try to stay "neutral" in world affairs, and still some psycho foists a jihad on you. What's a country like Switzerland to do? (P)
Some 700 Club intern just got called in on the weekend to figure out how Chile might have offended Pat Robertson's God. Better get that research done by Sunday, dude, or you'll be struck by lightning. (P)
Talk about your tin ear for politics: PETA's protesting Sea World shows that exploit murderous killer whales that kill. (P)
Jenny Sanford gets to divorce her husband. Why doesn't the rest of South Carolina? (P)
Just like A-Rod to get into a "fender bender" in his Maybach. If you're gonna crash a half-million dollar sports car, frickin' do it right. (P)
Rick Perry is poised to win the Republican primary for Governor of Texas. And of course, if he loses, he'll run for President. Of Texas. (P)
C'mon, Fitty: what's the point of being a famous hip-hop artist, if you have to Photoshop yourself into amateur sex videos? (P)

Cyborgs on Ice!

2010-02-24T11:28:00.002-05:00

PHUTATORIUS
I have a long list of grievances about figure skating. A long list that, if I had little else to do during my workday, would lend itself to an extended extended extended post (and you'd love it, too, ONTRI!). But I'll do only a "short program" today, as I mean to discuss a most strongly-held pet peeve: the flesh-colored tights that the women are increasingly wearing over their skates.

More...
First, a disclaimer: I raise this issue not as some sexist couch jockey who is determined to objectify female athletes by critiquing their wardrobe and equipment selections. I really don't care what Lindsay Vonn or Dara Torres wear when they compete; if they think a burqa will make them faster, they should go for it. Just bring home medals to the U.S. of A.

But figure skating's different, of course. Figure skating is a sport predicated entirely on aesthetics: [sadly,] it's all about how you look. So I have to ask the question: what in the name of Dick Button is remotely appealing about flesh-colored tights over skates? For starters, it's not at all convincing. You're not hiding anything, ladies. That's current points leader Kim Yu Na in the photos above (credit: New York Times). Check out that first picture: either Kim has some kind of grotesque protruding bone spur, she's acquired by mutation or surgery an additional joint midway between her knee and ankle, or that unsightly bulge is the poorly-concealed top of her skate. Who is she kidding? WHO?

And of course there are the skate blades. You can "flesh up" the boot, but not the blades. So even if we bought into the fiction that is apparently intended here — that the skates have been fully integrated into Kim's body, that "they are a part of her" — we have to accept that Kim has metal skate blades either screwed into or growing out of the soles of her feet. The very suggestion is, to me, horrifying. If this sport means to tap into our several souls' common craving to witness beauty — if its appeal is to that part of us that deeply appreciates the human form, its capacity for grace and will to perfection — why are we turning our female skaters into cyborgs? This isn't figure skating. It's disfigure skating.

The only possible justification I can muster for this offensive trend is that blending the skate boots into the legs might allow skaters to bluff mistakes past the judges. I write this knowing very little about figure skating, but I throw it out as a possibility. And then I throw the possibility out, too, as it seems to me that judges should be able to see through that sort of crap anyway, and if I were a judge I wouldn't particularly take to a skater who resorted to this sort of trick.

For years now people have been using ice skates to ice skate. It's sort of a requirement of ice skating that I think all of us in the crowd accept. In the spirit of our common humanity — and in recognition of how ice skating works — show us your skates, ladies. Please. There's no downside to it, and you'll be substantially less freakish and terrifying. And Mithridates says he'll give you beads.

The Blame America Crowd

2010-02-24T09:00:00.007-05:00

MITHRIDATES
Last week a militant launched a deadly terrorist attack on US soil. Most reasonable people came out and unconditionally condemned the attack, but others sympathized with the perpetrator's motivation while condemning the violence. Comments (assume [sic]s where warranted) include:

This is just the start of things like this. I DISAGREE with the way this guy rebelled, but i fully understand is frustration!!!"

and

I feel for the guy and I'm sure that there are many more out there who feel the same way. Of course, killing yourself and taking others with you is a horrible and wrong thing to do.

Others went further and actually saw good in the attack . . .

Hopefully, with such extreme measures a few Americans that actually posses a good head on their shoulders will take notice, and then TAKE ACTION

. . . or even worse, took the opportunity to threaten more violence against the American people:

Go here and do a little research before something with jets or propellers falls on your head...

More...
Other crazies displayed an all-too-familiar willingness to blame America first, claiming that the US government brought this action on themselves. Rep. King's reaction was to lambast federal policy, while adding (with a sickening smile) that the attack was unfortunate. These people are clearly "prime example[s] of the 'hate-America crowd,' . . . dripping with contempt for the nation's politics, its leaders, its economic system and for their foolish fellow citizens.'' Some notable conservatives have even D'gone so far as to call flying planes into American buildings courageous.

Our tax policies have indeed caused hardship. I mean how should an independent IT contractor be expected to know how to legally deduct a piano on his tax form? But ask these America haters in what other country low-tax supporters would feel more welcome. France? Not even close. Canada? Laughable.

For the most part, no one is seriously blaming the incident in Austin on anyone but the attacker (a Bush-hating, church-bashing, anti-tax, anti-everyone nutjob), despite the usual victim game played by certain righty types. That tiresome game, of course, involves combing through every corner of every article in search of a suggestion of commonality between the perpetrator and the Tea Party Movement: further evidence that the mainstream media is out to get you!

Of course, supporters of lower taxes (like Bush-haters and church-bashers) are mostly peaceful people who are appalled by the violence of those claiming to act in their name. But the low-tax community needs to root out the militants among them and speak with one voice, condemning these actions unconditionally.

And what about all those nutjobs out there who actually sympathize with and support the terrorists?

FO News Roundup, February 23, 2010

2010-02-23T12:20:00.003-05:00

Seven bullets today:

Mass killer and IHOP suckerpuncher Amy Bishop may have planted a "herpes bomb" in her lab building. The jokes just write themselves these days. (P)
Apple's iPhone Patrol: please leave the sex apps to the professionals, people. But as always, keep the fart apps coming. (P)
Nurse, get me 100 ccs of Viagra, with a Cialis chaser. Boner's gone missing! (P)
If Elvis left the building, would Schiphol air security notice? Because they sure as hell didn't see him coming in. (P)
Have a heart, Albania. (Yeah, we've done that line before, but who's gonna know?) (P)
Brown votes for the jobs bill. What kind of Republican are you, Scott? (P)
Lost in the Fox News outrage: the patriotic hero of their story thinks the Pledge of Allegiance is the "national anthem." (P)

DKG, The Economist Jump the "Make 'Em Filibuster" Bandwagon!

2010-02-23T10:02:00.009-05:00

PHUTATORIUS
The Economist observes that the filibuster is too easy, if you don't actually have to do it:

In the Senate the filibuster is used too often, in part because it is too easy. Senators who want to talk out a bill ought to be obliged to do just that, not rely on a simple procedural vote: voters could then see exactly who was obstructing what.

This comes on the heels of Doris Kearns Goodwin's interview on The Daily Show, in which she, too, argued that Dems should call the GOP's filibuster bluff.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Doris Kearns Goodwin

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Health Care Crisis

Of course, we opined on this matter weeks ago. Now that not just one but two august publication and an esteemed Presidential scholar have weighed in on the question, can't you see, Democrats, that the answer is right in front of you?

Oh, and you heard it here first.

Some Thai Food

2010-02-21T19:20:00.005-05:00

MITHRIDATES
Thailand is one of the truly great food countries in this world of ours. The 28 cent meat on a stick from a street vendor for breakfast; the $4 Chinese feast happily devoured by the only white guy in a hole-in-the-wall in the coolest Chinatown going; the Laotian smorgasbord for dinner last night. Thailand — and especially Bangkok — is food heaven.

So, why, on the afternoon of my last day in country, am I penning my travel memoirs over a $4 Big Mac Set at McDonald's? It's definitely not that I'm sick of Thai food. I was sick of Indian food after two weeks there, but with apologies to my Hindu friends, Thailand is simply a superior food destination, with more tasty culinary diversity in a much smaller country. So why am I here? You got it. It's the ambiance! Attached to the Westin Grand Sukhumvit on Soi 19, my delightfully bright red corner booth overlooks the chaos of swanky Sukhumvit Road. The air-conditioning slowly allows my shirt to dry after a day of touring through the capital on foot. The music is of the Thai elevator variety, but it's really quite soothing.

Bangkok isn't the only place where Mickey D's provides an oasis for a weary American. McDonald's is by far the cleanest, friendliest, and overall nicest place in all of Athens, Greece, for example. In addition to the creature comforts, the ubiquity of McDonald's is reassurance of the continued dominance of American culture around the world. Those golden arches in their legion in every corner of the globe remind the world that we're still here, we're still loud, and you still frickin' love us!

I mean, sure, sitting on the floor at Vientiane Kitchen was more authentic. But then again, with all due respect, authentic Lao would probably be sitting on the shit-covered floor of a mud hut eating a bowl of rice. This clean, comfortable booth all to myself is authentic American - and it's wonderful!

But here we are after two weeks in one of my favorite countries. Over the next several episodes we'll discuss food, of course, but also elephants and roosters; Buddha; the most dangerous activity in Thailand; language; friendliness and sleaze; Thai massage and Thai "massaaaaage"; boys, girls, and that 3rd kind unique to Thailand; martial arts; dung; sweat; and the remarkable transformation of Bangkok from grimy, sleaze capital of the world to kickass cosmopolitan destination. Stay tuned!

Did She Mean To Say That?

2010-02-21T16:10:00.004-05:00

PHUTATORIUS
I saw this commercial yesterday and had to do a double-take. Played it back on YouTube just now, and yes, indeed, this exchange really did occur:

"Amy," Nutrisystem Success Story: I can take care of the things that need to get done!
Marie Osmond: Including yourself.
Amy: Including myself.

[chuckles all around]

Wow. It's all there, starting at about 1:49, and it almost justifies what they've done with the "Substitute" riff.

Three Albums

2010-02-20T14:25:00.006-05:00

PHUTATORIUS
So we're promoting the site now through Facebook. We're finding now that we have 20+ "fans" — some of whom aren't even Facebook friends (!) — and on that basis we're talking ourselves round to thinking we have readers. In the hope of dispelling that delusion, I'm writing today to solicit "reader input" on a cultural exercise of great importance:

Brothers and Sisters, name the recording artist with the three best consecutive albums (Three Albums, for short). And, of course, name the albums.
More...
I've been thinking about this question for a while, and because I'm a dork, I've raised it over drinks with friends (who are also dorks — dorky friends, I'm relying on you here). I have some ideas, but before I get to them, first some Rules and Guidelines.

☞ Rule: A greatest hits release doesn't count as an Album, for these purposes. That Steve Miller abomination with the Jordache logo is not an Album (and for that matter, it sucks anyway).

☞ Rule: A live release is not an Album, either, unless it's substantially comprised of new songs written specifically for the release. Thus and so, Under a Blood Red Sky is not an Album. Rattle & Hum? Yeah, probably.

☞ Rule: No EPs or singles compilations, please. We're talking strictly about studio albums. Hatful of Hollow, Louder Than Bombs, and the World Won't Listen are not studio albums. I know this pretty much dooms the Smiths, because it leaves no room to maneuver around Meat Is Murder. This breaks my heart, but it's increasingly clear to me that the Smiths were a singles band, anyway.

As for Guidelines, I figure I'll throw out some general principles you can choose to accept or reject. Obviously Quality comes first, but we might favor as well Three Albums that reveal significant Growth or Refinement on the part of the artist. I'd be inclined to credit Three Albums delivered in a short span of time — say, yearly releases — over a series of three that span a decade or more. It shows me more. Variety would seem important to me. It's the spice of life, after all, and a sign of an artist's versatility. If the Three Albums don't reveal the aforementioned Growth or Refinement, Sustained Level of Brilliance might carry the day. Don't come to me with Two Sandwich Albums on Either Side of a Fair-to-Middling Third. That's not Three Albums. And don't tell me an album is so good it ought to count as Three. I've been in that place. I've considered The Violent Femmes and The Stone Roses. They belong in another contest.

Everybody got it? Good. I submit the following Three Albumses for your consideration:

Start with the Beatles. Get 'em out of the way. You could conceivably do Five, Six, or Seven Albums here, given that we're talking about the Beatles. But Three is the order of the day. I say Revolver, Sgt. Pepper's, and the White Album. But wait, Phutsie: The Magical Mystery Tour came after Sgt. Pepper's and the White Album. Yes, it did, but as I understand matters, it's a soundtrack built around re-released singles ("Strawberry Fields Forever," "Penny Lane"). I won't say I can't be convinced otherwise, but for now I'm excluding TMMT on the ground that it is a compilation.

Some other obvious candidates occur to me. The White Stripes: [self-titled], De Stijl, White Blood Cells. R.E.M.: Life's Rich Pageant, Document, Green. The Clash: [self-titled], Give 'Em Enough Rope, London Calling. And of course an old and enduring favorite, James, for whom I propose two Three Album possibilities: Strip-Mine, Gold Mother, Seven and Gold Mother, Seven, Laid (I see Strip-Mine and Laid as substantially equivalent).

I'd like to nominate My Aim Is True, This Year's Model, and Armed Forces as contenders, but the first album was recorded by "Elvis Costello" (who recorded with an uncredited backing band), whereas the next two were by "Elvis Costello and the Attractions." Can I get a ruling here?

I am what I am, and I'm a Man of Enthusiasms Others Do Not Share. On that score, I submit to you probably my favorite Three Album set, Stereolab's Mars Audiac Quintet, Emperor Tomato Ketchup, Dots and Loops. What Stereolab accomplished between 1993 and 1996 — in terms of the distinctiveness and layered complexity of their sound, their complete overhaul of that sound, and just overall excellence from the standpoint of writing damn good songs — rivals any comparable three-year period from the Beatles' career. Roll your eyes. Laugh. I'll pull a gun on you, I swear. You'll sit down at gunpoint and listen to these albums, and you'll come around. Camper Van Beethoven, of course, falls into My Unshared Enthusiasm category. [self-titled], Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart, Key Lime Pie. Eat it, skeptics! And just to push the envelope in this quarter, I'll throw out the Boo Radleys' Giant Steps, Wake Up Boo!, and C'mon Kids!, although the last of these grates on me a little (which was, I've read, the Boos' intention).

Some final ideas before I open up the floor for comment — Liz Phair: Exile in Guyville, Whip-Smart, Whitechocolatespaceegg. They Might Be Giants: Lincoln, Flood, Apollo 18. The Stooges: [self-titled], Fun House, Raw Power. The Flaming Lips: The Soft Bulletin, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, At War with the Mystics. You can accuse me of grasping at straws here by this point, but it ain't easy. Understand that I've considered and had to reject Joy Division, the Pogues, Green Day, Black Sabbath, Oasis — even Led Zeppelin and Blondie, any of whom have Two Albums better than anything I've listed in this paragraph. But for one reason or other (front man hanged himself, III wasn't all that, what the Jaysus happened with Be Here Now?) they don't have Three. And of course I've left it to Mithridates to argue for the Police.

Anyway, we all have our Enthusiasms and Prejudices, and we all have distinct record collections. E.g., I've only got one Bob Dylan album, so someone else will have to post an entry on his behalf. Write a comment, make a case, so we can threaten or laugh at you.

The Frozen Burrito Mystery

2010-02-20T10:12:00.001-05:00

WHITECOLLAR REDNECK

What is it about the physical makeup of a microwaved frozen burrito that permits it to be cool to the touch where you test it, but molten hot where you first bite into it? There's a skinless square inch on the roof of my mouth that would very much like to know the answer.

Your Public Apology Insults Me and I Don't Want To Hear It

2010-02-19T10:15:00.008-05:00

PHUTATORIUS
Kazuhito Tadano was young and needed the money.

Later on, after he'd signed a minor league contract to pitch in the Cleveland Indians organization, word got out that back in Japan, when he was young and needed the money, he'd appeared in a gay porn video. Within minutes, Indians officials had swung him in front of a podium to deliver a public apology.

As an Indians fan, I followed this story, and as an Indians fan, I was one of the folks to whom Tadano apologized. At the time — this was back in 2004 — I couldn't quite put my finger on why all this orchestrated penitence troubled me.

Six years and dozens of public apologies later — and with the Mother of All Public Displays of Humility due from Tiger Woods any minute now — I think I've finally sorted through my feelings on this: I don't think I'm owed an apology by Tiger Woods, and it insults me that he thinks I am.
More...

Now let's put aside questions about whether anything Tiger says today will be sincere and from the heart, and whether he, and not a team of attorneys and PR consultants, actually wrote a word of it. A public apology from Tiger Woods presupposes that we all go around relying on Tiger Woods to be faithful to his wife, such that when he didn't, we all suffered some grievous personal harm. I can't speak for the entirety of the public — boy, do I wish I could, but I can't — but for me, this is emphatically not the case. There may be folks out there in the general public whose hearts were just torn to bits upon reading the tawdry revelations about Tiger's sex life in the press. But if you're one of those people, you don't need an apology. You need what we here at Feigned Outrage call perspective in life.

Has anyone else noticed that as often as we're subjected to these apologies for the personal failures of public figures, they never actually apologize for the aspects of their carrying-on that do cause public harm? Consider all the politicians who grandstand about immoral sexual practices while at the same time engaging in them. I'm thinking of you, Mark Sanford, Larry Craig, David Vitter. That's hypocrisy — and at times even bigotry: consider Craig's condemnation of homosexuality, even as he "cruised" sporting goods stores in Boise and did the Solicitation Soft Shoe in men's rooms. We ought to be entitled to apologies for the hypocrisy, but we never get those. We don't hear "I'm sorry for telling you all how to behave, when I can't myself adhere to those standards." We don't even hear "I'm sorry for diverting public funds to my personal long-distance relationship with my mistress." At best we get an acknowledgment of the error and a summary reimbursement, alongside "I'm sorry that all of you put so much faith in me, and I let you down."

Let's out this sort of apology for what it is. It's an apology that means to repedestal the fallen man, to reexalt the speaker over the listener. The news crews are here to see me. You care about me. My conduct, which has nothing to do with you, nonetheless wounds you, because I'm special.

I want a personal exemption from Tiger Woods's apology to the general public, and if I don't get one, I'll be requiring Tiger to deliver an apology for the apology at a press briefing, no later than tomorrow. My people will be in touch with your people, Tiger, about the script.

FO News Roundup: February 19, 2010

2010-02-18T16:53:00.005-05:00

SEVEN bullets. Has to be a record (note that none of them carry (M)s):

"Troubling." Fox News comments on the loss of a reader. (P)
Hate to harp on a sentiment, but EAT IT, CHINA. (P)
Am I the only person in the world who thinks it's terrific that Google has scanned millions of out-of-print books and proposes to make them available to anyone with an Internet connection? Apparently. (P)
We all know Boston hasn't been the same since Cheers left the air, but "less drunk" than a city in Utah? COME ON! (P)
Look out, Silver Screen: snappy artificial mother/daughter repartee is coming for you. (P)
SHOCKER (sez Us Magazine): JWoww and Snooki aren't Italian. Adjust your stereotypes accordingly. (P)
FO exclusive sneak peak at Tiger's statement: "I did it all for the makeup sex. Right, baby? Baby?" (P)

Surprising Asian Flare

2010-02-17T11:46:00.002-05:00

WHITECOLLAR REDNECK

One more observation from my Virgin Islands vacation: one of the restaurants on St Thomas describes its food as "Delicious Caribbean fare with a surprising Asian flare." We didn't eat there, but I had visions of some poor guy quietly enjoying his jerk chicken before a Japanese ninja-type guy jumps out and lights a magnesium stick right in his face. Flair/flare confusion claims another victim!

Deep Questions, Steel Drum Band Edition

2010-02-15T19:02:00.003-05:00

WHITECOLLAR REDNECK

Having just returned from a week in the Virgin Islands, I'm left with this question: how do teenagers in the Virgin Islands ever make out at high school dances? I think the slowest tempo a steel drum band can play is somewhere between andante and allegro, and when you're dancing that fast it's impossible to cop a quick feel, let alone get into some serious "The Lady in Red" face-sucking. Hmmmm.

FO News Roundup, February 12, 2010

2010-02-12T05:15:00.001-05:00

Quotes, quotes, quotes:

Michelle Obama on Sarah Palin: "I try not to set opinions about people that I haven't had a substantive interaction with." But if everyone adopted that view, who would have an opinion about Sarah Palin? (P)
Texas Athletic Director on new NCAA recruiting rules: "Obviously, since this legislation impacts only two programs in the country, we feel we are being singled out." (P, with nothing to add)
John Mayer on the "N-word": "It was arrogant of me to think I could intellectualize using it, because I realize that there's no intellectualizing a word that is so emotionally charged." How about "it was arrogant of me to think I could intellectualize anything, because I'm John Mayer?" (P)
Spokesperson for anti-whaling org on recent activity in the Japan Sea: "A Sea Shepherd Delta launched from the Steve Irwin annoyed the harpoon vessels with rotten butter bomb attacks." What?!? Are Kim Jong-Il's PR people moonlighting? (P)

Phutsie's Pop Culture War Fantasies: Sinéad Sings "Troy," Destroys American Idol

2010-02-05T09:47:00.008-05:00

PHUTATORIUS
Our ever-deteriorating popular culture fires aesthetically offensive mortars at us all day long. Taylor Swift. Jay Leno. The Grammy Awards. Twilight. How I Met Your Mother. Whatever the Hell Happened to MTV. It's a near constant bombardment of shallowness and crap, and occasionally I'll close my eyes and daydream scenarios wherein those of us who are most aggrieved seek out one another, form a resistance, and begin to fight back.

Now of course daydreams are by their nature exercises in self-indulgence, and so I'm not ashamed to say that a full two thirds of my pop culture war fantasies culminate in me taking the podium at the Academy Awards and raining down rhetorical hell on the VIP audience. I've written before that I'm a dork, and probably too much of my free time is given over to the composition of these lecture-rants I'll never give at the Oscars. But we have other weapons, and one of them is Sinéad O'Connor, psychotic guerrilla songstress. She's our most radicalized asset, we've been holding her in reserve for a high-stakes mission, and we've been only barely able to contain her fury. Now we're going to unleash her on American Idol.
More...
Picture this: a young, mangy woman with shaved head and downcast eyes steps tentatively onto the Idol set. It's a put-on, of course, because we know how fierce she is, and we know her plans. Simon, Randy, and Paula raise eyebrows in perfect synchronization, but they at least act as though they're reserving judgment. Susan Boyle, right? You never know. It's clear from his face, though, that Simon is piecing together a thousand-word rant on the "hair gimmick."

The woman looks up. Her eyes, cool and blue, betray nothing of her intentions. She stands lightly, with arms at her side and ankles crossed, and she waits.

"It'll be this 'Mandinka' song, then?" Simon snaps, squinting disdainfully at the note in front of him.

Sinéad shakes her head.

"The musicians have rehearsed 'Mandinka.'"

Sinéad speaks for the first time, says quietly, "No musicians."

Simon snorts. Paula shrugs. "Do whatcha gotta do, Sister," Randy contributes, in his signature faux-hip argot.

Sinéad tiptoes to the microphone, drops feet to flats, turns wild eyes on Camera 1. "I remember it," she begins. "Dublin in a rainstorm . . ." And she sings "Troy" straight through, a capella.

What follows is something of a cross between the final scenes of Carrie and Raiders of the Lost Ark. The sheer power of Idealized Guerrilla Siren Sinéad O'Connor shears the flesh from the judges' bodies. The audience reacts in a panic as the stage catches fire, fissures appear in the walls and widen, and a great chasm opens in the ground in front of the stage. By the time the song is finished, the American Idol studios have been obliterated, along with much of the surrounding city block. Somehow, miraculously — as if Sinéad had wanted it this way — only Ryan Seacrest survives. Now deaf and blind, he climbs out of the rubble to tell the world what he saw and heard, The Last Things He Saw and Heard.

I haven't decided whether Sinéad survives. "THE PHOENIX FROM THE FLAME! I WILL RISE!" are indeed lines that receive particular vocal emphasis in the song she sang, but it's not clear to me that they don't carry more force if she herself succumbs to her own destructive power. That is, if she doesn't rise immediately, she can be, in a way, more threatening. Does she martyr herself to destroy American Idol, or does she reveal a certain degree of invulnerability by escaping the building's collapse and the ensuing conflagration, without a mark or a scratch? Tough call. I'll have to think about it.

FO News Roundup, February 4, 2010

2010-02-04T17:24:00.006-05:00

"I hate Valentine's Day. You pay a ton of money, you get this lousy prix fixe menu, the service sucks, and you end up spending three hours across the table from your woman, starting to look like Ruth Bader Ginsburg." CNN's Ashton Kutcher fetish subsists, unabated. (P)

Scott Brown takes office, Dow plunges 270 points. Just sayin'. (P)

Pluto's PR people make their case for planethood (photo at right). Really? Is that the best you can do? (P)
C'mon already: it's a Prius. Brakes? We don't need no steenkeen' brakes! (P)

FO News Roundup: February 3, 2010

2010-02-03T11:59:00.000-05:00

I have to struggle to imagine J.D. Salinger driving a Land Cruiser. Not sure why, but I picture writers in beat-up Volvos. (P)
Punxsutawney Phil (the little shit) predicts 6 more weeks of winter. No word from him on when we'll have an economic recovery. (P)
Ten films tapped for Best Picture! A cynical plot to sell more movie tickets? You tell me: they did nominate The Blind Side, for crying out loud. (P)
If you've been waiting 20 years for the "Real Story" about Milli Vanilli, then this article's for you. Also, let us know so we can ban you from accessing our site. (P)
$768.2 billion. Maybe we should apply "don't ask, don't tell" to the defense budget. (P)
"Fucking retarded," were Rahm Emmanuel's words, to which Sarah Palin takes offense — at "retarded" on Trig's behalf, and at "fucking" on Bristol's. (P)
U.S. government: don't drive your Toyotas. No conflict of interest there. (P)

FO News Roundup: January 29, 2010

2010-01-29T11:36:00.003-05:00

Senator John Cornyn would fault Obama for offering substantive criticism of a SCOTUS opinion, with the Justices in the room. Whereas it's just fine to suggest, in the same room, that judges are asking to get shot because of their liberal opinions. Really, the GOP couldn't find someone with more moral authority to argue this point? (P)
Really? UBL's quoting Noam Chomsky and ranting about climate change? Guess indiscriminate slaughter of infidels isn't the winner of an issue it once was. (P)
Mr. Salinger, meet John Lennon. He's got a bone to pick with you. (P)
There's no truth to the rumor that the body was found holding a Monkey's Paw. (P)
John Edwards made a sex tape with Rielle Hunter, presumably on the theory that no one would ever want to watch that long enough to confirm who was on it. (P)

Make 'Em Filibuster!

2010-01-26T14:56:00.010-05:00

PHUTATORIUS
Massachusetts elected a Republican Senator, and the health care bill is dead. Cap and trade is dead, too. And absent any lapse in party discipline — and you can accuse Republicans of lacking all sorts of things (hearts and brains leap to mind) but discipline is one thing they have in spades — pretty much any item on the legislative agenda that matters to Democrats is, to put it bluntly, dead.

There's talk now about what to do about the health care bill. Press ahead, undeterred, on the understanding that this was always going to be a slog? Go back to the drawing board? Take the offensive? Blow up the Senate rules? Push the bill through to a vote before Brown takes up his seat?

There's one option I haven't heard discussed: the Democrats could actually require the Republican Senators to filibuster the bill. Seriously.
More...
You see, nobody actually filibusters in the Senate anymore. The minority simply threatens to filibuster — and the majority, upon realizing it doesn't have the required 60 votes, abandons the bill, at least as currently configured. Per my unimpeachable source on the subject:

Today, the minority just advises the majority leader that the filibuster is on. All debate on the bill is stopped until either cloture is voted by three-fifths (now 60 votes) of the Senate. Some modern Senate critics have called for a return to the old dramatic endurance contest but that would inconvenience all senators who would have to stay in session 24/7 until the filibuster is broken.

If the Democrats truly believe they are on the right side of the question here, they should make the Republicans stand on the floor and drag out the debate, for several reasons:

First, if (as we hear) health care reform really matters to the Senators who support it, they ought to suffer through the "inconvenience" of a prolonged debate.

Second, if (as we hear) health care reform really horrifies the Senators who oppose it, they ought to be able to summon the energy to prolong the debate.

Third, if (as we hear) a significant objection to the bill is that it's been "crammed through" in a great hurry and without due attention to the weightiness of the subject matter, then surely a prolonged debate would vitiate that concern. For that matter — and maybe I'm showing exactly how naïve I am about Washington — the prolonged debate could yield insights or result in amendments that improve the bill.

Fourth, if (as we hear) a significant objection to the bill is that the public, and indeed lawmakers themselves, know so little about what's in it, then we all ought to benefit — understand again that I'm naïve — from a prolonged debate on the bill's merits.

Ah, Phutatorius: you dipshit! This isn't how filibusters work! It's not actually a debate. There's no substance here; it's purely a procedural stall, with one side reading the phone book and reciting "Jabberwocky" from memory. What's to be gained from keeping the lights on all night for this nonsense, when we can assume it all away, consistently with "modern practice?"

But now we're getting to the genius of the proposal (if I do say so my-naïve-self): Democrats can participate, too, and they can make their case on the "moral issue" of universal coverage all the more pointedly by juxtaposition. Imagine a scenario in which a Republican takes the floor, say, to auction off a date with his daughter, and then a corresponding Democrat rises to the podium and tells the story of an uninsured family bankrupted by health care costs and ousted from its house. After a round or two of this, the Republicans will have to make substantive contributions to the debate. If they don't, and the Democrats manage in the interim to make coherent and compelling presentations about the crisis this legislation means to resolve (yes, yes, naïveté, etc.), they'll come off looking spiteful and destructive. They'll look not-so-serious about an important moral issue.

Trust me: the GOP will be arguing substantive points on the floor very quickly. And the Democrats can, taking their turns at the microphone make their case as to why this bill, their bill, will alleviate the crisis. Indeed, with both sides committed to indefinite debate, we might even be able to go point-by-point, section-by-section, through the law. At this point the Democrats could make a second, economic case for the bill.

My point is, this ought to be a debate the Democrats want to have, and by promising to filibuster, it's fair to say their Republican counterparts are determined to give them that debate. If they debate well, surely the tide of public opinion will send one or more of the holdout Senators their way.

And if it doesn't, all this would still make great theater. That ought to count for something.

Privacy Protection

2010-01-25T11:26:00.004-05:00

PHUTATORIUS
Me: The lease is up on my Prius. I want to exercise the buyout option.

Toyota Customer Service Rep: Great. So we'll send you some forms to fill out, and you just need to return them to us with a check for the buyout amount. We can fax you the forms, or —

Me: Can you email them to me?

TCSR: Unfortunately we can't email them to you, because of privacy laws.

Me: But you can fax them to me? Because my email comes just to me, whereas my fax number is for my whole office. Privacy laws are stupid.

TCSR: [silence]

Me: Yeah, OK. So fax them to me.

TCSR: Great. What's your fax number?

. . . and scene.

FO News Roundup: January 21, 2010

2010-01-21T09:38:00.005-05:00

Bowling Alley Turf Wars in Jersey: A Farce in Three Lines. Arsonist 1: “Can you spare a match?” Arsonist 2: “Here’s one, now strike it.” Arsonist 1: “Done. It’s 7:10. We’d better split.” (P, here all week, unfortunately).
Cindy McCain has duct tape on her mouth to support same-sex marriage. Can we get some on her husband? (P)
Your honor, I move to dismiss this complaint as baseless. The plaintiff didn't slip on butter. She slipped on butter-flavored topping. (P)

FO News Roundup: January 20, 2010

2010-01-20T13:06:00.006-05:00

Coakley pollster: this wasn't our fault, Dems will get crushed everywhere in November, you'll see, etc. Translation: it was our fault, here's more proof, and now we're gonna take you all down with us. (P)
Sorry, Pudge, but not everything stays fair. (P)
Brittany Murphy had a "fear of dying." And then she died. Which makes her just like everyone else, only famouser. (P)
You thought the a la carte checked luggage fees were rough. Now Air France proposes to charge you for your carry-on fat. (P)
N.Y. dealers to N.J.: quit bogarting our business with your "medicinal purposes" law! (P)

Limbaugh, Parks Book Their Seats on the Jerk Jet

2010-01-19T15:45:00.003-05:00

PHUTATORIUS
If there were an abundance of justice in this world, and said justice had poetic license to act — certain persons in this world would swap places with the suffering citizens of Haiti. Of course Pat Robertson would be named on the passenger manifest of Justice Air's next flight from Pampered Prosperity to Port-au-Prince. And if I had my way as booking agent, two other nimrod passengers would be joining him.

I was conflicted when I wrote about Pat Robertson the other day. What can be said about this nimrod that is new or interesting? And when it's obvious the guy's motivation in saying appalling stupid things is a need for attention, to stay "relevant" and in the public eye, isn't simply ignoring him the better and more constructive thing to do? Yeah, probably. But I'm a weak person, in my soul, and I'm insufferable. Some things I just can't let slide. So it is with Limbaugh, who because of my susceptibility to The Ridiculous wins the moral (if inconsequential) victory of seeing his name in print on Feigned Outrage, on the strength of an obviously calculated bid to "make waves" in the Eastern Caribbean.
More...
Limbaugh took to the airwaves with great vigor and vitriol last week, declaring that President Obama's attention to the crisis in Haiti was a cynical and opportunistic attempt to score political points. Geez, sound familiar, Rush? (Um, er, sound familiar, Phutatorius? All right, Writer's Conscience: knock it off . . .) Rush went on to suggest that Democrats will "use this to burnish their, shall we say, credibility with the black community, both the light-skinned and dark-skinned black community in this country," adding that "Besides, we've already donated to Haiti. It's called the U.S. income tax."

Now let's assume for a moment — this will take effort — that Limbaugh isn't completely full of shit here. Let's assume that the President's "motivations" for rallying citizen support for the Haitian relief effort and his orders to the U.S. military to assist with the transport and distribution of supplies are purely political. So frickin' what? At times I've given change to someone in the street, and I've felt good about myself afterward, and I've asked myself whether the fact that I felt good about myself — and so gained something from it — detracts somewhat from the pure benevolence of the act. The answer to that question is undoubtedly "Yes." No act of kindness is totally and completely selfless, and that fact should never — never ever ever — cause a person to refrain from acting kindly. Barack Obama is our President. He's therefore The Person in the World Best Positioned To Do Good for Haiti. That goodwill might gather to him as a result ought to be a secondary consideration.

We have aisle seats in coach and Business Class still available, Mr. Limbaugh. Please note that federal regulations prohibit smoking in the aircraft cabin, and we'll kick your fat, freaky ass if you tamper with the smoke detectors in the lavs.

Lest it should appear that the work of nutjob politicizing the Haiti crisis is exclusively the province of the American right, let's board our next passenger, Alexia Parks of The Huffington Post. In response to President Obama's appointment of Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush to lead the Haiti Relief Effort writes the following:

No, President Obama. NO! You cannot take this step. It is like opening the door to looters and thieves. This act must be undone. It is not bi-partisan. It
is foolhardy, and shows the degree to which the Bush and Cheney drones are still
undermining real change that must take place, top to bottom in Washington.

* * *

What Haiti needs is visionaries, not vacuous placeholders.

Ms. Parks goes on to suggest that the Bush appointment impliedly introduces Dick Cheney into the relief effort, presumably based solely on Bush's prior association with Cheney, as nothing I've read remotely suggests that Bush and Cheney signed on as a package (or, for that matter, than they're forever joined at the hip).

Somewhere in this post, there might be the shade of a suggestion that the Bush Administration's policies toward Haiti might delegitimize relief efforts led by Dubya. But you'd have to work really hard to extract that logic from Ms. Parks's effusion of outrage. At best, then, this is a lost opportunity to make a plausible point. At worst — and this is what I'm inclined to believe — this comment is politics at its most unreadable.

I'm sorry, Ms. Parks: you'll have to check your ideological baggage at the end of the jetway, as it won't be able to fit in any of the overhead bins.

And it raises an important corollary to the point I just made about Limbaugh: just as it ought to be immaterial why the U.S. is trying to get help to Haitians in great danger and distress, it ought, too, to be immaterial who does it. But this is an observation entirely lost on the likes of Ms. Parks. It puts me in mind of folks on the left who loved to complain that the U.S. government, under Clinton, did not adequately address the Taliban's deplorable treatment of Afghan women. And then, suddenly, when a Republican Administration sends troops in to dislodge that regime by force, many of the same folks objected.

At bottom, I think I need to be a better person. A lot of folks are pulling together to help alleviate the situation in Haiti — with their money, with in-kind donations, with their own blood, sweat, and tears. 99.99999997% of the people in this world have responded to this crisis in ways that attest to our shared human values. That ought to be enough for me.

And maybe it will . . . once we've cleared this Jerk Jet for takeoff.

Donate.

FO News Roundup: January 19, 2010

2010-01-19T09:57:00.006-05:00

Hold those dinner plans. Macaweggie is coming to town.

Wait, so he probably isn't even the killer? And he's only getting 5 years knocked off a 30-year sentence? Oh, Boston Herald: you had me nice and hopping mad with the "NJ governor releases murderer" headline, and then those lefties at the AP screwed it up with their facts. (P)
Oh, pow! That's ROUGH! Oh, wait: turns out Rachel Alexandra is actually a horse. (P)
In business news, Kraft's buying Cadbury. Mac and cheese with creme eggs in 'em. (P)
The Chinese government doesn't like Avatar. The American right doesn't like Avatar. Ergo, the American right is just like the Chinese government. Well, they're both buzzkillers, anyway. (P)

Happy Birthday, Doc!

2010-01-19T09:28:00.006-05:00

MITHRIDATES
Happy Birthday (celebrated) to one of my favorite people! Judging by the picture shown here, my guess is that Harry Reid would refer (in private) to MLK as a "medium-skinned African-American." And from the speech I listen to every year on this date (try it, you'll like it), I'm pretty sure the Senator would say he speaks with a "Negro dialect."

But if you could talk to him right now, what do you think Dr. King would say about the Senator's controversial comments regarding Barack Obama? I bet it would go something like this:

We have a Negro President!?!? Holy Fucking Shit! We have a Negro President!

OK, fine, I'm just speculating here, and yes, whatever Dr. King said would almost certainly be a bit more eloquent. But I'm going to celebrate the man's birthday with a few observations on the most recent racial scandal.

More...
Racist, un-PC, or both?
Many made the point, but since we normally skewer the guy for the nonsense he puts out, I'm going to give props to Jeff Jacoby for finally writing something half-intelligent. In his column earlier this week, he managed to state the obvious truth that what Harry Reid said was NOT racist. He even went so far as to criticize Republican chairman Michael Steele for saying that Reid got caught "saying racist things." "Negro" may be politically incorrect (for whatever that's worth), but it's a category in the Census, has many other uses, and, as Jacoby points out, Reid is old and has seen several terms used for "African-American," so who cares? Like the mom in Bloom County who didn't understand why we could say United Negro College Fund and National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, but couldn't say "Negro" or "colored" [note: the politically correct term at the time was "people of color"]. What Harry Reid said might not have been PC, but it wasn't racist by any stretch. At worst, he was speculating too harshly on racism he perceived in the American electorate. Remember when we could laugh at this stuff?

Accusations of racism are thrown around too lightly. As the always-entertaining and enlightening Christopher Hitchens points out in this interview:

Actually, from some people I don't even care if I'm being called a racist. Their standards have become so low that it doesn't hurt like it should . . . And, by the way, that's a disaster. Racism should be a severe accusation. It should be something you are afraid of.

And so truly racist people are able to defend themselves by saying they're just being unfairly attacked by the "politically correct." As David Cross writes to Larry the Cable Guy:

You took umbrage at my calling a lot of your act anti-gay and racist and said that "...according to Cross and the politically correct police, any white comedians who mention the word 'black' or say something humorous but faintly negative about any race are racists." Well, first of all, your act is racist. Maybe not all the time, but it certainly can be. Here, let me quote you back, word for word, some of your "faintly negative" humor and I'll let people judge for themselves.
* * *

"Let me ask some of these commie rag head carpet flying wicker basket on the head balancing scumbags something!"
* * *

"What the hell is this the cartoon network? The Republicans had a muslim give the opening prayer at there (sic) convention! What the hell's going on around here! Is Muslim now the official religion of the United States!...First these peckerheads (...) fly planes into towers and now theys (sic) prayin' before conventions! People say not all of em did that and I say who gives a rats fat ass! That's a fricken slap in the face to New York city by having some muslim sum-bitch give the invocation at the republican convention! This country pretty much bans the Christian religion (the religion of George Washington and John Wayne) virtually from anything public and then they got us watchin' this muslim BS!! Ya wanna pray to allah then drag yer flea infested ass over to where they pray to allah at!" End Quote. So...yeah. There you go.

Yeah, so Larry the Cable Guy might be racist. Thank you, David, for calling him out. Harry Reid just might have been a bit un-PC.

The double-standard double-standard
The "liberal double-standard" feigned outrage of the Fox-Republican-righty blogosphere coalition is always tiresome, but in this case there's simply no case. Steele cries foul:

“What’s interesting here, is when Democrats get caught saying racist things, an apology is enough. If that had been [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) saying that about an African-American candidate for president of the president of the United States, trust me, this chairman and the [Democratic National Committee] would be screaming for his head, very much as they were with Trent Lott.”

Of course what Lott said, in a public setting, was "When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We're proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn't have had all these problems over all these years." Thurmond ran on a segregationist platform. Lott had made similar remarks before at a rally in Mississippi in 1980, "You know, if we had elected this man 30 years ago, we wouldn't be in the mess we are today." Lott claimed he wasn't talking about segregation, but fiscal conservatism. That seems implausible, but I guess within the realm of possibility. Even the Wall Street Journal editorial page hammered Trent Lott for this. Lott made repeated public remarks that at best expressed nostalgia for racial segregation; Reid used an un-PC term about a President he supported. Every right-wing pundit who used the Lott-Reid comparison to "prove," once again, that the left maintains a double standard on race is full of crap. The two events simply aren't comparable.

Of course, the Democrats are entirely consistent on the race issue. They'll use the facts that there are no black Republicans in congress, blacks vote overwhelmingly Democratic, and Republican supporters are overwhelmingly white to attack the Republicans as racist every chance they get. They've always done this and always will. The Republicans are perceived as weak on race and the Democrats will take advantage. Just as the Republicans do on national security with their "double standard" regarding failed shoe bomber ("see, we need Bush's policies to keep us safe! Damn liberals!") and failed underwear bomber ("see, Obama's not protecting us! Damn liberals!").

Race Matters
To be PC in the 21st century, Harry Reid should have stuck to "African-American." And one might say we should let people be called whatever they want. The problem is that "African-American" is a terribly imprecise term to use to denote a person's race. Dark-skinned twins from Angola leave home: one moves to NYC, the other to London. One's now an African-American, the other is not. Does anyone in the world believe they're not of the same race?

So who cares? Well, there are consequences. In 2007, commentators on Jackie Robinson Day came out in droves to decry how Jackie would be disapointed with the racial make-up of today's Major League Baseball rosters, noting that only 8-9% of players were African-American. A representative article by ESPN's John Helyar lists MLB's African-American players. Missing from the list, among many others, are the following:

Those guys are all blacker than "African-American" Derek Jeter, but they don't count because they're not American and therefore not African-American. But they certainly couldn't have played before Jackie broke the color barrier. MLB has grown steadily less American, you see, and therefore less everything-American. It's certainly gotten steadily less white.

But at least the fact is true. The worst part is some headlines actually read "Baseball only 8% Black", which is just plain wrong. But you can't blame them for being confused. Just take a look (an actual "look") at any MLB team and it screams racial diversity.

Such bad terms for race lead to things like white South Africans being able to get credit on college applications by checking the "African" box and educators bemoaning the racial mix at Harvard by noting that most of the blacks aren't African-American.

But after all this, I'd have to break the news to Dr. King that we actually have a white President. You see, his mother was white. Oh no wait, my bad. By current racial accounting rules you have to have 100% pure white blood all the way down the line to qualify as white. Any African heritage at all qualifies you — like Derek Jeter, Tiger Woods, and Lenny Kravitz — as African-American. Now how racist is that?

But if you want to take the edge off some of the cynicism . . .

Not bad, huh?

FO News Roundup: January 18, 2009

2010-01-18T15:07:00.006-05:00

Stray bullets have their merits, but we prefer to fire off our ammo in concentrated bursts. And so, the Roundup is back:

An 80,000 square-foot Planned Parenthood facility just opened in Houston. That'll be fun for all concerned. (P)
"Stab-vests" with the Cross of St. George on them — in case you had any illusions that the World Cup could help build goodwill among nations. (P)
God bless you, sir. You made our bland old lives Supreme, and all it took was sour cream and tomatoes. (P)
Universal Health Care: "I was born in Massachusetts, and I'll die in Massachusetts." (P)
"HELL, NO! WE WON'T ADAGIO!" (P, cringing)

2010-01-17T16:19:00.004-05:00

BULLETIN: Hey, so that kid you want to abort? He could grow up to be a Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback and the World's Best Person Ever. Choice can be a real bitch.

2010-01-15T09:56:00.002-05:00

BULLETIN: Scott Brown doesn't think President Obama's views are relevant to the Senate race in Massachusetts. But Curt Schilling's are. What, is he going down there to call balls and strikes?

Haiti and Pat Robertson's Petty and Incompetent God

2010-01-14T09:24:00.012-05:00

PHUTATORIUS

Pat Robertson says Haitians got their just deserts in the form of a 7.0 earthquake, because their ancestors "made a pact with the Devil" to get out from under the French. At risk of generalizing, I'll venture the notion that a lot of the time people say really stupid things because they don't think before they talk. This is the greatest of gifts to bloggers, because it allows us to do the thinking-through afterward, and so we end up with a fairly newsworthy post.

So let's get to what I believe to be the considerable flaws in Pat's thesis.
More...
There is some historical support for the suggestion that Haitians conducted a voodoo ritual in advance of the 1791 insurrection against French colonist occupiers:

This event was a Petwo Voodoo service. On the evening of August 14th Dutty Boukman, a houngan and practitioner of the Petwo Voodoo cult, held a service at Bois Caiman. A woman at the service was possessed by Ogoun, the Voodoo warrior spirit. She sacrificed a black pig, and speaking the voice of the spirit, named those who were to lead the slaves and maroons to revolt and seek a stark justice from their white oppressors.

See also Dutty Boukman's Wikipedia entry.

There is no evidence that the Haitians obtained the assistance of the Devil, necessarily, as their Lafayette, but we'll cut Pat a break on this point and assume he was taking some rhetorical license here. The upshot is that Haitians turned on the white Christians who were brutalizing and enslaving them, and they enlisted the aid of a god of their own. That god wasn't Pat Robertson's God, these Haitians weren't practicing as Christians, and so there's basis enough here for divine retribution 220 years later, in Pat's view. Fine. Done.

It's what happens next that doesn't make any sense. First, the Haitians win. That is, the side aided by the Devil triumphs over the Christian French, and the Haitians are awarded independence. You'd think Pat Robertson's God, if He were All That, could have nudged his army, better trained and resourced, to victory over this ragtag bunch of rebels with Ogoun/Satan backing them. But it's commonly the case that Satan presents counterparties to his contracts with earthly spoils, only to have them lose their immortal souls in the process. That's the way divine justice works, after all: win here and now, lose later and Elsewhere. That could well have happened in this instance.

Except it seems Pat Robertson's God was Heaven-bent on earthly retribution, and so, after stewing for some 220 years, PRG slapped this week's earthquake down on Port-au-Prince. These two centuries of delay might seem like the bat of an eyelash to the Embodiment of Eternity, but the practical effect of it is that none of the folks at the voodoo ritual were on hand to suffer the result of the quake. PRG, being omniscient, would have known this, and yet He acted anyway. This starts to look a lot less like justice than it does about revenge — particularly when you consider that God, being omniscient, would be well aware of the old saws that "justice delayed is justice denied," whereas "revenge is a dish best served cold."

But of course even in the case of revenge, you'd want to make sure that your act of vengeance was directed at the very persons who have offended you. Now it may be the case — Pat doesn't discuss this — that certain persons in Haiti continue to practice voodoo in lieu of Christianity. Maybe those folks could fairly be the object of PRG's transferred wrath. Still, though, an earthquake is a rather blunt instrument with which to knock out nonbelievers. One would think that Pat Robertson's God, being omnipotent, would be able to smite and strike down anyone he pleased, with perfect precision. Until I hear otherwise, I'm going to assume that not every victim of this earthquake had it coming, in Pat Robertson's terms.

(And what about folks in the Haitian Diaspora? Some 60,000 Haitian emigrés live up here in Boston, where the ratings for The 700 Club are low and dissipated liberal elites sleep in on Sundays? Why do the emigrés get off scot-free? Shouldn't the scourge have been sinner-centered, and not simply directed at a spot on the globe? God has to be better than this. Seriously: if this is how it works, Pat, don't be surprised to find Mithridates and me slaughtering a pig in your back yard tomorrow. Hey, everybody can dream . . .)

Which leads me to my next quibble with Robertson's thesis: why punish at all? One would think that Pat Robertson's God, being omnipotent, would not be overly concerned about whether folks down here are adequately crediting and revering Him for His works in this earthly realm. It seems to me that if You're not secure in Yourself, then You're not really all that omnipotent. I mean, geez: Your son forgave the Romans.)

Finally, I don't think Pat thought through the implications of his argument. If a nation-state can be so tainted by its close association with a non-Christian faith, then do we not have an obligation, as His agents on Earth, to follow PRG's example and destroy those countries with overwhelming force? Pat, are you endorsing a foreign policy by which we affirmatively act to obliterate all non-Christian nations? I don't think even you would say that out loud.

If Pat's arguments about Haiti are true, then he believes in an insecure, tottering, ham-handed God who holds grudges too long and acts erratically in discharging them. For my part, I think this says more about Pat Robertson than it does about God.

If you liked any of this, donate $100 to the American Red Cross to help the poor people in Haiti. If you didn't, donate $200.

2010-01-12T09:59:00.004-05:00

BULLETIN: "I wish I had never touched steroids," Mark McGwire said. And he's going to give back all the millions he earned when he was one of the three most feared power hitters in the game. Right, Mark?

Precious: The Battered Moviegoer Breaks His Silence

2010-01-11T20:53:00.004-05:00

PHUTATORIUS
It is the fate of The Man in a relationship to suffer along when the woman (in this case, his "Wife") picks a movie on Date Night. Long ago the Wife acquired a right of veto over the Man, after he selected Plunkett & MacLeane, an MTV-meets-18th century action comedy about highwaymen starring Robert Carlyle, and the Wife, who apparently never saw Adam Ant's "Stand and Deliver" video, walked out during the second act. This Man does not have that right of veto — not necessarily because he hasn't been dragged to some downright brutal movies in the name of love and marital concord, but rather because he always manages to sit through them in their entirety, and in the end he's not too proud to admit that for the most part the movies were pretty darn good.
More...
There's not very much one can say that is new or interesting about the differences between the sexes, but here's something I've hit on: men favor novels and films in which the hero (often, but not always, a man) lashes out, runs roughshod through the landscape, engaging and defeating dozens of nameless and faceless enemies before joining battle with his nemesis in the end and destroying him in a viscerally satisfying way. Women can't wait to tell men how morally objectionable this sort of Man Narrative is. Man Narratives are inhuman and unfeeling; they desensitize us to violence and exploit the basest human appetites. Yeah, fine.

But consider the outright pornography that women favor: consider the hundred thousand books and movies in which the protagonists (often, but not always, women) are threatened, battered, raped, abused, cheated on, imprisoned, humiliated, or afflicted directly or indirectly with terminal or mental illness. They of course never fight back — if they did, the narrative would become a Man Narrative, and the protagonist would likely become something of a sex object to the men in the audience who are silently screaming for the broken woman just to get herself a gun, some numchuks, and a little frickin' payback, for Christ's sake. These women instead soldier on stolidly through the adversity and are cheered for their strength of spirit. It is through (1) suffering, and (2) doing nothing about it, that the Woman Narrative protagonist finds and displays moral courage. It's that very forbearance that confers gravitas and humanity on the Woman's Narrative, and these supply the cover story for the women who, deep in their souls, actually just like to spend their time and money reading about and watching other women get broken right down to the ground. Let's be clear: when woman go on and on about how inspiring it is to watch Character X's forbearance and strength in the face of adversity, they might as well be showing us a Penthouse magazine and talking up the articles.

If you haven't guessed by now, this blog post is a Woman Narrative, and I'm the protagonist (as I said, not all of them are women). Because, you see, I tried to exercise a veto power on Sunday night. I said absolutely no way no how was I gonna see The Lovely Bones. I've waited all week to get out of the house. I'm the father of a beautiful two-year-old girl. So no, my idea of fun and games isn't a movie about a little girl who gets raped and murdered by her neighbor.

So instead, naturally, we saw Precious. Oh, my frickin' God. Eat your heart out, Jodi Picoult. Law and Order: SVU: you've been lapped. Title character Clarise "Precious" Jones is obese, illiterate, and pregnant. She lives in a darkened Harlem apartment with her chain-smoking mother, who farms her daughter's uterus out to her boyfriend, Precious's father, to augment her case for continued welfare support. Precious has been raped by her father since she was three years old. Her daughter has Down's Syndrome and lives with her grandmother. Her mother, far and away the most loathsome character I've ever seen on the silver screen, verbally abuses and humiliates Precious, attacks her with frying pans, and very nearly kills her second child. Boys in the street shove Precious face down on the pavement for kicks. Would it surprise you to learn that Oprah Winfrey co-produced this movie?

Anyone in this world who has a soul has to agree that Precious is a form of psychological abuse. It's the cinematic equivalent of being whacked over the head with a lead pipe over a period of 110 minutes. Every other scene would deliver another concussive blow — Precious, you're in school now and looking to take your GED, you've moved away from your mother into a halfway house, and you're looking after your toddler son. Well, guess what? Your father just died of AIDS, AND YOU HAVE IT, TOO. HOW YA LIKE US NOW? Signed, The Screenwriters. Every new moment of abhorrent violence, each soul-shattering revelation would elicit audible gasps from the women in the audience, Wife included. Audible, gleeful, quasi-orgasmic gasps.

And in the end, does Precious get to empty a machine gun clip into her Mama? Does she get to take her turn with the frying pan and beat Mama into the floor? Expect no satisfaction, Gentlemen. Oh, there's a bit of a mother-daughter rumble at one point, but the joy we might take from that scene is considerably mitigated by the fact that there's a newborn baby pitched in the middle of it, and we're left to believe that the baby's been severely injured or killed for five minutes before the movie lets us off the hook. No, in the end Precious confronts her Mama in front of a welfare case worker (played by Mariah Carey, who, she says, "had to lose all vanity" and "change layers of who [she is]" to play so mundane and plain a character) and vindicates herself basically by shaking her head at her and leaving the office.

I came out of this movie dazed, shaken and upset. Resentful, even, because looking up at the marquee I remembered the surge of hope I felt as we approached the theater, as it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, she had picked The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. This movie broke me. And here's the Turn — that last bit that closes the loop on the Woman's Narrative and makes it something slightly better decorated than straight pornography: it was a pretty frickin' awesome movie. Yargh! Growth through Suffering. Son of a bitch. And I haven't even covered the movie's exploitation of the tired old "teacher inspires inner city kids with [_____]" gimmick, with "journal writing" filling the blank in this instance. I saw that old standby coming a mile away, I saw it loosening its belt, reaching into the Vaseline jar — got a problem with these images? they're taken directly from the movie — and I let it have its way with me and leave me in the dust.

One of these days I'm going to fight back.

2010-01-11T09:43:00.003-05:00

BULLETIN: Moviegoers are depressed, considering suicide because life on the Avatar planet isn't real or attainable. Class action, anyone? (P)

Meritocracy

2010-01-11T09:00:00.007-05:00

MITHRIDATES
In today's Boston Globe, Neal Gabler takes on the issue of "meritocracy" in college admissions. His thesis — one that's been made before — is that the admissions process at elite schools isn't meritocratic at all, but based more on wealth and privilege. It's not exactly a courageous, or new, position to take — tearing down our great academic institutions is a great pastime for populists on the right, who resent East Coast intellectuals, and the left, who make their living telling people that the system is designed by the rich to keep the poor in their place.

Gabler says the admissions process isn't meritocratic. He keeps using that word, but I do not think it means what he thinks it means. Let's go with Merriam-Webster on this one:
More...

Main Entry: mer·i·toc·ra·cy
Pronunciation: \ˌmer-ə-ˈtä-krə-sē\
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural mer·i·toc·ra·cies
Etymology: ¹merit + -o- + -cracy
Date: 1958
1 : a system in which the talented are chosen and moved ahead on the basis of their achievement
2 : leadership selected on the basis of intellectual criteria

So let's look at Gabler's analysis:

They [high school seniors] know that America, for all its professions of meritocracy, is a virtual oligarchy where the graduates of the Ivies and the other best schools enjoy tremendous advantages in the job market.

According to the above definition, in a meritocracy people move ahead based on their accomplishments. This opening salvo is a poor attempt at proof by assumption. Moving people ahead based on their academic pedigree is only un-meritocratic if you believe earning a degree from MIT or Stanford is no accomplishment at all. Gabler himself doesn't even appear to accept that premise, so moving people ahead based on graduating from the best schools is actually evidence in support of a meritocratic society in the post-college world.

So let's look at the admissions process itself.

Daniel Golden demonstrated in a Pulitzer Prize-winning series for the Wall Street Journal and then in his book, “The Price of Admission,’’ the so-called “best’’ schools give heavy preferences to the wealthy; as many as one-third of admissions, he writes, are flagged for special treatment at the elite universities, one-half at the elite liberal arts colleges, and the number of open spaces for the non-privileged is reduced accordingly. As Golden puts it, the privileged take so many spots that the “admissions odds against middle-class and working-class students with outstanding records are even longer than the colleges acknowledge.’’

Some of this is undeniably true, and obviously un-meritocratic. But the development process at Duke analyzed by Goldman represented 3% to 5% of the enrolled student body. It's possible that Goldman selected a year and school that helped make his point, so that the figures might be even less at most schools. Legacies, however, make up a far bigger portion of the student body at the top schools. From Golden:

Sons and daughters of graduates make up 10% to 15% of students at most Ivy League schools and enjoy sharply higher rates of acceptance. Harvard accepts 40% of legacy applicants, compared with an 11% overall acceptance rate. Princeton took 35% of alumni children who applied last year, and 11% of overall applicants. The University of Pennsylvania accepts 41% of legacy applicants, compared with 21% overall.

While I'd personally like to see legacy criteria dropped from my alma mater's admission process (sorry, Junior), it's unclear how much of an advantage it really is. The naive analysis of the above numbers suggests it's huge, but without any explicit advantage given to legacies, we'd expect them to have higher admission rates anyway. Why? Well, lots of reasons. If Mommy was smart (or had some other quality that got her admitted), some of those genes might have passed on to Junior; Harvard grad Dad probably corrected Junior's English and helped him with his homework; rich parents got Junior tutors, paid for piano lessons, and put him in private school; finally, when Joe the Plumber's son came home with Bs he got a pat on the back, but Yale Junior got sent to his room without supper.

So it's hard to tease out the explicit advantage a legacy gets over a similarly qualified non-legacy from the numbers above. But we have this, again from Golden, about the University of Michigan's admissions process:

The University of Michigan has a 150-point "Selection Index" for undergraduates, with 100 points usually enough to get in. The university awards a four-point bonus to children and stepchildren of alumni, or one point to grandchildren, spouses or siblings of alumni.
Michigan also gives an automatic 20-point bonus to blacks, Hispanics and native Americans (though not to Asian-Americans).

So yes, there's an explicit legacy advantage, but it's one-fifth the advantage given to under-represented racial minorities. While I'd personally like to see it go away altogether, it's a very small advantage compared with other selection criteria. Certainly nowhere near enough to claim the admissions process is devoid of meritocracy. As far as privilege itself, Gabler points out:

They are aiming instead for a diverse student body: an exceptional athlete, an exceptional musician, an exceptional scientist, an exceptional poet. Except that exceptionality, as most parents can attest, doesn’t come cheap. Athletes require coaching and often traveling teams; musicians require lessons and instruments; scientists require labs and internships; poets require classes and opportunities for publication.

Meritocracy means that the selection should be made based on "achievement." It does not say that said achievement can't be aided by wealth, genes, or other opportunity and advantages. That is, to be meritocratic the schools should accept the best violinist. Period. Not the richest , not the poorest, but the best — however she got to be the best. Those tutors and instructors, as noted above, might have been awarded to young, richer children based on wealth — but the decision to admit based on accomplishment conforms to the very ideal of meritocracy.

One more note from Gabler about poorer applicants.

The prognosis is equally poor for economically disadvantaged students, whether black or white. According to Golden, economic diversity counts the least in admission considerations, and only 3-to-11 percent of admittees come from the lowest economic quartile.

See the above "legacy" analysis to see why this might happen naturally, without any explicit preferences. You wouldn't expect 25% in a meritocratic admissions process — or even in an entirely meritocratic society. Genes, environment, expectations, and other opportunities would keep this number well below even if the college admissions process were 100% "meritocratic." In fact, 11% from the lowest quartile suggests a pretty healthy opportunity for social mobility and refutes Gabler's following statement:

Indeed, the system exists not to provide social mobility but to prevent it and to perpetuate the prevailing social order.

Gabler also laments that SAT scores correlate with wealth, but the same argument applies for the most part. Studies suggest that paying for coaching helps a little bit (and I'd personally like to see that entire industry go away), but for the most part you'd expect richer children to be better at math and have stronger vocabularies. You want to make the process more meritocratic by ignoring verbal and math skills in the admissions process? That seems silly. How exactly would removing the part of the application process most associated with intellect promote "leadership selected on the basis of intellectual criteria?"
A good compromise might be to recognize that a poor person who got a 1200 despite their background has achieved something more impressive than a rich kid who got the same. Some colleges claim they do this, but its hard to say for sure how much this is really done.

[Interesting side note, in his commentary in the Economist, Lexington notes that more emphasis should be placed on test scores to make the process more meritocratic.]

Yes, we'd have an even more meritocratic society if tutors, trainers, educated parents, and private schooling were allocated to the most promising students instead of the richest. That seems true enough, but would require an awful lot of socialism and government interference in raising our children. But the lack of meritocracy is in the years leading up to college admissions — the evidence is lacking that the admissions process itself is significantly un-meritocratic. Could it — should it — be more meritocatic? Yes, I think. But the numbers actually suggest that our top academic institutions are doing a good job of accepting the best and allowing for advancement.

Final note: while tangential to the rest of this post, as often occurs when we try to discuss race in America, Gabler doesn't seem to understand what "race" actually means.

Nor does diversity extend to racial composition. Of course every college boasts about its efforts to enroll a more racially diverse student body. But here are the facts: A New York Times article in 2004 revealed that Harvard’s incoming freshman class was 9 percent black, but between one-half and two-thirds of those black students were actually West Indian or African immigrants or the children of immigrants, and many others were biracial. In short, they weren’t African-American.

Hmm, so Harvard's class had about the same mix of blacks as the US population as a whole, but this doesn't count as racial diversity because many of those blacks are from other countries or are the children of immigrants? Racial diversity is about race, not country of residence. If more of those blacks were from the US, the student body wouldn't be any more racially diverse.

2010-01-10T22:13:00.003-05:00

BULLETIN: Hey, Beck: aren't all words "made up?" You douchebag. (P)

2010-01-10T22:09:00.004-05:00

BULLETIN: From CEO of Domino's Pizza to Athletic Director at the University of Michigan — David A. Brandon promises to deliver a winning football season in 30 years or less. (P, heh heh)

2010-01-10T18:43:00.010-05:00

BULLETIN: Every black Republican in Congress is demanding a personal apology from Harry Reid for his remarkably stupid remarks. (M)

Shiny, Happy, Useless Thought of the Day

2010-01-08T09:30:00.008-05:00

MITHRIDATES
It may not be stupid enough to qualify for Idiot Watch, but Nicholas Kristoff's most recent column in the New York Times certainly qualifies as inane blather. He notes that Costa Rica ranks at the top of several Happiness Index lists and wonders what lessons the US can learn from its tiny neighbor. He starts off with this potential reason for its happiness:

Hmmm. You think it’s a coincidence? Costa Rica is one of the very few countries to have abolished its army, and it’s also arguably the happiest nation on earth.

And having grasped this straw, he doesn't let it go:

What sets Costa Rica apart is its remarkable decision in 1949 to dissolve its armed forces and invest instead in education.

Then:

I’m not antimilitary. But the evidence is strong that education is often a far better investment than artillery.

And finally:

But what does seem quite clear is that Costa Rica’s national decision to invest in education rather than arms has paid rich dividends. Maybe the lesson for the United States is that we should devote fewer resources to shoring up foreign armies and more to bolstering schools both at home and abroad.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I think the Switzerland of Central America did a smart (and good) thing by disbanding its military. Of course they have security forces with military equipment, but we can even ignore that for the time being.
More...
But all this is a luxury of a tiny nation residing in the shadow of the world's most powerful military force, with which it has maintained very friendly relations since disbandment. Costa Rica has a coast guard, which trains and cooperates with its US counterparts via the U.S.-Costa Rica Maritime Cooperation Agreement. Beyond that, a naval assault from a foreign country against Costa Rica within a few hundred miles of the home of the most dominant navy in the history of the world would be laughable. It has land borders with two impoverished nations (Nicaragua perhaps occasionally a bit bellicose), who, even if they had the inclination to invade, would be repelled in about six seconds by el Gigante del Norte.

But are there really lessons here for US domestic or foreign policy? Perhaps we could follow the Costa Rican model and have our debts forgiven in exchange for our creditors investing in US forest preservation, as the US did for Costa Rica in 2007. Maybe Obama should ask Costa Rica for around $75 billion in economic aid to invest in education here in the US, which would be per capita what the US gave to them in the 1980s. Maybe they should invest in sustainable development in the US, like the US did there in the 1990s.

Costa Rica made a bet on friendship with the US, and it's paid off. The US provides security, half its tourism, buys most of its exports, and has invested heavily in Costa Rica so they could build the educational system lauded by Kristof. There is no analogous "U.S." for the U.S.

Kristof wants us to learn the lesson from Costa Rica and invest in other countries' schools, uh, like we did in Costa Rica. Maybe Kristof means we should learn from that great bit of investment we already did and try to replicate it elsewhere. Should we — could we — encourage other countries to do the same, and invest along with them? Maybe, but its hard to find others with the geographic luxury of Costa Rica who are so friendly to the US.

The best thing the US has done recently in Latin American foreign policy has been the military aid given to Colombia, helping that country move back from the precipice of failure. Would Colombians be happier if they disbanded their military? With FARC destroying the country from the inside and Chavez lining tanks on the border?

We're building schools in Afghanistan as fast as the Taliban can blow them up. Maybe if Afghanistan disbands its military and we stop giving it military aid, the Taliban will leave them alone and let their daughters go to school.

Once the nations of Western Europe stopped fighting among themselves (check that, after the US stopped them from fighting among themselves) and moved under our security umbrella, we invested in their economy, too. Most places, you see, need that bit of security first.

I'd love to see us invest more in education. I wish the countries to which we gave military aid had Costa Rica's secure geography and could put that money to other use. Other Central American countries would probably be wise to follow Costa Rica's lead — if they could convince their respective militaries — and live under the US's protection and spend their (and our) money elsewhere. But what real lesson is there for the US? Mr. Kristoff?

More, More, Better, More

2010-01-07T19:20:00.007-05:00

MITHRIDATES
Today, President Obama outlined steps we are taking to improve security in the wake of the near-disaster on Christmas Day. There are four:
More...

First, I'm directing that our intelligence community immediately begin assigning specific responsibility for investigating all leads on high-priority threats so that these leads are pursued and acted upon aggressively -- not just most of the time, but all of the time. We must follow the leads that we get. And we must pursue them until plots are disrupted. And that mean assigning clear lines of responsibility.

OK, so step one is pursue more leads and pursue them longer.

Second, I'm directing that intelligence reports, especially those involving potential threats to the United States, be distributed more rapidly and more widely. We can't sit on information that could protect the American people.

Step two is have more people read the reports.

Third, I'm directing that we strengthen the analytical process, how our analysis -- how our analysts process and integrate the intelligence that they receive. My Director of National Intelligence, Denny Blair, will take the lead in improving our day-to-day efforts. My Intelligence Advisory Board will examine the longer-term challenge of sifting through vast universes of intelligence and data in our Information Age.

Step three is analyze better.

And finally, I'm ordering an immediate effort to strengthen the criteria used to add individuals to our terrorist watchlists, especially the "no fly" list. We must do better in keeping dangerous people off airplanes, while still facilitating air travel.

Step four is put more people on watch lists.

Look, all these things sound great to me. But all of them (except the "do a better job" third fix) require more people spending more time. So are we going to hire more people or just spread our existing people thinner? Putting more people on the sex offender registry, for example, sounds good to the "tough on crime" types, but means fewer resources protecting our children from the really dangerous ones — unless you spend more government money and hire proportionately more police. Unless our intelligence folks are sitting around all day with nothing to do, giving them more leads to pursue means less time on the higher priority leads, no? Sounds like a net loss to me unless you're willing to step up the investment . . .

Stands for "Big Crock of . . ."

2010-01-07T16:47:00.007-05:00

PHUTATORIUS
Bill Hancock took over as Executive Director of the Bowl Championship Series today and immediately proved his aptitude for the job — and his fit in the organization. Hancock took advantage of his first day at work to recite the party line on Why a Football Bowl Series (Division I-A) Playoff Is a Bad Idea. This is, of course, a crucial part of the job — justifying the continued existence of your organization in the face of congressional rumblings and a growing consensus disfavoring its business. I won't take the time (today) to shoot down all of the self-serving arguments Hancock served up, many of which come now with bulletholes already built in, courtesy of the BCS's newest hired PR gun Ari Fleischer. (Need someone to provide a bedraggled and hopeless defense of The Indefensible? Hire a former Bush Administration Press Secretary!)

No: I've only got one bone to pick here. Hancock actually took the position that fans would not turn out at FBS playoff games, arguing from low attendance figures at Football Championship Series (I-AA) playoff games. The FCS, you see, has a four-round 16-team playoff, with high seeds playing home games until the neutral-site championship game late in December. Here's Hancock:

It works at that level, I can't deny it, but if you look attendance for those games, only Montana had decent attendance. Many teams didn't draw as well as they did in the regular season.

There are few things in this world that Little Ol' Me (Little Ol' I?) feel I can predict with absolute certainty. But I would STAKE MY LIFE on the proposition that if an FBS playoff game were played at Ohio Stadium, the Swamp, Beaver Stadium, Tiger Stadium, Darrell Royal Stadium, the L.A. Coliseum, or Rocky Top — just to take a few examples — fans of the pertinent teams would turn off The Biggest Loser, pry themselves off their couches, and come out to watch. COME ON!

FO News Roundup: January 7, 2010

2010-01-07T09:50:00.003-05:00

"Hey, I heard you missed us, WE'RE BACK!" Thank you, David Lee Roth.

Mass. lawmaker blames failed Breathalyzer test on his toothpaste. An unlikely story, indeed, and we're toasting the Boston Herald for road-testing the defense. Here's to you, boys! (P, downs Sensodyne and soda)
Why is there a cork on the chopstick? To prevent Ruprecht from hurting himself. (P, M)
"Coated in Controversy" over a picture of the President, "Obama made mistake", "Advantage GOP?", "Right optimistic", "Health Care: Critics eye deficit", "Fox Forum: Balance of power starting to tip", "You Decide: Most troubling issues for Dems". I believe that's a new record: seven anti-Dem/pro-Rep bits in the tiny headline box all at once. (M)
Amend for Arnold! Let's play "Count the Democratic Weasels Who Won't Support This for Fear of Their Union Paymasters." Now let's play "Count the Republican Weasels Who Will Criticize Supporters for Any Repeat Offender Released before the End of His Natural Life." (M)
In the beginning, there was Jared Fogle. Now Taco Bell's touting this Christine Dougherty character. Fame and fortune await you, if you can lose weight eating nothing but a single restaurant chain's fast food. I'll do McDonald's! Oh, wait. Crap. (P)

Attack of the Shopping Carts

2010-01-06T21:18:00.014-05:00

PHUTATORIUS
There's a great creeping threat confronting our nation's cities. It's not homegrown Islamic extremism, and it has nothing to do with the health care industry or undocumented foreign-born residents. I'm talking about a commonplace and seemingly innocuous object, a simple metal basket with a handle and four wheels attached. Yes, I'm talking about a Shopping Cart, that very totem and mascot of our modern consumer-based economy. Sure: it seems harmless enough, as you trundle it up and down the produce aisle dropping shrink-wrapped rutabagas into its bottom. It's docile, unquestioning, and but for that one shuddery and skittish front wheel (standard issue, it seems), it does its work.
More...
But what if I told you that the nation's Shopping Carts are rebelling? That they're escaping their grocery masters in ever-growing numbers? That they're swarming into our streets, tumbling down highway embankments, cluttering our pristine cityscapes, even — gasp! — nicking our bumpers? You'd laugh, is what you'd do. But then I'm not just trumping up the threat here. I have evidence:

In June 2006, municipal officials in Long Beach, California embarked on a "sweep" of their fair city for Abandoned Shopping Carts. The sweep, which was conducted over the course of a single Saturday, turned up 699 ASCs. If you'll allow me the blogger's privilege of rounding up, I'll be able to say that at least SEVEN HUNDRED shopping carts had gone astray of a single city's supermarkets and were parked in plain view for the city to collect. I understand that some 500,000 people live in Long Beach. By my calculation, that's 1400 "[c]arts per million," to paraphrase a preferred term of the Climate Change Cassandras. And that's just what's out in the open: who knows how many more were secreted away in hiding?

Long Beach had to act, and act they did: the City passed an Abandoned Shopping Cart Ordinance that condemned the ASC an "eyesore, potential hazard, and nuisance." Henceforward, Long Beach supermarket owners are required to warn shoppers against removing carts from their property; the ordinance specifies that the warnings must appear in at least two languages (which two is a question left, apparently, to the cart owner's discretion: Cherokee & Finnish? Inuit & Urdu?), and in block lettering at least two inches tall. Under the Long Beach Ordinance, it is now unlawful to make off with a shopping cart without the owner's permission — thank heavens this loophole, this gaping lacuna in the law has been closed! — and certain store owners are required to maintain a "physical containment system" to keep shopping carts from making a break for it when no one's looking. (This latter requirement might seem a costly imposition, but when you consider that some chains have already implemented similar confinement schemes for their employees, in many cases it's just a matter of tinkering with systems already on-site.)

Lest you should think this plague was confined to Southern California, take note that lawmakers in Fresno; Worcester, Massachusetts; and Florida's Hillsborough County (that's Tampa) have also taken steps to combat the Abandoned Shopping Cart menace. Indeed, the Northwest Grocery Association, a nonprofit organization of grocery retailers, wholesalers and suppliers in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, has devised a Shopping Cart Retrieval Service to help its constituent businesses comply with laws of municipalities in those states. It looks as though our nation's cities and towns are finally getting the upper hand on this crisis. One could, I suppose, object that these laws have a quality of micromanagement to them. But when you consider the alternative — unmanned grocery carts careering willy-nilly around the landscape, scattering Stop & Shop coupon circulars in their wake — it becomes clear that we're surely better off with these laws than we'd be without them.

We at Feigned Outrage tip our caps to you, Town and City Councils of America, for wrestling this matter to the ground.

Of Underwear Bombers, Senate Holds, and Lousy Journalism

2010-01-05T10:15:00.008-05:00

PHUTATORIUS

The Washington Post has a story about a hold Senator Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) has placed on President Obama's nominee for TSA Director. DeMint's beef with the nomination, apparently, is that he has no clear statement of position from the nominee regarding unionization of TSA employees (which, being a Republican, he doesn't want). I had sent off a triumphant link to this article to Mithridates and Vercingetorix earlier in the week: AHA! was my thesis. Republicans fiddle while an aircraft [nearly] burns! Who's "soft on security" now, bitch?

But then I thought a little about it, and I realized that as rich and fan-the-flameworthy as this little tidbit is, there's plenty of room for complication here. Complication that can both aggravate and mitigate the "outrage" of the hold.
More...
Look past the obvious politicking here. DeMint holds up the nomination to stick it to Obama, to burnish his pro-management/ anti-union credentials, and to argue points about how Democrats are lousy on national security — the theory being that a union worker is a lazy, entitled worker, and anyone who would tolerate unionization of TSA workers would subordinate the safety of travelers to labor interests. Some points are due to DeMint for the relatively intricate argumentation, which, by requiring the listener to two logical steps, therefore exceeds in complexity most of the rhetoric we citizens get from the Senatorial class. The Post article takes care to present DeMint's side of the question, but of course its very appearance in the paper at this point in time (dateline: December 29, 2009) is a testament to superficiality. The hold has been in place for quite some time now, apparently, but only now does it bear discussion, after Freaky Farouk clears security and sets his lap on fire on an inbound Northwest flight.

But would the result have been any different if Erroll Southers were sitting at the director's desk in TSA HQ, rather than an "acting administrator?" Would galvanized agency officials have taken to their work with such vigor and concentration as to ensure that the Amsterdam airport security officers pulled the bomber off the flight? If not, there's not much fire here to go with this controversy's smoke (if you'll pardon the epxression).

Other complicating questions jump to mind. Can we say for sure one way or the other that TSA workers shouldn't unionize? We don't want our security screeners lazy and entitled, for sure. But we don't want them overworked, embittered and disinterested, either. Policemen form unions. Are we more or less safe, as a result? And even assuming unionization is a bad thing, would Erroll Southers even be in a position to stop it? If the National Labor Relations Act entitles TSA employees to unionize (and I assume there is no specific exception for TSA employees, or DeMint would not have cause for concern), an agency director can't legally stand in their way. If he had DeMint's view of the matter, he might try to litigate the question before the NLRB. But it would be Board members — some appointed by Obama, others by preceding administrations — who ultimately decided the question, certainly not Southers himself. Right?

It seems to me a Better Class of Politician would consider these questions before placing holds on nominations, or for that matter before blaming the Other Guy who placed a hold on a nomination. A Better Class of Journalist would consider these matters, and possibly even write about them, prior to publishing a story tying the hold (even impliedly) to the Christmas Day bombing attempt. Maybe the Best Class of Journalist doesn't write the story at all.

I suppose I'm raining on the parade here. We have a juicy political controversy here, after all. Dems have a basis to attack the GOP — and the conventional wisdom that favors the Republicans on security issues. Under fire now, DeMint gets to stand his ground and draw positive attention from conservatives. Don't you see, Phutatorius? Everybody wins! Pack away your unanswerable questions. Nobody here wants any of your furor-quelling complexity.

Former President Clinton Negotiates Release of Journalists

2009-08-05T10:49:00.002-04:00

WHITECOLLAR REDNECK

So when was the last time Bill Clinton got a girl out of trouble? (cymbal crash)

Thanks, folks, I'm here all week.

My GPS

2009-08-03T17:27:00.003-04:00

WHITECOLLAR REDNECK

On previous road trips, I've learned that the lady who provides the voice for my GPS system has a hard time pronouncing some pretty basic words, things like "Maryland," "Peoria," and "Square." But for some reason she has absolutely no difficulty with places in Mississippi - and I'm talking about places that your average American would lose two teeth trying to pronounce. She effortlessly guided me through Homochitto, Natchez rolled off her tongue quite naturally, and Doloroso came out just right. Tomorrow I will test her on Tougaloo, and if that doesn't get her maybe Tishomongo will the following day.

Two Differences Between New York and New Orleans

2009-08-02T13:26:00.005-04:00

WHITECOLLAR REDNECK

1) All CVS stores stock impulse purchase items by the cash registers - small things you might not have thought of buying but when you see them there you figure "Yeah, I could use some of that," and you end up buying. In New York, the impulse items are chapstick, gum, and phone cards. At the CVS on Canal & Bourbon in New Orleans, they had six-packs of Heineken and three-packs of Trojans.

2) In New York when you pass someone on the street and they have traces of white powder on their upper lip, you assume they work on Wall Street and just did a line of coke. In New Orleans when you pass someone on the street and they have traces of white powder on their upper lip, you assume it's a tourist who just had beignets.

There may be some other subtle differences between these two towns, but those are the ones I've noticed.

The Crime of the Century

2009-07-29T21:19:00.003-04:00

WHITECOLLAR REDNECK

Wouldn't tomorrow be a great night to break into Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s house? First of all, you know he's going to be out of town at the beer summit, second of all you can be pretty sure that neighbor lady isn't going to be calling the cops again if she sees any funny business next door, and third of all you can be damned sure the Cambridge cops aren't going to respond to another Gates residence break-in alert anyway.

And just in case someone does rob the place tomorrow, I can tell you right now I will have an alibi. I have a dinner scheduled.

Empathy and Law: A False Dichotomy

2009-07-14T17:13:00.006-04:00

PHUTATORIUS
As the Sotomayor confirmation hearings continue this week, and as folks like Jeff Sessions get all worked up about (1) President Obama's invocation of "empathy" as a quality we'd like to see in the judiciary, and (2) whether it's reasonable to suggest that a person's background and life experience might have something to do with what they would decide as a life-tenured judge, it's important, I think, to introduce just an eensy-weensy bit of reality and perspective to the discussion.

Now I know that "reality" and "perspective" are natural enemies of the sort of feigned outrage we're seeing from Sessions, who is, apparently, the GOP's attack dog here. So to suggest that the Junior Senator of Alabama constrain himself to these values is sort of like asking a bulldozer to pause and consider the structural integrity and refinement of the building in front of it. But we're all about lost causes here at Feigned Outrage. (So says Google Analytics, anyway.)
More...
The right-wing talking point goes like this: Judges shouldn't act on mushy concepts like "empathy." They should follow The Law. And if they act on "empathy," they're not following The Law, and they're suddenly — and this is a beloved bromide of the judge haters — "making law rather than applying the law."

And of course anyone who knows anything about how the law works — and this should include you, Senator Sessions, given that you were once Alabama's Attorney General — would know that it is an exceedingly rare occasion on which a judge has to choose between the Empathy Answer and the Law Answer. This for two reasons:

For starters, despite Congressional Republicans' best efforts, Empathy is often incorporated into The Law. In fact, a great deal of our most important and treasured laws — our Constitution's First Amendment and Equal Protection Clause, the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, shoot: even the stimulus bill, if you still believe in it — are monuments to empathy.

A bunch of white guys don't pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 unless they're capable of empathy. Sure, if you're cynical (and I'm not, by the way: well, not on this point), you could say that they acted in the interest of securing the stability of the nation by extending protections to an increasingly marginalized and dissatisfied underclass. But even to get to that point, to realize that a law was necessary, if not desirable, you have to be able to consider the perspective of someone from a different background. To know the real effect of a law, you have to consider — you have to predict — how it will affect the people subject to it. Sounds like "empathy" to me, and it sounds appealing.

Second, and probably more important: at the Supreme Court level there aren't that many cases in which The Law obviously compels a certain result. Sure, folks in the gallery may feel that way — and the lawyers at the lecterns may argue that way — but the questions before the Supreme Court are the tough ones. They're the questions that Congress didn't anticipate when it enacted a law. They're the questions on which the several Courts of Appeal couldn't come to agreement. The business of the courts isn't just to override the express will of elected officials and legislate by fiat. That's a happy last point of argumentative retreat when you don't like what a court decided. The job of the courts is to fill in the gaps in the law: to decide what the law means and how it applies when the Framers and Congress, despite their best efforts, left open litigation points.

Certainly as a critic, on the sideline, with a vested ideological interest in the outcome of a case, one can talk oneself into believing that The Law compelled a certain result — the result that one favors. And working backward from that point of epistemological certainty (and this is a space folks both on the left and on the right are comfortable working in, although I would submit that liberals may be more susceptible to uncertainty and less attracted to batten-down-the-hatches-style conviction), one can conclude that the judge who ruled in the other direction was necessarily led astray by impermissible considerations — human failings like bigotry, callousness, religious zealotry, provinciality, venality, empathy. (Wait a minute: empathy? Is that so bad?)

But I'd submit that this isn't a fair or realistic way to review the actions taken in most Supreme Court cases — and certainly in most of the high-profile, front-line-of-the-culture-war cases. The fact is that The Law very, very often doesn't compel a certain result, and it's up to the Justices to do their best to untangle the complexities of a given case and decide (gasp!) what result The Law should compel. A whole host of considerations necessarily leak into that process, and we can talk about what considerations should and should not be permissible. But the notion that a judge should draw on his or her own personal background and experience — that is, the accumulated data that form the basis for their exercise of wisdom — should not be controversial. We can idealize a Law that is so compelling that wise white men and "wise Latinas" would spit out the same outcomes. But that Law doesn't exist, principally because law is an artifact of humankind, and it therefore incorporates all of our best intentions and failures to meet them. It reflects our diversity of opinion and interests. Law is emphatically of the people, by the people, for the people, and when a judge is called upon to decide a case, it seems to me entirely appropriate that the judge should keep in mind that his or her decision is not one made in legal abstraction — it's not a matter for cerebral processing or an exercise of rhetoric and logic — but one that will absolutely have consequences, and generally very significant consequences, for real people.

That, at least to me, is the role that "empathy" should have in judging. And I think it's important.

Larry King's Suspenders

2009-07-13T10:25:00.008-04:00

PHUTATORIUS
I'm growing increasingly convinced that Larry King's body has grooves that hold his suspenders in place. I mean, look at him.

Now I'm no doctor, nor a chiropractor, either (and for that matter, I didn't even stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night), but it seems to me there are several ways in which a body might, organically and over a considerable amount of time, develop a suspension-groove system.

One obvious candidate is callouses, but this seems to me unlikely. The callouses would likely accumulate where the greatest amount of friction exists — that is, under the suspenders, such that you'd have the opposite of a groove. You'd instead have a raised, solid "track" over which the suspenders would be perched, rather than nested. Let's discuss other possibilities:

Muscle development could well be in play here. Consider what a bulge in the trapezius could accomplish, if it arose just between the shoulder and the spot where Mr. King customarily lodges his suspenders. The muscle-bulge would act like a notch — you slip the suspender over it and it can't possibly slide off laterally over the shoulder. Now consider that a second, smaller bulge might crop up between neck and suspender, to preclude lateral movement of the suspender in a neckward direction. It seems to me that Mr. King's forward-leaning "lunge" posture could well accomplish these two results, in a bilateral presentation — especially as from all appearances he is straining against the suspenders themselves. All it would take to develop these bulges would be a gradual tightening — if not as well a reduction in the elasticity — of the suspenders over time.

Third and finally, I suggest bone spurs. This hypothesis speaks for itself, I think, and I don't really see much to be gained from elaborating it.

Some Friendly Advice

2009-07-11T17:45:00.002-04:00

WHITECOLLAR REDNECK

If you want to go see Transformers 2 with your wife, please ask her if she wants to go see Transformers 2. Do not ask her if she wants to see "the Megan Fox movie". Apparently it makes a difference.

FO News Roundup: July 10, 2009

2009-07-10T10:41:00.000-04:00

China's President says "stability is paramount" and the Uighurs need to be "dealt a blow." Clearly he's more of a Grinch than a Hu. (P)
North Korea attacks! Well, virtually, anyway. And here we thought they only bought that computer so Kim could play Lode Runner. (P)
A stampeding bull gores a man to death in Pamplona, while a bear market chastens Wall Street bankers. Can't win for losing. (P)
Basic services are nice and all, but statuary inspires. So it goes in Uttar Pradesh. (P)
Next on the agenda, poverty and starvation. Ah, just in the time for the white asparagus and truffle soup. Waiter, can you take these leavings to the African contingent out in the hall? (P)
"Death by Chocolate": not just a ha-ha funny dessert name anymore. Thanks, menu-writers, for tempting fate. (P)
(Speaking of tempting fate . . . ) is this really the best al Qaeda can do? (P)

Pessimism

2009-07-07T20:38:00.010-04:00

PHUTATORIUS
The Economist recently criticized President Obama's kid-glove handling of Congress. The short version of Lexington's critique is that Obama writes the agenda, and Congress writes the laws. Nowhere was this more evident than in the case of the economic stimulus plan: Obama described the size of the bucket, and the Democratic Congress filled it up. This practice became a pattern with the climate change bill (The Economist, again) — although to be fair, lawmakers in the House had to load the law up with giveaways and postpone its efficacy (if not its effective date) for another ten years, just to win a majority.

Because, for better or for worse, I take my cues from The Economist, I'm afraid for the country. Here's why.
More...
Unlike many of the Republican naysayers, I actually believe that certain of America's bigger problems actually require government intervention. I've said my peace on the economy. But the energy and health care sectors, too, have seen the Invisible Hand failing to manage matters with any kind of deftness or dexterity. Let's consider why and how:

* Health Care. — The failures of the health care market are well-documented. It just isn't working. The principal reason for this is that there is no demand curve. Any reasonable person would rather be broke or bankrupt than sick and dying. If you need to spend $200 grand on a lifesaving chemotherapy, you do it. You plunk down the money and you figure out the rest later. Thus, spiraling costs. And there's the fact, too, that the structure of our health care system is an historical artifact of a market distortion: Stateside employers began to provide health insurance benefits to their workers during World War II, in an effort to compete for talent after the government imposed wage controls. Employers are expected to bear this burden today — and what's worse, employees come of age with the expectation that someone else ought to be paying for their health care. (Aha! cries the Republican — see here the long-term unintended consequences of government interference in the market! Yes, GOPer. Duly noted.)

* Energy. — The energy markets are failing us. Demand from developing countries will considerably outstrip production in the near and mid-range future. This isn't even a concern we can forget about in the short term. We saw inklings of what is coming last summer, when gas prices shot up over $4 per gallon. Prices are creeping back up again. As hundreds of millions of Chinese and Indians lift themselves out of poverty in the coming years, there simply won't be enough fossil fuel production to sustain them and us. This means skyrocketing energy costs, if not something worse — like war. Which brings us to the next factor that calls for government intervention in the energy markets: national security. Terrible, horrible regimes like those in Iran, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia perpetuate themselves on the strength of their oil production. State-owned gas and oil companies in Russia leverage the energy demands of Europe and former Soviet states for the political ends of the kleptocrats in the Kremlin. And worse, we compromise ourselves, we give in on important Western values, in our thirst for oil. We may not be overthrowing democratically-elected governments anymore in Iran, but we do support oil-rich regimes with grievous human rights records. Our need for oil poisons our foreign policy and, to be frank, we'd be better and more principled in our dealings with the rest of the world if we could shake this rotten dependency.

Note that I haven't even talked about the global warming and environmental considerations, which somehow still manage to be controversial among intelligent people. (Shout-out here to V'torix.)

Our energy markets are, of course, distorted by the affirmative intervention of the last Administration in favor of Big Oil. We can ascribe this policy to shortsightedness (voters like the incumbents more when they aren't getting squeezed at the pump) or to venality (oil barons scratch Republicans' backs, and Republicans scratch theirs), but whatever the cause, it's exactly the opposite of the policy we should be pursuing. Giving fossil fuels a market edge when they are already the incumbent technology is emphatically the wrong policy. We need to strike that and reverse it. Government needs to subsidize renewable energy. For our economic interest, for our national security, for our foreign policy, and — what the heck – for the Earth.

And now, the turn:

I earnestly believe that we need the government to tackle these issues — and more than just considering them, we need the government to muck around in the markets. That's the only way these problems get fixed. But then I look over at the two bodies charged with the constitutional power to act on the economy, on health care, on energy — and my heart climbs into my throat, and then it breaks. I have absolutely no faith in the ability of the House of Representatives, or for that matter the Senate, to come up with anything on these issues other than shortsighted, self-serving packages of special-interest giveaways and unintended consequences.

I lack this faith not because of the particular 535 persons who are occupying the seats in the two chambers (although I have to say, quite a few of them are doozies). The problem is our political system. The two parties gerrymander the House districts to protect their seats: as a result, the truly contested elections are primaries that bring the most identifiably partisan — and therefore extreme — candidates into the Capitol. So we have extremist ideologues from both parties dominating the House. Add to this the warped incentives that flow from our politicians' concluding that they win more votes with obfuscatory and infantilizing commercial spots than they do by taking real, principled positions on the issues, and now we have special interests buying and selling our wild-eyed legislators with the campaign contributions that nourish the all-important Media Buys.

It's no wonder the stimulus bill became a Christmas tree, a receptacle for pet projects and pork. It's no wonder, either, that the climate change bill is a toothless pack of giveaways. So now we turn to health care and energy policy, and I cringe, and I again feel like a man without a political home. It's bad enough to live life as a social liberal/economic conservative. Now consider the predicament of the poor blogging soul who shares both the Democrats' conviction that government intervention on certain critical policy issues is absolutely necessary and the Republicans' despair over the ability of a government — and specifically, this government — not to butcher the job.

Somebody tell me everything is going to be all right.

FO News Roundup: July 3, 2009

2009-07-03T18:12:00.000-04:00

It's Freud's birthday today, so we're all about sex and death. Actually, we lied: it's not Freud's birthday. Can you ever trust us again?

Look, dude. You didn't have to propose to her to get her to say "yes, yes, yes, like 500 times super fast in a row." Oh, no, wait: you're a Jonas Brother, so maybe you did. (P)
The Delhi High Court has upheld the right to gay sex between consenting adults. A "director's cut" of the Kama Sutra will hit the streets next week. (P)
Debbie Rowe was a "baby machine" for Michael Jackson, who apparently ditched her at the hospital and ran off with his newborn daughter "with all the placenta all over her." Somewhere, a middle-aged Billy Jean just kicked a hole in the wall. (P)
If you thought Billy Mays was only an American icon, think again: Chinaview.cn is covering his death. And so it is that great cultural gaps are closed by a dab or two of Mighty Mend-It. (P)
A new study shows that cardiac arrest is a really dangerous and shitty thing to happen to you. (P)
No link here — it's been taken down — but CNN was advertising a feature that purported to cover the "highlights of Michael Jackson's life and death." My favorite part of his death was the bit where he came back as a zombie and began to dance, in block formation, with some acquaintances from the cemetery. Well, that and the cardiac arrest. No. The zombie dancing bit was probably better. Less edgy. (P)
Last, but not least: we're all going to die this fall. Thank you, and good night. (P)

Ask Feigned Outrage

2009-07-01T12:29:00.008-04:00

MITHRIDATES
One of our many loyal readers recently wrote in seeking advice on how to respond to the following note received by her neighbor, left on top of her shipment of bottled water:

Dear Neighbor,

I couldn't help but notice you recently received a shipment of bottled water. Can I suggest you try Chicago tap water? It's some of the finest in the country. Or at the very least use a Brita water filter. That way you can do your part to help save the planet.

Thanks,

Your fellow global citizens

This is a delicate situation, with both the planet and neighborly relations at stake, so after much careful consideration I offer the following response:

Dear Fellow Global Citizens,

Thanks for the wake-up call and alerting me to all the damage I am doing to our beloved Mother Earth. You've inspired me to do some research and I can't help but agree that we'd all be better off if I stopped getting bottled water and switched to pure Chicago tap water. Even though the plastic bottles are recycled, this process uses a bit of energy and slightly increases carbon dioxide emissions. In fact, carbon dioxide emissions from many sources are harming our planet and under the new climate change bill, carbon dioxide is an official pollutant. Every time you drive a car, or even exhale, you cause immeasurable and irreparable harm to the climate of our dear planet.

So let's make a pledge to help the Earth together. I'll cancel my shipments and try out Chicago tap water and you cease any unnecessary exhalations. You can use sign language all you want, but never utter another word to anyone — every time you do you emit carbon dioxide and contribute to global warming. Moreover, you can save trees by cutting down on self-righteous notes to your neighbors. Now that you're aware of these facts, I know you can't resist such an opportunity to help save the planet. We all win. The planet cools down and no one will ever again be subjected to your obnoxious, holier-than-thou proclamations, either written or oral.

Once again, thank you for bringing my dangerously negligent behavior to light. I look forward to working with you to make our planet more livable. Thanks,

Your neighbor and fellow concerned global citizen

Dear readers, please continue to email us with your most troubling issues. We're always here to help.

Empathy, Activism, and Consipracy

2009-06-29T20:36:00.004-04:00

MITHRIDATES
As a liberal (debate the small "l", if you must), I'm happy with the outcome of the case. I empathize with the firefighters who passed their exam but weren't promoted because they weren't the right color. But anyway, all I'm saying here is that if I were a conservative and didn't want Sotomayor confirmed, I'd want this one particular case decided this way. And I'd want it decided just before the Supreme Court session ends so that it will be the most recent case during her confirmation hearings. That way I could loudly make the (somewhat circular) argument that she's not fit to replace the Bush appointee who voted to uphold her decision because the current Supreme Court overall disagreed with her 5-4.

I'm happy with the ruling, though, and am glad that Scalia, Roberts, and Thomas took into consideration the unfair treatment of the firefighters instead of just heartlessly and rigidly applying the law.

Bernie Madoff

2009-06-29T20:20:00.004-04:00

WHITECOLLAR REDNECK

Now, I've heard a couple people remark that a 150 year sentence, the maximum the judge was allowed to impose, seems excessive for an old man who's going to be dead in a few years anyway. Some of those people have pointed out that a lot of the victims of Madoff's crimes either knew or should have known that something sketchy was going on, and I suppose there's some truth in that.

But to me the most striking aspect of Madoff's guilty plea, and the aspect that makes him deserving of the maximum punishment allowable, is that he's provided exactly zero help to investigators. Sure, he's admitting his guilt, after it wasn't possible to hide it anymore. But he hasn't said word one about who helped him, how much various other figures knew, where the money went, or how he orchestrated it all. A truly contrite man, one deserving of mercy, would have come clean about everything. And a man who's not at all contrite, who only admits what can already be proven and offers nothing more beyond, seems like a man at whom the book ought to be thrown.

So Bernie, we'll see you in 2159 - you can watch the NBA finals at my place.

"Business lawsuits vex ex-hoops stars"

2009-06-29T20:12:00.004-04:00

WHITECOLLAR REDNECK

Apparently being hated by 98% of sports fans is not enough for Christian Laettner - he's trying to be hated by 98% of the investment community too.

Awesome!

2009-06-27T20:20:00.003-04:00

WHITECOLLAR REDNECK

Well, I'm thrilled that all the protests in Iran worked out OK, and the Waxman-Markey bill that would change America beyond recognition didn't end up happening. At least, I'm assuming that's the case, because the news is spending all their time talking about Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett, which I'm sure they wouldn't be doing if there were momentous issues still in play right now.

"Program Pays Girls a Dollar a Day Not to Get Pregnant"

2009-06-25T20:03:00.001-04:00

WHITECOLLAR REDNECK

Those girls are getting $1 a day not to get pregnant. Can I get $20 a day for not getting twenty girls pregnant?

Walk the Line

2009-06-24T16:55:00.006-04:00

MITHRIDATES
While the usual knee-jerk conservatives spout out their predictable objections, it's worth noting the delicacy of the situation in Iran. While most Americans obviously wants an end to the Ayatollah's theocracy and a peaceful, prosperous, and friendly Iran, the questions is how best to get there.

The posturing right demands a strong statement from the President affirming our support for the protesters. But to what end? An open declaration of support from the US President plays directly into the hands of the oppressors in Iran. It gives credence to their claims that the protests are orchestrated by their enemies and might help unite much of the country behind the regime. The obviousness of this predicament has not prevented condemnation of the President from some corners, and some conservatives, such as Peggy Noonan and George Will, should be credited for noting the foolishness of such criticism.
More...
Let's be fair. Not every conservative is as moronic as Jeff Jacoby and some argue reasonably for stronger words or at least acknowledge the potential downside.

We'll just quietly give thanks for a leader who thinks about the best course of action to effect the most favorable outcome and makes the necessary adjustments as circumstances change — unlike, well, you know . . .

What the Iranian people need is to know that the rest of the world supports them. Obama is trying to do this without giving any credence to the regime's claims of foreign interference. It's a delicate line to walk, and we wish the President success. And whether he got to this speech because of Republican criticism or just a reasonable reassessment of changing circumstances, it's still a damn good one. The man can talk, and right now the right words matter.

Top 10 Harvard-Globe Comments

2009-06-24T10:17:00.005-04:00

MITHRIDATES
The Internet has changed journalism forever. You heard that first here. One of the great improvements over old-fashioned print media is the comment section at the end of an online article. This is where you learn that — however reasonable you originally thought the article was — it's really just either socialist propaganda from the left-wing media machine or fascist rhetoric from the corporate/Christian right.

Don't be fooled by a seemingly bland article about an apparently apolitical topic . Somewhere there's a communist plot — and our commentators are going to find it for us. Nowhere is this more apparent than in a supposedly left-leaning (left-wing, socialist, COMMUNIST!) paper's article about an allegedly liberal (radical, anti-American, MARXIST!) institution.

So without further ado, here are the top 10 comments from Harvard to Lay off 275 in the Boston Globe:
More...

Ah, the poetic justice is intoxicating. These Universities were the most fervent supporters of President Obama in his run. The Liberal minded Professors slamming any opposition to him on campus. Now, with benefactors getting hammered left and right with taxes, threats to take their wealth, and so forth and so on, they are running for the proverbial hills. Which leaves the previously mentioned Professors scrambling to retain their jobs. I wonder what they think of their CHOSEN ONE now. He conned everyone he came in contact with, and is now dismantling the very same establishment which put him in power. The sweet smell of buyers remorse is in the air. - Posted by Jim
See what communists does? It runes the eckonomy by redistributting the wealth. Now those Harvard libruls can feal it.
We need Free Markets, deregulation on Wall Street and TAX CUTS for the top 5 percent in order to make this economy better for all of us teabaggers.
Who cares about educashun and evoloution when you don't get a job?? Knot me. - Posted by Jonny Wingnut
billions in the bank and laying people off??? Not for profit??? something is not right here? LIke everyone else said, why arent they paying taxes? This state is a JOKE. Why do we still live here?If they only had a BILLION in the bank it shouldn't matter. - Posted by rayhags
Harvard can't dip into its endowment to save some of these jobs? Got to build another gigantic building, but let go of all the personnel? I thought communism was all about redistributing wealth to everyone? - Posted by realist
Harvard isn't going to hell, it's already there. E-gad what a horrible bunch of people. - Posted by Jack Higgins
This is almost entirely fault of former Harvard President Larry Summers.
I just hope he would not screw our nation/federal government.- Posted by Rudy Biden
Economic problem precipitated largely by Harvard Alum's and now it comes home to roost. Maybe a revision of the Ethic's Standard and Practice courses would be apropos! - Posted by DanB
Sure .... Destroy the economy and lose 275 jobs. Justice??
What a bunch of elitist clowns at that place...
They do not get it at all... Answer - Do not respect these low life bone heads. Show them massive disrespect wherever they go. They are the elite gone mad. - Posted by Terry Wise
I find it interesting that a large majority of comments on this subject are barely literate. - Posted by Ed
Is there a sensible reason why there is a commentary section for articles published in this newspaper? The quality of the reactive screes that people write is an embarrassment. It is a forum for those that need somehow to express their anger at anything that stays still long enough to tag with graffiti.

It is hardly any better than that.

I think that this newspaper should rethink the premise on which researched news articles are plastered with these random splatters of anger. - Posted by David

Ah, the delightful bashing of: one of the best of our world-leading institutions of higher education; a great contributor to the advancement of science; a source of pride for the U.S. and the state of Massachusetts; one of the state's top employers; one of the top attracters of talent from around the world to the United States; a leader in providing affordable debt-free education to top students; and a contributor to the education of the general public through its Extension School . . . thank God for the Internet!

FO News Roundup: June 24, 2009

2009-06-23T16:44:00.007-04:00

This Roundup started like any old Roundup. But the twists and turns of the Mark Sanford story just took it over.

"Arthur Caplan, Ph.D." wants to know how Steve Jobs got to the front of the transplant line. Like any of 100,000 Macopaths wouldn't offer up his liver to Jobs free of charge. (P)
Off the grid and inaccessible for days on end. Just what we want in a [Republican] President? (P)
Turns out Governor Sanford was up hiking the Appalachian Trail . . . on Naked Hiking Day. We'll take the high road here (pun intended) and assume that wasn't his plan. (P)
Oh, no wait. He wasn't on the Appalachian Trail; he was in Argentina. "We knew he was somewhere that started with an A," said staffers. (P)
Wait wait wait, there's more: speaking of A's, Sanford ought to be wearing a scarlet one. Please, oh, please let the Argentine paramour's name be Elizabeth. I've been trying to find a way to work "I'm coming, Elizabeth!" into this post for hours now. (P)
Same link, new bullet: Sanford has taken the extreme atonement step of resigning his post as President of the Republican Governor's Association. Word is he also plans to kick himself out of the Columbia Kiwanis Club. (P)

FO News Roundup: June 23, 2009

2009-06-23T11:39:00.000-04:00

Poisonous Burkas, Poisonous Ayatollahs, Poisonous Preachers, and Poisonous Cookie Dough:

Take, for example, zis lovely wife of mine, yes? Next slide, s'il vous plait. How would I know I wanted to marry zis woman, if I had not seen her tremendous — 'ow you say zis? — breasts in these Italian magazines? (P)
This product could give you vomiting, abdominal cramps, and diarrhea. On the other hand, it's delicious chocolate chip cookie dough. And you thought Hamlet's decision was hard. (P)
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, my clients did threaten and harass Mr. Bierfeldt. But I ask you to consider the uncontroverted evidence, which shows he is kind of a self-righteous dick. (P)
You asked for a right-winger's conundrum, Redneck? Well, you got it. What's a decent, red-blooded, wolf-hunting, bible-thumping, rootin'-tootin', Real American supposed to think about the right of terrorists to buy guns? (M)
Jeremiah, you got to listen to your pal the Ayatollah. It's Zionists controlling the media, not Jews controlling the President. Get your poisonous, hateful, and insane rhetoric right, would you? (M)

Iran, Iran So Far Away

2009-06-21T20:26:00.002-04:00

PHUTATORIUS
You may win this round — and for that matter, you may win the bigger fight. You have the guns, the gas, the sticks, the vans, the torture rooms. And most importantly, you have the disregard for life and human dignity. All that's going for you, to be sure.

But the rest of us have the Internet, and whatever happens tomorrow, or the next day, or down the road — there will always be a record of this day, the day you ran screaming down the road for cover, like the little fascist bitches you are.

The GOP's Attention to Deficits Disorder

2009-06-19T09:40:00.004-04:00

PHUTATORIUS
I'll start this by acknowledging I hold the status of The Last Writer On This Blog Anyone Will Confuse With An Economist. Be wary, then, of my seductive appeals to logic and common sense over intricate egghead theories of the economy supported by charts and graphs.

The Republicans in Congress have had an awakening recently about the federal budget and deficit spending. Of course, this is hypocritical, given their spending record earlier in the decade, and the Democrats have hammered away at this point when- and wherever they can. But politicians would have to credit the electorate with a memory before they would ever hold themselves bound to a value like "consistency." And of course many of the Democrats who would spend spend spend now were begrudging the consignment of debt dollars to Republicans' pet projects back in the day. To my mind, then, the question to ask isn't "who is inconsistent?" but "is there a right side to the inconsistency, and if so, who is on it?"

This is where you lose, Republicans.
More...

Most reasonable people understand that if there is a magic bullet that someone can fire to kill off a spiraling recession, it's government spending. A failing economy absolutely needs an infusion of dollars to jump-start the recovery. It has to come from somewhere, and the federal government is emphatically the best entity to provide it, for at least three reasons that I can discern:

(1) Like it or not, the federal government is the single biggest unitary actor in the economy. It can make the big Trillion Dollar Splash that is required.

(2) The federal government's mandate is different from that of any other economic actor. It is capable of a kind of selflessness that the regular investor, personal or institutional, is not. I don't mean to suggest a value judgment here about selfishness and capitalism. What I mean to say is that private investors rightly think hard about what they themselves will gain from their investments, and there's just no incentive for a private investor to kick money into a busting economy on the attenuated theory that, if everyone else throws their money at the problem, too, things will get humming again at a macro level and we'll all do better. The government's gig is to examine the larger picture.

(3) The government can raise the money. There's some suggestion right now that this will not always be the case, but there's a reason why the T-bill confers the lowest rate of return on your investment: it's the safest investment you can make. Sure, we thought institutions like GM and Lehman Brothers would be around forever, but this recession has proved us wrong. If there's a safe bet out there, it's that the United States government is here for the long haul.

So, duh: anyone with half a brain can figure that the federal government is the best and only bet to spend us all out of this. Note that I didn't say the government should generally be trusted to run the economy, and I didn't say I think the government isn't susceptible to all sorts of conflicts of interest, rent-seeking, and competence issues that will undermine its ability to target and direct its spending in the most efficacious, recovery-inducing way. But at a time like this, there's no better solution out there, and no one better to undertake it.

On to deficits, then. We know that there is an economic cycle of boom and bust, of growth and recession. The prudent government knows that it will need to spend spend spend — and possibly spend more than it brings in — during the downturns. The prudent government will prepare itself for that part of the cycle by working to generate a budget surplus during the boom times. Sure, we can carry a certain amount of debt from one generation to the next, but it makes sense to keep that practice to a minimum, so that — ahem! — we don't get in a habit of it, such that it gets out of control.

Working with a Republican Congress, President Clinton was able to balance the federal budget during the boom times of his second term. Both sides of the aisle are due some credit for this, but it's worth noting that Clinton didn't demand all sorts of tax cuts and extra spending to max out the economic growth. We were content with the prosperity that we had. Enter President Bush, and we instantly cut taxes, a recession followed (probably not related) and when we came out of that, we threw more than a trillion dollars at a war of convenience and added a massive GOP-championed federal entitlement in the form of the Medicare prescription drug benefit. These three significant deficit-creating events — the tax cuts, the Iraq war, and the drug benefit — have three things in common: (1) they all happened when the economy was running smoothly, (2) they were all championed by the Bush Administration and the Republicans in Congress, and (3) they were all unnecessary gestures of political convenience.

The government should run a surplus in boom times and spend into the red during economic crises. That's an "inconsistency," to be sure, on the question of deficit spending. But it's an inconsistency that makes sense. The Republicans were drunken sailors during the good times and are budget hawks now. They've got it completely backward, because they care more about politics than about the economy and the federal budget. Hypothetically, would the Democrats have done the same if they'd been running the show for the past eight years and the Republicans were in power now? Possibly. Probably. But it's the Republicans who have been actually stupid and wrong, to our detriment. Let them answer for that, and let the Democrats learn from it.

This Not Remotely an Economist has spoken.

"BILLY JOEL'S THIRD MARRIAGE COMING TO AN END"

2009-06-18T19:42:00.001-04:00

WHITECOLLAR REDNECK

I hope the Piano Man had a prenup, or his next release is going to be a blues album.

FO News Roundup: July 17, 2009

2009-06-17T09:00:00.000-04:00

There was music in the Cafes at night and Revolution in the air.

Finally we can get the news from Iran directly without passing it through the biased filter of CNN and the rest of the liberal media. (M)
Thanks to all the men and women of the US military who are so bravely securing our right to Feigned Outrage, hypocrisy, double standards, and inane news topics. We can all take a deep breath. Sarah Palin has accepted David Letterman's apology. (M)
Thank god we got rid of Bush and Cheney. A new era of transparency in government has finally arrived! (M)
Prominent Republican Deviates from Party Norms by Having Affair with Woman. Glenn Murphy, Larry Craig, Mark Foley, and Ted Haggard all express their shock and dismay.(M)

"Downed maple smashes into two Toyota Priuses"

2009-06-16T19:04:00.002-04:00

WHITECOLLAR REDNECK

Yup, even Mother Nature hates those Prius-driving hippies.

A Trip to the Dentist

2009-06-15T12:28:00.003-04:00

WHITECOLLAR REDNECK
I had my six-month checkup this morning. My dentist has installed TVs in each of the little offices, so while the hygienist was rooting around in my mouth I got to watch Good Morning America's roundup of the latest happenings on I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here. I'm not sure which of those was more uncomfortable. Oh, if you know who Spencer is, please drop a note in the comments.

FO News Roundup: June 15, 2009

2009-06-15T11:00:00.000-04:00

C'mon, Japan: have a heart. It's a shame that in some countries religion and a flawed healthcare system can interfere with the sensible practice of medicine. (P,M)
"Yeah, the vote was rigged," says Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. "By God." Does that make it OK? (P)
Joe Biden's thoughts on the Iranian election result:"I have doubts but withhold comment." No, Joe, that's a comment. And thus the mystery of Joe Biden's uncontrollable gaping maw is explained. The man simply doesn't know that he's saying anything at all. (M)
"The Holocaust didn't happen, but my reelection did." It's a tough life on the far side of the looking glass. (P)
They're saying the jackass who shot up the Holocaust Museum in D.C. is a "neo-Nazi." But at 88 years of age, isn't he really just a regular Nazi? (P)
Nixon went to China; Clinton enacted welfare reform; might it take a Democrat to curb medical malpractice lawsuits? (M)

Not Such a Pretty Mouth After All

2009-06-13T14:00:00.003-04:00

MITHRIDATES
We all know that Hollywood is full of lefty nutjobs. From Sean Penn's rants about George W. Bush's bloodsoaked underwear to Tim Robbins' opening his mouth on just about anything. Hollywood is the right's symbol of the lunatic left (never mind that it's also possibly America's greatest export industry).

But the smaller, but still lunatic, right-wing fringe of Hollywood isn't staying silent. They're few and far between, but that just means we need to cover the righty rants more when they happen. You know, in the name of a balanced press.
More...
So here's to Jon Voight's mostly incoherent, sometimes scary, often scathing ramblings at a Republican fundraiser last week. No need to watch the whole thing if you value ten minutes of your life — it's not that good — but here are some highlighted fragments, phraseoids, and other snippets:

Obama's "false haloistic presence."
He "turned out be wildly radical. The way he played his deception is interesting . . ."
His "strategies should be looked at to see if we could mimic them in a positive legal way."
"Everything Obama has recommended has turned out to be disastrous."
"Joe Biden, one of the great double-talkers of our time . . ."
"The government wants to tell people what doctors they can see, how much they can make, and what cars they can drive."
"We can blame [list of Democrats] for the downfall of this country."
"We and we alone are of the right frame of mind to free this nation from this Obama oppression."
"Let's give thanks to all the great people like Sean Hanity, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Laura Ingram . . .Glen Beck . . . Anne Coulter . . . Michele Malkin . . . Let's give them thanks for not giving up and staying the course to bring an end to this false prophet Obama."

At one point he quotes, and this is no joke, Pravda to prove we're on the road to Marxism. All of this to (sometimes thunderous) applause and the acclaim of the Republican establishment in attendance.

False, haloistic, illegal, radical, deception, disastrous, double-talker, downfall, oppression, false prophet, Marxist — all in one speech.

Read this later interview if you want to see Bill O'Reilly appear the voice of reason against:

"We have a fellow who's bringing us to chaos and socialism."
"They're actually attacking entrepreneurs. They're attacking business."
"This is a very extreme agenda."

And just in case you were wondering, Glenn Beck does not appear the voice of reason in the interview he did, but here are more Voight highlights:

"Well, you know, I came into celebrity in the end of the '60s and I was surrounded by people who were very heavily programmed, Marxist. And I didn't even realize it at the time that this was communist-based stuff, you know, that the communists were behind organizing all of these rallies and things."
They [the left] didn't take seriously the blood that they had been directly causing."
"We're losing so much. This man, Obama, is not only, you know — has not only set himself to redistribute the wealth of the middle class, he also is set to take over, control the industrial wealth of the country with banks and with, you know, the major corporations, with foreign companies."

OK, so Jon Voight's a nutjob. So what? Well, so nothing, so long as he's not invited to speak at the National Republican Congressional and Senatorial Committees gathering and roundly applauded by the Republican establishment. Hey, everyone's entitled to their opinions. Go ahead and applaud if you like. Just don't then pretend you were really ever willing to support the President or give him a chance.

I'm Enjoying the Yankees/Red Sox Rivalry

2009-06-12T09:59:00.003-04:00

PHUTATORIUS
Let's be clear: I absolutely detest these two baseball teams. I hate hate hate them both — I like to think equally, although the Yankees' free-agent cannonball splash this offseason makes them more recently offensive. And theoretically, if you hate both teams, you should hate the rivalry, too, which is all anyone wants to talk about on any of the NINETEEN nights during the season when Boston and New York are playing baseball against one another.

It gets tiresome. It's tiresome that the 8 p.m. Sunday game on ESPN is always Yankees/Red Sox, if they have a weekend series. It's aggravating to show up at the Depot on Thursday for Trivia Night, only to find that they've suspended Trivia Night because New York and Boston are playing an "important" regular-season game. It's sad that Major League Baseball has compromised the integrity of its competition by introducing the unbalanced schedule — basically so that this rivalry can be joined as often as possible between April and October.

And now that Boston has grown into an American League powerhouse franchise with a standing and fan following at least equal to the Yankees' — and as these teams have fought tooth and nail, more often than not, for the AL East division title, if not for the pennant, in recent years — the rivalry has become overhyped, overblown, and overplayed.

In short, I hate hate hate everything about the Yankees and Red Sox, and so anything like this rivalry, which features them both and exalts them both, should absolutely get on my last nerve and shred it with a cheese grater.

Except now — right now and for now — I'm really enjoying it.
More...
Why's that, Phutatorius.?

I'm so glad you asked, Brother/Sister. Here's exactly why. Because I hate hate hate both of these teams with a white-hot, burning-acid hate, the only pleasure I can derive from having the media shove them in my face is in seeing them fail. Fail, Yankees! Fail, Red Sox! Fail miserably, and dramatically. Fail graphically and violently. Die! Die great, Shakespearean baseball deaths. Let the diamond dirt soak up great gobs of blood and sweat spilled in defeat. Let your wretched, unwashed, barbarian fan bases gnash their teeth and rend their knock-off jerseys in anguish and despair!

But of course that's not going to happen. These teams aren't going to fail: certainly not both of them, anyway. The Yankees spend too much money, and the Red Sox are too well-run. It would be too much to expect them both to crash and burn. No — the smart Yankee- and Red Sox-hater has to hedge his bets. He has to be content if just one of these teams fails in dramatic fashion. And although, in the bigger picture, both teams are doing well this year — they're running 1-2 in the division right now, with the Sox 12 games over .500 and the Yanks playing 8 games over even — I am pleased to report that the Yankees have lost eight straight games against the Red Sox this year.

AWESOME!

Let's develop the narrative a little more. The Yankees had dominated this rivalry, and the rest of baseball, for much of the last century. But since their last World Series title, the Red Sox — the RED SOX — have won two championships, while the Yankees' organization has floundered. New York actually failed to make the playoffs last year, with a payroll of over $200 million. This is the baseball equivalent of falling out of bed and failing to hit the ground. It was glorious. And now, after throwing $420 million at the problem last year, the Yankees still can't beat Boston.

Oh, yeah, fine: they can beat everybody else: they're 16 games better than .500 against the other teams. But they've lost eight in a row to Boston. Ha! Ha ha!

This is where the rivalry becomes useful for the Yankee- and Red Sox-hater. These teams have transcended the rest of the competition. It's not exactly Celtic-Rangers, but it's as close as the game of baseball allows. If we accept that both teams cannot simultaneously be ground down (or at least that this outcome is statistically improbable), let's run with the idea that one can absolutely dominate the other, and if we are able to ignore the winning team's success and focus specifically on the losing team's frustration and disappointment, some measure of Schadenfreude is available to us. There is great pleasure to be had here.

Going forward, until such time as the Yankees reestablish themselves in this rivalry, I will be rooting strongly for Boston to win its games against New York. Not because I like Boston at all, but because I am able to see Boston as a blunt instrument with which another team I hate hate hate in equal measure might be clubbed senseless and battered into the ground.

And, of course, if New York should turn this train around and win nine in a row against Boston, then go, Yanks!

Hitchens v. Obama on Hijab Laws

2009-06-09T20:51:00.011-04:00

PHUTATORIUS
A few posts ago Redneck described a left-winger's conundrum. Well, here's another one: what happens when the practices of a religious minority conflict with equal rights for women?

Avowed secular polemicist Christopher Hitchens just took issue with President Obama's assertion — in the Cairo speech on America and Islam — that French and other European governments infringe religious freedoms when they enforce laws that prohibit women from wearing the hijab.

I gotta say, I'm not sure where I come down on this one — I think because both Hitchens and Obama are oversimplifying the question (go figure a journalist and a politician dodging complexity).
More...
In truth, there's a whole lot of middle ground between the assumption that drives Obama's position (that women want to wear the hijab) and Hitchens's (that they don't). I won't presume, as Obama and Hitchens did, to speak for all Moslem women, but my surmise is that a lot of them don't draw a distinction between what they want to do and what they have to do. This is the ambivalent nature of tradition, after all. I would venture to say that a lot of Moslem women do want to wear the hijab, but they only want to wear it because they have to — just as I might find more pleasure supporting another baseball team, but I stick with the godawful Indians because it ties me to my roots, it's something my father taught me, and for some unfathomable reason the Indians are a part of my identity.

If you want to have to do something, or you have to want to do it, is it fairer to say that you want to do it, or that you have to? I'd say neither. But when the question is whether or not to have the sort of law that President Obama was discussing in Cairo, it's useful to make one or the other assumption. If women are culturally (or physically) pressured to wear the hijab, then it's sure worthwhile to have a secular sovereign write and enforce a law to override the compulsion. If they simply want to wear it, then that same law surely infringes religious freedoms. Ideally, there's a law that says it's unlawful to compel someone to wear a hijab: that would get to the heart of the question, and it would punish appropriate people: i.e., the jerkwads who impress backward, illiberal "traditions" on these women in the first place.

There's the broader policy point, too, that Hitchens makes: acceding little pockets of sovereignty to the umma is destabilizing to Western countries, and it encourages the kind of transnational radicalism that al Qaeda et al. promote with their talk of a worldwide Caliphate. But there's a counterpoint to consider here, which is that the true believers will always exalt the celestial law over the mundane, so that a secular state's regulation of religious practices itself has a radicalizing property to it, by provocation. I'd like to figure out which is the better policy, and I'd like to tackle it with some sharper analytical implement than "concessions embolden, so let's antagonize them."

In the end, though, I go with my instinct: liberal, secular values are important. Everybody else who comes to America has to trade some component of his/her identity to join the larger community. Life's a bitch. Wear what you want, but when we take your driver's license picture, take off the frickin' hijab so we can see you. Just like everyone else.

Of course, this only brings me back round to another conundrum: does disagreeing with President Obama here make me part of the hawkish right-wing opposition, or an apologist for France?

Redneck: any thoughts?

FO News Roundup: June 8, 2009

2009-06-08T13:50:00.002-04:00

The best news u can find 'anyWHERE on interNET'

Funny what passes for good news these days: more jobs lost, but at a slower rate. I suppose we can thank Newton and Leibniz for this kind of analysis. Let's hope we're not reduced to celebrating a reduced rate of job loss acceleration anytime soon. (P)
The Big Unit notched his 300th win the other night. Asked to comment from his perch on Some Other Temporal Plane, a certain bird said, "F**k him." (P)
I'm so angry I could tweet! "Pres Obama you got nerve while u sightseeing in Paris to tell us 'time to deliver' on health care. We still on skedul/even workinWKEND." Really? Has it come to this? "Pres Obama while u sightseeing in Paris u said 'time to delivr on healthcare' When you are a 'hammer' u think evrything is NAIL I'm no NAIL." That's the sound of our democracy plummeting into the abyss. (M)
Launching missiles, imprisoning Americans, threatening neighbors? Don't worry about it. President Obama is "going to take a very hard look at how we move forward on these issues." And some people were worried this guy was soft. (M)
I thought we had kicked out the right-wing regime. At least the Bush administration never honored people who actually worked for the Nazi war machine. (M, P)

"Canada's governor general eats seal heart"

2009-06-07T13:20:00.002-04:00

WHITECOLLAR REDNECK

Jay Nordlinger highlights this article about the governor general of Canada participating in an Inuit ritual involving eating the heart of a baby seal. Jay wonders what left-wingers will make of the story - is it awful that a public official is eating the heart of a baby seal, or is it awesome that a public official is participating in an ancient ritual of an indigeneous people?

I'm trying to think of a case where right-wingers would be equally flummoxed - maybe if union members started carrying concealed weapons, or something like that. Help me out by suggesting something, please.

Deep Questions

2009-06-07T13:16:00.002-04:00

WHITECOLLAR REDNECK

Is it possible to be both a ladies' man and a man's man?

I think so, but I can see the case for the other side too. Discuss amongst yourselves!

Summertime Rolls: Nine Inch Nails and Jane's Addiction at the Comcast Center in Mansfield, MA (Part 1)

2009-06-06T01:01:00.001-04:00

PHUTATORIUS

Short answer: Jane's wins in a rout — and in what was probably an unfair fight. Here's the background. I saw Nine Inch Nails back in 1994 on the Downward Spiral tour. It was at the Nautica Theater in Cleveland; the seats were removed to create a giant general admission pit; and the Nautica's location in "the Flats" — flush up against the Cuyahoga River — sets up a terrific vibe of post-industrial decay, with rusty bridges and rotting barges supplying a suitable background for Trent Reznor's aesthetic. More to the point, I was young, in college, and angry, and to this point Nine Inch Nails had turned out only two albums and one EP's worth of "woe is me, woe to you, my soul is black, so go screw" rock-electronica.

Jump ahead to 2009. The Comcast Center, once the Tweeter Center, is — as it sounds — a heavily cross-promoted venue in the "summer concert" style. This place, along with its 30 or more cookie-cutter counterparts across the country, is nested in a woodsy, off-the-beaten-path locale. It has the usual Pavilion and Lawn seating, which in 2009 means they've gone and replaced most of the Lawn with seats just like those in the Pavilion, except that the Lawn seats aren't sheltered and are taken on a first-come, first-serve basis. There is no pit in the Pavilion, no intimacy anywhere, and not really any sound in the Lawn seats, which is where the three of us are sitting.
More...

My frame of mind is this: I never saw Jane's Addiction, but I love and have canonized the two studio albums from 20 years ago. I think Jane's absolutely rawks and have been fired up for weeks to see them. As for Nine Inch Nails, I tuned out after The Downward Spiral. Nothing I've heard since that album has particularly interested me. I consulted SR a great old friend and longtime devotee of the band in advance of the concert: what should I buy? SR's answer, as longtime devotee of Nine Inch Nails, was (and I paraphrase) pretty much everything (except for what I could get for free on the NIN website, and isn't Trent Reznor great for doing that, and so on). In anticipation of the show, I put Jane's in heavy rotation and blew off any plans I had to cram the last dozen years of Nine Inch Nails.

Part of this is that "my soul is black" can surely be meaningful to a person in a particular state of mind, but that state of mind is necessarily ephemeral. If it's not, then you're truly in a "downward spiral," and good luck to you. My state of mind these days is that things are generally good, and if and when they're not, I don't need an over-earnest faux-artiste (yeah: you, too, Win Butler) to articulate the sentiment for me. And so I was bracing myself to be curmudgeonly and irritable when Nine Inch Nails took the stage.

Four thick paragraphs of set-up — or maybe disclaimers or explanations I think I owe to folks I know like SR who think the world of Nine Inch Nails — and only now I'm getting to the show. So be it. You don't read these posts because you crave punchy prose. Curtains up!

Trent Reznor has filled out. He doesn't look like a starved, patchy rat anymore. He has more of a Henry Rollins-crossed-with-thickness-of-middle-age body, and his (naturally) black clothes are well-tailored and well-cut. He has a nice, neatly-coiffed head of hair. His appearance gives the impression that any presentation of onstage chaos has been blocked out and planned weeks in advance. In short, Reznor is seething with competence, rather than passion. The band is a straight four-piece, with vocals, guitar, bass and drums, but there are pianos and keyboards scattered on the stage, too. And what we get is basically a straight-ahead rock performance, with the occasional interstitial segment of electronica.

The crowd's reaction to Nine Inch Nails' performance is, I think, telling. Most everyone in the Lawn seats is carrying on a conversation during songs. This speaks to Trent's inability to hold our attention, and also to the fact that the sound isn't traveling particularly well. The sound issue is important: what distinguishes Nine Inch Nails is sound and production values, and if you want to be specific, the dual gimmicks of stop-start and quiet-loud. When, from where you're sitting, "start" and "loud" aren't all that powerful, these gimmicks falter.

A live performance by a group like Nine Inch Nails is necessarily a dicey proposition, because what "art" we can fairly attribute to Nine Inch Nails lies in the carefully manicured production, the layering of dozens of tracks, the love and attention that Trent gives to every buzz and lilt that lands on a master tape. Contrast the often gag-worthy lyrics ("I built it up now I take it apart climbed up real high now fall down real far") and the guitar hooks, which are nothing special and are generally distinctive only for their weightiness and timbre. The problem here is that the live performance with the four-piece band relies on the vocals and the hooks. Urk.

So the crowd chatters and yawns, and on those brief occasions when vox and guitar give way to a brief spasm of Nine Inch Nails-style electronica, the crowd stirs and cheers the band. Worth noting, too, that I'm apparently not the only attendee who tuned out after Spiral. Whenever Trent dips deep into his back catalogue — for, say, "Gave Up," "Piggy, "March of the Pigs, or "Wish" — the crowd's enthusiasm level surges, only to fall back again when the band returns to this century's material. And what is more, I feel this, and maybe it's a matter of perception and bias more than anything, but I really do feel it: the band itself seems to kick it up about three notches when it plays these old songs. They attack the classics full-throttle, and generally to great effect, whereas the songs in between seem (again, at least to me) to be delivered with a kind of listlessness. Strange, I think, because usually it's the reverse: usually the band is all-too-enthusiastic about its new material, and it's apparent from the soulless rendition of the "old stuff" that they find it tiresome.

I find myself increasingly aggrieved over the selection of songs from the earlier (i.e., familiar) releases. What — no "Terrible Lie?" On what basis, Trent, do you decide to exclude "Terrible Lie?" And you ransack the Broken EP, and all you can find is "Wish" and "Gave Up?" Pfft. You'd have done more justice to Broken with "Suck," or even the "(You're So) Physical" cover. These choices are troubling to me.

And now it's time to discuss the blackness and anger. Some of it is well-cast, fine-tuned, and delivered from some interesting perspective: I've always admired the cyber-alienation theme of "The Becoming," and it's no coincidence that in the entirety of the set it is this song, which documents a soul-destroying mechanization of self, that best incorporates the band's signature electronic elements into the straight-ahead rock. "It won't give up/It wants me dead/God damn this noise inside my head" is especially catchy — the closest Reznor has approached (and will approach, based on what I've seen) to "Bow down before the one you serve/You're going to get what you deserve," lyrical heights he reached, tragically, in his first single, twenty years ago.

Twenty years is a long time to be serving up this blather about Blackness, and it's an aesthetic that, for the reasons I described above, doesn't lend itself to holding the same cohort of fans over the long haul — simply because the sentiment grows wearisome over time. Your best bet, then, if you're Trent, is to pick off successive generations of rock fans as they hit the Blackness Stage of Life, then set them free thereafter. If they don't come back, as the old bromide goes, they were never yours to begin with, and you can use the ensuing feelings of betrayal and loneliness to nourish the next album's Blackness.

At some point I wish out loud that Nine Inch Nails would play its cover of "Dead Souls," and this leads into a conversation with my friend KL about Joy Division. Well, not so much a conversation, because there is live music playing, I'm monologuing, and KL, as is his practice when he goes to concerts (even though it was not really necessary here), has installed earplugs to keep his ears from ringing afterward, so he probably hears only half of what I'm saying. Joy Division is, of course, the unattainable ideal for Nine Inch Nails. If they were contemporaries, I'd use the Mozart/Salieri analogy. Joy Division had the advantage of masterful instrumentation from creatively coequal bandmates, a brilliant producer in the studio in Martin Hannett, and genuinely nihilistic and soul-destroying lyrics. Joy Division's recordings were groundbreaking in their production values, and yet when all Hannett's bells and whistles were necessarily shunted aside for the band's live performances, the band was still able to deliver the goods with an intensity, an immediacy, a desperation and menace that Nine Inch Nails can only dream of having. KL nods in agreement. I can't say for sure he's not patronizing me (he is, himself, an insufferable rock critic), but I gather from his body language that he won't be taking up Nine Inch Nails' cause against Joy Division or anyone else after this show.

There comes a point where Trent Reznor means to introduce a song that is particularly important to him. He says he locked himself away by the ocean for a period of time, ostensibly to write songs, but, he says, "what I really wanted to do was kill myself." He has clearly crafted his presentation of the story to give it maximum rhetorical kick, but given the way he said these words, I don't doubt his sincerity. Trent winds his way through the rest of the story — he only managed to write one song during this lowest period, and it was "The Fragile." Then the band plays "The Fragile," which, to me, is hardly noteworthy or compelling. Not when, ever since my rant to KL ten minutes before, I have had "Dead Souls," "Atmosphere," Side B of Closer, and "Love Will Tear Us Apart" on my mind. This isn't fair, of course: Ian Curtis did commit suicide, and those songs are the very documentation of his downward spiral, which found depths Reznor, to his credit and great benefit, didn't reach. Reason #125, then, why I'm not being fair to Nine Inch Nails in this review.

And indeed, KL told me on the phone yesterday that Nine Inch Nails shouldn't be judged against Joy Division — it should be judged against its real musical progenitors, Psychic TV and Skinny Puppy (in his view). But I'm inclined to judge Nine Inch Nails against Joy Division for two reasons: (1) the high production values of their recordings (see above), and (2) their emphasis on interior terror (see below). Most of the "scary" acts in rock serve up a theatrical kind of "scary": Sabbath sings about the Devil; Gene Simmons spits blood; Alice Cooper is, well, Alice Cooper. Bauhaus, too, pointed to objects, images, legends in its efforts to frighten. The theatricality of metal and Goth is enjoyable. It's a horror show: if you're at all scared, you're scared smiling.

By contrast, Joy Division is the only band I can think of that is well and truly terrifying. I'm actually afraid of what could happen to me if I listen to them too much. If a child of mine got into Joy Division as a teenager, I would confiscate the recordings. And if you know me, that says something. What makes Joy Division so terrifying is that the terror is achieved by introspection. Joy Division doesn't point to something awful: it creates it. Ian Curtis found it in himself and committed it to tape, and the musical fit — the mood, the atmosphere — that his friends and bandmates provided for Curtis's lyrical compositions was uncanny. Nine Inch Nails has chosen to swear off Goth-style theatricality in favor of Joy Division-style interior terror. That's a very ambitious choice, and good for Trent for making it. After all, anybody can put on eye liner and bite a fake-blood capsule. The problem is that this higher prize is very, very hard to attain, and I don't think Trent Reznor has enough going for him to get there.

This is my very, very long way of saying that Nine Inch Nails did not move me. Not like they did when I was twenty years old in a general-admission pit in Cleveland, when the band was fronted by a mangy, probably strung-out industrial rocker clawing desperately at a living. Not like they did before he set forth his mission statement, which is to be 21st century America's Joy Division — as if that is even possible in this time and place, and for a one-man auteur who apparently has it together enough to book a tour of the nation's built-for-Buffett Comcast Center venues alongside Jane's Addiction. Nine Inch Nails has recorded some terrific songs. They should not try to be the band they're trying to be, because it's not working.

Jane's Addiction in the next post.

David Carradine

2009-06-05T18:48:00.004-04:00

WHITECOLLAR REDNECK

Okay, I can understand how a man might end up now and then practicing more extreme forms of self-stimulation. But the shocking part of the David Carradine story, for me, is that this guy was masturbating alone in his hotel room in Bangkok, Thailand!

Isn't that like going to Paris and eating a sandwich you brought with you? Or going to New York City and saying "Forget Broadway, I'll just watch some old Seinfeld reruns at the hotel." Seriously, was he thinking "Hey, I'm really horny, but what are the chances I can score in this town, maybe I'll just take care of it myself"? Baffling.

"Questions Raised Over Plane Debris"

2009-06-05T18:43:00.006-04:00

WHITECOLLAR REDNECK

Okay, so the WSJ says that the large oil slick and floating debris the Brazilian navy found 300 miles of the Brazilian coast is not from the missing Airbus. So what the heck else sank or blew up out there leaving a large oil slick and a bunch of floating debris?

Bill Kills Bill

2009-06-04T17:12:00.010-04:00

MITHRIDATES
There's going out by way of what is, quite simply, the deadliest blow in all of martial arts — to the climactic music of Ennio Morricone . . .

. . . and then there's hanging yourself in your Bangkok hotel room.

Global Warming Caused by Racism

2009-06-03T10:47:00.002-04:00

MITHRIDATES
You're joking, right?

Yeah, you caught me. Racism doesn't cause global warming. It just makes people fat. At least that's what a new study by Boston University researchers claims.

There are several unassailable truths in the world, and among those are:

Racism exists and can have serious consequences
Social scientists publish studies overstating the impact of racism
Journalists write articles about these studies overstating the studies' own conclusions

More...
Now, of course, not all of these axioms hold true all of the time. Not everyone is a racist (at least not all the time); sometimes a study employs sound methodologies, the data are fairly presented, and the stated conclusions are appropriate; and sometimes journalists get it right. But let's take a look and see how the scientists did on this one. And the point is not to pick apart the study over irrelevant details. Real science is imperfect, after all. We're just trying to see if the conclusions are way out of line with what the data suggest.

First, let's examine the proposed correlation between perceived racism and increased weight gain. As far as I can tell (and one always has to trust the authors a bit), the statistical analysis is sound. The ordinal trends appear to be statistically significant for "everyday" racism. But the 95% confidence intervals for the highest and lowest quartiles do overlap and the "lifetime" racism trends were insignificant for each Body Mass Index group. So there does appears to be some correlation for "everyday" racism, but the evidence is far from overwhelming.
Second, lets tackle the ubiquitous "correlation vs. causation" issue. E.g., did CNN liken the black woman to a turtle because she's obese; or is the black woman obese because CNN likened her to a turtle?
Seriously, one of the good things the researchers did is to make this a prospective study and get temporal correlation the right way. But that does not give us causation. There still could be a (very plausible) confounding variable.
The data only concern "perceptions" of racism. It's possible that "perceptions" of racism do contribute to stress that, in turn, adds to weight gain. But this doesn't stop the authors from boldly declaring in their conclusions that "weight gain increased as levels of everyday and lifetime racism increased" and "experiences of racism may contribute to the excess
burden of obesity in U.S. black women." These pronouncements despite the fact that there were no data about actual experiences of racism, just perception. It may be that the increase in perception of racism was attributable to increased levels in actual racism. But might women who are more insecure or willing to blame others for their problems be more likely to perceive racism and be less responsible about their health? Of course, this isn't the conclusion those of raised with bleeding hearts want to hear. It might not be true, but it's at least as plausible as "perceived racism makes people fat." Let's not bend the science towards our pre-conceived conclusion.
Finally — and this is the big one — suppose you believe there is a correlation, that perceptions of racism translate directly to actual incidence of racism, and that the causality is correct, in that increased racism causes an increase in weight gain. The lowest quartile of study subject for "everyday racism" gained 11.2 pound, and the highest quartile gained 12.5 pounds. That means a baseline gain of 11.2 pounds and an extra 1.3 pounds gained from the lowest to highest quartile. There's a bit of wiggle room here for extrapolating this result to lower levels of racism beyond what anyone in the study experienced — but far better to add some white women to the study for that.

But there's not even any wiggle room with "lifetime racism." Those who answered no to all the "lifetime racism" questions gained 11.6 pounds compared with 12.6 pounds for those who answered yes to all of these questions. In this case we can say that a typical study subject who suffered no "lifetime racism" would gain 11.6 pounds — whereas a subject who experienced the highest level of "lifetime racism" would gain one extra pound. That means only 1 out of 12.6 pound gained is attributable to racism! And that's if you swallow all the assumptions and analysis wholesale (which, as you might have guessed, this author doesn't).

Now, surprisingly, the journalists actually did OK on this one. Sure, there's the usual selection bias in promoting this story prominently over other issues. So they fail by putting the race story on the front page, because "race sells." But at least the Globe's headline, "Perceived Racism Linked to Weight Gain," more accurately states what can be fairly concluded from the data than the authors' own claim, which overlooked the gap between perceived and actual. Usually the journalists take a point made by scientists and blow it out of proportion; so let's give some credit to the journalists who actually rein in the scientists . . .

Actual racism exists. But its real, pernicious effects can be drowned out by the absurd headlines about "scientific" studies blaming it for all of society's ills. This author sympathizes, but so far his few experiences with racism — when the waiters at a certain 55th street establishment don't come by to ask him if he needs anything else — actually make him thinner.

The Korean Central News Agency: Catch the Fever!

2009-06-03T09:33:00.013-04:00

PHUTATORIUS
Yeah, sure: the Iraqi Information Minister had his moment in the sun (or was that tracer fire?). But if there is one enduring can't-miss source of government propaganda, it has to be the Korean Central News Agency.

More...
As the principal mouthpiece of North Korea's Communist regime, KCNA — not to be confused with KCNA The Drive 102.7 FM, "Rockin' hits of the 70s, 80s, and more!" (you won't find "Slow Ride" by Foghat here) — reports daily on developments in North Korea. For example, here's coverage of Kim Jong-Il's "forced march" to visit a fertilizer plant: "forced march" here meaning, apparently, "Oh, crap, it's the fertilizer plant today? Fine. Yeah. Fine. Girls — wait for me. Pull the goddam Mercedes around, and let's get this over with."

And of course, KCNA delives the odd bit of revolutionary commentary, too, which we can assume spins wildly out of Kim's head while he tucks into lobster with silver chopsticks and plans a cross-border raid to mass-abduct the South Korean film industry.

Consider the genius of "Puppet Authorities' Fascist Repressive Actions Flayed in S. Korea," or "Ex-Prime Minister Abe's Outbursts Flayed." That's two flayings on May 27 alone. I defy the West's august publications — The Times, The Guardian — to keep pace with KCNA's flay-rate. And there's quality here, too, as well as quantity. Something about that Old-Timey Revolution Talk just brings a smile to my face and a flush of "red" to my cheek. Let's take a closer look at the Abe-flaying:

Ex-Prime Minister Abe, an icon of Japan's ultra-right conservatives, went off political spasm again.

He recently underscored again the "need" to adjust the legislation for attacking the missile base of the DPRK.

This is nothing but despicable anti-DPRK rhetoric let loose by a militarist maniac almost every day, keen on the hostile moves against the DPRK.

Awesome. And hard-hitting, too. Take that, Limbaugh, you pussy. You spastic right-wing reactionary fascist maniac. Oh, no, wait. That sounds about right. Abandon sarcasm . . !

[Deep breath. Sarcasm resumed:]

And indeed, if it's inspiration that you seek — but you'd be content with bemusement — take a proper gander (pun absolutely intended) at "Two Big and Small Brick-carrying Frames," which tells the story of a young Kim Jong-Il rolling up his sleeves to make a token contribution to the construction of Pyongyang University of Technology ("PyongTech") some sixty years ago.

Maybe if some of you capitalist dogs had the commitment to industrial development that Kim displayed so many years ago — that is, if you could be bothered to get off frickin' Facebook for a minute and carry a brick frame yourselves — well, maybe we'd still have a domestic automobile industry here in America. Think about it, and get back to me. In the meantime, I'll be accepting an unspecified gift from the Nigerien president. (C'mon, KCNA: tell us what they gave him! I'm guessing it was a dildo. They always try to paper over the dildos.)

Readers, consider yourselves "flayed."

Tallying Them Up

2009-06-01T20:03:00.002-04:00

WHITECOLLAR REDNECK

Okay, let's add them up: as taxpayers we now own GM, Chrysler, AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, a big chunk of Bank of America, and bits and pieces of a handful of other big banks who are trying to give Uncle Sam his money back ASAP (JP Morgan, Goldman, Morgan Stanley, et al.)

I didn't expect to end up here - and it's crazy how fast it all happened.

Successful Unionized American Industries

2009-06-01T19:54:00.004-04:00

WHITECOLLAR REDNECK

Andrew Ross Sorkin quotes Jack Welch asking, "Give me a highly successful, unionized American industry." Someone in the comments comes up with aerospace, which is a good one, except it's pretty idiosyncratic and doesn't make you say "Yeah, unions and success in business really can go together."

The always-interesting Eddy Elfenbein suggests Hollywood, and pro sports. I wouldn't have thought of those, but they're certainly true. Of course, they're also even less likely to make you think "Yeah, unions and success in business really can go together." So I'm still thinking about this question and what it means.

Michael Caine . . .

2009-06-01T15:50:00.001-04:00

PHUTATORIUS
. . . is a badass.

That is all.

Magic 103, Cavs 90

2009-05-31T14:17:00.001-04:00

WHITECOLLAR REDNECK

Okay, maybe the NBA playoffs aren't fixed.

California Court Splits the Baby

2009-05-26T16:30:00.007-04:00

PHUTATORIUS

No, not an abortion case — post title notwithstanding — but the other issue that brings judge-haters into a froth: same-sex marriage.

Earlier today the California Supreme Court upheld the validity of a constitutional amendment that specifically overruled the Court's earlier decision that the state constitution required the government to allow same-sex marriage. Same-sex couples get civil unions in California, but they can't marry. The amendment, like many lousy ideas in California, made its way into law by ballot initiative. This is significant because same-sex marriage is classically a matter of minority rights. If a majority of people had favored extending the right to marry to same-sex couples, the Court likely (I say likely, because even in California there is representative government, such that not all these matters are resolved by popular plebiscite) would not have had to intervene in the first place. And that's the whole point of having a court decide matters of minority rights.

More...

Now of course, as I observed in an earlier post, it takes some modest amount of effort to pass a constitution-amending ballot initiative in California. It's not a simple matter of submitting the question to a majority vote: the measure has to pass with a 2/3 majority in both houses of the state legislature.

This additional requirement — and the California Court's endorsement of an admittedly discriminatory (in their own view) provision of law on the ground that the provision's ratification fully complied with it — means that the equal protection constitutionally due to political minorities in California can't be blithely pushed aside by political majorities. Rather, the political majority has to really want to reject and destroy that equal protection. And in that case, so long as the majority crosses its procedural t's, dots its electoral i's, and runs its bigoted television ads in the appropriate media markets, constitutional process can trump substance, and the minority's rights disappear.

But hey: easy come, easy go, right?

Really though: what gives? Justices who rejected preexisting legal impediments as discriminatory find no constitutional problem when the same oppositional forces organize to raise further impediments. What changed their minds? Were they well and truly convinced that Proposition 8 worked a constitutional amendment, rather than a revision?

I've often said (usually 100 comments deep into some blog post on Volokh.com) that courts have to stay ahead of the people on questions of minority rights, or else they, and the constitutions they vindicate, lose their relevance. On the other hand, they cannot press too far ahead, either, or they trigger a backlash — replete with the usual charges of "activist" judging and of "making law" — that threatens their legitimacy. Courts do not, after all, wear the pants in the government family. Their funding is at the mercy of the other branches, one of which employs the Fellows with the Guns. They rely on affable compliance from the agencies charged with enforcing their interpretations of law. In this respect our separation of powers, among other constitutional values, is a castle built on air. Judges know that if they push too hard, if could provoke defiance from the executive branches. The whole edifice collapses, and we're suddenly living in Zimbabwe.

(We all must rely, too, on the good sportsmanship of the Fellows with the Guns. This, to me, is why, whatever you think of George W. Bush, it was Brother Jeb in Florida who mounted more of a threat to our constitutional system. President Bush swallowed the constitutional medicine given him by Supreme Court justices who rejected certain of his anti-terror policies. Governor Bush sent troopers to stop the court-ordered removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube.)

This is one of those cases where the Court, having taken one giant step forward for Constitutional Relevance, takes a step backward to defend the Constitutional Castle. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court beat a similar defensive retreat when, after ruling in favor of same-sex marriage and then emphatically rejecting the legislature's compromise proposal of civil unions, it rejected the bids of nonresident couples to solemnize their unions within the Commonwealth. Both rulings were, at their core, tactical decisions, made without regard to consistency or correctness. It simply defies logic to suggest that a constitution should protect a minority against the political whim of a legislature or plebiscite, but the same oppressive law is tolerable if the popular will is so concerted against that minority that both the legislature and the people, by popular vote, approve it.

But hey, a Court has to cover its ass, too.

In short, this is just the sort of decision that prudent jurists (and you don't get within sniffing distance of any high court bench unless you carry prudence in spades) will make to disperse the horde of right-wing psychopaths gathering outside the courthouse with their torches and pitchforks. Forty years ago, this Court might have held differently, but by now the political culture is so up in arms over "judicial activism" that judges see a real threat to their legitimacy in doing what's right. At worst, then, this decision attests to the power of judge-hating mobs to cow judges into voting their way. At best, the decision reflects a determination to protect the long-term legitimacy of the judiciary, even if common sense, basic principles of constitutional law, and the rights of thousands of loving couples are sacrificed.

In the end, I guess I'm writing to explain what the California Court did today, even though I can't excuse it. The Court split the baby — each side gets a decision in its favor — and the result was that a newborn right to marry died at its hand.

Which Quote is Real?

2009-05-22T10:48:00.007-04:00

MITHRIDATES
Charles I: Our reign will stand up well in history. On our watch, they never cut off our head again.

Herbert Hoover: Our administration will stand up well in history. On our watch, the stock market never crashed again.

Quintus Sulpicius: Our military command will stand up well in history. On our watch, they never sacked Rome again.

Dick Cheney: Our administration will stand up well in history. On our watch, they never hit our country again.

"5 teens accused in beatdown outside Staten Island high school"

2009-05-21T21:05:00.003-04:00

WHITECOLLAR REDNECK

This story made me wonder, is it just my perception, or have you also noticed that about once a week a gang of meathead Staten Island kids viciously beats up some poor sap? People get assaulted one-on-one in every one of New York's boroughs so I'm not suggesting that a fight is anything out of the ordinary, but these five-on-one beatdowns always seem to take place on Staten Island. I have no idea why - do kids in Queens not realize that bringing all your friends to an assault improves your chances?

"Domino’s Launches Line of Bread Bowl Pastas"

2009-05-19T20:20:00.002-04:00

WHITECOLLAR REDNECK

So Domino's is rolling out a new line of pasta bread bowls. This will certainly help them win back all those customers who stopped ordering from them because they couldn't get enough carbs, I suppose. Seriously, how fat a motherfucker do you have to be to not only want to eat a whole meal of pasta, but to also eat the container in which it came? My outrage is only partly feigned here.

Idiot Watch: Mary Ann Glendon

2009-05-18T14:30:00.003-04:00

PHUTATORIUS

With his commencement speech at Notre Dame yesterday, President Obama will — we hope — have put an end to these many weeks of absurd posturing by Catholic conservatives over Obama's record on "life issues." The "pro-life" lobby has poured it on with such relish and gusto, you'd have thought the President was Justice Blackmun himself (or Jane Roe) — when in point of fact, he's endeavored to stake out the middle ground on life issues, to the extent there is any to be found.

One aspect of the tomfoolery around South Bend way that struck a chord with me is Harvard Law School professor Mary Ann Glendon's refusal to accept Notre Dame's prestigious Laetare Medal this year — because she couldn't bring herself to share the stage with Barack Obama, Baby-Killer.

Mary Ann Glendon is an Idiot, and I'm taking the liberty of capitalizing the I.

More...

For full disclosure's sake I should note, before I continue, that I had Professor Glendon for Property in my first year of law school, and she gave me a B. I wasn't thrilled with the grade, but it never detracted from my abiding affinity and respect for her, which I would consider to be the same measure of affinity and respect I would have for any of my law-school professor, before they went and did something backward, absurd, and unqualifiedly stupid. So please don't believe this post marks an attempt to avenge, eight years later, that uninspiring grade — any of you who have talked foreign policy knows that I believe in a proportional response to aggression, such that I would never respond to that B with the F I'm giving Glendon today.

On to the Idiocy now. The open letter Professor Glendon wrote to Notre Dame refusing her Medal last month described President Obama as "a prominent and uncompromising opponent of the Church's position on issues involving fundamental principles of justice." The letter doesn't supply any of the details to support this indictment of the President. As I can think of no other respect in which anyone can remotely characterize him as the war-criminal dictator described in the letter, I can only assume Glendon is talking about "life issues." President Obama is a well-known advocate of a woman's right to choose, and he supports capital punishment as well. These positions contradict teachings of the Catholic Church, and it's these issues that tend to incite activists — although, one would hope, not a law professor — to the sort of inflammatory rhetoric we see here.

Let's study that rhetoric. Prominent? Barack Obama has never tried to highlight or exploit either of these issues politically. For the most part, he's entirely ducked acting on or discussing them. Nothing in Obama's candidacy or Presidency to date describes a man committed to promoting abortion or fast-tracking executions. Uncompromising? This is an outright laugher. Obama's expressed position on abortion is that he thinks the ideological logjam can and should be broken by taking policy steps to reduce the number of abortions. And yes, Obama opened up federal funding to stem-cell research, but it's likely quite a large number of lives will be saved, as a result of that decision. For that matter, Obama recognizes the importance of interposing "strict guidelines" to govern this field of study.

One wonders what the word "compromise" means, to someone like Mary Ann Glendon. As I remember the word, a compromise calls for concessions from both sides, and that's exactly what Obama has sought to accomplish on these most divisive issues. He's hardly a hard-headed ideologue on these points, and while I understand the urgent absolutism that might make anti-abortion advocates inclined not to give an inch on the question of the lives of the unborn, it's a bit of a logical stretch to describe Obama's position as uncompromising, simply because he doesn't endorse their view.

It's worth revisiting, too, the point Mithridates made in an earlier roundup: that Barack Obama stood alone among the handful of serious aspirants for the Presidency in his opposition to the Iraq War. Lives were lost as a result of that decision — a decision that the Church opposed — but apparently no credit is due to Obama for this, as he is not completely in lock-step with Glendon and the bishops on the other "life" issues. The Church is at least consistent in its life doctrine, even if so many of its conservative adherents would gladly hang, shock, waterboard, and bomb their fellow man, if it could translate to a marginal increase in their own "security."

But more important — to my mind, anyway — than Professor Glendon's obvious posturing, willful inconsistency, and unsupported (and unsupportable) rhetoric is the fact that Mary Ann Glendon should know that the first and most important mission of a university, Catholic or not, is to foster and promote a free exchange of ideas. Putting aside the sheer absurdity of her attempt to cast the President as a willful and determined challenger to Church orthodoxy on issues that have to this point all but escaped his Administration's notice — particularly as he is as close to a moderate on these issues as there can be — it's supremely irksome that a law professor (a law professor!) should turn on Notre Dame for inviting Obama to speak. If differences of opinion cannot be tolerated at a university, then where?

Glendon finesses this issue just a little by writing that the University's intention to confer an honorary degree on President Obama contravened the request of U.S. bishops that Catholic institutions "should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles." Glendon writes that this request "in no way seeks to control or interfere with an institution's freedom to invite or engage in serious debate with whomever it wishes," and she is sorely troubled that a "Catholic university should disrespect it." It logically follows from this passage that Glendon would have accepted her Medal, had the University only invited the President to speak and stopped short of awarding him the honorary degree. But really, though: would Glendon have abandoned her very public, self-serving gesture of sacrifice, if only Notre Dame had withheld a degree from the President?

I doubt it. Mary Ann Glendon is a bright woman, so bright that she knows to seek nuance when it might serve her, and to abandon it in favor of blithely cast generalizations when it doesn't. The ostensible addressee of her open letter, Father Jenkins, the President of Notre Dame, surely saw through the manipulative and self-serving representations she made in her letter, just as I did. But of course we know that the letter wasn't really meant for Father Jenkins: it was directed to the frothing horde of Obama-haters — the kind, just like her, who will happily exaggerate his differences with the Church, overlook the many areas in which his views are consonant with official Church doctrine, and judge him so harshly, four months into his Presidency, that they can't even stomach the notion of appearing on a stage with him. This was never about religion; it was about politics. And in either case, a distinguished scholar like Mary Ann Glendon should be able to tolerate the presence of — and indeed the grant of honors to — a man who disagrees with some of her deeply-held opinions. That goes double when that man is your President.

You ought to be better than this, Professor Glendon.