We’ll be doing a Crooked Timber seminar around the end of next month on Sheri Berman’s new book on the past and future of social democracy in Europe (now available from “Powells”:http://www.powells.com/partner/29956/s?kw=Sheri%20Berman%20primacy%20politics and Amazon). The book itself is highly recommended, and should make for a fun and interesting discussion.
From the monthly archives:
September 2006
Tony Blair’s announcement that he will resign within a year, but that he won’t say when, is one of those absurdities that seem to be inevitable in politics, a variant on the Galbraith score. There doesn’t seem to be any satisfactory way of handling this kind of situation, since most leaders want to be seen to be making their own choice to leave, but few are willing make that choice until most of their followers already want them to go.
“Making Light”:http://www.nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/ points us to Wikipedia’s “Lamest Edit Wars”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lamest_edit_wars which in turn refers to the “epic battle”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Irish_breakfast over what makes an Irish Breakfast an Irish Breakfast. It’s a lovely example of how Wikipedia should work. The bizarre and repulsive heresies of the fried kidneys and the baked beans are duly anathematized and dispatched into limbo. A blatantly political attempt to assimilate the meal that nourished our fathers under the rubric of the entirely inferior morning repast of the Hated Anglo-Saxon Oppressor is vigorously repelled. And a “harmonious consensus”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_breakfast finally prevails, which not only correctly identifies the proper constituent parts (sausages, rashers, eggs, mushrooms and black and white puddings), but contains much useful information (e.g. Iarnrod Eireann breakfasts, the great expense of) for the interested inquirer.
These are serious matters. When in Belfast, one of my uncles once spotted a colleague declining to partake of the Ulster Fry that was provided for breakfast, and instead ordering muesli – _with skim milk_. He knew at once that the man wasn’t to be trusted.
Most of us have seen the picture of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam in the mid-1980s, but my recollections of the extent of Republican support for Saddam at that time have always been a bit cloudy.
This piece by Peter Galbraith, a former US ambassador to Croatia, gives chapter and verse.
Over the weekend, Political Theory Daily Review linked to a recent essay on the Gang of Four. (The band, that is. Not the group in power in China thirty years ago this month, and in jail thirty years ago next month.) The title indicated it would treat the band’s work as Marxist cultural theory. Not in terms of, mind you, but as. Good call: The Gang’s lyrics were always very explicit about reification, class consciousness, and whatnot. No ex post facto Zizekian-epigone hijinks necessary, thank you very much. Makes its own gravy! A critic who understood that from the start might go far.
Australia rarely attracts much international attention, which is probably a good thing. For the last week or so, things have changed, though not for in a good way. First, there was the Downer-Zombietime fiasco, and then the death of Steve Irwin. Now our (intentional scare quotes) “national newspaper”, the Murdoch-owned Australian, has received international publicity for a report on global warming that (along with an editorial and additional coverage) adds new errors to the denialist case on global warming, while recycling many of the old ones.
Eric Umansky (via “Laura Rozen”:http://warandpiece.com/) has a great “article”:http://www.cjr.org/issues/2006/5/Umansky.asp in the CJR on how newspapers dealt with stories about torture and murder in Iraq. For example, this story about the _New York Times_.
Gall filed a story, on February 5, 2003, about the deaths of Dilawar and another detainee. It sat for a month, finally appearing two weeks before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. “I very rarely have to wait long for a story to run,” says Gall. “If it’s an investigation, occasionally as long as a week.” Gall’s story, it turns out, had been at the center of an editorial fight. Her piece was “the real deal. It referred to a homicide. Detainees had been killed in custody. I mean, you can’t get much clearer than that,” remembers Roger Cohen, then the Times’s foreign editor. “I pitched it, I don’t know, four times at page-one meetings, with increasing urgency and frustration. I laid awake at night over this story. And I don’t fully understand to this day what happened. It was a really scarring thing. My single greatest frustration as foreign editor was my inability to get that story on page one.”
Doug Frantz, then the Times’s investigative editor and now the managing editor of the Los Angeles Times, says Howell Raines, then the Times’s top editor, and his underlings “insisted that it was improbable; it was just hard to get their mind around. They told Roger to send Carlotta out for more reporting, which she did. Then Roger came back and pitched the story repeatedly. It’s very unusual for an editor to continue to push a story after the powers that be make it clear they’re not interested. Roger, to his credit, pushed.” (Howell Raines declined requests for comment.) “Compare Judy Miller’s WMD stories to Carlotta’s story,” says Frantz. “On a scale of one to ten, Carlotta’s story was nailed down to ten. And if it had run on the front page, it would have sent a strong signal not just to the Bush administration but to other news organizations.” Instead, the story ran on page fourteen under the headline “U.S.Military Investigating Death of Afghan in Custody.” (It later became clear that the investigation began only as a result of Gall’s digging.)
I have the privilege of telling you about our new permanent additions to the roster. You’ll remember that Ingrid Robeyns joined as a guest for a week last month — well, now she’s back, and permanently. Ingrid is a Belgian economist and political theorist working in the Netherlands, and you can find out more about her (and perhaps a bit more about what to expect) at her personal website. Scott McLemee is a journalist of longstanding, formerly at the Chronicle for Higher Education but more recently at Inside Higher Education, and a Texan, of which he is evidently very proud. I’ve known of Scott (though we’ve never met) since the late 1980’s, and suspect that I am one of the earliest admirers of his work, many of his early articles having been published in journals and magazines which I used to sell, and of which I was one of very few readers! I’ve actually met Ingrid several times, and know her pretty well, so for me she won’t just be a virtual presence.Â
Welcome aboard both of you, its great to have you on the team!
Loudon Wainwright III is 60 today. I just thought I’d remind the world, because I’m sure he won’t. Belle, you’d better send an e-card or something. He’s the performer I have seen live more than any other, and, as George Cole might say, I have all his albums.
And Al Stewart is 61!
David Velleman has a riveting paper on his website called Family History (via an independently interesting post about the influence of genes on identity formation). The paper is an extended argument for the wrongness of having a child by an anonymous donor (including by an anonymous surrogate mothers). The argument goes something like this (sorry David, I’m trying to be terse): children have an extremely powerful interest in knowing who their genetic forebears were, because that knowledge plays a vital role in their identity formation (not, interestingly, because it plays the more mundane role of giving you information about your probabilities with respect to health prospects, etc). People who deliberately have children via anonymous donors thus deliberately have children for whom a vital interest cannot be met. So they do a wrong. He does not explicitly call for the prohibition of anonymous donation of various kinds (and rightly not; establishing that some behaviour is wrong falls short of establishing that it is appropriate to prohibit it), and it is not clear what the public policy consequences are of his argument. He dispatches various objections rather well – you should read the whole thing. But I’m interested here in the central premise – that having acquaintance with one’s biological forbears plays a vital role in identity formation and maintenance.
What evidence does Velleman marshall for this claim? It seems to me that he has 2 main reasons for believing it.
Steve Irwin, famous as the Crocodile Hunter died today while diving near Port Douglas, after being stung through the heart by a stingray. According to the report I saw, only two people have ever died from stingray attacks in Australia before, so this was an exceptionally unlucky accident. Playing the Aussie image to the full and beyond, Irwin did a great deal to promote conservation. He was only 44 and leaves a wife and two young children.
Via “Dave Weeden”:http://backword.me.uk/2006/August/why_i_can.html, the “latest moneyspinner”:http://www.sptimes.com/2006/05/06/Tampabay/Scientology_nearly_re.shtml/ to emerge from the “muppet labs”:https://crookedtimber.org/2006/03/12/further-muppet-resistance/ at Scientology HQ in Clearwater, FL:
Under wraps for decades, Super Power now is being prepped for its eventual rollout in Scientology’s massive building in downtown Clearwater. … A key aim of Super Power is to enhance one’s perceptions – and not just the five senses we all know – hearing, sight, touch, taste and smell. Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard taught that people have 57 “perceptics.” … Hubbard promised Super Power would improve perceptions and “put the person into a new realm of ability.”
How much would you pay to receive this marvellous training? Five thousand dollars? Ten thousand? Don’t answer yet! There’s more. The 57 Perceptics (not a brand of tomato sauce or an unsuccessful doo-wop outfit) include Timen Sight [sic], Tasten Colorn Depth [sic], and Personal Size [if you know what I mean].
Asked about Super Power, church spokesman Ben Shaw provided a written statement: “Super Power is a series of spiritual counseling processes designed to give a person back his own viewpoint, increase his perception, exercise his power of choice, and greatly enhance other spiritual abilities.” Shaw would not say how much the program will cost. Upper levels of Scientology training can run tens of thousands of dollars. He declined to provide further insight into Super Power. “It’s not something I’m willing to provide to you in any manner,” Shaw said.
Comic Book Guy Alert! No information will be imparted to you whatsoever until you answer me these questions three, and also sign over the deeds to your house.
Super Power takes “weeks, not months” to complete, said Feshbach. He would not discuss the specific machines and drills that former Scientologists said are used to enhance perceptions. The perceptics portion of Super Power is one of 12 “rundowns” in the full program … Details of Super Power training have been kept secret even from church members. Like much of Scientology training, details aren’t revealed until one pays to take the course.
Notice the 11 extra rundowns that have just been added to the program, of which Super Power Perceptics is only one! _Now_ how much would you pay? Sign up now! Remember, your very willingness to cough up large amounts of cash for this stuff is evidence that you need professional training to heighten your preceptual awareness of the world and the sort of people who live in it.
I guess my Irish co-bloggers are rather used to foreigners thinking that they come from a gigantic theme park that bears no resemblance to their country as it actually is. For me it was rather more of a shock, when, for family reasons, I got dragged along to “British Day”:http://www.britishday.de/ in Hamburg ( “photo gallery”:http://www.britishday.de/en/gallery.shtml ). This was the UK (assisted by the Irish who seemed to count as honorary Brits for rugby and drinking purposes) as depicted in _Horse and Hound_ or _Country Life_ , re-enacted by enthusiastic Germans. There was polo, there was rugby, there were endless stalls selling Harris tweed and barbour jackets, there was a welly wanging contest, and a Highland games section where characters called Otto and Diemut (or something like that) tossed the caber whilst dressed in Royal Stewart tartan. English boarding schools — though not the really famous ones — were there too, touting for business among the Hamburg anglophiles: “send Hans to Hogwarts and make him into a real gentleman” was the message. Really quite bizarre. I’m afraid I missed the “last night of the Proms” part, where enthusiastic Hamburgers joined in the singing of “Land of Hope and Glory”, but I could hear it all in the distance. And the stall that came closest to the actual lives of most of us … Indian food, naturally.
I don’t know how long this will last so I took a screencap.
Yes, that’s right. Amazon’s book bundling AI has determined, for reasons best known to itself, that Michael Bérubé’s What’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts? goes best with Alan Moore’s Lost Girls Collected. Ah, we always knew THAT was what was liberal about the liberal arts. Porn! High concept porn! This can only provide terrible confirmation of Ross Douthat’s worst fears.
Honestly, I’d be so honored if a book I wrote went better with something by Alan Moore. Maybe he can write, like, The League of Extraordinarily Liberal Gentlemen next.
Somewhere in Athens, the Greek counterpart of “Bjørge Lillelien”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bjørge_Lillelien is shouting into a radio mike, “Thomas Jefferson, William Hearst, Herbert Hoover, Warren Harding, Muhammad Ali, Paris Hilton — we have beaten them all! We have beaten them all! George Bush can you hear me? … Your boys “took a hell of a beating!”:http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/sports/AP-BKO-Worlds-Greece-US.html?hp&ex=1157169600&en=71272e7744801df5&ei=5094&partner=homepage