I don’t want to write a “whither blogging?” bit any more than you want to read it, so I’ll spare you. Suffice it to say that I believe that Sturgeon’s Law (“Ninety percent of everything is crap”) has proven to be much more supportable than each and every rah-rah slogan about how “the blogosphere is self-correcting” or whatnot. I still believe that there are plenty of jewels in the political blogosphere making the world a slightly better place, including (but certainly not limited to) Obsidian Wings, Radley Balko, Kevin Drum, The Editors, Jim Henley, Brad DeLong, Tim Lambert… And that Matt Welch’s old article has held up better than most anything I’d have written.

It was an act of extraordinary generosity for the brilliant folks here at Crooked Timber to give me a platform and lend me some of their credibility. I hope that I haven’t tarnished it too badly. It’s been a great pleasure and honor to be part of the crew here, and I wish them nothing but continued success and good luck.

Of course, this is not always true. I’d be interested to hear about movies that were released ten or more years before your birth that you genuinely enjoyed, rather than appreciated. Here are a few of mine:

Paths of Glory- I don’t know why you don’t hear more about this one. I love Stanley Kubrick and think that his movies have aged well because he doesn’t feel like anyone else. The uncompromisingly bleak story, and the odd rhythm to the long shots, make for a timeless war movie.

Casablanca- When movies dream, they dream that they’re Casablanca.

The Third Man- A gorgeous film, shot in the ruins of postwar Vienna. Dark and hugely fun, even if the big reveal isn’t much of a surprise.

M- I don’t know if I would recommend this to everyone, because it’s a little slower than we might be used to, but I really enjoyed it. It’s the story of a child killer loose in (Berlin?) as the police and the underworld team up to find him. Peter Loore plays the killer with a wonderful, creepy, wild-eyed, pathetic fury.

High Noon- Exceeded my expectations by a mile; just a wonderful movie. What makes it special, IMHO, is Gary Cooper’s lack of swagger. As his friends and colleagues back out on him one by one, he doesn’t chastise them, even though he knows he’s right. When he goes out alone to fight, he’s plainly scared to death. If the Gary Cooper role had gone to a cocksure John Wayne, I don’t think it would have been long remembered.

Rather, he believes that the leadership of the Republican party has taken specific steps to reduce the power of the scientific consensus on public policy. Mooney largely ignores the low-hanging fruit of conservative commentators, who barely appear in the book. Instead, the book predominantly focuses on top policymakers in Congress and the White House. In one thread, Mooney tells the story of how the Gingrich Congress eliminated the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), a scientific body that used to provide Congress with independent expert analysis of science issues.

“Gingrich’s view was always, ‘I’ll set up one-on-one interactions between members of Congress and key members of the scientific community,’” recalls Bob Palmer, former Democratic staff director of the House Committee on Science. “Which I thought was completely bizarre. I mean, who comes up with these people, and who decides they’re experts, and what member of Congress really wants to do that?”

It wasn’t long before this latitude was abused. Rep. Senator James Inhofe, the man who called the EPA a “gestapo bureaucracy” and who famously suggested that manmade global warming was “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people”, was awarded the chairmanship of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in 1999. Mooney relates how Inhofe reacted to the solidifying scientific consensus on global warming. Says Mooney, “The IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union- all agree that human activity is causing climate change.”

Inhofe led a committee hearing in 2003 which set two global warming sceptics with ties to the energy industry against one scientist, Michael Mann, to represent the mainstream view. Mooney again:

At Inhofe’s hearing, Mann defended both his own work and the conclusions of the IPCC, which channels the work of hundreds of experts. But for those keeping track of the Senate that day, the intellectual ticker showed a score of two to one, not a handful versus a horde. Such was Inhofe’s conception of “balance.” At one point, for example, the senator asked the panelists whether they agreed or disagreed that rising carbon dioxide levels can “produce many beneficial effects on the natural plant and animal environments of the earth.” Here were the results:

DR. SOON: I agree.
DR. MANN: I find little there to agree with.
DR. LEGATES: I would tend to agree.

… By now, the problems with Inhofe’s attempt to turn Congress into a science court should be apparent. The validity of Michael Mann’s particular “hockey stick” analysis remains open to debate among experts, and has in fact been prominently challenged in the peer-reviewed literature. But holding a heated public hearing between mainstream scientists and contrarians will hardly help determine its merits. “That’s why the federal government turns to the National Academy of the Sciences for advice, or the governments of the world turn to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,” explains Princeton University climate expert Michael Oppenheimer.”

The book catalogues a series of incidents in recent years in which the Republican leadership battled, ignored or muddied the mainsteam scientific consensus when it conflicts with the policy preferences of either large industrial interests or fundamentalist Christians.

It’s hard to argue that the answers to each of these political arguments absolutely have to lie in a test tube or a climate model. The Republican leaders in question could have made arguments for their positions by arguing that moral or economic criteria sometimes trump science. There’s no objectively correct answer to the question of when life begins; if one accepts that a fertilized egg is the moral equivalent of an infant, then it’s logical to consider stem-cell research the moral equivalent of murder. Many global warming skeptics have argued that the economic costs of Kyoto-like greenhouse gas emissions measures swamp the forseeable benefits. Mooney mentions legislation protecting food and drink companies from obesity-related lawsuits, which 40% of House Democrats voted for, and which many people (including me) would be happy to support, even knowing the connection between fast food and obesity.

What is not acceptable is the distortion of science to win the argument. Mooney argues (successfully, I think) that this has become a common modus operandi when the scientific consensus threatens the policy preferences of a Republican interest group.

That was almost a year ago. Since that day, I’m sorry that I can honestly say that not a day has gone by in which I have thought about that train crash again. Not once.

To my fellow Timberites: despite my admiration for countless blogs such as Obsidian Wings, Arms and Influence and The Agitator, if I’m ever caught engaging in anything resembling blog triumphalism, pull the plug on me. I mean it.

Cracked Magazine, the unbearably crappy MAD rip-off of our youth, has been reborn as a sharp humor site featuring such favorites as Neal Pollack and Jay Pinkerton. For starters, check out More Cartoons that Might Offend in the Middle East, or the Spring Movie Preview:

V for Vendetta

IN A NUTSHELL

An ex-mental patient builds a terrorist cell in dystopian future Britain, commits murder and blows up government buildings with the help of a bald-headed Natalie Portman. Luckily the terrorism’s completely inapplicable to real life, since in this fictional scenario, they only do it because the government lies. That sound you just heard was 10,000 impressionable trenchcoat-wearing outcasts cocking their semi-automatic rifles, by the way.

WHY YOU SHOULD HATE IT

Because League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and From Hell already proved there isn’t a subtle, textured Alan Moore graphic novel in existence that can’t be turned into a feature-length Hollywood film about a farting donkey CEO on roller skates switching places with a pantsless Rob Schneider… with outrageous results!

It’s framed by Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman as if it the Bush Administration was spending over a billion dollars of public funds to promote his agenda. Steve is right to highlight cases in which this has, in fact, happened. But if you read the report (.pdf), it’s pretty hard to defend that characterization for the large majority of the money. Most of the money is spent by non-partisan government agencies- the military, the Census, the DEA, lots of things. Quite a lot of it is unobjectionable. The military really does need to buy advertisements to recruit soldiers. The NIH really should be promoting heart disease awareness. Some of these agencies exist just to create and promote public awareness campaigns about things like breastfeeding or child safety seats. And so on.

That doesn’t make it bulletproof, of course. Quite a lot of it is surely a waste of taxpayer’s money, like the $55 million the Bureau of Engraving and Printing spent promoting the new currency. It has the potential to be an enormous patronage machine. And, we’ve seen that some of it has been used inapproriately for partisan campaigning. But we’re not looking at $1.6 billion for An Army of Armstrongs. (ahem)

My first response was “This is why good people turn libertarian.” Upon reflection, that’s my second response, too.

P.S. I’ve spent a fair amount of time on government websites recently. Did you ever notice how many have a “For Kids” section? I really hope that there’s some teacher, somewhere, getting some use out of Energy Ant.

P.P.S. I’ve just defended the Bush Administration from a Democratic attack, and pushed for spending discipline. Why won’t the right reach out and engage a moderate like me? What I’ve noticed, over and over, is that the bloggers on the left link to you when they agree and ignore the disagreements, and the bloggers on the right link only for the things they disagree with, to denounce you with short posts saying you’re evil/stupid/crazy, and don’t even seem to notice all the times you’ve written posts that take their side. Why is this happening? I find it terribly, terribly sad, and in no way transparently self-serving.

WHAT’S MORE: The point of that last paragraph isn’t necessarily obvious if you don’t already live inside my head, which relatively few people do.

To be more straightforward, I’m not at all irritated with any lack of approving links from right-of-center bloggers. I think that’s just the way of the world. Rather, I’m poking fun at Professor Althouse and the alleluia chorus surrounding the post that I’ve linked to in the last sentence. It seems to me that Althouse is starting with the assumption that, since she is at the center of political discourse, any asymmetrical treatment that she recieves from the right and left blogosphere must be due to the personality and intellectual flaws of liberals. I think that the asymmetrical treatment is better explained by the perception that she’s a moderate conservative, and I’d point to her self-placement in the Conservative Blog Advertising Network and her pleasure at being named a Conservative Blog Diva, and her own asymmetrical concern about national security leaks, as evidence.

This is not to minimize the pleasure of the links from right-of-center blogs, which I do greatly appreciate.

Reproduced from memory from the highly-recommended Les Halles Cookbook.

2 tablespoons butter
1 medium shallot, minced
1 cup fish stock (sold frozen at Whole Foods)
1/2 cup heavy cream

1 pound sea scallops (also sold frozen. They thaw in cold water in ten minutes), tendons removed, patted dry with paper towels, salted and peppered
1/2 cup champagne
Juice of 1/2 lemon
Salt and pepper

In the first pan (a medium non-stick pan works well, but it doesn’t really matter), melt one tablespoon butter over medium heat. Cook shallot until soft, approximately 3 minutes. Add fish stock and reduce to 1/2 cup. Add cream, bring to boil, then lower heat and simmer for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Heat second pan over high heat (a 12-inch cast iron skillet works very well for me). Melt butter and place scallops flat on the pan in a single layer. Cook them without moving for 3 minutes, then flip them with a pair of tongs and cook the other side without moving for 3 more minutes. Remove scallops to a plate and cover with aluminum foil.

Add champagne to hot pan in which you cooked the scallops, scraping up the leftovers at the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon. Reduce until champagne coats the back of the spoon.

Add the hot cream to the pan with the champagne and briefly bring to boil. Remove from heat and add lemon juice. Salt and pepper to taste (I’ve found that the salt and pepper from the scallops and broth is sufficient, but that’s just me). Distribute scallops to serving plates, pour sauce over scallops and serve.

For example:

Michael Jackson, “Thriller”: The song that inspired the question. Vincent Price’s sinister cackle couldn’t be better.

Pink Floyd, “Goodbye, Cruel World”: It’s a short song, basically a suicide note sung over a quiet organ. On the last word, “Goodbye”, the organ cuts out, leaving the last syllable unaccompanied. When I first heard this tape in junior high, it was just about the spookiest thing I had ever heard.

Wilco, “She’s a Jar”: The music is too plodding to be a great song, but the lyrics, a little poem about a troubled relationship, are pretty good. It begins:

She’s a jar
With a heavy lid
My pop quiz kid
A sleepy kisser
A pretty war
With feelings hid
She begs me not to miss her

The last verse reprises the first verse, but replaces the last line with

She begs me not to hit her

And it stops right there. It always throws me.

The Hives, “Automatic Schmuck”: Ends with the whole band dropping their instruments and screaming, “I’LL ERODE, I’LL EXPLODE, YEAH, I’LL BREAK YOUR FUCKING CODE” during the fadeout. It rocks so hard that Dio has been known to arch an eyebrow in modest appreciation.

Comment away. I’m sure that I’m going to be smacking my head in an hour, wondering, “Why didn’t I think of that one?”

A number of screenwriters with blogs (John Rogers, Alex Epstein, Craig Mazin, Denis McGrath and John August) have been having a fascinating discussion of how they deal with race and ethnicity in their scripts. I’ve found this interesting for a long time because, in a world full of touchy people, it’s so much easier to get wrong than right. (When I say “wrong”, I mean that you get someone angry at you. I personally think that kvetching about ethnicity in casting is generally inappropriate, but not everyone agrees.)

There are any number of factors playing into the casting decision:

• The desire to prevent your work from emphasizing harmful stereotypes
• The desire to create positive role models of minorities
• The desire to offer working opportunities to nonwhite actors
• The desire to create a cast of actors that don’t look anything like each other (see John August, or watch Cruising and try to keep all of the dark curly-haired guys straight)
• The desire to keep Jesse Jackson and Brent Bozell off of your lawn
• The desire to write stories with a racial component, or just to leave the possibility open (On “The Shield”, the black actress CCH Pounder plays a role that was originally written for a white man. In the first episodes, her race is irrelevant, but it eventually becomes very important to office politics.)
• The desire to attract a minority audience
• The desire to avoid alienating a white audience (“Can we not make the dumb guy Southern?”)
• The desire to represent reality as closely as possible (“That’s a street gang? What is this, West Side Story?”)
• The desire to avoid audience eye-rolling at perceived PC casting (“This town sure has a lot of of black female judges”)
• The desire to avoid the perception of tokenism or mechanical “one good Latino for every bad Latino” rules
• The desire to cast the best/ most famous actors, regardless of race

Inevitably, some of these guidelines are going to conflict, and that’s where it gets interesting.

Here’s an exercise. Kindly indulge me while I let out my inner Eric Blevins:

A strung-out junkie is arrested after ambushing and shooting a college premed student coming home to his off-campus apartment late at night. The junkie is caught in the middle of ransacking the apartment. Under interrogation, he claims that a cab driver picked him up, gave him the gun, and offered him $1000 to kill the student. Most of the cops don’t believe him and don’t care- they’ve clearly got the murderer, and no witnesses remember a cab. One detective, however, gets authority from his sargeant to follow up with cab agencies around the city. After a series of complications, the detective eventually finds the driver, who confesses that the junkie was telling the truth. The cab driver tells him that he wanted revenge on the father of the student. He believes that the father of the victim sold drugs to the driver’s child, who died of an overdose. At the pleading, the driver pleads guilty and tells the judge, “It was worth it.”

(I never claimed to be original or plausible. I’m a blogger, after all.)

What does the cast look like, in terms of gender and ethnicity? I dunno. There are any number of pretty good options which resonate in interesting ways. What if the cab driver is Arab, so bitterly disappointed at how immigrating to America has torn apart his family that he’s willing to engage in murder? What if the detective and the junkie are both black, and the detective is visibly disgusted with him? What if the witnesses are liberal white students, who offend the cops with their concern about how the cops are treating the junkie? What if the premed student is Jewish, and it’s unclear to what extent the crime is motivated by antisemitism? Or, what if he’s a WASP, and the police don’t really consider the cab driver’s accusation against his father? What if the student is black, his father is black, and the white cab driver had made some unwarranted assumptions connecting him to his own son’s death? What if the cab driver and the detective are both women, and the detective has a hard time convincing her bosses to follow up? Which of these is too offensive, cliche or implausible?

What if you’re a white producer uncomfortable casting minorities as murderers, junkies and drug dealers? What if the show couldn’t get made with a minority actor playing the detective?

Etc. What if I don’t have a point here? What do you think?

• I was reading the back pages of Kung Fu Monkey when I came across this, in response to Rove’s old speech that accused liberals of treason:

Did you know that the definition of treason is quite specifically defined in the Consititution? Did you know it’s the only crime actually spelled out in the Constitution? DO. YOU. KNOW. WHY?

No. Of course you don’t. Nobody ever bothers to read the goddam thing.

Because the Founding Fathers had seen the charge of treason used too many times against the political opponents of the British Government. They knew, when the government gets nervous and breaks out the Big Evil Golf Bag of Shutting Up Questions, the first club out is the Treason Charge. They knew the first guy to yell treason was the bastard.

• I’m all for liberals making a fuss about unfair and inaccurate news. I agree that it distorts the news when media organizations get a tempest of feedback when they offend the right without a similar level of feedback when they offend the left. In other words, ditto. And this warms my heart.

But, let’s be realistic about what we’re doing. I can’t remember where I saw it, but one line sticks in my mind: “Conservatives get upset when the media do their jobs, while liberals get upset when the media don’t do their jobs.” Come on, guys. I like honest partisan pushback, and I’d like to see more of it, but it’s simply not the same thing as apolitical media criticism. If there is such thing as apolitical media criticism.

• What bothers me most about Mickey Kaus’s crusade against Brokeback Mountain is not the dumb-ass argument that people go to the movies simply to ogle the opposite-sex actors (hence the pathetic failure of Reservoir Dogs with male audiences), nor the implication that he just isn’t crazy about watching gay intimacy. A lot of people aren’t. What bothers me is his overriding resentment (or, given his professional persona, his faux-resentment) that imaginary liberals would fail to to treat his discomfort with respectful silence.

• Do you ever think that A** C****** will turn back into a mummy if thirty days pass without her name in the press? It would explain a lot.

This ought to hotten up the blood:

Do you have a question you’d like to ask Tim Russert, Peggy Noonan, or Fred Barnes?

I’ll be in a conference with all three next week. I’m not sure how much face time I’ll have with any of them, but there is a good chance I’ll be able to ask at least one question each.

So: what is the question you’d most like to ask each of those folks?

I’m looking for insightful questions that might set them back on their heels. They’ve thought of all the obvious ones and have their formulaic answers well rehearsed.

Let’s shake them up!

Comment over there, not here.

It’s also interesting to note how the analogy with the Vietnam war breaks down with regards to Iraq. Iraqification is probably more difficult than Vietnamization because of the threat of ethnic civil war, and I don’t think that it’s accurate to talk about “guerilla bands that lie in wait just outside the populated areas” in Iraq. But, as always, I might be wrong.

(Comments on the last excerpt were especially good.)

Excerpt removed. Buy the book.

(As always, Arms and Influence has more.)

(UPDATE: This sort of corruption, of course, is another big part of the story.)

Quote taken down. Buy the book.