Alan Levinovitz examines the history of the book blurb:
In 1936 George Orwell described them as "disgusting tripe," quoting a particularly odious example from the Sunday Times: "If you can read this book and not shriek with delight, your soul is dead." ... When did this circus get started? It’s tempting to look back no further than the origins of the word "blurb," coined in 1906 by children’s book author and civil disobedient Gelett Burgess. But blurbs, like bullshit, existed long before the term coined to describe them ("bullshit," in case you were wondering, appeared in 1915).
What the future holds:
The blap is a glossy page covered in blurbs that immediately follows the front cover.
Michael Saler believes that the famous detective, starring in a new BBC series, enchants our rational world:
In the modern age, reason is often seen to be the panacea for our ills, but it can also be the source of them. Rationality seems to "disenchant" the world, removing the elements of wonder, surprise, and purpose that allegedly characterized the "premodern" world. ... [Holmes] made critical thinking into a romantic adventure. Through his discerning eye, every detail of modern life, from newspaper advertisements to the footsteps of a giant hound, became charged with meaning, possibility, and wonder.
David Banks commends the show for seamlessly incorporating technology into its plot lines: "The technology gives us useful information, but it cannot solve the crime." Maria Konnikova takes note of Sherlock's uncanny observations:
Our senses–and here I don't just mean vision; I mean all of them, touch, hearing, smell, taste–are powerful forces. Every day, countless items, some glanced, or heard, or felt, or smelled only briefly–perhaps without ever registering in our consciousness–affect our minds and play into our decisions.
Franzen seems the type of bibliophile who values the book as an object as much as the words it contains. He needn't worry; just as there'll always be vinyl records, physical books will always exist for people like him (and me). Ebooks, though, represent the core of literary democracy and the best parts of capitalism: if you have an idea, put it out there and the people will decide if it's as great as you think it is. Ebooks take the power out of the hands of a select few editors and put it in the hands of readers.
I spent years shopping my novel to publishers and agents; after reaching the end of my patience I dumped the book into the Kindle Bookstore expecting only my mother to buy it.
I think the big point that's missing from the readerdiscussion of Franzen’s curmudgeonly gripes about ebooks is this: Format <> Medium. Yes, Kindle books are DRM'ed to hell and Apple's iBooks are terrible too, blah blah blah ... but those aren't complaints about ebooks; they're complaints about specific formats or readers clumsily extrapolated to apply to the very notion of reading a book on something other than paper. If you'll permit me to be curmudgeonly as well, I think this is a bunch of poppycock.
If one insists on trying to assemble a comparison between democracy and ebooks, then I can win that debate with two words: Project Gutenberg.
Leon Wieseltier pens a wonderful meditation on browsing:
Browsing is the opposite of "search." Search is precise, browsing is imprecise. When you search, you find what you were looking for; when you browse, you find what you were not looking for. Search corrects your knowledge, browsing corrects your ignorance. Search narrows, browsing enlarges. It does so by means of accidents, of unexpected adjacencies and improbable associations. On Amazon, by contrast, there are no accidents. Its adjacencies are expected and its associations are probable, because it is programmed for precedents. It takes you to where you have already been—to what you have already bought or thought of buying, and to similar things. It sells similarities. After all, serendipity is a poor business model. But serendipity is how the spirit is renewed; and a record store, like a bookstore, is nothing less than an institution of spiritual renewal.
You have until noon on Tuesday to guess it. City and/or state first, then country. Please put the location in the subject heading, along with any description within the email. If no one guesses the exact location, proximity counts. Be sure to email entries to VFYWcontest@gmail.com. Winner gets a free The View From Your Window book. Have at it.
Hyperpolyglots argue that what they do is not fluent speaking but instead a sort of mechanical reproduction, a robotic trick rather than a human skill. Hale, an MIT professor who died in 2001, is quoted as disputing the idea that he "spoke" fifty languages, limiting his claim to only three, one of them being the Australian Aboriginal language Warlpiri. He distinguished "saying things" from speaking a language and really understanding it. The ability to pretend to converse in a language, and get by, isn't the same as speaking it fluently.
The most famous hyperpolyglot, Giuseppe Mezzofanti, a nineteenth-century Bolognese cardinal, spoke between thirty and seventy languages:
Daniel Eagan demonstrates how different sports were shot throughout film history:
Football became increasingly more popular in the 1950s and 1960s, in part because of how it was broadcast on television. Just like they did with baseball, sports directors learned to turn football games into narratives. As CBS director Sandy Grossman put it, "The reason [the gridiron] is easier to cover is because every play is a separate story. There’s a beginning, a middle, and an end, and then there’s 20 or 30 seconds to retell it or react to it."
Now just about every player on the field can be isolated during a play, allowing the director to build a story line from different takes. Slow motion enables viewers to see precisely where a play succeeds or fails.
Psychologist Elizabeth Dunn argues that in fact we are not working more and relaxing less - our time is just worth more than it used to be:
[A]s time becomes worth more money, time is seen as scarcer. Scarcity and value are perceived as conjoined twins; when a resource—from diamonds to drinking water—is scarce, it is more valuable, and vice versa. So, when our time becomes more valuable, we feel like we have less of it. ... Over the past 50 years, feelings of time pressure have risen dramatically in North America, despite the fact that weekly hours of work have stayed fairly level and weekly hours of leisure have climbed. This apparent paradox may be explained, in no small part, by the fact that incomes have increased substantially during the same period. This causal effect may also help to explain why people walk faster in wealthy cities like Tokyo and Toronto than in cities like Nairobi and Jakarta.
Maybe convincing yourself that your time isn’t so valuable is a good way to relax. Or rather, remembering that feeling un-hurried is more valuable than anything you could be doing with your time.
Maggie Koerth-Baker marvels at the above clip from 2010:
This is simply breathtaking. In the video, researchers pump 10 tons of concrete down an ant hole and then slowly, carefully excavate the site to see what an ant colony looks like. The result is an intricate structure, equivalent in labor to humans building the Great Wall of China.
David Byrne recently mused over the same video and the idea of collective creation:
That was the helpful advice offered to one victim of prison rape when he went to the authorities. Christopher Glazek is horrified that "before this year, the federal government had never bothered to estimate the actual number of rapes that occur in prisons":
In January, prodded in part by outrage over a series of articles in the New York Review of Books, the Justice Department finally released an estimate of the prevalence of sexual abuse in penitentiaries. The reliance on filed complaints appeared to understate the problem. For 2008, for example, the government had previously tallied 935 confirmed instances of sexual abuse. After asking around, and performing some calculations, the Justice Department came up with a new number: 216,000. That’s 216,000 victims, not instances. These victims are often assaulted multiple times over the course of the year. The Justice Department now seems to be saying that prison rape accounted for the majority of all rapes committed in the US in 2008, likely making the United States the first country in the history of the world to count more rapes for men than for women.
Adam Gopnik confronted prison rape earlier this week.
Friday on the Dish, Andrew exploded false accusations of bigotry after the "Mormon Mask" post and explored the issue with the help of Mormon readers. We wondered why Romney's message was so vacuous, compared him with various Democrats, debated whether he'd be beholden to the GOP base, predicted he couldn't win if there was a full economic recovery, watched him take American exceptionalism too far, found his argument on Afghanistan wanting, and thought the Donald would be nothing but trouble for Mitt. Polling data dried up for lack of money, Obama's numbers spiked for a number of reasons, and defeat probably wouldn't change the GOP. Ad War Update here.
Andrew also explored, in detail, the terrifying intimacy of reality television and the "Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" horror in particular. We grabbed reax to the pretty job numbers and surveyed the web's thoughts on the Susan G. Komen vs. Planned Parenthood fiasco (follow up focusing on other problems with Komen here). The world left Afghanistan - but not without depositing poisonous detritus first, nation buidling seemed over, Palestinian Christians did, in fact, exist, and monogamous societies worked better than their polygamous fellows. Tax reform was important, Facebook's IPO was extraordinary (follow-up here), online piracy was possibly the new radio, and a minimum age to buy sugar was silly (pile-on here). The health care system shaped the birth control and religious liberty issue, glitter bombing didn't advance gay equality, and class perceptions constructed "snobbery." Reader discussion and debate went forward on ebooks, pot, and abbreviations. Chart of the Day here, VFYW here, MHB here, and FOTD here.
Thursday on the Dish, Andrew wrote a paean to Obama's handling of the withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan in an election year and tracked the conservative crackup over, respectively, Romney's "very poor" comment and Obamneycare. We followed the broader reaction to the former, wondered if Romney was too perfect, marvelled at his endorsement from the Donald, and (reality) checked his polling against Obama. Romney jumped ahead in Nevada while Paul looked in position to land a second-place place. Ron's segment of the GOP might have become critical to the party's hopes (certainly if the online primary is any guide), Newt had an awkward history with Paterno, Santorum entered the Bad Lip Reading contest, and veep speculation began. Self-deportation remained ridiculous, Super PACs conquered the election, Presidential races weren't worth your money, and it didn't look like killing bad guys helped the President much. Ad War Update here.
Off the campaign trail, Andrew slammed the absurd legal regime and institutionalized hypocrisy surrounding marijuana in NYC and DC (follow-up here). Assad's grip on power slipped, the Muslim Brothers betrayed the revolution, our money hurt Afghanistan, NATO enlargement got debated, global war wasn't coming, and aliens complicated global politics. American history hamstrung our bureaucracy, interest in tinkering with Obama care might (fingers crossed) have been piqued in the GOP, Eric Cantor shielded congressional insider trading, new voter ID rules hurt disadvantaged inner-city blacks, and segregation may (or may not) have declined. The power of the state over religious institutions proved contentious, vegetarianism felt passe (to some), college went global, Groundhog Day got a detailed treatment, Parks and Rec was all over abbrevs. VFYW here, FOTD here, and MHB here.
Miami, Florida, 6.15 pm
Wednesday on the Dish, Andrew peeled off Romney's "Mormon Mask," fit the "I don't care about the very poor" comment into a broader pattern of ineptness, flagged the clearest explanation of Bain yet (from Jon Stewart, natch), dove into the fundraising disclosures, copped to his love for the Newt candidacy, raged at the GOP's inability to reckon with the Bush years, and experienced some nasty flashbacks after watching the Game Change trailer. We grabbed reax to Romney's Florida primary, spotted cracks in his dog-on-the-roof story, watched the first Mittpression of the campaign season, followed up on the morning's very poor gaffe, and saw Romney take the top national spot from Newt. We also grimaced at signs the GOP wouldn't change after a general loss, explored their SuperPAC advantage, noted a (Romney-specific?) base turnout problem, thought the party decided the primary, and wondered what Sarah was playing at. Compilation of Florida primary coverage here.
Andrew sounded a warning about a slippery slope to war with Iran and explained his "poetic free association" in the shrooms discussion. Syria escalated (in a number of ways), bullets got smart, and international relations scholars already used LARPing to understand the world. Libertarianism needed to stay away from partisan politics, marriage equality won with the next generation, the Fast and Furious scandal got a serious look, and another horrific scene from the drug war came to light. Government work paid well for the less educated and entrepreneurship wasn't actually that risky. We unearthed the most annoying Tweet imaginable, noticed people living alone, found a way to get people off elevators, and countered the "music is on the decline" perception. Readers sounded off on ebooks, pain pills, and teenage abbrevs. Quote for the Day here, FOTD here, MHB here, and VFYW here.
Tuesday on the Dish, Andrew liveblogged the resounding Romney victory in Florida, explained why the panhandle was a key indicator of future performance, cautioned against premature declarations of victory in the primaries, and pondered Mitt's inscrutable persona. We also bet the margin of Romney's victory would be important and saw legal trouble on the horizon when it came to delegate allocation. Romney displayed his awkwardness (twice), his electability and "businessman" pitch were scrutinized, and both his new tax loophole for the rich and involvement in a Medicare scam caught flak. It wasn't clear which candidate sensible Republicans should root for, Chris Matthews psychoanalyzed Newt, there was reason for Gingrich to keep running, and the long primary contined to hurt the GOP. Ad War Updates here and here.
In non-election coverage, Andrew connected shrooms to our spiritual lives and defended Obama's long-game strategy against a partisan liberal critique. Our Iran strategy showed promising signs, Libya muddled through, Israel unravelled further, and the US was advised against starting more land wars. Joe Paterno received a Chutzpah-riffic defense, Miss Piggy went rogue, and the housing bubble didn't actually provide people, er, homes. Other people deserved pain pills, brains worked like waistlines, and circumcision might have decreased risky sex.
The world of seals amazed, teenagers used silly abbreviations, cabin porn went on display, and cities greened the earth. Malkin nods here and here, Map of the Day here, VFYW here, the latest VFYW winner here, MHB here, and FOTD here.
Monday on the Dish, Andrew set the record straight on Obama and bin Laden, waded in to the "Israel Firster debate," bashed Jonathan Franzen's rant against e-books, updated you on his Angry Birds progress and the latest research on its beneficial effects on your brain, noted Newt's money problems, told the guy not to quit after Florida, confessed to loathing Romney, saw an uptick in Obama's (Rasmussen!) numbers, and agreed that mocking people for their physical appearance is "just dickish." Newt's fate was up to the elderly, the press hoped for more primary drama from the former speaker, his campaign was fundamentally, historically underwritten by one rich donor, and he appeared to have been down with the mandate in 2009. Romneycare worked, its eponymous progenitor's jobs claims didn't hold up, Paul crept up on the race, foreign policy hurt the candidates, and Intrade's value was debated.
An Iran war seemed like to hurt the one in Afghanistan, nuclear weapons were ambiguously calming, debate raged over American (non) decline, LARPing explained international relations, and the State of the Union may have been less xenophobic than previously thought. The Buffett Rule had hypothetical downsides, space exploration cost a pretty penny, snow economics were tricksy, and the Queen's job record impressed. Dogs were super malleable, phenotypically speaking, and adorable at dog parks. Conservatism didn't correlate with age, the Salem witches took a bunch of datura, the internet binged on television, and Hollywood's treatment of race continued to be a hot topic.
Quotes for the Day here and here, Cool Ad here, Correction of the Day here (counter-correction here), Yglesias Nominee here, FOTD here, MHB here, and VFYW here.
Kyle Leighton says the above chart explains Obama's comeback:
The short-lived bump from the killing of Osama bin Laden was countered by a strong trend downward toward the politically poisonous summertime fight with Congressional Republicans over raising the debt ceiling. No one got out of that one unscathed — but, there was ample evidence that the GOP hobbled itself even more going into an election cycle when they were supposed to have the upper hand, with more voters blaming them for the sorry affair than Democrats. After a debt agreement was done, Obama immediately made a successful pivot to jobs, and the public responded. ... Those factors led to an uptick over the last three months, just as the Republican presidential primary process began in earnest.
Joe Weisenthal and Jon Terbush offer a different interpretation:
Aaron Carroll argues that that sugar shouldn't be treated like alcohol:
Any regular reader on the blog knows of my interest in obesity, and my concern that we are failing to address the problem adequately. But this seems to go a bit too far. There are legitimate reasons that we don’t allow children to purchase and/or consume alcohol. Sugar (as glucose), on the other hand, is necessary for life. It’s in lots of food, not just processed foods. And just because something “can” be abused doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be allowed to have it.
There are data that show immediate and serious consequences of drinking. As far as I know, no such data exist for sugar, teased apart from other unhealthy nutrients.
Ice covers the fountain under the Alfred Escher memorial statue on February 3, 2012 in Zurich, Switzerland. The country is currently in the grips of a cold snap which has seen of temperatures of minus -27C in mountainous areas and -10C in Zurich. By Harold Cunningham/Getty Images.
Not if conservative entertainers have anything to say about it. Friedersdorf expects Limbaugh & Co. to resist reform:
[A]ll the commentary you see about the right and its future takes as its starting point the notion of 2008 as a historic defeat. For folks whose highest priority is conservative governance, that's what it was -- eight years of frustration, betrayal, and disillusionment, culminating in a huge defeat. But the period from 2000 to 2012 has been lucrative as hell if you're Roger Ailes or Rush Limbaugh or Mark Levin or Andrew Breitbart or Sarah Palin. That isn't to say they don't earnestly want Republicans to win, or that they're faking their preference for conservative governance. It's just to say that advancing their careers or enterprises is seemingly their priority. As swimmingly as that project is proceeding, why would anyone expect them to change course?
J. Bryan Lowder feels that anti-homophobic "glitter bombing does not speak the same language as a march, occupation or even a petition—it’s just an angry tweet in comparsion to those actions’ grand manifesto":
[W]hat does glitter mean, exactly? When animal rights operatives throw fake blood on fur coats, the symbolism is clear: this life-giving fluid was spilled out of the desire for extravagant clothing. But when gay or trans people are injured by society, do they shed meaningless confetti? Glitter: a party accessory, Ke$ha’s drug of choice, the stuff children dump all over garbage-destined handicrafts; is this superfluous material really appropriate for the protest of such crucial issues?
Seven-plus years into its life as a public company, Google is healthy and thriving. This is the lens through which we now view Facebook. We’re looking at the hot company through Google goggles. In 2004, people feared Google might be the next Webvan. In 2012, they’re hoping Facebook will be the next Google.
The controversy surrounding the Susan G. Komen foundation's decision to revoke and then restore funding to Planned Parenthood could politically charge the ubiquitous pink ribbon. Rod Dreher finds the "whole Conspicuous Compassion thing" unsettling:
While I have, or hope I have, compassion for those who suffer from all sorts of maladies, I don’t get the appeal of Moralistic Therapeutic Bunting — that is, ribbons that make you feel that you’ve done something to fight a disease, and allow you to preen moralistically in front of people whose lack of beribbonment perhaps indicates that they aren’t as enlightened as you are, but which ultimately means nothing. I have never worn a Conspicuous Compassion ribbon for any cause, and I never will, simply because it strikes me as a vulgar and emotionally manipulative practice.
A new film Pink Ribbons, Inc. (trailer above) takes this a bit further in a polemic broadside against the Komen foundation's relentless marketing machine:
A President Romney would be on a very short leash. ... Moreover, Romney is not a man of vision. He is a man of duty and purpose. He was told to “fix” health care in ways Massachusetts would like. He was told to fix the 2002 Olympics. He was told to create Bain Capital. He did it all. The man does his assignments.
Why do teenagers abbreviate everything? Because, for the most part, they can’t spell. Schools stopped teaching spelling years ago. I am the parent of a near-teenager, and I can say with certainty that while she is certainly the world’s cutest kid, she can’t even correctly spell words that are written on the same page she is writing on. We were horrified in second and third grade when her teachers told us that the school was "de-emphasizing" spelling. I guess the idea is that everyone writes on computers these days, and we all know how infallible spell check is. As good old Trudy Stein would have said where she to have been edumacated in the USA these days, "Their iz no thar there."
Another writes:
There's an interesting twist to this phenomenon in Switzerland.
Tight budgets simply won't allow for it right now:
Nation building in Iraq and Afghanistan was very expensive, and many of the funds were lost due to corruption and waste. The governments of both nations are a very long way from being stable or democratic—and their alliance with the West remains untested. The Obama strategy calls for any future nation building to draw on large conventional forces; in effect, it seeks to rely on offshore balancing of the kind that worked well in Kosovo and Libya and is now attempted in Yemen. Some in the Pentagon will keep fighting for a counterinsurgency approach, which includes a strong element of nation building rather than counterterrorism, but given the budgetary pressures this plank is most likely to survive—and for good reasons.
There have very few polls for Nevada, which caucuses tomorrow. Blumenthal says we're "seeing fewer polls because of constrained budgets":
National media and polling organizations knew that attention would focus on the first four primary and caucus states in January and spent their money accordingly. A few invested in the expensive task of surveying Iowa's likely caucus-goers using live interviewers, but in an era when many media organizations have cut back on polling, these upcoming caucus states are simply a lower priority. As with other aspects of campaign coverage, polling in the February caucus states will be no match for what we saw last month.
Above is an AAA from October on the topic of legalization. A reader writes:
You are correct that the continuing national support for cannabis prohibition is almost entirely about symbolism (i.e. we know weed ain't a big deal, but we can't admit it publicly for the sake of The Children), just like it was in the early 1980s when the so-called "parents movement" brought marijuana-focused drug intolerance back from its decade-plus public policy exile. But however much the stats on MJ-related enforcement from the NYPD and other big city police departments might make for good anti-drug war propaganda for Drug Policy Alliance and the ACLU, what's actually driving these policies has nearly nothing to do cannabis per se.
Continuing to pretend like the NYPD is on a "marijuana arrest crusade" for the purpose of stamping out pot smoking is muddying the debate over the very real, very serious, and much more important issue of how minority neighborhoods are policed.
Pivoting off Romney's gaffe, Larry Bartels looks at how the recession has impacted income classes:
The average real income of middle-quintile households declined from $50,766 in 2008 to $49,309 in 2010, while the average real income of households in the top five percent of the income distribution declined from $298,437 to $287,686. The latter change is larger in percentage terms, and much larger in absolute terms, but may not entail nearly as much human cost. The average real income of households in the bottom quintile declined from $11,803 to $11,034; that sounds like struggling to me, with or without a safety net.
We seem to have forgotten that the fundamental purpose of our tax system is to raise revenue to fund government. The current system is riddled with tax provisions that favor one activity over another or provide targeted tax benefits to a limited number of taxpayers. Whether permanent or temporary, these provisions create complexity, impose enormous compliance costs, breed perceptions of unfairness, create opportunities to manipulate rules to avoid tax, and lead to an inefficient use of our economic resources. The tax code has become less stable, increasingly unpredictable, and more and more difficult for taxpayers to understand.
A reform that broadens the base would not only raise revenue but would also simplify the system, increase transparency, make it less distortive by reducing tax-induced biases towards certain activity, and improve the fairness of the system.
Previous AAA video on the topic here. Readers continue the discussion:
I read an interesting article on why software piracy is so important to the preservation of art and history on Technologizer.com, available here, that I was reminded of after reading your latest post on ebooks and democracy. Short version: unsanctioned copying of books throughout history has saved many works of art that would have been lost in time; electronic applications, unlike books, die as fast as the hardware used to create them; and software piracy can help to preserve original forms of art that may otherwise vanish without anyone noticing.
Another writes:
Many complain about ebooks being more malleable, but frankly, people are not powerless in the face of DRM.
Philip Klein believes that yesterday's Trump event was a "colossal blunder" that will haunt Romney:
[S]eriously, Romney wants to be president and he’s so afraid of what Trump will do that he goes to his Las Vegas hotel to publicly kiss his ring? As Tony Blair once said, “Weak. Weak. Weak.” Of course, there’s something more important at stake here. Regardless of whether or not Trump has a following, his statements questioning Barack Obama’s birth certificate were disgraceful. It’s an embarrassment for Romney to elevate him like this. That shouldn’t be seen as within the bounds of acceptable discourse in the Republican Party.
The breast cancer foundation responsible for those little pink ribbons has recently caused controversy by withdrawing its financial support for Planned Parenthood - and then promptly restoring it after a furious backlash from pro-choicers. Jeffrey Goldberg, who first reported strong evidence that defunding was probably about abortion, calls the Komen Foundation's reversal "a case study in what not to do in a controversy." Daniel Foster is furious:
Look, the beauty of free speech is that, if you’re inclined to do so, you can write a check to PP in an act of solidarity, or write a check to Komen as an expression of moral approval. That’s all fine. But there’s something quite a bit different, something creepy and not a little despicable, about the Planned Parenthood set’s besmirching Komen’s good name across a thousand platforms for having the audacity to stop giving them free money. And I don’t care why that decision was made, frankly.
Ezra wonders if the decision to restore funding is secure. Before the reversal, Amanda Marcotte explained why Komen's donations were such a priority for pro-choice advocates:
Breast cancer ... can strike the lifelong virgin, the married woman who only has sex for procreation, and the dirty fornicator (i.e. the vast majority of American women) alike. Because of this, anti-choicers have tried to create a rift between women's health advocates who focus on breast cancer and those who focus on reproductive health concerns below the waist. Today, they had a victory with Komen's act of cowardice.
McArdle, who's pro-choice, defended the original decision:
[Romney's] only real winning scenario involves winning on the back of a bad economy. While it’s improving, the economy remains very weak. And there remain any number of scenarios that could derail the fragile recovery — a European implosion, an Israeli attack on Iran, or something else we’re not thinking of.
Althouse and Reynolds accuse me of bigotry for merely raising the issue. The notion is preposterous. Althouse, who apparently doesn't even read the posts she attacks as well as the articles, asks:
Is it a special thing reserved for Mormons? ... Test yourself out, Andrew. Imagine some friend of yours told you something like that about some other religious group. Test it with every religious group can think of, referring to political candidates that you like and dislike. Hold yourself to a neutral standard. Are you satisfied with what you’ve put out there?
Well, yes. In my post, I made a direct analogy to Catholicism, my own faith:
Think of a pastor who has a game face, or after-Mass cheeriness, because it's impossible for a human being truly to relate to so many different needs and individuals all the time without some kind of defense mechanism; some set of phrases to get him through a confession or consultation when he may be having an off day; some way to remove himself from the emotionally draining responsibilities of so many pastoral duties.
I'm actually sympathizing with the need for such a mask in that kind of situation in all denominations, not attacking it in one. Yet Reynolds and Althouse accuse me of bigotry, and charge that I am attacking Mormons as a whole. They need to apologize. To accuse someone of bigotry when the evidence they provide disproves it is disgusting character assassination.
Actual Mormon readers - and not partisan propagandists like Reynolds - saw no bigotry and addresses the question from personal experience:
Your post on the "Mormon Mask" does have a ring of truth to it. Once a Mormon reaches a certain level within the church hierarchy there is a tendency to start interacting with others in the manner you describe. For a male, it usually begins at the Stake President level (a stake is similar to a Catholic diocese). It is not so obvious at the Mormon Bishop level as the local congregations (called wards) are smaller (400 to 700 people) and more intimate in their interactions. At the stake level there are 3,000 to 6,000 members that necessitate the need for the "mask". Additionally, most often, the position of Stake President is filled by a successful businessman or professional who finds the same "mask" useful in business dealings. If they serve long enough it does become a part of the person.
(Trey Parker and Matt Stone partially allude to this Mormon trait in the Book of Mormon song, "Turn It Off".)
Karl Rove prods the former governor to be "bolder in his prescriptions." Fred Barnes worries that many of Romney's lines on the stump are "essentially meaningless":
Romney has an unsolved issue problem: He needs a big issue or vision to give purpose and a framework to his campaign. As things stand, his overriding issue is himself. He’ll revive the economy. Why? Because he says he will. That won’t cut against Obama. "My vision for free enterprise is to return entrepreneurship to the genius and creativity of the American people," Romney said in his victory speech. Fine, but how will he do that? He didn’t say.
Along the same lines, John McCormack is disappointed that Romney has distanced himself from serious entitlement reform. Meanwhile, Jennifer Rubin wants conservative critics to "chill."
Kate Aurthur was transfixed by "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills":
Critics I respect wanted Bravo to axe the entire season before it even aired, and others were repulsed throughout its run. I’ve felt the opposite; to me, scripted television has never done anything this enthralling.
Well, I wouldn't exactly call it enthralling, but it sure took reality television into a zone it is designed never to enter: reality. The obvious goal of the fantastically successful Bravo series - a personal addiction to which I blame entirely on Aaron - is to create petty squabbles between rich, pampered women, preferably about inane things like where Lisa Vanderpump will hold her daughter's bachelorette party in Las Vegas. The second feature is classic Depression era porn: such fantastic obscene luxury and wealth paraded like a 1930s movie set in aristocratic New York apartments with massive sweeping staircases and near-mandatory black tie.
But on the Beverly Hills season, two things actually happened beyond orchestrated pissing matches. First, one of them was clearly on some sort of drugs and was deteriorating in front of our eyes. Second, and much more dramatic, one of the more fragile of the golden female parakeets got progressively more disturbed and panic-stricken and volatile.
Her husband, a very tightly wound and humorless executive, gave me the creeps from the start. And then halfway through this season, in one compelling scene, in a conversation in which Taylor demanded total honesty from her friends about their views of her increasingly unraveling personality, one of them blurted out that she had already told the group that her spouse was beating her, even breaking her jaw. Suddenly, the subtext became text.
Bravo clearly panicked. Reality shows are not supposed to be about reality. There's usually more reality in scripted sitcoms and cartoons. So they removed any footage they might have had revealing the abuse, kept the sub-plot off-stage, built tension, and then simply cut the period after Taylor finally quit her marriage after one last bruise on her face and her husband committed suicide. We got a bewildering swift mention of the suicide in the beginning of the final episode before we got on to the more serious question of whether the outside air-conditioning was sufficient for a Beverly Hills marriage tent.
But then we had the first of a three-part reunion. It pole-axed me. They read aloud some of the truly horrific texts Taylor's clearly disturbed husband had sent his wife on her birthday. The emotional abuse in the words was somehow more upsetting than the off-stage physical threats and bruises. It reflected what was a poisonous, awful, destructive marriage - the kind that liberalized divorce laws saved so many women from. And then Taylor spoke these words (I paraphrase):
I almost wanted him to hit me during these fights just to get it over with.
It was the reallest moment I have ever witnessed on reality television. It gave you a glimpse into the mindset of battered wives in abusive relationships and marriages - and the living hell that follows them every day. So why on earth go on a reality show? The wife suggested that she did it in order to stop the abuse - to get a third party to intervene and understand. The husband's motive? I have no idea. But being a wife-beater on national television must have been an ordeal. But here's what's unforgivable: they have a 5-year-old daughter exposed to all of this, a daughter who was with her mother when they found her father's body: "She knew something was bad. The first thing she said was, 'Did Daddy do something dumb?'" Armstrong recalled.
I find marital abuse so horrifying I cannot express my feelings. That simple sentence - "I almost wanted him to hit me during these fights just to get it over with" - stuck with me for days. The show trod a very fine line between brutal exploitation of these people's lives and absurd glorification of them.
I think it's pretty clear at this point that the combination took one life, arguably saved another, and took on a toll on a five year old whose longterm consequences we will never know. Pray for her.
(Photo: Kennedy Armstrong, Taylor Armstrong and Russell Armstrong attend the Lollipop Theatre Networks 3rd Annual Game Day at Nickelodeon Studios on May 7, 2011 in Burbank, California. By Todd Williamson/Getty.)
He says he hates the accelerated drawdown in Afghanistan. Ackerman ponders Romney's spin:
Remember, a major part of Romney’s foreign policy critique of Obama is that Obama callously mistreats and neglects U.S. allies. The allies, however, want the 2013 timetable. Romney surely had to bash the change in the timetable; that’s all in the game. But Mitt doesn’t seem to have thought through the angles here.
James Joyner says our allies will welcome the early exit from Afghanistan:
Whether NATO's goals are achievable with unlimited time and resources is debatable. It's also moot. Most of our allies were going to have, at most, a token force in Afghanistan through the end of 2014. They were there largely at America's urging and they'll be happy to leave.
The Economist's Clausewitz columnist suggested that the report is overly pessimistic, fearing that Panetta's announcement "may have triggered an unseemly rush to for the exit." Alas, it began years ago. The United States supplies 90,000 of the 130,386 troops in ISAF and only a handful of members supply as many as a thousand. France had already beaten Panetta to the draw, announcing it would speed up its withdrawal after an Afghan soldier killed four French soldiers, deflating already abysmal public support in France for the war effort.
Felix Salmon celebrates today's strong employment report:
You thought the December jobs report was great? I certainly did — but it’s been revised, now, and it’s even better than was first reported. And the January report is positively glowing. Unemployment was just 8.3% in January, marking three successive months where it fell by 0.2 percentage points. This time last year, there were 13.9 million unemployed; that figure has now dropped by 1.2 million people, or 8.3%. That’s really impressive for an economy which is hardly booming.
State and local layoffs continue to be a drag on the economy, and it continues to be true that at this pace it will take years to get us back to full employment, but these are the kind of numbers I'm looking for when I talk about an accelerating recovery. This is still a crappy labor market and there are still a dozen way policymakers could screw us in 2012, but if they avoid new disasters we are on the road to recovery.
[R]evisions are important for what they tell us about where we are in the cycle. Because initial reports are based on some combination of survey and model, the BLS has to extrapolate the "real" number in part based on cyclical trends. If past reports keep getting revised up, it means the BLS is still behind the curve in measuring how fast the economy is growing.
Derek Thompson worries about the long-term unemployed:
[L]ong-term unemployment is still an extremely sticky problem. (Who are the long-term unemployed? See here.) The share of the jobless who have been out of work more than six months is stuck at 43 percent, roughly the same share as it was two years ago. There are still 5.5 million people who have been out of work for more than six months. As the recovery accelerates, long-term unemployment's share of the total could rise if these people are truly frozen out of the labor force and while the short-term unemployed find work.
Floyd Norris fears that the seasonal adjustments are off:
A reason to doubt the [jobs] number is that there has been a tendency in this cycle for the seasonal factors to overstate moves, in both directions. Labor mobility is down, as fewer workers quit to seek better jobs and employers both hire and fire fewer people than they used to do. If the seasonal adjustment was too large, then the gain should be smaller.
Jamelle Bouie considers the political implications:
Earlier this morning, Nate Silver argued that 150,000 was President Obama’s “magic number” for job growth, in part, because 150,000 is the dividing line between a bad report—where the economy isn’t growing fast enough to keep up with population—and a decent one, where it is. If the economy could generate that many jobs on a monthly basis, then Obama is on okay footing for the election in November. Today’s report blows that magic number out of the water.
The bottom line is that this isn’t just a good jobs report. It’s a recovery jobs report. It’s showing the sort of numbers that win elections. As my colleague Neil Irwin tweeted, “That sound you hear is champagne corks in the West Wing.”
And Ross Kaminsky wonders how Romney will respond:
The political issue here, if this sort of economic trend were to continue, is how Mitt Romney will make his case, which is primarily an economic one, if the economy seems to be on a solid recovery track. I do not believe this pace of improvement is sustainable. Nevertheless, the argument that "this is the weakest recovery in modern American history" is somewhat too subtle for the average voter to understand.
Terry Allen fears that we've trashed both countries:
The little media attention that has been paid to this massive pollution has dimly illuminated its potential impact on U.S. troops. Left in mephitic darkness are the contractors, often impoverished South Asians, who did the dirty work at the bases, as well as Iraqi civilians who live and farm nearby. The Times of London reported that “open acid canisters sit within easy reach of children, and discarded batteries lie close to irrigated farmland,” causing people to sicken and rats to die “next to soiled containers.”
The toxic air echoes with the Vietnam War’s Agent Orange fiasco. Victims of that war’s dioxin suffered for years before the United States took limited responsibility – but only for its troops, and not for the countries it poisoned.
Sam Wilkinson challenges our understanding of the term:
Because the snob presumes that other preferences are of a lesser value than their own, snobbery is often assumed to come only from those in a superior position. But wade into almost any debate between almost any two people about the relative value of a thing ... and you’ll find people dismissing each other’s preferences ... these preferences are not always bound up by class considerations. Listen sometime to people debating Fords and Chevys; the form of those arguments is the same as the one between two people debating Fords and Bentleys. “My thing is better than your thing for these reasons.”
Laura Schmidt, coauthor of a new study outlining the health hazards of sugary treats, wants to set an age-limit on them a la alcohol or cigarettes. Her reasoning:
The reality is that unfettered corporate marketing actually limits our choices about the products we consume. If what's mostly available is junk food and soda, then we actually have to go out of our way to find an apple or a drinking fountain. What we want is to actually increase people's choices by making a wider range of healthy foods easier and cheaper to get.
The social network employs only around 3,000 staff, giving it an average revenue of $1.2m per person in 2011. Analysts are quick to point out that the site’s users effectively act as employees, adding content and value for others.
Has any major company — let’s say with a valuation of $50 billion or higher in today’s dollars — ever had a lower ratio of employees to customers than Facebook does?
Noah Millman reframes the contraception and religious liberty debate:
Ultimately, the source of the conflict here is in holding simultaneously that health care is a right and that health coverage will be provided primarily by private employers. If you believe both of those things, then you have to coerce private employers into providing coverage that meets some kind of minimal standard.
In the abstract they declare that “normative monogamy reduces crime rates, including rape, murder, assault, robbery and fraud, as well as decreasing personal abuses.” Seems superior to me. As a friend of mine once observed, “If polygamy is awesome, how come polygamous societies suck so much?” Case in point is Saudi Arabia. Everyone assumes that if it didn’t sit on a pile of hydrocarbons Saudi Arabia would be dirt poor and suck. As it is, it sucks, but with an oil subsidy.
Neil Young recently made the analogy. Mathew Ingram agrees:
Comparing piracy to radio is a smart way of looking at the issue: in the early days of the music business, when live performances and record sales were the main revenue generator for artists and publishers, radio itself was seen as a form of piracy (as sheet music was before that). Musicians fulminated about radio stations playing their music for free, and some record labels made their acts sign waivers saying they would not appear on the radio. In the end, of course, radio became a huge revenue driver for music — although it did so in part because record labels and publishers pushed for licensing fees.
Haroon Moghul sees major problems with Republican responses to questions about Palestinians and Arab Americans:
The percentage of Christians among the Palestinian population is about the same as the percentage of African Americans in the U.S.A. For a party so concerned with America’s Christian identity, Romney and Gingrich’s dismissal of the Palestinians is part of their broader disinterest in the Muslim world, and its diversities and differences. Namely, most Muslims aren’t Arabs, and most Arab Americans are Christians. You read that correctly.
James Poulos fits Mitt into a Bill Clinton-sized suit. Jacob Weisberg, in contrast, pushes the Gore and Kerry comparisons:
Gore and Kerry both suffered from the same characterizations that get applied to Romney—too wooden in person while too flexible in their views. Their supporters often argued that qualifications were what mattered. But ominously for Romney, both Gore and Kerry lost winnable races because of their flawed personalities. George W. Bush, on the other hand, got elected and re-elected, despite his enormous, substantive shortcomings, because ordinary people found it easy to relate to him at a personal level. They felt he wasn’t trying to be someone different from who he was.
The Romney campaign launches OneTermFund.com ("What is a one term Obama presidency worth to you?"):
The Obama campaign responds by creating TwoTermFund.com, which is comfortably outraising the Romney camp. Capitalizing on the "not concerned about the very poor" controversy, the DNC shoots out an insta-ad:
First Read makes a good point about Mitt's latest foot-in-mouth moment:
[Romney] really can’t complain about being taken out of context. Why? Because one of his very first TV ads took President Obama out of context (quoting him as saying back in ‘08, “If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose” – when Obama was actually quoting a McCain aide). You reap what you sow… [A]s for the quote IN CONTEXT, it is a little less bad but still awkward, frankly.
Romney's campaign didn't just take Obama's words out of context and hope viewers wouldn't notice. They argued that the ad was in-bounds as a form of tough politics aimed at contrasting Obama's message four years ago with Obama's message today. Even if you find that argument persuasive, you have to wonder at this point whether it was really worth giving up the right to complain about context in a very long campaign.
Here's the latest from Santorum's PAC, running in Minnesota:
