Category: Rants

THE BIANNUAL FJM TREATMENT OF DAVID BROOKS

Posted on | by Ed | 25 Comments on THE BIANNUAL FJM TREATMENT OF DAVID BROOKS

What is this, number four for Mr. Very Serious Brooks? It may seem like he is given the Treatment far too often, but in reality I applaud myself for showing almost superhuman restraint in featuring him in this format as rarely as I do. Every word he writes begs for this kind of response. Every New York Times column, not to mention every television bobblehead appearance, is like a massive nuclear explosion producing a giant cloud spelling out "Ed! FJM me!" It is so tempting to comply. His web archive makes me feel like a kid in a candy store whereas actually trudging through his columns makes me feel like a diabetic kid in a candy store…I can see all kinds of treats on the Times website but I can't have any of them. I have to read goddamn David Brooks.

Being the good Sensible, Adult Moderate that he is, Mr. Brooks must take the occasional stab at liberal cred, which is as difficult as you might expect for someone who is basically a less hirsute Mitt Romney. But DB sure does try, most recently in last week's excruciating "The Long Strategy." The nondescript title does not betray how bad the ensuing column really is. Let me put it this way: if you ever wanted to meet David Brooks in his high school years, this is as close as you can get. Now that I've really sold it, buckle up. This FJM is made possible through the generous support of the Sanctimonious Pud Foundation.

I was a liberal Democrat when I was young. I used to wear a green Army jacket with political buttons on it — for Hubert Humphrey, Birch Bayh, John F. Kennedy and Franklin Roosevelt.

"Don't you think I'm cool now? I was also into Foghat. I knew Timothy Leary. I played tambourine for Country Joe & the Fish for a couple of years. I banged Squeaky Fromme. Ever hear of the Baader-Meinhoff group? I was Baader."

I even wore that jacket in my high school yearbook photo.

PICS OR IT DIDN'T HAPPEN.

It’s a magic green jacket.

Holy shit! Can we call it the Dream Coat from now on? Oh. I guess that's taken.

But the moral of the story is that no one F'ed with DB in high school, not with his Cloak of Invisibility and +3 Bag of Holding.

I can put it on today and, suddenly, my mind shifts back to the left. I start thinking like a Democrat, feeling a strange accompanying hunger for brown rice.

Ha ha! He knows 1960s liberal stereotypes! Oh, that's rich.

When I put on that magic jacket today, I feel beleaguered but kind of satisfied.

"Not unlike that time I barfed in Morley Safer's bathroom but mostly missed the toilet. He's a dick. God, we drank so much Keystone Light. You wouldn't tell by looking at him, but Ed Bradlee turns into Wolverine after a sixer."

I feel beleaguered because the political winds are blowing so ferociously against “my” party. But I feel satisfied because the Democrats have overseen a bunch of programs that, while unappreciated now, are probably going to do a lot of good in the long run.

Wait…they did things right? Things that David argued against when proposed?

For example, everybody now hates the bank bailouts and the stress tests. But, the fact is, these are some of the most successful programs in recent memory. They stabilized the financial system without costing much money.

Brooks on Charlie Rose, 2/9/09: Bank bailouts = bad.

The auto bailout was criticized at the time, but it’s looking pretty good now that General Motors is recovering.

Nov. 2008: "Bailout to Nowhere." Auto industry bailout = bad.

But the magic jacket-wearing me is nervous about the next few years.

Regular jacket-wearing you was nervous about the last few, too. Good thing the government didn't listen to him.

I’m afraid my party is going to get stuck in the same old debates that we always lose. First, we’re going to have the same old tax debate. We’re going to not extend the Bush tax cuts on the rich. The Republicans will blast us for killing growth and raising taxes as they did in 2000 and 2004.

"And I'm certain of it, because those will be my next three columns as soon as I take off the Magic Jacket and replace it with my Dickhead Sportcoat, Smug Slacks, and a size 10 pair of Platitude Shoes."

Then we’ll get stuck in the same old spending debate. We’ll point to high unemployment and propose spending programs too small to make much difference.

Right, we will settle on spending programs too small to make a difference after people like non-Jacket David Brooks rail endlessly about how the proposal is too expensive.

The Republicans will blast us for bankrupting the country with ineffective programs, and the voters are so distrustful of government these days that they’ll side with the Republicans on that one, too.

Have to go with DB here; they pretty much have this one down to a science. Run the government into the ground, campaign on "small government", and assume that people aren't paying enough attention to figure it out. Brilliant.

So I sit there in my magic green jacket and I wonder: What can my party do to avoid the big government tag that always leads to catastrophe?

"Now that we all agree that big government is bad, how can the party accused of favoring it run against the party that consistently implements it?"

Then I remember President Obama’s vow to move us beyond the stale old debates. Maybe he couldn’t really do that in the first phase of his presidency when he was busy responding to the economic crisis, but perhaps he can do it now in the second phase.

Oh crap. You all know what's coming, right? You've seen this before, right?

It occurs to me that the Obama administration has done a number of (widely neglected) things that scramble the conventional categories and that are good policy besides. The administration has championed some potentially revolutionary education reforms. It has significantly increased investments in basic research. It has promoted energy innovation and helped entrepreneurs find new battery technologies. It has invested in infrastructure — not only roads and bridges, but also information-age infrastructure like the broadband spectrum.

Well, that's all pretty tame. But yeah, most sane people would think those are good ideas – meaning that about 60% of the American public does.

These accomplishments aren’t big government versus small government; they’re using government to help set a context for private sector risk-taking and community initiative.

No, they're SOCIALISM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Where have you been, David? Liberal fascism! Hitler! Stalin! Neville Chamberlain! FEMA internment camps in the desert! Sharia law! Death panels! Reparations! My precious fluids!

They cut through the culture war that is now brewing between the Obama administration and the business community. They also address the core anxiety now afflicting the public. It’s not only short-term unemployment that bothers people. What really scares people is the sense that we’re frittering away our wealth. Americans fear we’re a nation in decline.

Well, for once, Americans are fuckin'-A right.

So I sit there in my green jacket, happily chewing on a Twizzler that I probably left in a pocket in 1979,

"Probably?" That's the kind of thing you would know, David. You'd know. Also, how many times are you going to bring up this jacket?

and I think: What would happen if Obama sidestepped the fruitless and short-term stimulus debate and instead focused on the long term? He could explain that we’re facing deep fundamental problems: an aging population, overleveraged consumers, exploding government debt, state and local bankruptcies, declining human capital, widening inequality, a pattern of jobless recoveries, deteriorating trade imbalances and so on.

Yes, those are our problems. Also bear attacks, and those two astronomically expensive wars.

These long-term problems, Obama could say, won’t be solved either with centralized government or free market laissez-faire. Just as government laid railroads and built land grant colleges in the 19th century to foster deep growth, the government today should be doing the modern equivalents.

That sounds like a good idea. What is the modern equivalent of a system of enormous, well-funded state universities and a nationwide network of railroads?

Not much is going to get passed in the next two years anyway, but the president could lay the groundwork for a whopping second-term agenda: tax simplification, entitlement reform, a new wave of regional innovation clusters, a new wave of marriage-friendly tax policies.

David, even for you this is pathetic.

Some kind of regressive flat tax, privatizing and/or slashing Social Security, gutting Medicare, and coming up with some new tax breaks to reward people for…getting married, I guess? Which one of those is like the railroads, David?

If the president is looking for a long-term growth agenda, he could read “Path to Prosperity,” co-edited by Jason Furman and Jason Bordoff, or “The Pro-Growth Progressive” written by Gene Sperling. Some of these guys already are on his staff.

Yes, he needs to listen to even more people telling him that the key to succeeding as Democrats is to support all of the policies of the Republicans. Because what the American public really wants is a Republican Party with some sort of different name.

Eventually, I see a party breaking out of old stereotypes, appealing to entrepreneurs and suburbanites again, and I start feeling good about the future. Then I take off the magic green jacket and return to my old center-right self. A chill sweeps over me: Gosh, what if the Democrats really did change in that way?

Well, then we'd have a one-party system like the Soviet boogeyman that you and your kind can't stop bringing up even though it means almost nothing (at least nothing accurate) to most of the country. Is this really your dream, David? Is this the Big Change you want to see in the world? The Revolution According to Brooks: a Democratic Party that completely buys into Alan Greenspan economic theories but is a little more liberal than Tom Tancredo on social issues.

As a small child, David also dreamed of being an average player on a 4th-place baseball team. Of joining NASA and being the guy who greased the gimbel joints on the Saturn V. Of moving out to Hollywood and being a grip. Of being the soundman for a mediocre band. Of writing the Decent American Novel. Of winning a Bronze medal…at the Pan-American Games. Of someday living in Kearney, Nebraska. Of winning honorable mention in a pie-eating contest.

David Brooks: always dreaming big. And insisting that if only the Democratic Party was more conservative its success would know no limits.

THE POWERS OF DEDUCTION

Posted on | by Ed | 13 Comments on THE POWERS OF DEDUCTION

Deep underneath 1 Murdoch Place, the council of stroke victims who conduct quantitative analysis for Fox News celebrated yesterday when they discovered a way to rationalize how SB 1070 is actually helping Arizona tourism. Oh, it doesn't make any sense, but it's more than good enough for the parade of the lame, the halt, and the ugly who make up the network's viewers.

In "Arizona Hotels Thriving Despite Boycotts Over Immigration Law," Fox peddles its usual special brand of decontextualized statistics and disastrously poor logic. They want their readers to be unduly impressed with the statistic that, "hotel occupancy was up 5.7 percent in May and up 8.3 percent in June compared with the same time a year ago. That sounds great! Almost 10%! Take that, you stupid Messicuns! It seems impressive until you realize that last year was the worst year for tourism in Arizona since the 1970s.

In the depths of the recession, no one traveled last summer. That seems logical enough. This year things are still lousy but there is a little bit of a rebound. Makes sense too. 8%. Good for you, Arizona tourism industry.

Let's say a baseball player reliably hits about 35 home runs every season for 15 years. The next year, being old and broken down, he hits only 12. He insists on playing one more season and manages to hit 20. Would you look at that and say:

A) "His home run total increased 40%!!! He's immune to the effects of age!"
B) "That season where he hit 12 was so lousy he couldn't help but do better this year, albeit still considerably below his career average."

If you chose A, congratulations! You are a Fox News SuperViewer. Go back to reading Glenn Beck's Common Sense and buying the criminally overpriced gold he's paid to tell you to buy. If you chose B, stick around for the next part.
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Congratulations on figuring out that a small rebound from a historically low number means exactly nothing.

With some Arizona tourism professionals offering anecdotal evidence that the Governor's scare tactics are convincing tourists that the state is Beyond Thunderdome, it is plausible that the hotel business would be up much more than 8% without the law, the boycotts, and the posturing of ignorant elected officials. (By the way, is there a more selfish politician in America than Jan Brewer? Her state survives on tourism and she's on TV telling A) Latinos to fuck themselves, which is odd because I think Latinos go on vacations and B) everyone else that "headless corpses" are turning up in the state courtesy of the armies of violent drug mules invading the state? Who cares, right, as long as Jan scares enough white retirees into re-electing her!)

The second problem, one that would be apparent to anyone who…I don't know, thinks about stuff, is that the tourism industry runs in long cycles. The law wouldn't be expected to result in canceled conventions this year because that's simply not how the convention industry works. My professional association, the American Political Science Association, schedules its massive 10,000 attendee conferences six years in advance. APSA 2016 is already confirmed for Philadelphia. The blow to Arizona's convention and tourism industry will come when the convention business it is losing today comes to pass. How many groups and trade associations are making plans right now and concluding that Arizona just isn't worth the headache? No one can answer that question, of course, but those of us outside the Fox News audience are at least sentient enough to ask it.

Kinda puts that 8% increase and the relationship between SB 1070 and tourism in a new light, though.

WIKILEAKS, PART I: WHERE'S THE SHAH WHEN YOU NEED HIM?

Posted on | by Ed | 31 Comments on WIKILEAKS, PART I: WHERE'S THE SHAH WHEN YOU NEED HIM?

Rather than constructing the longest post in ginandtacos history to cover both the content and the controversy of the Wikileaks release of Afghan War documents, I'm going to split this up into two days.

Despite the sensation, we have not learned much from the much-publicized release via Wikileaks of a treasure trove of DoD documents on Operation Enduring Freedom. The war isn't going particularly well (duh) and U.S. military operations are killing a lot more civilians than the press releases indicate (shocking). What is surprising is the extent to which the DoD is well aware of the prominent role of the Pakistani intelligence agency (ISI) in supporting and even carrying out Taliban attacks. Since India exposed the role of the ISI in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks it has been clear to even the most casual observer that the goals of the U.S. and Pakistan are not aligned and that Pakistan should be considered a dubious ally at best, an enemy hiding in plain sight at worst.

In the Cold War era the U.S. had a bountiful roster of right-wing strongmen who ruled their nations with an iron fist, and such allies were always available to help the U.S. further its anti-communist foreign policy goals. Does America now have so few useful allies in the region that Pakistan – a corrupt, borderline-failed state with security and military agencies that support Islamic terrorist groups – is our best choice for an ally? Its strategic position bordering Afghanistan makes it a desirable ally, but how much bad behavior should one overlook to further the fantasy that we'll someday surround Afghanistan with stable, democratic neighbors?

The fundamental issue underlying the behavior of the ISI and the Pakistani military is the lack of effective control over all aspect of the state apparatus by the central government.
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Musharaff and his successor Asif Ali Zardari say the right things and, hell, might even mean them. But it is clear that whatever their intentions they lack meaningful control over the military and intelligence functions of the state. The left hand isn't sure what the right hand is doing. So Lesson One is that you can't negotiate foreign policy with a country that can't control rogue portions of its military infrastructure. Oh, and did we mention that it's a nuclear power? Of all the convoluted fantasies on the right about how al-Qaeda was going to build or steal nuclear weapons, these documents suggest that the most plausible scenario for a terrorist armed with a nuke is the ISI handing him one.

Aside from the role of Pakistan the only thing we're learning from these documents is that Enduring Freedom is going poorly.
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Really poorly. Like, even more poorly than we already assumed. Afghanistan was a curious issue in the wake of 9/11. The rationale for invading Afghanistan was far superior to that of Iraq later in 2003, yet it would not be possible to pick a country in which the odds of success – defining our goal as establishing a stable democratic state – would be lower. As the USSR learned in its ill conceived and disastrous Afghanistan misadventure from 1979 to 1989, Afghanistan is one of those countries that isn't really a country. On western (and Soviet) maps, yes, it is a country. But the effective power of the national government doesn't extend much beyond the borders of the capital city. This is extremely common in Third World countries. And make no mistake, this is a Third World country.

Despite the complete lack of any valid reason supported by evidence to invade Iraq, at least Iraq offered some sliver of hope for long-term success. It was a Second World country, having a particularly shitty government but a government nonetheless.
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A government that had effective authority over all (or nearly all) of the land within its borders. A government with infrastructure – utilities, schools, roads, etc. – and public resignation to its authority. Everyone within and outside of Iraq knew who was in charge. This is not true in Afghanistan and it never has been. It is a desolate, impoverished amalgam of tribal groups and regions cobbled together by European colonialist cartography. Outside of Kabul, and particularly in Balochistan, Sindh, and the "Federally Administered Tribal Territory", the nominal government has almost no authority. In some tribal areas it has none at all, and whatever organized government exists is local, regional, or tribal.

The rationale for deposing the Taliban was defensible, but the expectation that it could be replaced with a stable, effective central government was and is not. The country can't be pacified because it was never a country, let alone a pacified one, to begin with. And the Wikileaks documents draw in high relief the futility of playing Terrorist Whack-a-Mole in the vast, remote, and lawless Afghan countryside. The U.S. wants, and has been used to finding in the past, a strongman who can assert authority over Afghanistan and do so in a way that suits American interests. But there is no Shah, no Pinochet, and no Trujillo on the horizon. The U.S. will remain an unwanted presence among the population and the country will remain a nation in name only.

In short, these documents only reinforce what we already knew or deeply suspected. Pakistan sounds like an ally and acts like an enemy and OEF is a war the U.S. cannot possibly win if it defines winning as establishing an Afghan government friendly to American interests and hostile to Islamic terrorism. We'll see a National Hockey League team in Kabul before we see a government that can impose order and is willing to take marching orders from Washington. As Lincoln once quipped about South Carolina, it appears that Afghanistan is too weak to be considered a nation but too large to commit to an insane asylum.

THE JOB DESCRIPTION

Posted on | by Ed | 28 Comments on THE JOB DESCRIPTION

A few years ago there was a brief spike of interest in "conscience clauses" for pharmacists whose deep, meaningful belief in the scientific opinions of Jerry Falwell led them to conclude that birth control pills are a form of abortion. They argued that they should not be legally required to help a customer perform an abortion, and thus they could refuse to fill prescriptions for oral contraception. Several states adopted relatively meaningless Conscience Clause laws for healthcare providers, meaningless in that A) the accommodations an employer must make for an employee's religious beliefs are limited to a reasonable effort and B) the employee must comply with company policy about objections based on conscience – for example, Wal-Mart and Target require pharmacists to refer the customer to a co-worker who will fill the prescription. The issue rapidly disappeared.

The underlying and more serious problem, however, is that the idea of refusing to perform the most basic – and from the perspective of the public, only – duty of one's job based on moral qualms is an unworkable model. Pharmacy is a profession with a creed and a set of principles, the most basic being that patients are autonomous (i.e., the pharmacist will respect the informed wishes of the patient) and the doctor-patient relationship is inviolable. See, people don't go to the pharmacy to get moral advice or a lecture or a second opinion on medical decisions. We go to get our goddamn prescriptions filled, a job, in an age of pre-filled and factory sealed bottles of pills, that could reasonably be done by a vending machine. If you're not prepared to fill prescriptions, maybe pharmacy ain't for you. I'm not prepared to kill animals all day, so I don't apply for many slaughterhouse jobs. And there's a good chance that if I took one and refused to kill animals they would fire me.
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For cause. This idea that we will structure the world to accommodate the personal objections of individuals that take jobs with legal responsibilities and professional codes of conduct is as dangerous as it is stupid.

Let's play the slippery slope game for a second. What if my religion is Christian Identity and I don't want to teach any Jews or minorities? If we apply the pharmacy example, the University would have to offer all students fitting that description a separate class and pay me to teach only to Aryan students. Of course in reality they would simply fire me, pointing out that I took the job understanding that it requires me to treat all students equally and carry out all duties under my job description. No one would coddle me. But let's say I was something tamer than a neo-Nazi Christian fringe believer. Let's say I don't believe in evolution. If I taught biology, could I just skip any mention of evolution? No, I'd be asked to do what the job requires: to present the scientific consensus on evolution. That's what the students are paying for.

This brings me, albeit very indirectly, to the case of a Georgia student seeking an MA in Counseling who refuses to accept the scientific consensus in her field as part of her job requirement. Jennifer Keaton is suing Augusta State University because she claims the school is attempting to "force (her) to change (her) beliefs" that homosexuality is a deviant condition that should be cured. ASU is, well, a terrible school (US News labels it "4th Tier"). It is about the 8th best school in Georgia, and Georgia isn't exactly California when it comes to the university system. So with all due respect to their students, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Ms. Keaton isn't exactly the cream of the academic crop. She may even be a complete idiot, which is ad hominem on my part but also explanatory of the basic problem with her position.

You can believe whatever you want to believe, dear. You can believe that the world is ruled by alien lizard people, the moon landing was a hoax, or that 9/11 was an inside job. You can believe that down is up. It really doesn't matter. What the profession you seek to enter demands, however, is that you do your job as legal and professional rules dictate. No one gives a shit if you think Teh Gays need to be cured. A psychologist's job is not to impose personal beliefs on a client/patient. There is no scientific evidence for the beliefs in question – being gay is a choice, gays are sick, etc. – and thus you are entitled to believe them but forbidden to use your position of influence to impose them on people who come to you for treatment.
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A patient seeing a psychologist expects to be treated according to an understanding of recognized medical disorders, not according to what some name they got out of the Yellow Pages thinks. If you cannot understand the problem inherent in letting psychologists ignore the DSM and substitute their personal beliefs at their own discretion, I think I might be able to explain why you are on the verge of getting kicked out of a 4th-rate school.

The University should make it clear that Keaton will receive her degree when she understands the job description of the field she is attempting to enter. I won't hold my breath. There are some reasonable solutions here – seek a degree from Bob Jones University or someplace that will reinforce her worldview and/or get a job at a private school, preferably run by fundamentalists, that will accept her conception of the job as a pulpit for preaching one's own beliefs. What won't fly is to expect ASU and the profession as a whole to let each member write his or her own set of rules, standards, and job descriptions.
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COMING SOON TO A PANT NEAR YOU

Posted on | by Ed | 34 Comments on COMING SOON TO A PANT NEAR YOU

(Caveat: I am in a wedding this week, one that requires interstate travel. First of all, congratulations to commenter Scott – who would have thought that purchasing a Chechen mail order bride would work out this well?

Second, I don't anticipate any interruption in posting but I might be a little…curt.)

Oh boy. Call your stockbroker and see if you can go short on pants, because there is about to be a whole new torrent of right wing pant-soiling and race-driven hysteria.

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The DOJ is prosecuting post-Katrina vigilante shootings, apparently believing the craaaaazy idea that heavily armed white southerners with itchy trigger fingers operating on no sleep in a lawless environment might just start plugging every black guy they saw, with or without cause. I mean, that would never happen, would it?

Spike Lee's excellent When the Levees Broke films surprisingly skirted this issue, although Douglas Brinkley's even more excellent book The Great Deluge discussed it in some depth: many survivors told of experiences with vigilante/survivalist types who were really excited to shoot someone. Like, "Finally law and order have collapsed. I've always wanted to shoot a black guy!

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" excited. That attitude, combined with the degradation of judgment that accompanies a few hungry and sleepless days in a disaster zone, no doubt produced a number of shootings of…dubious legality.

As disturbing as citizen-on-citizen violence is – whether it's one person looting or another person shooting everyone he thinks is about to loot him – the mindset bothers me even more. We are all justifiably disgusted when someone looks at a natural disaster as an opportunity to burglarize a liquor store. We didn't hear nearly as much indignation at the number of Louisiana and Mississippi residents who looked at the same disaster as the long-awaited chance to enact their Mad Max fantasies. The media vent tons of hot air about thieves stealing Plasma TVs and none whatsoever over home- or business owners who think it gives them carte blanche to use their hoarded weapons however they please. Especially when what they please is to plug "anyone darker than a paper bag" to quote one of the charming indicted Louisianans.

IN SOVIET RUSSIA, SCANDAL FABRICATES YOU

Posted on | by Ed | 65 Comments on IN SOVIET RUSSIA, SCANDAL FABRICATES YOU

I once spent four days at a conference in Branson, Missouri. It is far from the worst place on Earth – being safe and having indoor plumbing puts it ahead of a lot of the globe – but it most definitely earns its status as a punchline. It looks like a giant dragon that craps chain restaurants rampaged through the town, narrowly missing the countless ex-celebrity entertainers whose careers have gone to Missouri to die. Among the latter, famously, is 1980s comic sensation Yakov Smirnoff. He doesn't simply have regular gigs there.
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He has his own theater.

Yakov, for those who don't remember him, made a career out of a single running gag: he was That Soviet Comedian. Nearly every joke followed the now-infamous pattern of "In America you have _____, but in Soviet Russia we had ______!

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" The only deviation was for the purpose of reinforcing American stereotypes about the USSR, i.

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e. "First time I went to Disneyland I saw Space Mountain. Big building with no windows, everyone inside screaming. I said 'Hey, we have one of those in Moscow!'" Moderately amusing, until you hear the next 50 jokes and realize that they're identical. But I digress.

Obviously he camps out in Branson because kids who are 20 and under today were born after 1990 and thus the Soviet Union means about as much to them as the Holy Roman Empire. They can't tell you what "communism" is aside from its status as the Bad Guys in action or war movies. Stalin, Brezhnev, perestroika, SALT, the Domino Theory…these terms mean nothing to them. Since Smirnoff's comedy depends entirely on stuff like this, his career can only survive if he finds audiences that remember it. Enter Branson, where the average age of vacationers is in the high sixties. All of them are old enough to remember the Cold War, and some of them are senile enough to think it's still going on.

Fox News has been taking notes of Yakov's success and has adopted its own Branson Strategy with its latest balls-out effort to fabricate a scandal: the "New Black Panthers" voter intimidation "story." I mean, how the hell old do one's viewers have to be before the Black Panthers are a relevant cultural reference? Even the USSR was relevant until 1991. The Black Panthers haven't fueled the paranoid fears of white people since the early 70s at best. When even the commenters at well-known conservative websites don't buy this pathetic effort to make something where there is nothing – OMG, two black guys were standing outside a polling place! Why, no, we can't produce a voter who claims to have been "intimidated" out of voting by said Colored Men! – you know the goal isn't to convince viewers on the merits of the case. It's an unsophisticated attempt to remind viewers for whom that group is relevant, i.e. your grandparents and anyone else over 70, that intimidating, heavily armed, and hostile black people are coming to take away Our Way of Life.

Even by Fox's standards, this "story" is ridiculous.
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Apparently they feel that enough old white people are watching to make an appeal to 1968 nostalgia worthwhile. I can't wait to see what throwback they dredge up next to connect with their demographic. Baader-Meinhoff? The Symbionese Liberation Army?** Sacco and Vanzetti? The Sans-Culottes? Among its many other assets as a media outlet, it appears that News Corp is making a much appreciated effort take viewers on a trip down memory lane in its comical attempt to engineer public opinion.

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**(Keep an eye out for my SLA musical, "From Tania to Cinque", which should be in theaters near you soon)

REWARD AND PUNISHMENT

Posted on | by Ed | 170 Comments on REWARD AND PUNISHMENT

A former student with whom I have kept in contact asked me a while ago what the post-college years – the twenties, in essence – are like. I thought about this a lot when I hit 30, and it boils down to this. First, everyone you know moves away. Then everyone you know gets married. Then everyone you know has kids. Then you never hear from anyone you know anymore.

This piece – "All Joy and No Fun: Why parents hate parenting," forwarded to me by my sister with three children – is all over the interwebs for the last few days. One of the few inviolable taboos in modern society is that no one may admit how much they hate having children or express any regret after having made the decision to do so. You hear this every once in a while, usually followed by outward expressions of horror from the listeners or a strong rebuke. But all of us, whether we have children or not, struggle with the same unavoidable question: if having kids is so amazing and rewarding, why does it look like it's so awful?

Being a non-parent the question is more important to me. And I do think about it quite a bit. If kids are wonderful, why does everyone who has them look like they would murder someone for an uninterrupted night of sleep? Why do Mom and Dad always look so unhappy wrangling their multiple children who have no interest at all in obeying basic requests? Why does the joyous addition of a child to the family drive the parents apart, up to and including divorce? Don't get me wrong, I'm sure parenting has its benefits too, but think back to before you had kids. From the outside looking it, it looks like a lifetime commitment that takes up all of one's time and money, straining all other relationships and necessarily forcing one to give up most if not all of one's independence.

Everybody understands this before having kids. Yet most of us will do it anyway. Why?

The sad truth, and the article only tapdances around this, is that a lot of people do it because they expect it to make them happy. Depending on someone else, be it a child or a spouse or a friend, to make you happy is of course a very poor strategy. The best answer to the "Why?" question, however, is the difference between happiness and joy. Long- and short-term rewards. Yes, the day-to-day of parenting sucks. Having kids changes everything about your life. But in retrospect people (mostly) say they would do it again and/or that it was the most rewarding part of their lives. Like anything else, it seems like we're more likely to regret not having kids than having them. So I suppose having kids sucks, until it doesn't. It's hard and miserable, but we don't regret doing it.

That conclusion makes a lot of sense, and I think it explains why so many people are reading and recommending the article. Joy vs. pleasure. Gratification vs. satisfaction. My question is why we, and by that I mean Americans, think we have to pick one.

The article touches on this so briefly that it's easy to miss, but a major contributor to the short-term misery of parenting in this country is directly or indirectly related to politics. It makes little sense to me when I read public opinion research explaining that having kids tends to make people a little more conservative, because there is no better way to get a first-hand look at how badly our welfare state has deteriorated. And it hasn't happened by accident.

Parenting is miserable in part because we make it miserable. Other countries have a year of paid maternity leave; Clinton had to fight tooth-and-nail to get the FMLA passed, granting a generous 6 months of unpaid leave. Parents also have to panic about how they are going to pay for their child's health care, because family plans are pricey and are getting more pricey in a hurry. Then they fret about affording college, because while college is free in most of the western world even the public schools are expensive here. Then they panic about paying for private K-12, because of course no one can send their kids to public school given the systematic dismantling of public education in this country since the seventies. Then they have to find affordable child care, because Mommy (or Daddy, depending on who takes the unpaid leave) needs to get that ass back to the office and start bringing home a paycheck ASAP to afford all of this stuff. And of course because of our idiotic urban planning and absence of workers' rights we have long commutes and 9+ hour workdays that guarantee we'll spend precious little time with our kids before we collapse in bed at an embarrassingly early hour.

Throughout the article the author emphasizes the point that parents can't seem to think or talk about anything but parenting. "I swear I feel like I’m surrounded by women who were once smart & interesting but have become zombies who only talk about soccer and coupons." It it amazing, then, that in a country in which so many adults have kids and elections in which working- and middle-class parents are far more likely to vote than singles we don't insist on policies that encourage family life and child rearing. On the one hand, we realize that the bare basics found in other democracies would alleviate many of the worst, most taxing aspects of parenting. But on the other hand, SOCIALISM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's a very persuasive counterargument.

GALL

Posted on | by Ed | 38 Comments on GALL

Chris Matthews is barely tolerable, but if your stomach feels strong today this six minute Hardball clip is interesting viewing. Matthews sits between a Heritage Foundation drone (appropriately named, as you will see, James Sherk) and an absolutely incoherent liberal d-bag as they debate unemployment.

Having already insulted him, I have to give Mr. Sherk a little bit of credit. He did as well as possible with an argument that inspires absolutely no sympathy. He refers to published studies and evidence more than the typical right-wing talking head, keeps his temper, and comes off as something better than Satan's butt boy. That's more than most of the Heritage/Cato/PNAC bobbleheads manage. In particular I think one aspect of his argument has merit: unemployed people may – although do not necessarily – limit their job search to jobs they consider "good enough" for them.

There is some truth to this, although there's no reasonable way to measure it. If I became unemployed, I would not start sending out applications to Burger King. I'd likely say "I have a goddamn Ph.D., and in light of the 20 f'n years it took me to obtain it I am going to hold out for a job that puts it to use." In other words, Sherk is correct in one respect. The availability of unemployment benefits (assuming I qualified by being laid off) would keep me from taking "any old job." If I had six months of benefits, I would look for an academic job for six months. When it ran out and the next step was eviction, then I'd swallow pride and see if Wal-Mart needs a cart wrangler. I don't think I'm exceptional in this regard. The world's lawyers and MBAs and accountants aren't likely to start delivering pizzas the moment they lose their jobs.

Where the wheels fall off (circa minute 4 in the video) the argument is the proposed solution. It's so ridiculous that Matthews' laughter obscures about 30 seconds of the exchange. If you can't watch the video, Sherk brings back Ronald Reagan's favorite remedy: telling out-of-work people that they need to move where the jobs are. Let's briefly overlook the bleedingly obvious impracticality of such advice (as if unemployed people can afford a cross country move) and look at the more troubling implication.

Sherk makes a big mistake by combining this remedy with the argument he's presenting here. Note that he is not saying people should move to Nebraska (his example) to get equivalent jobs – teachers getting laid off in Ohio and finding teaching jobs in Omaha. He is arguing both that people should take whatever job is available AND they should be willing to move to do it. So, as Matthews guffaws, when an Applebee's opens up in Denton, Texas unemployed people in New York City should be willing to move there for the job.

And this is why he ends up looking like such an ass. Not only is it depressing to think that we've come to this as a nation, but how does anyone work up the gumption to tell people, either in person, on TV, or in Heritage Foundation white papers, that this is the course of action they need to follow? How can a six-figure foundation fellow in the Beltway say with a straight face that people need to start moving across the country for minimum wage jobs?

I guess it's pretty easy to do this, apparently, given how common it is becoming. I generally do not subscribe to the empathy fallacy, the argument that a person needs to experience someone else's life to intelligently comment on it. In my field, for example, it's not well-received when white people do research on black or Latino politics. Even among people smart enough to know better there is a "What can you really know about black voting behavior?" attitude. This is patently ridiculous. My point with this example is that I don't believe that the media or politicians need to be minimum wage peasants in order to understand us little people. Any reasonably thoughtful person, even the millionaires in the Senate, can understand the problems that unemployed and/or low-income people face if he or she is willing to sit down and think about it.

The problem, I suppose, is that part about being thoughtful and willing to think because the Beltway elites are getting unreasonably comfortable giving edicts to those of us in the lower castes, edicts that belie their privileged status and ignorance of what life is like for the bottom 99%. Whether it's Mika Brzezinski (born into the political elite, and I can only assume embarrassing the hell out of her father) telling the little people that they need to "get used to" having Social Security cut or Congressmen turned gubernatorial candidates claiming that government needs to tighten the screws on food service income because waiters are making $100,000, haughty politicos and pundits with six- (or seven-) figure incomes really shouldn't be telling us what kinds of sacrifices we should be happy to make.

Mika Brzezinski doesn't give a shit if SS is cut because she can fund her own retirement 10 times over. Tom Emmer has no idea what a waiter makes (in Minnesota, apparently the average for full timers is under $19,000) because he hasn't had a real job in 20+ years. These facts being true of almost every elected official and media celebrity, why can none of them draw the conclusion that discretion is the better part of valor? "Maybe I shouldn't lecture people who depend on SS about why they should get used to cuts so that my income bracket doesn't have to pay more in taxes." "Maybe someone who makes $200,000 per year on the books as a Congressman shouldn't go after people who serve coffee to stoners at Denny's for minimum wage." "Maybe as a 'fellow' who makes six figures to sit on my ass at a wingnut welfare foundation and occasionally to babble on TV shouldn't be telling unemployed professionals that they need to suck it up and work at Chik-fil-A."

These are all entirely reasonable thoughts that, with a minimum of introspection, a reasonable person might conclude. Unfortunately the wealthy, the elite, and the conservative – and often the three overlap – lack shame and believe that it is their god-given right to lecture people who aren't as wonderful as them, dispensing advice that they would never follow. "My advice is for the little people – I'm different" used to be the kind of argument that would force a public figure to start keeping the company of bodyguards. Now we've relabeled it "common sense" and it is one of the many weapons wielded by the half of the working class who think they will benefit if they kill the other half as ordered.

NORMALIZING DEVIANCE

Posted on | by Ed | 34 Comments on NORMALIZING DEVIANCE

On Monday, CNN.com posted one of those magazine-generated "100 Best Places to Live in America" lists. This, even in the context of a fluff piece, floored me:

Certainly there is more to being a great place to live than economic conditions, but please note that the alleged 5th best place to live in America has a 7.8% unemployment rate. You know McKinney, TX is doing well because that's a full two percent below the national average. Way to go, McKinney!

It is remarkable how efficiently our economic betters – including the worker ants in the media conglomerates – have normalized the 10% unemployment rate. That is, the 10% "official" (U3) rate. Nevermind the U6 rate currently over 16%, which still probably understates reality. But I digress. Arguing that 7.8% is good because it is less than 10% is like…well, let's do Katrina metaphors two days in a row. It would be like leaving New Orleans flooded rather than draining it and then selling real estate with an argument like, "Our competitors' houses are under 10 feet of water. Ours are only under seven!"

I don't like putting on the Art Bell-esque Official Crazy Guy Hattm very much, but there certainly is a concerted effort being made by the political and economic elite of the U.S. and western Europe to take advantage of the current conditions to do what they have been trying to do since the Great Depression. Lower the standard of living for the little people. Make the labor force more compliant, riddled with fear bordering on desperation, and with (even) less bargaining power. And above all else, dismantle what remains of the social safety net.

As our Bi-Partisan Pud Pulling Deficit Reduction Committee nears the end of several months of wasting time and money before earnestly telling us we need to cut Social Security and Medicare – what an unexpected outcome! – the Senate refuses to extend additional "funemployment" benefits to Americans out of work. It's like the anti-New Dealers of the 1930s are finally getting to see all of their wet dreams come true. More unemployment! Lower taxes! (Wait, I forgot – tax cuts create jobs! Except when they don't!) No more handouts! Deregulation! Huzzah! Let's all go over to Henry Clay Frick's house and beat servants to death for sport!

I knew we had it in us as a society to wearily accept 10% as the new benchmark for unemployment. After all, it's not like we can do anything about it, right?!? I have to admit that I am a little surprised how quickly the transition took place, though. The collapse of our economy is not yet 24 months old and already we're back to tax cuts being the answer, regulation being the problem, and the unemployed being Welfare Queens. We knew we would get back to this rhetoric eventually, but logically it would happen after the recovery. You know, wait for the crisis to pass before reinstating the conditions that created it. I guess I am an optimist at heart, because I didn't think the top 10% were brazen enough to double down on this rhetoric as we continue sinking. Looks like that was naive of me.