Actually, I don't know if it's just me, but the debate over religion-in-politics seems to be coming to a head recently, so I have a number of things to comment on.
David Brooks's latest strawman argument is that liberals are up in arms (or would be if they only knew) that Abraham Lincoln prayed and tried to discern God's will before issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. The NYT letters page is full of great dope-slap replies, all to similar effect: political leaders are welcome to pray privately on a decision. They just can't express or justify or limit discussion of the decision on grounds that it's "God's will." I don't mind that Bush prayed before deciding to take us to war. But when he (to Ariel Sharon) or his military officers claim that our invasion is divinely sanctioned, I mind.
Two other things. One, if there was ever a decision to pray over, Emancipation was it: a momentous, unprecedented moral course correction. A "no atheists in foxholes" kind of thing. Lincoln, as Brooks knows but won't say clearly, wasn't particularly pious--if HE prayed over it, it was big. Brooks is asking us to equate freeing the slaves with appointing a judge to the Third Circuit Court. Two, Lincoln's choice was defined for him in political terms, by events and by economic and religious pressure groups on both sides He saw a course of action, he felt it was right but knew it would be hugely difficult, and he prayed for resolve. And of course, there was plenty that was practical, not absolute, about the Proclamation. It freed only slaves in the South, not the North; it was timed right after a midterm election; etc. If it was a prayerful decision, it was only in a very narrow sense.
With a spate of op-eds in March and April warning of a "Christian jihad," John McCandlish Phillips (who was an evangelical in the New York Times newsroom, a thing rarer than an albino alligator) protests that evangelicals are being unfairly caricatured by the liberal punditocracy. His case would be stronger if he even mentioned Terri Schiavo or the nuclear option or anti-abortion legislation, instead of leaving us to think that this anti-Christian sentiment came out of nowhere. He finishes with a tangent about religious language in government--"ceremonial deism," in the Bush Justice Department's phrase--that's rather disingenuous. Issues like right-to-life are about a lot more than that. Also, while I'm ambivalent about stuff like the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, things were a lot different in 1789, when the spectrum ran from Anabaptist to Anglican and "God" pretty much covered everyone equally, than today, when Americans include Muslims and Hindus and believers and non-believers of many stripes.
Phillips also completely misrepresents Paul Krugman's views of suposed liberal bias in academia. Krugman, in Phillips's account, says that belief in God makes one unable to do valid scholarly work. I read that Krugman column, and that's not what it said at all. It pointed out, rightly, that the GOP leadership is hostile to academic freedom, to scholarly work that reached conclusions that were politically incorrect for GOP ideology. If you have a scholarly bent, and academic freedom is a priority for you, conservatism is announcing that it doesn't want you.
***
We got into a discussion of religious fundamentalism vs. the science of evolution over at PeoplesForum yesterday, and I found myself in the position of the beleaguered conservative in the discussion, which I hate. Let me expand here. Yesterday's chat focused on a recent Salon interview with Richard Dawkins. I posted a while back about Kenneth Miller of Brown University. Miller is one of the leading authors of high-school biology textbooks in the US, so his interest in the evolution-creationism debate is pretty damn concrete. Unlike Dawkins, sitiing in a hotel suite in his "crisp white shirt and soft blazer," uttering provocative bon mots to the delight of Salon readers, Miller goes to lobby the Kansas State Legislature, he goes to offer expert testimony in Georgia, and he speaks to audiences of divinity students in North Carolina. He gets his hands dirty, so to speak. He's not a bomb thrower, he's an infantryman. Miller is no less committed to the struggle over creationism than Dawkins, and he will get a lot more accomplished. For what it's worth, Miller was very much on my mind when I was criticizing Dawkins.
My beef with Dawkins, in sum, was that he lumps all religious folks together under the most unflattering label. The funny thing is, in some of his comments Dawkins comes so close to what I believe. Dawkins describes the wonder that scientists take in the natural processes that they understand so well, with terms like "almost transcendental" and "quasi-religious." Well, take off the weaselly modifiers and you have my view. I think Dawkins's problem with religion boils down to (1) the idea of divine intervention in nature or history, and (2) the notion of an afterlife. Well, I'm an agnostic on those things myself, yet I identify (a little uncomfortably) as a Christian. Religious categories are not as simple as a checklist of doctrines one affirms or denies. These are culture groups, somewhat fluid but somewhat persistent, which is why it's easier to speak of a Catholic child than it is to speak of a Keynesian child.
The Ludic Kid had a post yesterday about Dawkins, and I'm guessing that I'm one of the Dawkins "revilers" he's picturing. I didn't mean to come off that way. I'm no expert on the history of American evangelicals, but I'm pretty sure the Kid is leaving out some things in his analysis. The 1960s, Billy Graham, the shrinking economic pie, the fraying Protestant consensus--I suspect those things deserve a mention.
This shit makes me angry, too, this rampant yahooism. For one thing, I worry for my kids and the kind of education, the kind of economy, the kind of country they're going to grow up to. But I'd like to invoke the spirit on Tom Frank and say, progressives are not going to get far treating our opponents as idiots or children. I agree, Ted Haggard is not persuadable, but Ted Haggard's (the megachurch movement's) power is organizational. He's got 10,000 worshippers (or whatever, maybe more). You suppose 10% of them are persuadable?
The answer to so much about the predicament of the American left, I'm more and more convinced, is to organize. Nothing is going to change quickly. The great successes of liberalism in this country, like civil rights and the labor movement, took decades to build. That's got to be our time frame.
In general, there are quite a few voices on the left whom I respect, but who are pretty clueless about religion, particularly as it's actually practiced. I read Atrios, uh, every day like clockwork, but every time he comments on religion I want to throttle him. He just gets things wrong, and while he's usually humble in the face of a subject outside his expertise, he'll mouth off about religion with no compunction. He's done it recently, about Barbara Bradley Hagerty of NPR (not as bad as Atrios says) and this Baptist church that expelled members for voting for Kerry (well, that's bad, but there must be a whole lot more going on there than we can learn in a 40-second TV news clip, plus there is already some backlash against that church and there may be more to come).
I'm still working my way through the issue of Harper's that Ludic and Mr. Obscurity have been praising. The Gordon Bigelow piece was very enlightening, and all new to me. (That old crone Cora Nelson, who taught me Econ 101 freshman year--probably a Baptist! No wonder I got a C-minus!) The piece on the Colorado Springs megachurch is by Jeff Sharlet, whom I read regularly at The Revealer, and I think I can say something about his account compared to my own reading and experience. More later.
Speaking of Jeff Sharlet, here is a review he wrote of a new biography of Jonathan Edwards, that sheds a little light on the history of evangelicals in this country.
Friday, May 06, 2005
Thursday, May 05, 2005
Private Geography
Dorothea Dix Hospital is a state-run inpatient mental health facility in Raleigh. Founded in 1856, its several red brick buildings sit on top of a hill. Over the years, many a North Carolina child has been threatened with being "sent to Dix Hill" if he couldn't regulate his behavior.
For ten years I lived within a stone's throw of Dix Hill, in the Boylan Heights neighborhood adjacent to the hospital grounds. In the early and mid-1900s, Boylan Heights was rather intimately connected with Dix Hospital. Dix nurses and orderlies were likely to live in the neighborhood. Halfway houses and other, less formal assisted-living arrangements eased some patients' re-entry into the community. As Boylan Heights gentrifies, the relationship becomes less intertwined. But Boylan residents value the Dix campus greatly, as nearby green space and for recreation value. A city greenway with a hiking/biking path runs along the near side of Dix Hill. I went running or dog-walking there regularly. During the summers my wife and I picked blackberries there. There is an open grassy area with a picnic shelter, and behind the shelter the hillside rises with a stand of oak trees, some of the biggest old trees in the city. On snowy days, rare though they are, people would come from far and wide to sled on Dix Hill. My children were introduced to sledding there.
It sounds awful to say your neighborhood is bordered on one side by the state mental hospital, and on another by the maximum security prison--which Boylan Heights is: Central Prison, kitty-corner from Dix Hill, is the Big House, home to North Carolina's Death Row. But I found it was no problem living next door to these places. Central Prison's security was formidable, as you'd expect, and if not for the faint sound of loudspeakers (announcing Lights Out or whatever; I could never make out any words), you could forget the prison was there. With Dix, you occasionally read of security lapses, patients wandering off, but I never worried, since the few times I'd encountered patients (supervised, out for a walk usually) they weren't threatening: quite the contrary, they tended to be blissed out of their gourds on meds.
I was very fond of the neighborhood, still sort of grieve having to move away, and I have nothing but good memories of Dix Hill. It's a significant and distinctive landmark in my adopted home city, and I'm amused by the irony of the Bedlam associations, the boogeyman function Dix Hill has for native Tar Heels. So I claimed its name for my blog.
Dorothea Dix Hospital is scheduled to be closed in two years. in 1856 Dix Hill was a good out-of-the-way site for a sanitarium. Today it is a prime piece of real estate, 300 acres with a view of the Raleigh skyline, and there is intense interest in how it's going to be developed. Dix Hill has resonance for students of public policy as well: for changes (not necessarily for the better) in mental health treatment, and as a major crossroads in Raleigh's city planning. I may have more to say about those public developments, but I wanted to write up what Dix Hill means for me.
For ten years I lived within a stone's throw of Dix Hill, in the Boylan Heights neighborhood adjacent to the hospital grounds. In the early and mid-1900s, Boylan Heights was rather intimately connected with Dix Hospital. Dix nurses and orderlies were likely to live in the neighborhood. Halfway houses and other, less formal assisted-living arrangements eased some patients' re-entry into the community. As Boylan Heights gentrifies, the relationship becomes less intertwined. But Boylan residents value the Dix campus greatly, as nearby green space and for recreation value. A city greenway with a hiking/biking path runs along the near side of Dix Hill. I went running or dog-walking there regularly. During the summers my wife and I picked blackberries there. There is an open grassy area with a picnic shelter, and behind the shelter the hillside rises with a stand of oak trees, some of the biggest old trees in the city. On snowy days, rare though they are, people would come from far and wide to sled on Dix Hill. My children were introduced to sledding there.
It sounds awful to say your neighborhood is bordered on one side by the state mental hospital, and on another by the maximum security prison--which Boylan Heights is: Central Prison, kitty-corner from Dix Hill, is the Big House, home to North Carolina's Death Row. But I found it was no problem living next door to these places. Central Prison's security was formidable, as you'd expect, and if not for the faint sound of loudspeakers (announcing Lights Out or whatever; I could never make out any words), you could forget the prison was there. With Dix, you occasionally read of security lapses, patients wandering off, but I never worried, since the few times I'd encountered patients (supervised, out for a walk usually) they weren't threatening: quite the contrary, they tended to be blissed out of their gourds on meds.
I was very fond of the neighborhood, still sort of grieve having to move away, and I have nothing but good memories of Dix Hill. It's a significant and distinctive landmark in my adopted home city, and I'm amused by the irony of the Bedlam associations, the boogeyman function Dix Hill has for native Tar Heels. So I claimed its name for my blog.
Dorothea Dix Hospital is scheduled to be closed in two years. in 1856 Dix Hill was a good out-of-the-way site for a sanitarium. Today it is a prime piece of real estate, 300 acres with a view of the Raleigh skyline, and there is intense interest in how it's going to be developed. Dix Hill has resonance for students of public policy as well: for changes (not necessarily for the better) in mental health treatment, and as a major crossroads in Raleigh's city planning. I may have more to say about those public developments, but I wanted to write up what Dix Hill means for me.
Wednesday, May 04, 2005
She Used to Do the Pony, She Used to Do the Stroll
Here Be Monsters has an excellent post on the story (cough) of Jennifer Wilbanks, the runaway bride in Duluth, Georgia. What a country! What a news industry! Those were minutes and brain cells that we'll never get back.
According to HBM, one of the New York City tabloids says that in the South, an unmarried woman of Wilbanks's age is presumed to be "insane, in prison, or gay." I laughed out loud to read this. Ms. Wilbanks didn't sound desperate for a husband, from what I could tell. The wedding was going to be pretty lavish, the groom is from a prominent family in that town. Everybody around her was so happy FOR her, they just took for granted that she was happy herself. Wrong-o. Personally, I find pre-wedding jitters to be a believable and serious thing. The couple of people I've known who have honorably backed out of a church wedding after the invitations have been mailed, I rank as some of the bravest people around. I would sooner bolt at that point rather than face the music. I was sure all along that Ms. Wilbanks had bolted; it was the likeliest explanation.
What I don't quite understand is why the families were so publicity-hungry, even after the whole emergency turned out to be a big misunderstanding (to be charitable--"hoax" would be uncharitable). Why is the groom appearing on Sean Hannity, of all shows? Why is the father of the groom "forgiving" Wilbanks on ABC, NBC, and CBS simultaneously the other morning (separate taped interviews, but his face was on three channels at the same instant)? Why is the bride's uncle standing up in front of the TV cameras saying that Jennifer had some issues the family wasn't aware of? No shit, Uncle Sherlock. I think, if not shame, at least reticence is called for by the principals in this situation. Just go inside and pull the shades. The cameras will go away pretty soon.
The groom is willing to give her another chance. That doesn't make him a saint; it's what he should have done. They'll go through worse things in the course of a marriage. I hope it works out for them in the end, but in any case, the family should just make a brief written statement to the Duluth paper. Remember when we and the TV networks made utter fools out of ourselves over a jittery bride? Well, briefly, here's how that turned out...
Final thought on the subject: You know why the Duluth authorities are pissed and considering throwing the book at the bride? Not because of wasted manpower, not because she's trashy. They're embarrassed because they treated the groom, who was decent and blameless through the whole thing, as a murder suspect.
According to HBM, one of the New York City tabloids says that in the South, an unmarried woman of Wilbanks's age is presumed to be "insane, in prison, or gay." I laughed out loud to read this. Ms. Wilbanks didn't sound desperate for a husband, from what I could tell. The wedding was going to be pretty lavish, the groom is from a prominent family in that town. Everybody around her was so happy FOR her, they just took for granted that she was happy herself. Wrong-o. Personally, I find pre-wedding jitters to be a believable and serious thing. The couple of people I've known who have honorably backed out of a church wedding after the invitations have been mailed, I rank as some of the bravest people around. I would sooner bolt at that point rather than face the music. I was sure all along that Ms. Wilbanks had bolted; it was the likeliest explanation.
What I don't quite understand is why the families were so publicity-hungry, even after the whole emergency turned out to be a big misunderstanding (to be charitable--"hoax" would be uncharitable). Why is the groom appearing on Sean Hannity, of all shows? Why is the father of the groom "forgiving" Wilbanks on ABC, NBC, and CBS simultaneously the other morning (separate taped interviews, but his face was on three channels at the same instant)? Why is the bride's uncle standing up in front of the TV cameras saying that Jennifer had some issues the family wasn't aware of? No shit, Uncle Sherlock. I think, if not shame, at least reticence is called for by the principals in this situation. Just go inside and pull the shades. The cameras will go away pretty soon.
The groom is willing to give her another chance. That doesn't make him a saint; it's what he should have done. They'll go through worse things in the course of a marriage. I hope it works out for them in the end, but in any case, the family should just make a brief written statement to the Duluth paper. Remember when we and the TV networks made utter fools out of ourselves over a jittery bride? Well, briefly, here's how that turned out...
Final thought on the subject: You know why the Duluth authorities are pissed and considering throwing the book at the bride? Not because of wasted manpower, not because she's trashy. They're embarrassed because they treated the groom, who was decent and blameless through the whole thing, as a murder suspect.
a Frank bulletin
When I posted about Tom Frank a while back (here), I remarked that Kansas didn’t really deal with electoral strategy per se. Well, Frank makes up for that deficit in the latest edition of the New York Review of Books. I don’t think he breaks any new ground in NYRB (and was Zell Miller’s conversion really much of a net gain for Bush?) but he can be forgiven for saying I told you so, because Kansas foreshadowed a lot of what happened in the ’04 presidential race.
Incidentally, Bernard Henri-Levy had an interesting take on Tom Frank (either summing Frank up or explaining him away) in an interview at the Atlantic Monthly’s website:
Incidentally, Bernard Henri-Levy had an interesting take on Tom Frank (either summing Frank up or explaining him away) in an interview at the Atlantic Monthly’s website:
[Frank] wondered whether it was a surprise that so many Americans were ready to vote against their economic interests. To vote against one's economic interests means ideology—-means politics. It is the very definition of politics. If people voted only for their economic interests there would not be politics. What [Frank] was surprised by, and in a way discovered, is that America is becoming a place of strong political debate.
Friday, April 29, 2005
So Bad, It Might Be Good
Prime-time White House press conference? That's never a sign that things are going smoothly on Pennsylvania Ave. Karl Rove must have been desperate to get those pictures of Dubya and Prince Abdullah holding hands off the airwaves. I watched a little of last night's tableau. I'm sure Bush hates doing a press conference, but I can't objectively assess whether he's had a good performance and achieved his aims with the thing, or not. Most people obviously don't see what I see: a guy getting inappropriately pissed off, at a bunch of people just doing their jobs, whom he (Bush) invited there to ask him questions in the first place. Maybe the conference did him some good, I sure can't tell.
GW Bush, Donald Rumsfeld ("Are we getting our ass kicked in Iraq? You bet."), Tom Delay, Bill Frist, Das Ahnuld, John Bolton, and more of my least favorite people, have all had a bad week, and that's good. Too good to believe, and so I won't believe it yet, not until Social Security is safe and the danger of a troglodyte getting lifetime tenure on the Supreme Court is past.
Being more of a rhetoric kind of a guy than a policy kind of a guy, in the flurry of bad news for the Pubbies I've been particularly transfixed by the Beltway sleight of hand by which the GOP has tried to redefine the term "nuclear option" as a threat from the Democrats. This is even more brazen than the White House's efforts to strongarm the media into calling them Social Security "personal accounts," rather than "privatization," the commonly accepted term of long standing.
Reality is, Trent Lott coined the term "nuclear option" for the threat of the GOP's eliminating the Senate filibuster on judicial nominations, and it's been perfectly well understood as the biggest mashie in the Republicans' golf bag. But Frank Luntz must be giving them an earful how the n-phrase is killing them in the polls.
As an aside, you think the Goopers do a collective headslap thinking of the Trent Lott debacle of two years ago? That Strom Thurmond birthday toast was a killer, less for the stain of racism it put on the GOP (eh, what's one more) than for the elevation of featherweight Bill Frist to the post of Senate Majority Leader. Say what you will about Lott, he would not paint himself into a corner the way Dr. Frist consistently does.
I don't see how a meat-eating Republican can go along with this namby-pamby stuff, these word games. How can they strut around Capitol Hill like committee room tough guys, then turn into wussies when they encounter the soccer moms? Embrace your inner bully, wingers. Besides, I thought the GOP was the party of national strength. They're real comfortable talking about the actual nuclear option, yet they get all squeamish about the parliamentary one? What, have they turned into Jackson Browne all of a sudden?
Most of all, I guess I hate being instructed in proper vocabulary by Dubya and his ilk. Listen, Mr. Preznit, don't tell me how to operate the English language, and I won't tell you how to fuck up the country.
GW Bush, Donald Rumsfeld ("Are we getting our ass kicked in Iraq? You bet."), Tom Delay, Bill Frist, Das Ahnuld, John Bolton, and more of my least favorite people, have all had a bad week, and that's good. Too good to believe, and so I won't believe it yet, not until Social Security is safe and the danger of a troglodyte getting lifetime tenure on the Supreme Court is past.
Being more of a rhetoric kind of a guy than a policy kind of a guy, in the flurry of bad news for the Pubbies I've been particularly transfixed by the Beltway sleight of hand by which the GOP has tried to redefine the term "nuclear option" as a threat from the Democrats. This is even more brazen than the White House's efforts to strongarm the media into calling them Social Security "personal accounts," rather than "privatization," the commonly accepted term of long standing.
Reality is, Trent Lott coined the term "nuclear option" for the threat of the GOP's eliminating the Senate filibuster on judicial nominations, and it's been perfectly well understood as the biggest mashie in the Republicans' golf bag. But Frank Luntz must be giving them an earful how the n-phrase is killing them in the polls.
As an aside, you think the Goopers do a collective headslap thinking of the Trent Lott debacle of two years ago? That Strom Thurmond birthday toast was a killer, less for the stain of racism it put on the GOP (eh, what's one more) than for the elevation of featherweight Bill Frist to the post of Senate Majority Leader. Say what you will about Lott, he would not paint himself into a corner the way Dr. Frist consistently does.
I don't see how a meat-eating Republican can go along with this namby-pamby stuff, these word games. How can they strut around Capitol Hill like committee room tough guys, then turn into wussies when they encounter the soccer moms? Embrace your inner bully, wingers. Besides, I thought the GOP was the party of national strength. They're real comfortable talking about the actual nuclear option, yet they get all squeamish about the parliamentary one? What, have they turned into Jackson Browne all of a sudden?
Most of all, I guess I hate being instructed in proper vocabulary by Dubya and his ilk. Listen, Mr. Preznit, don't tell me how to operate the English language, and I won't tell you how to fuck up the country.
Friday, April 15, 2005
Geeks A-Poppin'
Latest book is The Numbers Game by Alan Schwarz, about baseball statistics. It's for people who found Moneyball to be not geeky enough. Schwarz does a decent job, but this is pretty arcane stuff: the evolution of the newspaper box score, etc. I never knew of this book's existence until last week--if it had been out in 2003 when I wrote about fantasy baseball for The High Hat, I'd feel embarrassed for not addressing it, but it didn't come out until 2004.
Sabermetrics has been largely driven by devoted volunteers for a long time, and as with so many geek subcultures, when the first move was made to turn a buck on it (the formation of STATS Inc. in the mid-80s) there were bitter feelings of betrayal, some of them somewhat justified. Baseball stats actually offer an interesting lesson in proprietary versus open-source business models. The Elias Sports Bureau dominated the field of compiling sports statistics for many years (for pro football and basketball as well as baseball), but Elias hoarded its data. It assumed it only had a few dozen possible clients, and had to charge each one $1000's. STATS proved there was a market of average fans who wanted baseball data broken down a zillion different ways--1000s of customers at $20 each. Both companies were successful on their own terms, but STATS puts out a much better product because it invites mass scrutiny and mass input.
The level of fixation on numbers by some baseball fans can only be called a fetish. For example, Hack Wilson (Cubs, 1930) holds the single-season record for runs batted in. Generations of fans knew the magic number to be 190, and there was amazing resistance to the finding that Mr. Wilson had been shortchanged: he actually batted in 191 runs that year. First of all, you'd think people would favor accuracy, and second, for those who favor heroic achievement, the revision was in Wilson's favor. But people howled.
I'm on a bit of a sports-book jag lately. I did get hold of Michael MacCambridge's new one about the NFL. I'll probably get to it before I get to Karen Armstrong.
Sabermetrics has been largely driven by devoted volunteers for a long time, and as with so many geek subcultures, when the first move was made to turn a buck on it (the formation of STATS Inc. in the mid-80s) there were bitter feelings of betrayal, some of them somewhat justified. Baseball stats actually offer an interesting lesson in proprietary versus open-source business models. The Elias Sports Bureau dominated the field of compiling sports statistics for many years (for pro football and basketball as well as baseball), but Elias hoarded its data. It assumed it only had a few dozen possible clients, and had to charge each one $1000's. STATS proved there was a market of average fans who wanted baseball data broken down a zillion different ways--1000s of customers at $20 each. Both companies were successful on their own terms, but STATS puts out a much better product because it invites mass scrutiny and mass input.
The level of fixation on numbers by some baseball fans can only be called a fetish. For example, Hack Wilson (Cubs, 1930) holds the single-season record for runs batted in. Generations of fans knew the magic number to be 190, and there was amazing resistance to the finding that Mr. Wilson had been shortchanged: he actually batted in 191 runs that year. First of all, you'd think people would favor accuracy, and second, for those who favor heroic achievement, the revision was in Wilson's favor. But people howled.
I'm on a bit of a sports-book jag lately. I did get hold of Michael MacCambridge's new one about the NFL. I'll probably get to it before I get to Karen Armstrong.
Fish Wars
I heard a talk Friday by Kenneth R. Miller, a noted biologist at Brown University. He is co-author of a widely-used high school science textbook. In fact, his is the book that the Cobb County, GA school board slapped with a warning label: Caution: Contains Darwinism. Avoid Contact with Brain. Flush with Scripture Immediately if Exposure Occurs.
Miller is a point man for the pro-Darwin forces, testifying in court and participating in public debate in Kansas and Cobb County and other flashpoints in the struggle. He has written a book titled Finding Darwin's God, and he outlines the conflict between science and fundamentalism, and the way he resolves it, with authority and impressive clarity. There is nothing weak or shaky about evolutionary theory that makes it more vulnerable to attack than physiology or organic chemistry or any other aspect of natural science. It is purely a matter of the cultural implications Darwin has for some conservatives. How to respond? Develop a proper understanding of science. Answer the scientific objections calmly and respectfully. And fight the presumption that evolution is anti-religious.
Miller is an engaging speaker and peppered his lecture with a number of funny asides. For instance, in 1999, the Kansas State School Board didn't stop at removing evolution from schoolbooks, it removed or rewrote much scientific consensus, including the fossil record and much geologic theory. The latter deletion was protested by the Kansas petroleum lobby: "for God's sake, that's how we find oil." If I were Miller and a coast-to-coast network of nitwits and charlatans was harassing me and slandering my life's work, I wouldn't have nearly the amount of good humor and equanimity that he has. In his good-humored way, though, he demolished the arguments of the intelligent design crowd (he called intelligent design a brilliant PR maneuver, but not much more than that).
But he also cited some overreaching statements by scientists. The assertion that science alone can lead us to truth is a philosophical one, not scientific in nature. Unlike some of his religious opponents, Miller has read the Book of Genesis closely, and he finds room there for a Darwinian view ("Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures... Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds..."). Remarkably, I learned today, St. Augustine in AD 411 wrote "On The Literal Meaning of Genesis," in which he implored fellow Christians not to talk nonsense about science; it embarrasses the church. Augustine encourages the study of nature, and part of his intellectual legacy is that the father of genetics, Gregor Mendel, was an Augustinian monk.
Good stuff all around.
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
The So-What Question
Nothing like a game of moral values ping-pong between the centerish and leftish factions of the Democratic Party. It doesn't make us look silly at all.
I've read Amy Sullivan quite a bit, and I have some affinity for her basic position: bringing a religious sensibility to progressive politics. But her recent project has been to carve out a niche in the DC pundit empire by parodying herself, and honing a schtick: making the Democrats palatable to her Baptist granny back home in the Midwest. It's tiresome. Others have jumped on Sullivan plenty for fudging on the principle of reproductive choice, so I won't pile on. But I'm confused by her anti-Hollywood tirade. Is the objective here to take a principled stand against obscene or otherwise harmful content, or is it to score points a la Sister Souljah at the expense of Susan Sarandon? Because Susan Sarandon is hot, and America needs her to be a little more obscene, not less. Fewer mother roles, more groupie roles. What was my point again?
I wrote up some stuff about my wife's and my efforts to regulate our kids' TV and movie consumption, but I felt like an ass after reading it. I'm definitely open to charges of being lazy or hypocritical. I'm bothered by some of what my kids watch on TV, but not always bothered enough to be the bad guy and turn the thing off. And it IS a parent's responsibility, if it's anybody's, to be the gatekeeper for his or her kids. So I have no room to bitch. And a lot of people are in my boat. As I was reminded recently, when the Southern Baptists tried to rally their members to boycott Walt Disney, because Disney offered employee benefits for gay partners--that was biting off more than the SB's could chew. Sorry, preacher, but I can't deny my kids their theme park vacation and their Mulan 2 video.
The Democrats do need to find a narrative that lifts up family life and critiques pop culture. Why do we coddle our kids? Why do we feed junk to both their brains and their bodies? Why do we settle for a vapid popular culture? How can we get more time and security and public space to enrich our family life? Perhaps these questions could acknowledge parents' concerns and rally them to act. But flattering hypocrites and congratulating them for their hypocrisy--that's pandering.
Pop culture is the slippery slope to hell? As the title of this Digby post says: Prove it. What's the cause and effect here that we should be worried about? "Friends" contains dirty jokes. Teenage girls wear hip-hugger pants. Young black men play their car stereos loud. So what? Where do any of these observations get us, beyond the fact that something makes you uncomfortable? We need to go a step further.
I've read Amy Sullivan quite a bit, and I have some affinity for her basic position: bringing a religious sensibility to progressive politics. But her recent project has been to carve out a niche in the DC pundit empire by parodying herself, and honing a schtick: making the Democrats palatable to her Baptist granny back home in the Midwest. It's tiresome. Others have jumped on Sullivan plenty for fudging on the principle of reproductive choice, so I won't pile on. But I'm confused by her anti-Hollywood tirade. Is the objective here to take a principled stand against obscene or otherwise harmful content, or is it to score points a la Sister Souljah at the expense of Susan Sarandon? Because Susan Sarandon is hot, and America needs her to be a little more obscene, not less. Fewer mother roles, more groupie roles. What was my point again?
I wrote up some stuff about my wife's and my efforts to regulate our kids' TV and movie consumption, but I felt like an ass after reading it. I'm definitely open to charges of being lazy or hypocritical. I'm bothered by some of what my kids watch on TV, but not always bothered enough to be the bad guy and turn the thing off. And it IS a parent's responsibility, if it's anybody's, to be the gatekeeper for his or her kids. So I have no room to bitch. And a lot of people are in my boat. As I was reminded recently, when the Southern Baptists tried to rally their members to boycott Walt Disney, because Disney offered employee benefits for gay partners--that was biting off more than the SB's could chew. Sorry, preacher, but I can't deny my kids their theme park vacation and their Mulan 2 video.
The Democrats do need to find a narrative that lifts up family life and critiques pop culture. Why do we coddle our kids? Why do we feed junk to both their brains and their bodies? Why do we settle for a vapid popular culture? How can we get more time and security and public space to enrich our family life? Perhaps these questions could acknowledge parents' concerns and rally them to act. But flattering hypocrites and congratulating them for their hypocrisy--that's pandering.
Pop culture is the slippery slope to hell? As the title of this Digby post says: Prove it. What's the cause and effect here that we should be worried about? "Friends" contains dirty jokes. Teenage girls wear hip-hugger pants. Young black men play their car stereos loud. So what? Where do any of these observations get us, beyond the fact that something makes you uncomfortable? We need to go a step further.
Monday, April 11, 2005
Fastball
Slate's Sports Nut pieces are either quite wrongheaded or quite good. I liked this one, about the physical limits on how fast a pitcher's fastball can be. (Summary: Pitchers are pretty close to the limit, probably have been since at least the days of Bob Feller in the late 1930s.)
The interesting thing about being a basketball fan in my lifetime (and a little before) is that we could see the sport evolve before our eyes. Bill Russell, Julius Erving, Michael Jordan--each of them represented a quantum leap forward in the basic physical toolkit of top players. Basketball's heyday in terms of its maturation and rapid change was about 1955 to 1995. The comparable period for baseball ended about 1920 with the Babe Ruth revolution. Not that there's been no change since then, but the envelope hasn't been enlarged very much.
As of today I am hatefully jealous of Noam Scheiber, who gets to write political analysis for The New Republic, and moonlight as a baseball writer.
The interesting thing about being a basketball fan in my lifetime (and a little before) is that we could see the sport evolve before our eyes. Bill Russell, Julius Erving, Michael Jordan--each of them represented a quantum leap forward in the basic physical toolkit of top players. Basketball's heyday in terms of its maturation and rapid change was about 1955 to 1995. The comparable period for baseball ended about 1920 with the Babe Ruth revolution. Not that there's been no change since then, but the envelope hasn't been enlarged very much.
As of today I am hatefully jealous of Noam Scheiber, who gets to write political analysis for The New Republic, and moonlight as a baseball writer.
Friday, April 08, 2005
Roundball Roundup; or, Basketball Blather
I posted last summer about Duke's Mike Krzyzewski, basketball coach and leadership studies guru. Time for an update: Separate from the fate of his team, Coach K has been getting some attention recently (not all of it positive) for showing up in a bunch of television commercials. One spot is for the American Express card, and Coach portrays himself as "a leader who happens to coach basketball"--much more than a guy with a whistle and a chalkboard, but rather someone imparting life skills to his young charges.
Today I stumbled across this Wall Street Journal profile of Krzyzewski. It's a puff piece for his leadership institute, and more generally for the relevance of team sports (basketball perhaps most of all) to leading in a business or other grown-up context.
The article alludes to the fact that college ball is more and more being raided of its best players by the pros, and college coaches have to do a lot of ego-stroking. The WSJ attributes the trend to the celebrity status of the players. But they don't mention the way the NCAA takes advantage of these kids. One thing I notice in the American Express ads is how Krzyzewski's face and even that of his assistant coaches can be shown, but no player can be identified (we glimpse a headless torso in a white-and-blue jersey). Coach K can pocket a fee, Duke U. can enjoy some incidental advertising, but the players remain faceless and uncompensated--the NCAA makes sure of it.
Celebrity status of the players? Somebody inform CBS. Personally I don't tune in a game in order to watch Bobby Knight or Krzyzewski in action, but to hear the college hoops media oftentimes, you'd think it's all about the coaches. But I have to admit, in the college basketball industry, the CEO is all-important, much more so than in most industries. The University of North Carolina won the Big Dance the other night, you may have heard, and the major story line was coach Roy Williams's success in keeping his core of talent (a) enrolled at Carolina and (b) pulling together. Roy didn't dazzle with X's and O's, and he didn't seem to inspire his boys to tap some previously unknown hidden strength. But he got them to raise their defensive effort just enough, and take turns in the offensive spotlight. (Sean May was a rock-solid contributor every game, and then one other guy, a different guy each time, would shine: McCants one day, maybe Felton or one of the Williamses the next.) He got them to keep their mouths shut in public and compromise their egos for the sake of the team enterprise. Each player did what we knew he was capable of, and didn't get in the way of the next guy. That's a mighty bland way of speaking about a championship team (Illinois, the runners-up, had a lot more style and synergy to their game). But what Roy Williams did this year was a pretty fair example of postmodern leadership in action.
Rashad McCants, after sitting on the bench the last few minutes of the title game because he couldn't guard anybody--McCants didn't even seem particularly happy after the buzzer sounded and the Tar Heels had won. He didn't quite seem part of the celebration. He seemed relieved. These Chapel Hill lunatics had gotten what they wanted, he hadn't screwed it up, and now he was free to move on and get the star treatment somewhere else that Carolina had withheld from him. He informed a reporter of his intent to turn pro and skip his final year at UNC before he had left the arena Monday night. Not that anyone is surprised, not that anyone necessarily blames him (his mother is ill, so the family probably needs the NBA money), but it would have shown class if he could have sat on his announcement for a week or two and not distracted from the team's celebration. McCants is a hell of a scorer, and Carolina couldn't have won without him, but he's an incomplete player and was sort of a live grenade all year--he couldn't wait to release the stress of having to behave. It'll be interesting to see if he can get his act together in the future.
Today I stumbled across this Wall Street Journal profile of Krzyzewski. It's a puff piece for his leadership institute, and more generally for the relevance of team sports (basketball perhaps most of all) to leading in a business or other grown-up context.
The article alludes to the fact that college ball is more and more being raided of its best players by the pros, and college coaches have to do a lot of ego-stroking. The WSJ attributes the trend to the celebrity status of the players. But they don't mention the way the NCAA takes advantage of these kids. One thing I notice in the American Express ads is how Krzyzewski's face and even that of his assistant coaches can be shown, but no player can be identified (we glimpse a headless torso in a white-and-blue jersey). Coach K can pocket a fee, Duke U. can enjoy some incidental advertising, but the players remain faceless and uncompensated--the NCAA makes sure of it.
Celebrity status of the players? Somebody inform CBS. Personally I don't tune in a game in order to watch Bobby Knight or Krzyzewski in action, but to hear the college hoops media oftentimes, you'd think it's all about the coaches. But I have to admit, in the college basketball industry, the CEO is all-important, much more so than in most industries. The University of North Carolina won the Big Dance the other night, you may have heard, and the major story line was coach Roy Williams's success in keeping his core of talent (a) enrolled at Carolina and (b) pulling together. Roy didn't dazzle with X's and O's, and he didn't seem to inspire his boys to tap some previously unknown hidden strength. But he got them to raise their defensive effort just enough, and take turns in the offensive spotlight. (Sean May was a rock-solid contributor every game, and then one other guy, a different guy each time, would shine: McCants one day, maybe Felton or one of the Williamses the next.) He got them to keep their mouths shut in public and compromise their egos for the sake of the team enterprise. Each player did what we knew he was capable of, and didn't get in the way of the next guy. That's a mighty bland way of speaking about a championship team (Illinois, the runners-up, had a lot more style and synergy to their game). But what Roy Williams did this year was a pretty fair example of postmodern leadership in action.
Rashad McCants, after sitting on the bench the last few minutes of the title game because he couldn't guard anybody--McCants didn't even seem particularly happy after the buzzer sounded and the Tar Heels had won. He didn't quite seem part of the celebration. He seemed relieved. These Chapel Hill lunatics had gotten what they wanted, he hadn't screwed it up, and now he was free to move on and get the star treatment somewhere else that Carolina had withheld from him. He informed a reporter of his intent to turn pro and skip his final year at UNC before he had left the arena Monday night. Not that anyone is surprised, not that anyone necessarily blames him (his mother is ill, so the family probably needs the NBA money), but it would have shown class if he could have sat on his announcement for a week or two and not distracted from the team's celebration. McCants is a hell of a scorer, and Carolina couldn't have won without him, but he's an incomplete player and was sort of a live grenade all year--he couldn't wait to release the stress of having to behave. It'll be interesting to see if he can get his act together in the future.
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
Bioethics for Dummies
My March 30 post notwithstanding, I've become interested enough in the Schiavo controversy that I dragged myself over to a brown bag lunch hour discussion of the case on Monday. It was sponsored by Duke University's Institute on Care at the End of Life.
The discussion didn't touch much on the political and media aspects of the Schiavo phenomenon. The speakers were pretty circumspect, and to me were partly taking an opportunity to give their standard rap on palliative care at a time when public interest in their field is high. They discussed the importance of a living will or advance directive, AND of discussing your wishes with loved ones (there is potential for court challenges even with the existence of a document), AND of being careful when you assign power of attorney (a spouse or other loved one may be too overwrought to carry out your wishes effectively).
The lead speaker at the meeting, Dr. Payne (don't bother, he's heard them all), happens to be a neurologist as well as a theologian, and so could comment substantively on Ms. Schiavo's condition. He had grabbed Ms. Schiavo's CAT scan off the Internet (it's widely circulated due to all the legal and media wrangling) and used it in his PowerPoint file. Dr. Payne did hedge, saying he couldn't diagnose someone he hadn't examined. But the scan seemed to illustrate his definition of a persistent vegetative state, where the brain stem is intact but the cortex has died. The strongest statement of opinion Dr. Payne made was one of condemnation of Senator-Doctor Bill Frist, who contradicted Ms. Schiavo's doctors based on his viewing of a brief video clip of her.
One aspect of Ms. Schiavo's case that I didn't know was that she was bulimic, and purging may have led to the cardiac arrest that caused her brain injury. The folks at the meeting ruminated on the idea that feeding Terri was a desperate mission for her parents. Significantly, though, in light of the emotional pleas of the Save Terri crowd not to "starve her to death," Dr. Payne commented that his experience even with dying patients who are conscious, is that they don't ask for food or water, beyond what they need not to have a dry mouth.
In my job I get some wonderful opportunities to attend lectures and discussions. This one was not among the best ones. Most of these are not directly applicable to my job duties--I owe big thanks to my supervisors who give me a lot of latitude to "raise my awareness" of issues I may never have to do or say anything about. The least I ought to do with these experiences is blog about them, I figure. I plan to do some make-up posts about other talks I've heard in the past few months.
The discussion didn't touch much on the political and media aspects of the Schiavo phenomenon. The speakers were pretty circumspect, and to me were partly taking an opportunity to give their standard rap on palliative care at a time when public interest in their field is high. They discussed the importance of a living will or advance directive, AND of discussing your wishes with loved ones (there is potential for court challenges even with the existence of a document), AND of being careful when you assign power of attorney (a spouse or other loved one may be too overwrought to carry out your wishes effectively).
The lead speaker at the meeting, Dr. Payne (don't bother, he's heard them all), happens to be a neurologist as well as a theologian, and so could comment substantively on Ms. Schiavo's condition. He had grabbed Ms. Schiavo's CAT scan off the Internet (it's widely circulated due to all the legal and media wrangling) and used it in his PowerPoint file. Dr. Payne did hedge, saying he couldn't diagnose someone he hadn't examined. But the scan seemed to illustrate his definition of a persistent vegetative state, where the brain stem is intact but the cortex has died. The strongest statement of opinion Dr. Payne made was one of condemnation of Senator-Doctor Bill Frist, who contradicted Ms. Schiavo's doctors based on his viewing of a brief video clip of her.
One aspect of Ms. Schiavo's case that I didn't know was that she was bulimic, and purging may have led to the cardiac arrest that caused her brain injury. The folks at the meeting ruminated on the idea that feeding Terri was a desperate mission for her parents. Significantly, though, in light of the emotional pleas of the Save Terri crowd not to "starve her to death," Dr. Payne commented that his experience even with dying patients who are conscious, is that they don't ask for food or water, beyond what they need not to have a dry mouth.
In my job I get some wonderful opportunities to attend lectures and discussions. This one was not among the best ones. Most of these are not directly applicable to my job duties--I owe big thanks to my supervisors who give me a lot of latitude to "raise my awareness" of issues I may never have to do or say anything about. The least I ought to do with these experiences is blog about them, I figure. I plan to do some make-up posts about other talks I've heard in the past few months.
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
All Hat, All The Time
Check out the long-awaited new issue of The High Hat webzine here.
My list of links needs sprucing up. I promise to get around to that within a few days. In the meantime, a recommendation: For a steady diet of bite-size morsels from the High Hat elves, check out http://hatblog.blogspot.com. If you stumbled into this place, you ought to stumble over there.
Spring has finally sprung in the last few days here in piedmont North Carolina. It had been cool and dreary for weeks (it was actually a little rough coming back from Florida to this weather), but then Sunday was a nice warm day for working in the yard. Then back to work on Monday and suddenly Pow! Dogwoods!
I really would like a haircut like the one Ron Eldard is sporting on this new show Blind Justice. What are the odds, though, of a blind guy having a haircut that good?
My list of links needs sprucing up. I promise to get around to that within a few days. In the meantime, a recommendation: For a steady diet of bite-size morsels from the High Hat elves, check out http://hatblog.blogspot.com. If you stumbled into this place, you ought to stumble over there.
Spring has finally sprung in the last few days here in piedmont North Carolina. It had been cool and dreary for weeks (it was actually a little rough coming back from Florida to this weather), but then Sunday was a nice warm day for working in the yard. Then back to work on Monday and suddenly Pow! Dogwoods!
I really would like a haircut like the one Ron Eldard is sporting on this new show Blind Justice. What are the odds, though, of a blind guy having a haircut that good?
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
The Culture of Get A Life
Thank God our vacation coincided with much of the Terri Schiavo hoopla, so I was away mostly from TV and entirely from the Internet. All I have to contribute to the discussion is the nifty title of this post, and this link to a St. Petersburg Times editorial column.
"I wish the line wasn't so long"
We took the kids to Disney World during their spring break last week.
Opinions about Disney World are rather sharply divided, even among my little circle of friends, by and large a liberal and well-educated lot, if I may say so. Pro-Disney people are delighted to hear your post-vacation story, and might even want to share tips: how to move around the Disney properties, minimize long lines, get reservations to the character breakfasts. (Don't scoff, there are entire Fodor's-type guide books on how to navigate Disney World. It's a veritable field of study, it is.) Other friends smile politely but with a look in their eyes that says, "Why in the hell...?"
Everyone is right. It's fun, it's grueling, it's magical, it's gauche. The rides are huge advertisements for the movies, and the movies are advertisements for the rides, and we consumers chase our own tails in ever decreasing circles, eating $8 ice cream cones, wearing $30 souvenir t-shirts. It's the most cosmopolitan crowd I've been in in a long time; there are loads of people from Europe and Latin America. I had a nice chat with a man from Guadalajara while we sat on the asphalt in the middle of the world's largest parking lot, awaiting our shuttle bus. We observed German parenting styles up close and personal in our hotel swimming pool. (Teutonic discipline and efficiency? ha!)
I was struck anew by the fact that Disney refers to all park employees who work in the public eye as cast members. Having had a little exposure to the ego-negating ideology of customer service, I have to give a certain grudging respect to Disney workers, who maintain high levels of courtesy and good humor, while handling the relentless flow of irritable tourists about as well as humanly possible. Here was a high point: At the height of the lunch rush, they were holding people at the door of this burgers-and-fries place. As one Disney cast member stood aside and let me enter the building, another one ushered me to the shortest cashier lane. He looked me in the eye and said, "I wish the line wasn't so long... but I picked the best spot in line for you." And we shared a chuckle, admiring an exquisitely polished bit of bullshit.
The darker side is the extreme secrecy Disney requires of employees. I got just a taste of this when as a teenager I was in a choir that got to sing a brief concert at Disney. We had to pass through some of the "Cast Members Only" areas, and we damn near had to sign waivers and give DNA samples as part of our promise to never, ever take photos or otherwise divulge anything we saw or heard behind the scenes.
I dragged the family into the Hall of Presidents show; I actually had fond memories of it and wanted to see it, and it being Disney Day 5, the others were happy for an air-conditioned place to sit down for awhile. But wow, was I unprepared for the sight and sound of an animatronic Gee Dubya Bush being the master of ceremonies. A whole generation of youngsters will come away believing that Adams and Madison and FDR were non-speaking extras, while President Bush the Younger is one of the leading players in the great American drama. Clearly, Bush sat for Disney and recorded the voiceover narration his own self (to be fair, I'm sure Bill Clinton did as well). I guess the most disturbing thing was how much more believable and confidence-inspiring the animatronic Shrub is compared to the real article.
New wrinkles since I was last at Disney World seven years ago: The army of middle-aged guys who search your bag for weapons or contraband before you enter the park. The Fast Pass system that lets you skip to the front of the line of the most popular rides, as long as you come back at the time--maybe an hour later, maybe six hours later--that the computer algorithm tells you to. (I felt guilty about using the Fast Passes at first, but they're actually a pretty great idea for balancing the traffic.)
I was interested and a teeny bit perturbed to read that for their upcoming film version of C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Disney hired a Christian marketing firm that Mel Gibson used with The Passion. But on the whole, one can make a case for Disney as a good guy in the culture wars. I believe they still follow gay-friendly policies, despite protests from conservative Christian groups. (I think in trying to mount a boycott against Disney, the Southern Baptists picked a battle they couldn't win.) Okay, Walt was a sentimental sap, and Disney hopelessly anthropomorphizes nature, and Epcot permanently enshrines a hokey obsolescent George Jetson vision of "the future." But by gosh, the technology shows honor Charles Darwin where appropriate, and the Epcot international pavilion still honors France, and the Uncle Remus ride was dismantled a number of years ago, and it IS a small world after all.
Opinions about Disney World are rather sharply divided, even among my little circle of friends, by and large a liberal and well-educated lot, if I may say so. Pro-Disney people are delighted to hear your post-vacation story, and might even want to share tips: how to move around the Disney properties, minimize long lines, get reservations to the character breakfasts. (Don't scoff, there are entire Fodor's-type guide books on how to navigate Disney World. It's a veritable field of study, it is.) Other friends smile politely but with a look in their eyes that says, "Why in the hell...?"
Everyone is right. It's fun, it's grueling, it's magical, it's gauche. The rides are huge advertisements for the movies, and the movies are advertisements for the rides, and we consumers chase our own tails in ever decreasing circles, eating $8 ice cream cones, wearing $30 souvenir t-shirts. It's the most cosmopolitan crowd I've been in in a long time; there are loads of people from Europe and Latin America. I had a nice chat with a man from Guadalajara while we sat on the asphalt in the middle of the world's largest parking lot, awaiting our shuttle bus. We observed German parenting styles up close and personal in our hotel swimming pool. (Teutonic discipline and efficiency? ha!)
I was struck anew by the fact that Disney refers to all park employees who work in the public eye as cast members. Having had a little exposure to the ego-negating ideology of customer service, I have to give a certain grudging respect to Disney workers, who maintain high levels of courtesy and good humor, while handling the relentless flow of irritable tourists about as well as humanly possible. Here was a high point: At the height of the lunch rush, they were holding people at the door of this burgers-and-fries place. As one Disney cast member stood aside and let me enter the building, another one ushered me to the shortest cashier lane. He looked me in the eye and said, "I wish the line wasn't so long... but I picked the best spot in line for you." And we shared a chuckle, admiring an exquisitely polished bit of bullshit.
The darker side is the extreme secrecy Disney requires of employees. I got just a taste of this when as a teenager I was in a choir that got to sing a brief concert at Disney. We had to pass through some of the "Cast Members Only" areas, and we damn near had to sign waivers and give DNA samples as part of our promise to never, ever take photos or otherwise divulge anything we saw or heard behind the scenes.
I dragged the family into the Hall of Presidents show; I actually had fond memories of it and wanted to see it, and it being Disney Day 5, the others were happy for an air-conditioned place to sit down for awhile. But wow, was I unprepared for the sight and sound of an animatronic Gee Dubya Bush being the master of ceremonies. A whole generation of youngsters will come away believing that Adams and Madison and FDR were non-speaking extras, while President Bush the Younger is one of the leading players in the great American drama. Clearly, Bush sat for Disney and recorded the voiceover narration his own self (to be fair, I'm sure Bill Clinton did as well). I guess the most disturbing thing was how much more believable and confidence-inspiring the animatronic Shrub is compared to the real article.
New wrinkles since I was last at Disney World seven years ago: The army of middle-aged guys who search your bag for weapons or contraband before you enter the park. The Fast Pass system that lets you skip to the front of the line of the most popular rides, as long as you come back at the time--maybe an hour later, maybe six hours later--that the computer algorithm tells you to. (I felt guilty about using the Fast Passes at first, but they're actually a pretty great idea for balancing the traffic.)
I was interested and a teeny bit perturbed to read that for their upcoming film version of C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Disney hired a Christian marketing firm that Mel Gibson used with The Passion. But on the whole, one can make a case for Disney as a good guy in the culture wars. I believe they still follow gay-friendly policies, despite protests from conservative Christian groups. (I think in trying to mount a boycott against Disney, the Southern Baptists picked a battle they couldn't win.) Okay, Walt was a sentimental sap, and Disney hopelessly anthropomorphizes nature, and Epcot permanently enshrines a hokey obsolescent George Jetson vision of "the future." But by gosh, the technology shows honor Charles Darwin where appropriate, and the Epcot international pavilion still honors France, and the Uncle Remus ride was dismantled a number of years ago, and it IS a small world after all.
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Book of the Week
This time round it was The Franchise by Michael MacCambridge, a really well reported history of Sports Illustrated magazine. My father is a charter subscriber to SI--has been taking it almost continuously for 50 years. I've been reading it since about age nine and have never really stopped. Paging through The Franchise, I felt something like a fish reading about water for the first time. That's a bit hyperbolic, but I've been immersed in it too much to be very critical. I might've liked or disliked a certain writer, thought a certain period was better or worse than another, but never stopped to think about the magazine as an institution.
The biggest lesson I took away from MacCambridge was something I should've realized long ago but didn't: When SI began publishing in 1954, there was no consensus that sports was a coherent or pervasive, let alone important, theme in American culture. SI's parent publisher, Time-Life, was run by Ivy League types who, though they might enjoy tennis or golf, bore an attitude of apathy if not distaste toward dirtier, sweatier sports. There was no certainty that sports fans were an audience that advertisers would covet, nor any confidence that, say, readers in California were the least bit interested in Big Ten football. The first few years of the magazine's life, it spent fumbling painfully in search of an identity, running pieces about fly fishing and other stuff that today would be classified as Travel & Leisure.
One of the keys of SI's eventual success was an influx of writers from Texas, most notably Dan Jenkins. These guys knew golf not as a gentleman's verdant pastime but as a blood sport played on arid dog tracks. They knew high school and college football as the pulse of entire communities, states, regions. I may be guilty of seeing Red and Blue America everywhere I look nowadays, but this is an interesting manifestation of that dynamic, and a victory for down-home red-state wisdom.
The book is also worthy as a case study in business culture: the give and take between the editorial and corporate sides, the struggles for succession each time the Managing Editor post came open. MacCambridge did a lucid and thorough job; he seems to have interviewed just about every living writer, editor, photographer, and designer of note in the magazine's history (the book came out in 1997).
Thanks again to Phil of Here Be Monsters, who reminded me of this book's existence and gave it a good review over at Peoplesforum. MacCambridge has a new book out, a history of the National Football League, which I am sorely tempted to shell out for.
Brackets Update: In the Blogger Bracket at Yocohoops, I'm doing respectably well. I won't win it, but I'm in the top 10 or 15 percent of about 300 entries. It seems that for a guy who writes about sports, I know a lot about politics, and vice versa.
The biggest lesson I took away from MacCambridge was something I should've realized long ago but didn't: When SI began publishing in 1954, there was no consensus that sports was a coherent or pervasive, let alone important, theme in American culture. SI's parent publisher, Time-Life, was run by Ivy League types who, though they might enjoy tennis or golf, bore an attitude of apathy if not distaste toward dirtier, sweatier sports. There was no certainty that sports fans were an audience that advertisers would covet, nor any confidence that, say, readers in California were the least bit interested in Big Ten football. The first few years of the magazine's life, it spent fumbling painfully in search of an identity, running pieces about fly fishing and other stuff that today would be classified as Travel & Leisure.
One of the keys of SI's eventual success was an influx of writers from Texas, most notably Dan Jenkins. These guys knew golf not as a gentleman's verdant pastime but as a blood sport played on arid dog tracks. They knew high school and college football as the pulse of entire communities, states, regions. I may be guilty of seeing Red and Blue America everywhere I look nowadays, but this is an interesting manifestation of that dynamic, and a victory for down-home red-state wisdom.
The book is also worthy as a case study in business culture: the give and take between the editorial and corporate sides, the struggles for succession each time the Managing Editor post came open. MacCambridge did a lucid and thorough job; he seems to have interviewed just about every living writer, editor, photographer, and designer of note in the magazine's history (the book came out in 1997).
Thanks again to Phil of Here Be Monsters, who reminded me of this book's existence and gave it a good review over at Peoplesforum. MacCambridge has a new book out, a history of the National Football League, which I am sorely tempted to shell out for.
Brackets Update: In the Blogger Bracket at Yocohoops, I'm doing respectably well. I won't win it, but I'm in the top 10 or 15 percent of about 300 entries. It seems that for a guy who writes about sports, I know a lot about politics, and vice versa.
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
Don't Let Them Make A Monkey Out of You
One of my invisible friends tipped me to this story about the nationwide movement to promote intelligent design theory, or "intelligent" "design" "theory." Wouldn't you know it, the land of Dorothy, Toto, and Tom Frank figures prominently.
Nothing in here surprises me a great deal, but the article synthesizes some things helpfully. And the reporter. Peter Slevin, makes it unmistakably clear that intelligent design is a P.R. slogan, the sugar coating on a pill intended to purge the culture of Enlightenment rationalism.
This is important to understand, because when I first heard it, I thought intelligent design was a nice phrase. See, to me, Charles Darwin was divinely inspired. All great writers and thinkers are. The theory of evolution is a partial description of the divine intelligence. To my mind (semi-educated as it is), the interplay in nature between order (that science can describe) and randomness (some of which is permanently beyond science's potential to describe) is intellectually pleasing. I conceive of a divinity that takes similar satisfaction.
But I think humankind should follow scientific inquiry as far as it will take us. And I'll never enter a church that requires me to check my rational mind at the door. The people who employ the phrase I.D. do it with sinister and deceptive purpose. In the end they want to deny our intelligence and ignore nature's design.
In this interview I cited elsewhere, Dave Durenberger paraphrases Garrison Keillor, suggesting that when conservatives rail against liberalism, they ought to pause to consider everything liberalism has done for them. We wouldn't have child labor laws. We wouldn't be able to dial 911 in an emergency. We wouldn't have interstate highways (hell, Eisenhower got the idea from the damn Nazis!). This is not an appeal to ideology, but to proportionality.
Now think of the advances in technology since Darwin's time. We've eradicated many deadly diseases. Air travel has shrunken the world to a friendlier scale. Computers have enhanced our productivity. A thousand other technologies have eased and enriched our lives. Renouncing evolution is a kind of renunciation of telephones, television, antibiotics. All of them are part of the same fabric. I don't expect anti-Darwin conservatives to stop using technology. I expect them to keep using it, and to be used by it, and to surrender the notion that they can master it.
Willful ignorance is people's right, I suppose. The jarring thing to me, the moment when I slam up against cognitive dissonance, is when I read of someone who wants to insist on the literal truth of Genesis AND wants to become a doctor. Look, viruses mutate. Homo sapiens adapts gradually to environmental demands. Medical technologies develop through the use of scientific method and rules of evidence. If you're a Biblical fundamentalist, then by definition, you have a huge hole in your training and acculturation to the practice of medicine.
I'm not arguing absolutes. If you believe God created the universe in six days and that settles it for you, fine. But consider all the ramifications of that worldview. Modern life rests on the scientific approach. Somebody is going to keep developing and applying technology, and it won't be you.
Nothing in here surprises me a great deal, but the article synthesizes some things helpfully. And the reporter. Peter Slevin, makes it unmistakably clear that intelligent design is a P.R. slogan, the sugar coating on a pill intended to purge the culture of Enlightenment rationalism.
This is important to understand, because when I first heard it, I thought intelligent design was a nice phrase. See, to me, Charles Darwin was divinely inspired. All great writers and thinkers are. The theory of evolution is a partial description of the divine intelligence. To my mind (semi-educated as it is), the interplay in nature between order (that science can describe) and randomness (some of which is permanently beyond science's potential to describe) is intellectually pleasing. I conceive of a divinity that takes similar satisfaction.
But I think humankind should follow scientific inquiry as far as it will take us. And I'll never enter a church that requires me to check my rational mind at the door. The people who employ the phrase I.D. do it with sinister and deceptive purpose. In the end they want to deny our intelligence and ignore nature's design.
In this interview I cited elsewhere, Dave Durenberger paraphrases Garrison Keillor, suggesting that when conservatives rail against liberalism, they ought to pause to consider everything liberalism has done for them. We wouldn't have child labor laws. We wouldn't be able to dial 911 in an emergency. We wouldn't have interstate highways (hell, Eisenhower got the idea from the damn Nazis!). This is not an appeal to ideology, but to proportionality.
Now think of the advances in technology since Darwin's time. We've eradicated many deadly diseases. Air travel has shrunken the world to a friendlier scale. Computers have enhanced our productivity. A thousand other technologies have eased and enriched our lives. Renouncing evolution is a kind of renunciation of telephones, television, antibiotics. All of them are part of the same fabric. I don't expect anti-Darwin conservatives to stop using technology. I expect them to keep using it, and to be used by it, and to surrender the notion that they can master it.
Willful ignorance is people's right, I suppose. The jarring thing to me, the moment when I slam up against cognitive dissonance, is when I read of someone who wants to insist on the literal truth of Genesis AND wants to become a doctor. Look, viruses mutate. Homo sapiens adapts gradually to environmental demands. Medical technologies develop through the use of scientific method and rules of evidence. If you're a Biblical fundamentalist, then by definition, you have a huge hole in your training and acculturation to the practice of medicine.
I'm not arguing absolutes. If you believe God created the universe in six days and that settles it for you, fine. But consider all the ramifications of that worldview. Modern life rests on the scientific approach. Somebody is going to keep developing and applying technology, and it won't be you.
Fresh Air? Times Square!
This post will be more rambling than usual. It germinated over last weekend, when Atrios was leading a discussion of city living, suburban living, and why people with children are so averse to the idea of raising them in a big city. By "people" he is, and I am, probably thinking of Atrios's readership: Bobos, Yuppies, strivers, Merlot moms, Dickel dads.
What I'm talking about is my sense that there are large numbers of people who would consider someone who chose to raise their kids in an urban environment to be, well, out of their minds. And, that would be the case even if you took the top two "why I love the suburbs" reasons off the table - schools and crime. If you provided more decent school opportunities in urban areas and substantially reduced crime, they would still consider it nuts to raise your kids in the city.
My first thought was that he was describing a caricature of an urban-phobic parent. Turning the tables rhetorically, I'm sure there were a few rural-phobes who thought that "Deliverance" was a documentary, but only a very few. So I posted a comment at Atrios about public schools, which was a little wonky, and ignored the part where he explicitly took schools off the table.
Then darned if a couple of commenters didn't live up to the caricature. One guy wrote that he had to protect his kids from gang culture. Damn, buddy, we weren't suggesting you move to Cabrini Green, just to a decent townhouse near the city bus line.
I don't know what type of circles Atrios runs in, but I for one don't know a lot of people who are explicitly mulling a choice between, for instance, Philadelphia proper or one of the Main Line suburbs. (Fill in the metro area of your choice. Atrios lives in Philly.) But I do know a lot of folks who have followed this general migratory pattern of (1) city living when young, just out of college, single or newly married, then (2) buy a house in a suburban setting when the baby arrives. I once read an article in the Raleigh paper that referred directly to a (supposedly) common flight path in which young professional types graduate from UNC, go to Atlanta for a few years to have fun and add heft to the resume`, then come back to Raleigh or Greensboro or where have you to settle down. But generally, people don't talk about it as a deliberate plan, they do it semi-instinctively. My family and I moved four years ago, more or less following this pattern. Not the Atlanta part, we moved within the city of Raleigh, but the urban to suburban part. Heading for greener acres.
I don't hear people in real life articulate the thought, it's nuts to raise your child in the city. One is either a city person or one is not. And though this wasn't exactly the question the class was given, Atrios seems to posit the existence of an adult who sincerely loves city life for himself but decides he must leave the city for the sake of his offspring. I think such an adult is a mythical creature. We want to form our children in our own likeness. Cost of living or schools or other factors may play a part, but odds are, if a couple settles in the 'burbs, it's because their heart is in the 'burbs. Period. Becoming parents may be a handy excuse or a catalyst.
Here's what I do observe in real life. (My real life these days is largely suburban, some rural, not too much urban.) Lots of people love their cars. Personally, I consider the things an often-necessary evil, and I'm attracted by the idea, hypothetical though it is in my case, of living day-to-day without an automobile, relying on public transit. I hope to live that way at some future stage. But a lot of Americans have a horror of that. They love their cars--the bigger, the better. They want to come and go on their precise timeframe, in comfort and solitude.
Also, I've been struck by how many of my friends and relatives have bought a big parcel of land and built a brand new house. Maybe nothing fancy or distinctive, but brand new. Lots of space inside and out. Clean, convenient, anesthetic. Never been lived in. No history, no mystery.
Via Tapped I came across this interview with David Durenberger, Republican former U.S. Senator from Minnesota. As one who remembers when the GOP really was a big tent, Durenberger bemoans the current state of his party and the coarsening of political culture, and he reminds us to celebrate American diversity at the same we celebrate freedom. These are some of the terms he put it in:
David Brooks writes about exurbanites, the people beyond the suburbs, using the analogy of golf. Their life needs to be like a golf course, where all the grass is clean, and cut to the same size, and the sand traps are all edged appropriately. That's the way they live, that's the way of a growing number of Americans. They want to go to churches where people are just like them, and go to malls that serve people and lifestyles just like them. This is Brooks's characterization, not mine. Increasingly, people want to vote for people who look like them, talk like them, and think like them. They go to church on Sunday, and they want to vote for somebody who talks to them the way the preacher does.
And what [Garrison] Keillor is saying is, "You know, you guys wouldn't have those opportunities. Your girls wouldn't be playing for national basketball championships and things like that. You wouldn't have 911 to call to save your kids' life or your own life, if there hadn't been Democrats or liberals fighting for those things." Those are some of the examples he uses. And he's right.
... And there's a value in universities, there is a value to big old cities. There's a value to the Hmong or whomever. Here they are. And there's a value in that that doesn't exist in the golf course community, where everybody is the same. You can't possibly say you can represent everybody in your district, everybody in your state, everybody in your nation if you have this golf course community mentality.
The suburbs are typified by people who want things cut to their specifications. They don't want to wait. They don't want to share. They don't want to think. They don't want to be surprised or confronted with other-ness or challenged in their worldview. And if that correlates to people who are likely to have children, it's a sad commentary. It points to a rather cramped and narcissistic mode of parenthood.
Monday, March 14, 2005
Bracketology
I remember hearing my high school French teacher remark that the economy of France suffers hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of lost productivity each year due to work slowdowns during the Tour de France. Billions by now, I'm sure. A strong case could be made that it's a good trade-off, a few points of GDP in exchange for a folk-culture tradition that people feel passionately about. I think about my French teacher every year at this time, as I spend a few prime work hours puzzling over the NCAA men's basketball tournament brackets. (Actually, between the NCAAs and fantasy baseball draft season, mid-March is a doubly unproductive time.)
I won the office pool once, several years ago. (Cue Springsteen's "Glory Days" in the background.) There were quite a few foreigners in my former office, ignorant of basketball, yet enthusiastic about tossing $5 into the kitty. They were eager to take part in this American workplace ritual; they had something to prove; they wanted to fit in. They were pigeons.
Unfortunately, I'm not as up to date as I used to be, and my current workplace has a core of people who know their basketball. But the memory of my past triumph lingers. Moreover, the whole NCAA tournament pool phenomenon aggravates one of my less attractive personality traits: the love of being proved right, of showing my expertise, no matter how trivial the topic. Not only will I spend more time filling out the bracket than any adult should, wanting to win more than any adult should. I also have a paradoxical urge to predict stunning upsets. Alabama's sneakers are ill-suited for the court surface in Cleveland! The clever student-athletes of Bucknell will build a dossier on Kansas's star player's mother, making for devastatingly effective trash talk! This sort of thing.
My research today yielded the following information. West Virginia plays Creighton in Round One on Thursday. West Virginia's best players are named Johannes Herder and Kevin Pittsnogle. Creighton's best player is named Nate Funk. I leave you to draw your own conclusions.
I won the office pool once, several years ago. (Cue Springsteen's "Glory Days" in the background.) There were quite a few foreigners in my former office, ignorant of basketball, yet enthusiastic about tossing $5 into the kitty. They were eager to take part in this American workplace ritual; they had something to prove; they wanted to fit in. They were pigeons.
Unfortunately, I'm not as up to date as I used to be, and my current workplace has a core of people who know their basketball. But the memory of my past triumph lingers. Moreover, the whole NCAA tournament pool phenomenon aggravates one of my less attractive personality traits: the love of being proved right, of showing my expertise, no matter how trivial the topic. Not only will I spend more time filling out the bracket than any adult should, wanting to win more than any adult should. I also have a paradoxical urge to predict stunning upsets. Alabama's sneakers are ill-suited for the court surface in Cleveland! The clever student-athletes of Bucknell will build a dossier on Kansas's star player's mother, making for devastatingly effective trash talk! This sort of thing.
My research today yielded the following information. West Virginia plays Creighton in Round One on Thursday. West Virginia's best players are named Johannes Herder and Kevin Pittsnogle. Creighton's best player is named Nate Funk. I leave you to draw your own conclusions.
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
What Made You
What made you turn out to be a liberal or a conservative? No doubt, it's an identity question, a matter of finding which side makes you feel better about yourself.
Personally, looking at my parents and my childhood environment, I think I could've gone either way. Somehow, even when I was a little kid living in severely unhip West Virginia, hippie culture had an allure. Things I remember: I had an uncle who at least looked the part of a hippie: wore his hair long, partied, didn't finish college and enter a nice profession like the family wanted him to. He was the most fun of my relatives, and seemed (to me, at the time) to be living his life in a brave way. This uncle had stacks of Mad magazines, which I devoured and which taught me more about what was hip, what was square, and about a few things like Vietnam and Watergate that resisted satire, that were serious matters, and seriously screwed up. He also had stacks of Playboys, which taught me plenty, but besides the obvious taught me a respect for the concept of two-consenting-adults.
Later I became a fan of Doonesbury comics, and followed Trudeau's band of flower children as they grew up and their politics matured. I was a big fan of the TV series M*A*S*H. I watched the mini-series Roots and Holocaust. Saturday Night Live came along. I got hold of a Richard Pryor album, a Cheech and Chong album, and some underground comics, notably the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers.
Watergate happened, and I drew a hopeful lesson from it. Our system of government worked; a corrupt leader was peacefully removed from office. In junior high school my class went to see a play called "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been," about the McCarthy era. I didn't make any Nixon connections, but the play made an impression.
My mother followed feminist yearnings and social justice impulses. She was active in the church and drew me into it as well. In 11th grade, thanks to the fact that we were attending a tiny church with too few adults to fill all the leadership slots, I got elected to represent our parish at the annual (Episcopal) diocesan convention. I got to hear a passionate and eloquent debate on the subject of abortion, which completely turned my view of it around. (The diocese passed a resolution in favor of abortion rights.)
I have forgotten my motivation, I don't think it was a school assignment, but in 11th or 12th grade I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X. That stands out as a mind-expanding event. For a little while at least, I entertained the thought that the white man is the devil. By contrast, Tom Frank and the news media furnish multiple examples of conservatives who refuse to hear anything about themselves that doesn't flatter them. I think about the experience of reading Malcolm X fairly often.
Personally, looking at my parents and my childhood environment, I think I could've gone either way. Somehow, even when I was a little kid living in severely unhip West Virginia, hippie culture had an allure. Things I remember: I had an uncle who at least looked the part of a hippie: wore his hair long, partied, didn't finish college and enter a nice profession like the family wanted him to. He was the most fun of my relatives, and seemed (to me, at the time) to be living his life in a brave way. This uncle had stacks of Mad magazines, which I devoured and which taught me more about what was hip, what was square, and about a few things like Vietnam and Watergate that resisted satire, that were serious matters, and seriously screwed up. He also had stacks of Playboys, which taught me plenty, but besides the obvious taught me a respect for the concept of two-consenting-adults.
Later I became a fan of Doonesbury comics, and followed Trudeau's band of flower children as they grew up and their politics matured. I was a big fan of the TV series M*A*S*H. I watched the mini-series Roots and Holocaust. Saturday Night Live came along. I got hold of a Richard Pryor album, a Cheech and Chong album, and some underground comics, notably the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers.
Watergate happened, and I drew a hopeful lesson from it. Our system of government worked; a corrupt leader was peacefully removed from office. In junior high school my class went to see a play called "Are You Now or Have You Ever Been," about the McCarthy era. I didn't make any Nixon connections, but the play made an impression.
My mother followed feminist yearnings and social justice impulses. She was active in the church and drew me into it as well. In 11th grade, thanks to the fact that we were attending a tiny church with too few adults to fill all the leadership slots, I got elected to represent our parish at the annual (Episcopal) diocesan convention. I got to hear a passionate and eloquent debate on the subject of abortion, which completely turned my view of it around. (The diocese passed a resolution in favor of abortion rights.)
I have forgotten my motivation, I don't think it was a school assignment, but in 11th or 12th grade I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X. That stands out as a mind-expanding event. For a little while at least, I entertained the thought that the white man is the devil. By contrast, Tom Frank and the news media furnish multiple examples of conservatives who refuse to hear anything about themselves that doesn't flatter them. I think about the experience of reading Malcolm X fairly often.
Return from Oz
This week's book is What's The Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won The Heart of America, by Thomas Frank. Sorry about the photo, but be thankful I didn't attempt a "Dust in the Wind" joke.
Every comment I read on this book when it came out last year, and there were a lot of them, seemed to boil it down to two words: economic populism. Of course, at that time people were preoccupied with the election, and every new piece of political writing was being evaluated as campaign advice. Since I didn't think economic populism was especially good campaign advice for the Dems in 2004, I was prepared to dislike the book, but boiling it down to a slogan misses the point. Late in the book Frank does fault the Democratic Party for shirking its responsibility to educate voters about economic progressivism. But he's talking about a long-term project. George W. Bush is not a major presence in this book, and Frank literally does not mention John Kerry.
Frank inparts some valuable history lessons about his home state: its anti-slavery heritage, the rise of prairie ie populism, the oddball preachers and politicians that Kansas has produced. He mixes in some autobiographical musings about his childhood, the changes he has seen in his hometown, the experiences, particularly at the state university in Lawrence, that led him to a liberal perspective. He also does a neat thing: he interviews some actual conservatives, and treats them with respect and understanding and even a little admiration. The most vivid figures in the book include Tim Gruba, "an upside-down Cesar Chavez" who for years has been a driving force behind Kansas's grassroots pro-life movement--all the while holding a job as a line worker in a soda bottling plant. And there's Kay O'Connor, who refinances her house and sinks the proceeds into her pet cause, the school vouchers movement.
The main thrust of the book is the conservative backlash, the inversion of populism into a force for conservatism, the right-wing "Plen-T-Plaint" that features a lot of anger and venting but precious little analysis. I think my favorite line from the book is "[E]very one of the bitter self-made men of my youth was a believer in the power of positive thinking." Ain't that the truth. But the most important passage may be near the end:
[In People magazine] liberalism is a matter of shallow
appearances; it is arrogant and condescending... In an America
where the chief sources of one's ideas about life's possibilities are TV and the
movies, it's not hard to be convinced that we inhabit a liberal-dominated
world...
Like any industry, though, the culture business exists
primarily to advance its own fortunes, not those of the Democratic Party.
Winning an audience of teenagers, for example, is the goal that has made the
dick joke into a sort of gold standard, not winning elections for liberals.
Encouraging demographic self-recognition and self-expression through products
is, similarly, the bread and butter not of leftist ideology but of consumerism.
These things are part of the culture industry's very DNA. They are as subject to
change by an offended American electorate as is the occupant of the Danish
throne.
Never understanding this is a source of strength for the
backlash. Its leaders rage against the liberalism of Hollywood. Its voters toss
a few liberals out of office and are surprised to see that Hollywood doesn't
care. They toss out more liberals and still nothing changes. They return an
entire phalanx of pro-business blowhards to Washington, and still the culture
industry goes on its merry way. But at least those backlash politicians that
they elect are willing to do one thing differently: they stand there on the
floor of the U.S. Senate and shout no to it all. And this is
the critical point: in a media world where what people shout overshadows what
they actually do, the backlash sometimes appears to be the only dissenter out
there, the only movement that has a place for the uncool and the funny-looking
and the pious, for all the stock buffoons that our mainstream culture glories in
lampooning. In this sense the backlash is becoming a perpetual alter-ego to the
culture industry, a feature of American life as permanent and as strange as
Hollywood itself.
If I could only read one book to gain an understanding of the contemporary American polity, it would be What's The Matter With Kansas?
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