Month: December 2008

INTERNET COMMENT OF THE YEAR

Posted on | by Ed

I strongly recommend reading comments on TownHall.com columns. Anything about teh gays brings out the real comedy gold. To wit:

Along with many others, I've blacklisted Hollywood! No more movies, concerts, talk shows, etc. Reading is truly a wonderful thing. For news, I turn on FOX NEWS, or check out the Drudge report. I have blocked CNN, NBC, MSNBC, CBS and ABC from my TV because I don't feel safe listening to them. I sincerely believe that, if there was an imminent threat to the US that didn't bode well for Mr. Obama, none of the above stations would report it. I've lost that much faith.
As for the Prop 8, I've about had it! I've watched violent, childish, pathetic behavior from the Gays and Lesbians. They've lost me as a supporter for many reasons. If they want 'Unions'…let them have 'Unions'. But, I am now questioning their ability to raise children, given their behavior during the past month.

I used to get angry at this kind of cretin, but now it's simply funny. I feel like Woody Harrelson in No Country for Old Men, calmly asking them if they have any idea how insane they are.

SOLID STATE

Posted on | by Ed | 1 Comment on SOLID STATE

Does anyone have experience with the new (at least on the consumer electronics market) solid-state hard drives? Now that they have predictably plunged from $600 to $150, I am thinking about self-gifting one as a replacement for the OEM 5400rpm shitball that came with my laptop.

The advantages in speed, access time, quietude, and power consumption of a drive with no moving parts are all obvious. Does it entail a trade-off in durability or longevity?

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I get the distinct impression that these things are going to obsolete existing HD designs in very short order, although the fact that defragging (which most OS are set to do automatically at some interval) destroys SSDs will probably delay their widespread acceptance.
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THE HARD SELL

Posted on | by Ed | 3 Comments on THE HARD SELL

Many years ago I worked in a very unpleasant and traditional "office job." In formulating my escape plan I initially wanted to go to graduate school and study/dissertate on the history of advertising. When I realized that this would entail joining a "cultural studies" or communication department I abruptly changed course. Really, one must salvage some dignity in academia. Nonetheless the topic remains fascinating to me. Advertising from 200, 100, 50, or even just a few years ago does not merely look dated or quaint – some of it looks like it was made on another planet.

Watching some old political ads on Thursday reminded me of the Rosser Reeves Hard Sell in all of its glory. Today's televised ads, even the ham-fisted ones, are incredibly subtle in comparison. An 18-wheeler barreling through a minefield is subtle compared to classic Reeves. While most people have no idea who he is (although I'll bet a quarter that some character on Mad Men is patterned after him) I can guarantee that everyone knows his work.

Reeves never believed that advertising could create demand. He regularly told his clients that he couldn't sell lousy products – the purpose of advertising was to increase demand by hammering home one point, one catchphrase, which summed up the "unique selling proposition" of a product. There are 50 different chocolate candies on the market, but M&Ms "melt in your mouth, not in your hand." There's a lot of aspirin, but Anacin is "what doctors recommend." "We like Ike" Eisenhower, the "Man from Abilene." Colgate creates an "invisible shield" around teeth. At Avis, "We Try Harder." Relief is spelled "R-O-L-A-I-D-S." Reeves created ad campaigns before the frickin' Korean War that can be recited flawlessly today by anyone who looked at a TV in the 1950s.

The amazing thing about Reeves and the Hard Sell, something which is apparent if you click through any of the links, is that people simply hated his ads. They're annoying as all hell. They consist of unappealing imagery paired with an announcer repetitively yelling at the viewer. Can you imagine a modern political ad screaming at you like "The Man from Abilene?" Reeves believed art, subtlety, cleverness, and style were for pussies. He thought that it didn't matter one bit if anyone enjoyed the ad. All that mattered was that those same people who said they hated the ads remembered them verbatim. The combination of repitition (few companies advertised on TV, hence a small group of commercials were in heavy rotation) and pointed delivery make Reeves' ads unusually enduring.

The Hard Sell fell out of favor in the 1960s when the prevailing philosophy in advertising shifted toward campaigns which tried to be cool, cinematic, artistic, and less "pitch-y." In other words, advertising that didn't look so much like advertising. Compared to the new Doyle-Dane-Bernbach style, which incorporated concepts like post-modernism and breaking down the fourth wall, Hard Sell ads began to look exceptionally corny (Thomas Frank's Conquest of Cool goes into significant detail about the transition). It's the difference between a modern Volkswagen commercial and a Billy Mays ad for Mighty Putty. It's the difference between an Obama ad and this 1964 Goldwater ad warning viewers of "JUVENILE DELINQUENCY!"

Consumers began to tune out ads that insulted their intelligence with direct "BUY THIS NOW" appeals. So the Hard Sell disappeared. Right? Not so much. Ad execs may distance themselves from Reeves, recoiling at the mere implication that they would subscribe to the crass theories of a bygone era, but many modern ad campaigns incorporate all of his principles (albeit in a prettier package). No, the real change was in the products. There simply aren't enough things being advertised to us that have "unique selling propositions" – even phony, dubious, and pseudoscientific ones like we saw in the 1950s. What makes Nike unique? Nothing. It's a shoe. So are Reeboks. All shoes cover your feet. The only way to pitch Nike versus Adidas versus Reebok is on style points; look how "hip" our ad campaign is, look at the awesome celebrity spokespeople, look at how cool everyone will find you in our shoes. Accordingly, most products adopt a new campaign (and a new slogan) every 9 months lest they get "stale" and hence un-hip. In 50 years I can guarantee you that no one will remember McDonald's "I'm Lovin' It" slogan – or "Food, Folks and Fun" or "We Love to See You Smile" or any of their dozens of slogans since 1990. But in 2058 I bet that people will still be able to state exactly where M&Ms melt and where no such melting occurs.

LIGHTSABER POST-PRESIDENCY BLUES

Posted on | by Ed | 11 Comments on LIGHTSABER POST-PRESIDENCY BLUES

Age has a way of mellowing people in the political world. After a long career in the sewers of partisan politics, most well-known figures are happy to transition into an elder statesman role. They devote themselves to non-partisan issues and bury the old hatchets in order to end their careers in public service on a positive note.

The recent history of retired presidents shows how far a graceful retirement can go toward rehabilitating a bad career. Jimmy Carter, widely considered to be an atrocious President, has made himself into an American Mother Theresa analogue. His face and name are synonymous with Habitat for Humanity and international monitoring of elections through the Carter Center. Gerald Ford, another human punchline of a President, devoted himself to the Ford school of international affairs at the University of Michigan as well as the Betty Ford Clinic. Even Nixon salvaged some measure of respect by focusing on his expertise in foreign policy, being called upon for advice and diplomatic missions by every president who followed him. Harry Truman became excellent friends with Herbert Hoover and championed legislation to establish presidential libraries. Hoover, for that matter, was appointed to oversee the distribution of food to the needy in post-WWII Europe and headed the appropriately-titled Hoover Commission on reducing bureaucratic waste. The Hoover Institute at Stanford University is also the single most well-respected source of public policy from the right.

Even losers find ways to endear themselves to the public. Former Senate enemies and epic presidential failures George McGovern and Bob Dole were jointly awarded the prestigious World Food Prize for their organization dedicated to establishing school lunch programs in poor countries. Walter Mondale became an Ambassador. Michael Dukakis teaches political science at Northeastern University in his home state. Barry Goldwater and John Kerry returned to the Senate as quieter, gentler people. Adlai Stevenson became the US Ambassador to the United Nations, a post he held during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Thomas Dewey was offered a Supreme Court seat by Lyndon Johnson but turned it down. Wendell Willkie became one of FDR's most important political allies during WWII. Al Gore's post-government career has been controversial only because James Inhofe insists that the environment is a partisan battleground.

A couple of presidents are conspicuously absent from this list. Bill Clinton has had a hard time leaving the spotlight for numerous reasons. The Democratic Party was adrift from 2000-2004 and he remained its leader by default. His wife's political career has also kept him in the game. Ronald Reagan physically fell apart upon retirement, but even in becoming a recluse he managed to advance awareness of Alzheimer's research. So those two get passes. The name most conspicuous in its absence is the elder Bush.

After 1992 George Bush essentially fell off the face of the Earth. He briefly surfaced to raise money for Katrina victims (at Clinton's request) in 2005. His other major accomplishment has been to organize a yearly fishing tournament in the Florida Keys. Now, I understand that Pappy needed to lay a bit low for the past eight years lest his unpopularity affect his sons' political aspirations. That fails to explain the void between 1992-2000. He has essentially spent sixteen years lounging around at his family's dozen homes around the country. No dedication to lovable non-partisan causes (hunger, literacy, digging up landmines, saving tiny puppies, oranges for adorable babies with scurvy, etc). No statesmanship or half-assed efforts at diplomacy. He isn't even involved with the public policy school at Texas A&M which bears his name.

Pappy's example makes it even more difficult for me to picture George W. Bush having a remotely dignified ex-presidency. Can anyone honestly picture this guy devoting himself to charity? Being sent overseas to further diplomacy? Promoting peace? Monitoring a foreign election? Engaging in the academic side of public policy? I mean, this guy wasn't even interested in public policy (or governing, or diplomacy, or anything) during his presidency. It's hard to picture him developing such interests in retirement.

My best guess is that, like the overgrown fratboy he has always been, he's going to cash in on his title in the most crass and embarassing ways we can imagine. He'll be like one of those doctors who wins the Nobel Prize in Medicine and then uses it to hawk diet supplements on infomercials. He'll load up on honorary/no-show appointments to corporate boards of directors (Gerald Ford had a few of these). He'll lobby the Pentagon for defense contractors. He'll lend his name to the kind of partisan hackery that masquerades as a "cause" on the right (preventing voter fraud, achieving energy independence through oil drilling, abstinence-only education, etc). But these are only things that are conceivable at the moment; I fully expect W to take it places we never imagined possible. He will amaze us with how crass, how tacky, and how thoroughly disinterested in public service he is. It will not surprise me one bit to turn on my TV some day and see this fucker selling me a limited edition presidential Sham-Wow.

Perhaps I'm underestimating the man. If he's anything like his dad, though, anything listed in the previous paragraph would qualify as almost impossibly ambitious. He is likely to spend his retirement the same way he spent 50% of his presidency – sitting on his ass in Crawford, the public thankful for every moment it doesn't have to look at him.

MARK STEYN GETS THE FJM TREATMENT

Posted on | by Ed | 5 Comments on MARK STEYN GETS THE FJM TREATMENT

Some things are inevitable. Mr. Steyn getting a turn in the FJM seat is one of them. You may recall his best-selling book about how "our" way of life would soon collapse under the weight of brown people who are fuckin' faster than "we" are. He can always be relied upon to provide the loudest, most hysterical knee-jerk reaction to incidents of terrorism, Islamo-Fascism, or Terrorisislamofascism. To wit: a column with the 1980s PSA-styled title "Mumbai Could Happen Just About Anywhere."

Well, I sure am frightened enough to accept whatever he proposes as the best and perhaps only response! Let's Roll!

When terrorists attack, media analysts go into Sherlock Holmes mode, metaphorically prowling the crime scene for footprints, as if the way to solve the mystery is to add up all the clues.

Mark Steyn is the 2008 recipient of the Fraternal Order of Police Merit Prize for revolutionizing the field of criminal investigation, saving thousands of man-hours of labor with the Steyn Technique: replacing traditional investigative techniques with reactionary leaps to conclusions.

The Mumbai gunmen seized British and American tourists. Therefore, it must be an attack on Westerners!

Nobody said that. There were like 2 Americans killed. But Steyn wrote this column months ago and did a simple ctrl-f to replace the proper nouns.

Not so, said Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria. If they'd wanted to do that, they'd have hit the Hilton or the Marriott or some other target-rich chain hotel.

See? When those journalists start adding up clues it throws open the barn door to exactly this kind of far-out, straw-grasping, put-down-the-bong reasoning. I want some of whatever Fareed's drinking!!

OK, how about this group that's claimed responsibility for the attack?
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The Deccan Mujahideen. As a thousand TV anchors asked Wednesday night, "What do we know about them?" Er, well, nothing. Because they didn't exist until they issued the press release.

Good point, Mark. I agree that anyone who jumps to wild conclusions about a totally unknown group would end up looking like an incredible dipshit.

"Deccan" is the name of the vast plateau that covers most of the triangular peninsula that forms the lower half of the Indian subcontinent.

Well thanks a pantload, Carmen Sandiego!

It comes from the Prakrit word "dakkhin," which means "south." Which means nothing at all. "Deccan Mujahedeen" is like calling yourself the "Continental Shelf Liberation Front."

This is just fascinating. When I am on Jeopardy and the category is "Journalistic Filler/Research from Wikipedia" I will owe Mark Steyn a new poodle.

OK. So does that mean this operation was linked to al-Qaida? Well, no. Not if by "linked to" you mean a wholly owned subsidiary coordinating its activities with the corporate head office.

How to Have Your Own Syndicated Column, by Mark Steyn: chastise journalists for leaping to wild conclusions, copy something out of the dictionary ("Webster's defines excellence as the quality or condition of being excellent.") and then whip out your dick and start spraying wildly without regard for direction or wind speed.

It's not an either/or scenario, it's all of the above.

OK, so the question is, "is the operation linked to al Qaida?" and the answer is "all of the above." We are also reminded that "it" is "not an either/or scenario."

That…does not make sense. I'd blame this fact on Steyn's writing skills, but since I did enough peyote to stun a mastadon before I sat down to write it is probably my fault. I'm sure it makes sense to the rest of you.

Yes, the terrorists targeted locally owned hotels. But they singled out Britons and Americans as hostages. Yes, they attacked prestige city landmarks like the Victoria Terminus, one of the most splendid and historic railway stations in the world. But they also attacked an obscure Jewish community center.

They also befouled a vat of Holy Water, spat upon a Zoroastrian cleric, pressed their nuts against a statue of the Buddha, heartlessly taunted Confucious, left a flaming bag of dog shit on the Dalai Lama's doorstep, and briefly paused in a large courtyard to spell out "SUCK IT BENEDICT XVI" for an aerial photograph.

The Islamic imperialist project is a totalitarian ideology: It is at war with Hindus, Jews, Americans, Britons, everything that is other.

Their long-running battle against the League of Women Voters apparently merits not even a mention.

In the 10 months before this atrocity, Muslim terrorists killed more than 200 people in India, and no one paid much attention.

Maybe that's because Tamil separatists have killed about five times that amount in the same timespan. Not to mention that, you know, Indian people have killed about 10,000 people in India in the last 10 months. In a country of 800,000,000 saturated with every manner of factionalism and violence, Mark Steyn is apparently floored that these 200 people did not stop the presses.

They launched a multiple indiscriminate assault on soft targets, and then in the confusion began singling out A-list prey: Not just wealthy Western tourists, but local orthodox Jews, and municipal law enforcement.

al Qaida targeting hierarchy: wealthy Western tourists, the local Jewry, cops, auto rickshaws, gays, and street performers. If no such targets are available, terrorist operatives are to destroy as much ornamental shrubbery as possible before sacrificing themselves.

They attacked a hospital, the place you're supposed to take the victims to, thereby destabilizing the city's emergency-response system.

One thing that shocks most Westerners upon visiting Bombay is that the city of 10 million has only one hospital, fittingly named "THE HOSPITAL." It consists of three dirty cots in a converted goat barn.

And, aside from dozens of corpses, they were rewarded with instant, tangible, economic damage to India: the Bombay Stock Exchange was still closed Friday.

That's amazing. I know from watching our stock market that it never goes down for several days in a row unless something really amazing happens.

What's relevant about the Mumbai model is that it would work in just about any second-tier city in any democratic state: Seize multiple soft targets, and overwhelm the municipal infrastructure to the point where any emergency plan will simply be swamped by the sheer scale of events. Try it in, say, Mayor Nagin's New Orleans.

Sick burn, dude! It can happen anywhere, but especially in New Orleans!

Given the numbers of gunmen, clearly there was a significant local component. On the other hand, whether or not Pakistan's deeply sinister ISI had their fingerprints all over it, it would seem unlikely that there was no external involvement. After all, if you look at every jihad front from the London Tube bombings to the Iraqi insurgency, you'll find local lads and wily outsiders: That's pretty much a given.

Remember, he has absolutely no evidence for any of this. He is literally just making shit up. This does not even approximate journalism. He has gone from admitting that he doesn't know dick about this group to telling us about its membership in like ten sentences.

But we're in danger of missing the forest for the trees. The forest is the ideology.

Thanks for explaining the metaphor, Emerson. Otherwise you might have lost us with your mastery of figurative language.

You're sitting in some distant foreign capital but you're of a mind to pull off a Mumbai-style operation in, say, Amsterdam or Manchester or Toronto. Where would you start? Easy. You know the radical mosques, and the other ideological front organizations. You've already made landfall.

They already walk among us! It's too late! Start hoarding pre-formed pie crusts! Burn down the nearest mosque on your way to Wal-Mart!

It's missing the point to get into debates about whether this is the "Deccan Mujahideen" or the ISI or al-Qaida or Lashkar-e-Taiba. That's a reductive argument. It could be all or none of them. The ideology has been so successfully seeded around the world that nobody needs a memo from corporate HQ to act: There are so many of these subgroups and individuals that they intersect across the planet in a million different ways.

So, like, it would be pretty fucking retarded to fight a traditional land war with this formless ideology, right? All this talk about al Qaida "logistical support" and centralized control were pulled directly out of your favorite President's withered asshole, hmm? Good point, Mark. I concur.

Many of us, including the incoming Obama administration, look at this as a law-enforcement matter.
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Mumbai is a crime scene, so let's surround the perimeter with yellow police tape, send in the forensics squad, and then wait for the D.A. to file charges.

No, we're gonna send in Bones!

It's not a crime scene, it's an act of war from Radical Islam.

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The only option is to declare war on said ideology. We've declared war on nouns before and it has always worked out well.

There was a photograph that appeared in many of the British papers, taken by a Reuters man and captioned by the news agency as follows: "A suspected gunman …" The photo of the "suspected gunman" showed a man holding a gun. We don't know much about him (attempt at humor omitted) – but one thing we ought to be able to say for certain is that a man pointing a gun is not a "suspected gunman" but a gunman.

I saw that picture on CNN.com too. We did exactly the same amount of research on this subject, Mark. Let us mock Reuters for having an editorial policy. I bet you can use this example as a springboard toward some pretty wild conclusions!

"This kind of silly political correctness infects reporters and news services worldwide," wrote John Hinderaker of Powerline.

His source is Powerline. I swear to God we are *this close* to seeing a column containing the phrase "I checked with my roommate, and…"

One of these days. One of these days. It's coming.

This isn't law enforcement but an ideological assault – and we're fighting the symptoms not the cause. Islamic imperialists want an Islamic society, not just in Palestine and Kashmir but in the Netherlands and Britain, too.

Does anyone notice that every single column this guy has ever written comes to the exact same conclusion? I could recite the last two paragraphs of a Mark Steyn column from memory. I bet you can too, even if you don't realize it. It's like a song you didn't know that you know the words to. You hear some music, it sounds vaguely familiar, and before you know it you're belting out the chorus to a goddamn Candlebox song.

Their chances of getting it will be determined by the ideology's advance among the general Muslim population, and the general Muslim population's demographic advance among everybody else.

Mark is essentially a shrill klaxon who, like the emergency sirens in your town, is tested monthly to remind us that we're not fuckin' prodigiously enough.

So Bush is history, and we have a new president who promises to heal the planet, and yet the jihadists don't seem to have got the Obama message that there are no enemies, just friends we haven't yet held talks without preconditions with.

Yeah, I also heard all that stuff during the Obama campaign, like when he told the nation about his plan to hold a peace summit with suicide-bombing lunatics. I think that's why he carried Delaware.

He also sent Kim Jong-il a Vermont Teddy Bear.

This isn't about repudiating the Bush years, or withdrawing from Iraq, or even liquidating Israel. It's bigger than that. And if you don't have a strategy for beating back the ideology, you'll lose.

You've laid out a compelling case, Mark.

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Fortunately Obama has more experience than anyone on the planet at beating back an insanely angry, fanatical ideology that goes into economic wastelands and uses religion to incite the barely-literate poor to acts of violence and hatred.

Whoops, my apologies. I mean "suspected ideology."

Oh, you card!

This has been another issue of Mark-Libs, America's favorite nativist, xenophobic word game.

I have to jet, folks. I need to hurry up and make some white Christian babies. Any fertile women not currently putting their womb to work for Our Race should contact me immediately.

WOW. THAT DIDN'T TAKE LONG.

Posted on | by Ed

Last week's Senate 2010 preview is already in need of an update.
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Mel Martinez is abandoning ship after just one term. You may recall that he just narrowly beat Betty Castor in 2004, a year in which the GOP had a decided upper hand. Now he's another Bush victim, and he took some headshots at the Rove Party on his way out the door.

Martinez was in big trouble anyway, and as an open seat the Democratic challenger (probably Wexler) is the clear favorite.
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And I bet Jeb runs.

SPECIAL OLYMPICS

Posted on | by Ed | 26 Comments on SPECIAL OLYMPICS

One thing that keeps me from getting in trouble with my employer on account of this website is that I strenuously avoid any discussion of or references to specific things that happen to me "on the job." When I do talk about teaching or the university environment I keep things as vague as possible, withholding specific references to a class, colleague, or student. I'm going to try to keep this rough set of guidelines intact today. I like teaching to the point that it barely feels like work. So it's fair to assume that an angry teaching moment is overdue.

In my current assignment I am not in control of the standards to which the students are held. I legitimately despise the prevailing school of thought at the average Big Public University (since this obviously isn't an isolated problem) that grading undergraduates must be done according to what I like to call "Special Olympics rules" – just show up and everyone gets a medal. Quality and/or success are optional.

Grades should, of course, look something like a normal distribution, with the majority centered around "average" and smaller numbers at the high and low ends. The average grade for subjective work (essays, papers, essay exams) in a large class should be a middle C (75%). I have accepted the fact that here at Specific Big Public U the expectation is more along the lines of 78-80%. That is, mean/median grades should be on the B-/C+ borderline. A slightly exaggerated mean is fine with me, as it largely rewards students who try hard but for some reason don't end up with good results. In other words, it doesn't affect the A's or the F's – it largely turns a 73-75% into a 78-80%. Fine. Whatever. Doesn't bother me.

What is troubling is the occasional not-so-subtle suggestion that the distribution needs to change, and specifically that too many people are in the F range. Like, gee, that's a lot of students who are failing…shouldn't some of those F's be D's? Don't a lot of those D's look like C's? The message is clear even if the implications are ignored: no one should fail. Everyone who hands in all of the required work should pass. Failing grades are reserved for people who don't hand in the research papers or don't show up for one of the exams. It's OK to fail them. Everyone else gets a Participation Trophy.

Perhaps I am not yet jaded enough, given a scant five years' experience, to see the logic in giving everyone a passing grade for enrolling in the course and (intermittently) showing up. But the fact is that students perform exactly to our stated expectations. No more, no less. If we reward people for handing in shit, they will hand in shit. If we demand that they hand in something of good quality in order to get the A's and B's, most of them will do it. At the very least they will put in a good effort even if the results remain mediocre.

When people tell me "You have to go easy on them, they're just freshmen!" I like to note that they are college freshmen. They are not infants. Yes, they went to high schools of variable quality. No, they cannot be expected to hand in research papers that are New Yorker-ready masterpieces of literary style and substance. Here's what we can expect of written work, no matter who or where we teach:

  • A clear topic or thesis statement. The paper has to be about something.
  • Cited research. Don't plagiarize and don't write about your opinion.
  • A rough approximation of correct English grammar, spelling, and style.

    Is that so fucking hard? Is that unrealistic? A paper that does the bare minimum – the mean/median grade I talked about earlier – does these three things. To get into the A or B range requires going beyond this; the argument in the paper actually makes sense, the research is particularly in-depth and shows initiative on the student's part, and the grammar/style are free of all but the most trivial errors. My experience is that a plurality of students – 40 percent – can do more than the Three Basics, hence the A's and B's. Another 40% do the bare minimum and no more, hence the "median" grades in the 70-80 range. The remaining 20% fail to clear one of these three incredibly difficult and unreasonable hurdles that I have thrown in front of them.

    Why is this fair to expect of any undergrad regardless of high school preparation or academic experience? Because these things will all be done for students who seek the help. The campus writing center will proofread your paper and fix the grammatical Hindenburgs. Your professor will help you formulate a topic and structure a simple argument around it. A librarian or your instructors can help you figure out how to do basic research in a library or online database. Based on this we might conclude that anyone who fails to do the Three Basics is simply lazy, too lazy to seek out any of the resources that would have done it for them. But we would be wrong.

    Laziness plays a role with some students, but it is also learned behavior. The student does not go to the campus writing center for proofreading because all of the illiterate crap he has submitted in his academic life has been rewarded with a good grade. He feels no need to figure out a topic/argument because he has handed in dozens of papers about nothing and received B's in return. The expectation is that I will not upset the status quo, that if the assignment is "write a 10-page paper" then everyone who hands in 10 inked pages passes. I am expected to put a C on papers that tell me that campaign finance laws are "straight bullshit" (actual quote), to accept papers about how presidential candidates routinely "fake the funk" (no, seriously) or to read sentences like the following without stabbing my pen through the paper:

    Many people in high federal office trying to raise as much money that they can help pad themselves to have as much as possible for their quest for the presidency.

    With all professional respect toward the students, we don't owe them a fucking thing in terms of outcomes. What we owe them is an open door and the willingness to help them – whether it takes 5 minutes or 5 hours – understand and meet/exceed the requirements of the course. No one is entitled to a particular grade just by showing up. Sorry. Even as a young Padawan Learner in this profession it is apparent to me that I am going to have problems throughout my career on account of my attitude on this subject. So be it. We need to be a lot more willing to tell students, many of them for the first time in their lives, that horseshit isn't good enough. My brief experience is that saying "This is crap, you have to do better work" results in most students doing better work. Most of them can and will.

    College students are adults and they do not benefit from coddling. If they fail to meet the bare minimum of academic standards, one of two things is true. Either the students do not realize they are doing poor work, in which case they should be told the truth, or they knowingly submit total crap and believe that it entitles them to a passing grade, in which case no amount of jading will ever lessen my desire to disabuse them of that notion.

    • GREAT ELECTION HYPOTHETICALS, PART 1 – McCAIN'S VP

    Posted on | by Ed | 10 Comments on GREAT ELECTION HYPOTHETICALS, PART 1 – McCAIN'S VP

    One of the great things about using politics as a hobby is that it is structurally identical to being a fan of comic books, Star Trek, football, KISS, Harry Potter, or anything else. Something happens and then fans endlessly debate questions that cannot be answered except subjectively – whether Team A would have won if it had started the other quarterback, which Star Trek series is the best, whether the Lord of the Rings film trilogy was sufficiently faithful to the book, and so on. This is a roundabout way of inciting a debate about inherently unanswerable questions. We know it's pointless; we do it because we enjoy it.

    Here's the setup: Sarah Palin was in fact the most logical and best choice as John McCain's running mate. This has become obvious to me now that strategic decisions can be analyzed with the benefit of hindsight.

    The key to this conclusion is the assumption that McCain knew he was going to lose before most of us on the left accepted or admitted it.
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    This is a solid assumption based on post-election tell-alls from McCain campaign insiders (see, for instance, Newsweek's Special Election Project issue). Overpowering pessimism might not have reigned, but the campaign was certainly well-aware that it was not the favorite.

    McCain believed he was behind – possibly by a lot – and he needed to choose someone who could potentially put him on top. That is no easy feat. It's really difficult for a VP nominee to rescue a failing presidential campaign. If there was some magical person who obviously and definitely could have closed a 10-point poll gap, McCain would have picked him or her. Duh. But real life doesn't work that way. Getting the big payoff requires accepting a lot of risk. Think about it like an investment.

    Let's say John Doe is 60, nearing retirement, and in excellent financial health. He knows he has plenty saved for retirement as long as he doesn't screw anything up. How will he invest his money? Low risk, low return – bonds, savings accounts, and so on. Fred Doe is 60 and nearly penniless. His math is much different. He knows that the only way he'll have enough to retire at 65 is a miracle short-term investment with a huge return. So he takes his $10,000 life's savings and invests in penny stocks or takes it to Caesar's Palace. We'd call that kind of risk-taking foolish from John, but Fred can justify it on account of his dire straits.

    McCain's choices fell into two categories: safe ones who wouldn't help and huge risks who could help but probably wouldn't. He could have made a "common sense" pick like Romney, Pawlenty, Huckabee, or Lieberman. We all know that his preferred choice was Holy Joe. But do you honestly believe that McCain/Lieberman would have won? I sure as hell don't. The election might have been closer – McCain may have won Florida, perhaps North Carolina or Virginia too. So what? He lost by 100 Electoral Votes. Does anyone sincerely believe that Joe Lieberman would have been worth 100 EV? Romney? Huckabee? Pawlenty? Doubtful.

    Best case scenario: McCain limits Obama to about 290 EV by choosing Lieberman, and that's being very generous. It would have accomplished nothing, in short, except making the "final score" closer.

    Palin and Jindal are examples from the second category.
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    With them on board McCain was either going to win by a hair or get blown the hell out. He chose Palin not because he finds her brilliant but because there was no other choice.

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    He was backed into a corner and had to choose the only nominee who might, under some remotely plausible scenario, put him on top. It was a 100% chance of defeat with Lieberman and a 95% chance of defeat with Palin. Which would you choose?

    Palin was the only option who could fulfill the 5% victory scenario the campaign constructed. They needed someone new, young, exciting, likeable, and to the right of Falwell on social issues. Palin likely got the nod over Jindal based on her gender and the (unlikely) chance that it could attract some old, bitter Hillary die-hards. The odds are that someone – some insider, some consultant – told McCain that Palin was a complete idiot before he chose her. He knew it. But he had no choice, so he picked her and clung to the hope that she could be polished, trained, protected, and stage managed just long enough to get him past November 4. He knew we'd find out how stupid she is, but he hoped to delay that revelation for eight weeks.

    It didn't work, of course, but what would have? Palin was a monumental "blunder" like betting it all on one number in roulette is a blunder – everyone criticizes it, but if you win, who cares? The odds of winning are tiny. There comes a time in a campaign, though, when one realizes that any chance of winning is better than zero. Palin was probably the reason McCain lost so badly but the margin of defeat is irrelevant.

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    He could lose by 30-40 with Lieberman or, with Palin, he could squeak out a win or lose by 100.

    Tell me where I'm wrong. Was there anyone McCain could have chosen who would have altered the outcome? Did anyone offer better odds of success – not winning odds, mind you, just better ones – than Palin? My answer is negative on both counts.