Gin and Tacos

As a college student a professor in the department in which I was a major garnered some attention for refusing to engage in a "debate" with a publicity-seeking group of Holocaust deniers. Being 20 and generally full of shit, I visited him in office hours and told him that I thought that destroying their feeble arguments in public would be more effective than ignoring them. I'll never forget his response (I believe he was quoting or paraphrasing an authority on the subject): "If I debate them, no one will be convinced that the Holocaust was fake. But many people will be convinced that it is open for debate." The wisdom of that was apparent immediately and has become more central to the way I view social and political issues over time.

With that in mind, I'd like to get a summary of what is going through Katie Couric's mind when she decided to host a "debate" on the "HPV Vaccine Controversy." Seeing how no debate exists and not one shred of evidence links it to anything the anti-vaccine cult has laid upon it, it can hardly be called a controversy and there is nothing to debate. She brings on two mothers, one of whom had a daughter die a couple of weeks after taking the vaccine, and a skeptic described as a vaccine "specialist" to make wild accusations unsupported by anything but emotions. Then she brings out an actual doctor to explain why nothing the viewers just heard makes any sense. Couric also notes that she took her own kids to get the vaccine.

The bizarre thing is that Couric probably thinks not only that this was good, balanced journalism (We heard from Both Sides!) but also that the segment dealt a blow to the anti-vaccine claims. Bringing on actual experts to provide actual facts should have that effect. It would be ideal if those facts are what viewers took away from this segment. The problem is that by having this debate at all soft-headed viewers are likely to take away a different lesson: there is an open debate about the safety of this vaccine.

As the notion that every issue is a debate with two equally valid opposing viewpoints becomes ever more central to our public discourse we see more of these "controversies" every day. Providing a platform for people to make an emotionally charged but factually bankrupt argument ultimately is harmful no matter how good the balm of Debate and having Two Sides to Every Coin makes us feel. The appropriate response to these blatantly false claims is not to air and refute them, but to ignore them altogether. Even the process of poking holes in the argument gives it the kind of exposure it needs to rope in the confused and the gullible.

Maybe my friends are weirder than yours, but over the past two days I've seen a link to something called "Vaginal Knitting" posted on Facebook about 25 times. One can only see such a phrase so many times before the seesaw tips from revulsion to curiosity. Plus, as I have no objection to either knitting or vaginas individually, there was some potential here.

It turns out that vaginal knitting (described here, with an embedded and completely not-even-a-little safe for work video) is just your typical first year Art School bullshit. It is strongly reminiscent of another internet sensation, the 2010 "performance art" piece "Interior Semiotics", which featured a teen art school hipster opening a can of Spaghetti-Os (past their expiration date for good measure) and inserting them into her vagina before an audience full of fellow art students making some of the most amazing Reaction Faces you'll ever see.

I'm starting to think that Performance Art is just things being inserted into and taken out of the vagina.

Nothing says "low hanging fruit" like making fun of the over-the-top pretentiousness of Fine Arts students or the desperate pleas for attention of someone who thinks that adding the vagina to anything – including knitting – makes it a bold Feminist statement. Yet no matter how silly it is, someone on the internet will defend it. Gawker tried to salvage it by pointing out that the exhibition's "power lies in the fact that the same feminist themes and visuals that shocked us in the '60s and '70s still shock us today." But do they? Do they really? Is "shocking" an appropriate description of the reactions to this nonsense? To me this is neither shocking nor offensive, it's just stupid. It's tired and formulaic; take something boring, do it naked or stick it up an orifice, and call it art. Most people grow out of that around 19.

So don't be offended. It's just a vagina. And resist whatever urges you might have to explain how this is either art or some sort of bold statement about women. Try "No, this is just stupid" and leave it at that. Doing something like this is the simplest path to rapid fame on the internet, albeit with the substantial downside of guaranteeing that you will be known as "that woman who put yarn in her hoo-hoo and knitted with it" for the rest of your life. That saying that all publicity is good publicity is unpersuasive here.

In political science there is a shrinking but still quite depressing group of academics who studied the internal politics of the Soviet Union ("Sovietologists") and, due to tenure, outlived the Evil Empire by a couple decades. This is sad to me because these people specialized in something that has zero useful applications at this point, yet some of them are still around. The art of Sovietology involved using what little information was available to Western academics to make predictions about the heavily opaque internal politics of the Communist Party leadership in the USSR. They looked for signs that certain individuals were gaining or losing power and made educated guesses about the conflicts within the system, hidden from public view. It was, to put it mildly, an inexact science. Critics said it wasn't a science at all. But given that the entire Soviet government was shrouded in mystery to most Americans (even the intelligence services were only marginally aware of what was going on in any aspect of Soviet government and society except for the military) it was a useful effort.

When the USSR fell, ideally all of these people could have just retired or something. Some tried to transition to post-Soviet studies, but this is in fact a very different endeavor, theoretically and methodologically. Some tried to peddle their analysis for the Russian successor state ("Kremlinology") but information about Russian politics is not nearly so hard to come by as it was for the USSR. For the most part these folks, all of whom are pretty old now, are like a rotary dial telephone; a relic from a previous era, interesting but useless.

This is not unique to academia – the State Department, military, and other government agencies were full of these people in the 1970s and 1980s. Most of them are gone now. Most of the institutions of our society and government have come to grips, a quarter-century later, with the fact that the Cold War is over. But not everybody. Some people – neocons, for the most part – just can't let go. Either they are constitutionally incapable of updating any aspect of their worldview or they lack the intelligence to understand that the Cold War paradigm is no longer useful. It is not possible to keep the same framework in place and simply update the names – strike "USSR" and fill in "terrorism" or "North Korea." The world is different. Very different.

I feel the same sort of sadness when I see people like John Bolton, who recently generated some attention with an op-ed about how agreement or no agreement, someone needs to bomb Iran anyway. People like Bolton are forever stuck in 1980. The answer for everything is "Bomb it" or "Give the Pentagon more money" or ideally both. These aging Cold Warriors have been flailing around for two decades looking for an enemy, for a new Evil Empire to plug into their monochromatic worldview. But there is no modern equivalent of what the USSR was during the Cold War. It's pathetic to watch them try to make a new Soviet-sized enemy out of the table scraps available to them – an "Axis of Evil", for example, consisting of D-list wannabes that barely count as regional powers let alone global ones. Look at the dilemma this way: what would become of Superman if Lex Luthor and the other villains in that universe disappeared? Suddenly Superman would seem pretty irrelevant. He would either have to disappear or spend his time busting shoplifters and jaywalkers. And that would just be sad to watch.

It is reassuring, though, to realize that absolutely no one pays attention to these people anymore. Does anyone take John Bolton seriously? Does anyone care what he has to say about this or any other subject? The neocons had a chance to reassert their relevance in the early George W. Bush years and they blew it with Iraq. They were exposed for what they are: a sad group of people who are no longer relevant resorting to outrageous fabrications in an effort to make some third-rate dictator seem like an extremely dangerous boogeyman. Lacking what their belief system requires – a relatively equal opponent with nuclear weapons or their equivalent – they had to fabricate one. And now all but the most fact-impervious right wingers see with hindsight how little of a threat a country like Iraq posed or poses.

They're going through the motions again with Iran, and no one outside of the boardroom of the AEI appears to be buying the idea of Iran as a terrifying global menace. Deprived of a real enemy packing nukes, they're reduced to issuing hysterical warnings about countries that might be trying to build nuclear weapons – 75 years after the US, Britain, the USSR, and other true global powers did so. It's like the United States of 1950 deciding that some tiny nation posed a threat because they were attempting to figure out how to build machine guns. If the current situation with Iran is less ridiculous than that it is only slightly so.

The noted Jesus enthusiasts who run Hobby Lobby – America's #1 retailer of craft supplies and unbelievably tacky shit – are trying to get out of their legal obligations under the Affordable Care Act. As a large chain, I suspect they would be obligated to provide insurance for a good number of their employees who lack it at present. Predictably, they are claiming to be entitled to some sort of conscience exemption on the grounds that the ownership doesn't want to pay for it their deep Christian beliefs will not allow them to pay for any insurance that covers birth control.

This comes up every couple of years, usually when some pharmacist claims to be morally unable to dispense birth control prescriptions, and it never gets less ridiculous. It betrays a complete lack of understanding of what a conscientious objection is. I came across this excellent explanation from a Quaker – a group that has experience with CO during military drafts – of why this is so misguided:

I believe in Conscience Protection. I believe people should have the right to refuse work that violates their principles. If a draft were called tomorrow, I would wholeheartedly support people's right not to serve.

But if someone serving in the military came to me and said they wanted me to defend their right to refuse military service, but that they also wanted to keep their job and be paid as if they were actually serving in combat, I would laugh in their face.

A pharmacist demanding the right to keep their job even if they refuse to dispense legal medication is like a Marine demanding to keep their job even if they refuse to follow lawful orders. That’s not "conscience protection," that’s a handout to someone who wants to be paid not to work.

Unsurprisingly, Hobby Lobby and their ilk want to have it all ways. They want to do as their supposed morals dictate and flout the law, as though we all have a right to pick and choose what aspects of the law we will follow based on our preferences. I'm legally obligated to pay taxes for two wars I find profoundly immoral. If I chose to, I suppose I could stop paying whatever portion of my taxes goes toward that end. But what right would I have to complain when the IRS put me in jail or seized my assets to cover my tab? None. Absolutely none. Because a genuine act of conscience is not necessarily one for which you are protected from all of the potential consequences.

People who don't get a kick out of Black Friday shopping – and personally I find the idea about as appealing as Ann Coulter's used panties – certainly seem to get a kick out of mocking Black Friday shopping. I used to be one of them. As I've mellowed out with age I see it more subjectively. Maybe some people who enjoy wading into crowds of holiday shoppers at the mall think I am nuts for enjoying attending a hockey game. I don't get it, but people like different things. Hell, some people like the bagpipes, and that's the worst thing humans have ever made.

One of the new rituals for anti-Black Friday fans is posting videos of people fighting over merchandise or while waiting in line for Black Friday sales. Here's a gallery of them. This is my favorite:

I've seen a lot of complaints about the classism inherent in mocking people who are fighting over discount Wal-Mart merchandise, which would make more sense to me if these people were poor in any meaningful sense of the term. It's facile to fall back on arguments like "Even the poorest American is wealthy compared to a starving African refugee", but in this case that isn't even necessary. Bargain hunters? Sure. Overspenders? Maybe. But no one who's out to blow hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on disposable crap – toys, electronics, gadgets – for Christmas gifts is poor.

The disturbing part is that this video of comparatively well-off Americans looks eerily similar to those clips of filthy disaster victims, famine-stricken children, or war refugees. Just replace the bag of UNICEF rice with some virtually useless tablet computer and make the surroundings cleaner and more sterile. That's ultimately what bothers me when I see these videos or the endless stories about fights, injuries, or even worse breaking out on Black Friday. I can't put my finger exactly on the logic leading me to this statement, but I always think: This is what They want. They want us tearing one another to pieces over a fucking stuffed toy or a handheld electronic device that will make the journey from Chinese sweatshop to leaking heavy metals in a landfill in less than two years. "They" are looking at these videos and smiling, possibly drumming their fingers and letting out a Burns-like "Excellent…"

Sure, this is a small sample of people. We're not all like this. It's nonetheless disturbing how many people seem to be ready to resort to rudeness at best and violence at worst to defeat their fellow Americans in the quest to buy shit. A rational person might look at the last remaining PS4 and think, "Crap. Well, I can always go home and order it on Amazon." Instead, we deem it socially acceptable to fight over it like we're dying of cancer and it's the last batch of chemo drugs.

It's in someone's interest to encourage and condone that mentality in this country. That's what I think about every year after Thanksgiving.

Sometimes I think China sits around thinking of ways it can do things that will end up being passed around the internet for the rest of the world to look at and think, "What the fuck, China." This all may be part of a devious plan, a disinformation campaign. Or maybe lots of people in China are moderately crazy.

Well, here's a giant concrete replica of the American aircraft carrier USS Nimitz. Mull that over for a second.

Now I know China loves to build knockoffs of all things Western – either to sell back to us at a profit or simply for its own inscrutable reasons – but it's not immediately clear what could have possessed them to build a nearly full-sized aircraft carrier out of concrete. Believe it or not, building oceangoing ships out of concrete is rare but not unprecedented. However this concrete carrier was never intended to sail. Or even float.

Turns out that this is, in essence, a mall. The ship is actually a building resting on solid ground in a very shallow artificial lake. It's a theme restaurant-shopping-entertainment complex concocted by the city of Binzhou to gin up some tourism. According to what little information I could find:

Driving force behind the boat was the Binzhou City Tourism Bureau that designed the Binzhou Aircraft Carrier as a multifunctional entertainment paradise with restaurants, movie theaters, shops and a hotel.

Sadly, thing didn't turn out as planned. The construction of the interior proved much more expensive than estimated and the small city of Binzhou ran out of money. Further construction was suspended in 2006. The Binzhou Tourism Bureau went looking for investors and managed to persuade other government-run enterprises to put up some extra cash. In 2008 things looked very bright when the first restaurants and bars opened their doors on the upper deck of the ship.

Said businesses failed quickly, and for more than two years the derelict derelict has stood empty. It has the perfect paint job for a white elephant. You'd think the city leaders would just demolish it – clearly no one is going to buy it, and the description hints strongly that it might not even be structurally sound – so as to avoid having to look at the goddamn thing every day.

I don't understand you, China. I doubt I ever will.

(Publisher's Note: Ed is currently indisposed, so his Latvian pal Ivars will be handling today's post.)

Hello Gin with taco! Is Ivars! I have made many recover from trip to Burning Man where children of politburo trip balls in desert. Ed give to me many weblink for topic of posting, and I pick one that cause many confuse. I ask American friend, what is "24 Signs She's a Slut" and why is angry many reader? She explain but still I have confuse. Is supposed to be list of ways for tell if American woman is…prepare for sexytime. Is maybe different for America, but in Latvia cannot tell. Unless lady give family turnip on first date – then is guarantee of many sexytimes!

When explain to me my friend this 24 list, I must confess is very confuse. Many of 24 signs are just description of to be female. Have tan? Dye for hair? Have boobs? Is almost every Latvian girl! Except for tan. Is not good skin sometimes, if harvest of turnip is bad. But who is writer of this list? He sound like man with many problem and very small loaf of bread, if you get Ivars! He sound like he make many rape. Is all American man like this? Women of Latvia should not go to America for being with rape man. As Russian say, "nyet!" But enough about Russian, Russia is hole of ass.

I have many question. Please to help understand.

What is "slut face"? Writing man seem to think all lady have slut face. Maybe is only face of slut because man think all lady is slut.

Why is lady easy for sexytime when she make swearing? My mother make many swear, and she hate sexytime, says my father! Ha! But for serious, this is very silly.

Why does hair on body make for slut? Latvian woman have hair to stay warm for winter. Is also why Latvian woman eat like Latvian man, to make winter without die of starve.

What is "sorority"? Is like army? Ivars was in army. Is not like to talk about it.

What is "known party college"? In Latvia, all college is for party! Many party, I drink beer until take off pants. Sometimes friend will say, "Oh Ivars, you wear your pants!" American college is for party too, yes?

What is "tequila"? Have not taste tequila but who does not like shots? Is for party! And also for celebrate! And also for warm, when piece of shit Lada stop in winter.

Why is "feminist" more sexytime? Is feminist not mortal enemy of bag of douche like man who write this? If writer man say all of this is sign of slut, he sound not like he know anything about American lady.

In Latvia, is one way to tell if girl is for sexytime: She will say! Some time she say, "I want no sexytime" and other time she take off shirt and ask Ivars to put hands on her sweater turnips. Is not all the same, yes? Some lady in Latvia is for sexytime very eager, others like sexytime not at all. To find out is why for go on date and have many talk.

Is very silly, this link of web. Why is entire website by man who is very obvious know nothing of woman? Maybe should make website for how to stroke little Brezhnev with hand – is probably expert! Ha!

America is wonderful, but is sometime very hard for understand.

For people who like to portray themselves as Constitutional scholars and the modern executors of the Founders' intellectual estate, Republicans sure play fast and loose with the sacred text when it suits their needs.

Here is the briefest possible explanation for why the Senate changed the filibuster rule we all remember learning about in junior high civics class. Chances are most people who know what it is recognize it because the name sounds vaguely hilarious.

Yes, with three years remaining in Obama's second term the Senate Republicans have already nearly tripled the previous record for filibusters against the party in control of the White House. Worse, they have abandoned even the thinnest pretext of principle behind their use of the filibuster to block presidential appointments. They no longer bother mounting long, windy, insincere speeches about how the president's appointees are just Too Liberal and Activist Judges. No, for the past few years their approach has been essentially, "We're going to block all of these because we don't like you."

Typical Republican approach: break government, declare that government is broken, campaign against government. Repeat as long as rubes will buy it.

That a rule change was necessary is beyond obvious at this point. Yes, at some point in the future it will be used against Senate Democrats when they find themselves in the minority; that is something they will have to live with. This made sense in both the long and the short term. I'm sick to death of hearing about how the Senate is thinking about changing the rules. They've been talking about it for a decade. Shut up and do it already. It was starting to feel like Duke Nukem II, for christ's sake.

Now that it's over and done with, I do have a few lingering issues for our Constitution worshiping brethren on the right. They're very big on upholding the intent of the Founders, right? Right? Of course they are. Just ask them.

First, the word "filibuster" appears nowhere in the Constitution. It's a simple Senate rule. It is to the Senate what the phrase "under God" is to the Pledge of Allegiance – inserted after the fact but misrepresented as part of the original intent. Anyone who brings up the Constitution as a reason why the rule cannot be changed is the purest breed of dolt (Art. I, Sec. 5: "Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings…")

Second, does not the Constitution give the Senate the duty to ensure the operation of the government by facilitating the presidents' appointment of judges, ambassadors, and other officials? Sure, we could quarrel over the meaning of "advice and consent" here, but for people who claim to rely on the intent of the Founders it is abundantly, sparklingly crystal clear that the authors of the document had zero intention of the Senate minority using rules to prevent the body from approving appointees for partisan political reasons. Find some archival evidence that Madison said, "Well if you don't like the president, it's cool to abdicate the constitutional responsibilities of the Senate." I'll wait.

Third, it strikes me as hilarious that some Republicans appear to believe the party will score political points with this issue. The very idea that Americans even know what Senate rules are, let alone care that they have been changed, is laughable. As someone who studies public opinion, I've had this conversation a few times with folks who study Congress – you can't poll people on things like Senate rules and congressional procedure because people have zero idea what any of those things are. I'd assume, thanks to Hollywood, that the filibuster is somewhat more recognizable, but in an electorate in which 1/3 of eligible voters don't know which party controls Congress it's highly doubtful that the GOP will be able to build on…what, pro-filibuster sentiment? Do they think that is a thing that exists?

The simple reality of our system is that at some point you have to stop fighting election results. At some point the minority party has to accept that they lost and that they will have to do some things they don't like because the other party is in control. Except that now the GOP can't accept that and can't stop fighting, ever, because the Tea Party is looming over them like a cloud – a crazy, illiterate cloud – ready to primary challenge any member who fails to refuse absolutely to perform any part of his/her responsibilities that abets Obama in any way. In that light, we could argue that eliminating the filibuster did Senate Republicans a favor, as they no longer have to go through the futile kabuki theater of mounting a filibuster against every single act the Senate undertakes. That must be tiring, after all.

JFK died fifty years ago today, as the surge of related content on TV and in the news has probably reminded you. Very few moments in American history have captured our imaginations so completely over the years.

Last weekend I spent some time with my dad, age 62, and he went through his story of where he was and what he was doing when he heard the news. There are people in the world who don't like hearing older people tell stories like this. I am not one of them. Informal oral history is more interesting than anything I can read in a book or see on TV in yet another interview from the archives with Walter Cronkite. I know some of you are over fifty. Feel free to share your own stories in the comments. The media keep telling us that everyone remembers where they were when it happened, and how could the media have such a pervasive trope if it wasn't true?

Not having lived through it, I have nothing to remember. Part of the reason I think it fascinates people, though, is the 8mm eeriness of the Zapruder film. It's less like a document of a historical event than a clip from an early John Carpenter horror movie. It doesn't matter how many times it gets replayed – and certainly most Americans have seen it dozens if not hundreds of times already – it's never any less arresting. Every time the limo rolls into view in semi-slow motion I'm like, "Oh shit, man…you should duck…"

And he never does.