From the monthly archives:

April 2008

Look, and be Amazed

by Belle Waring on April 15, 2008

Would you like to see a bunch of people argue that calling a black man in his 40s “boy” isn’t racist, and it’s cynical playing of the mythical “race card” to say that it is? Hie thee to the commenters at Matthew Yglesias’. I considered excerpting, but it was like cool-ranch-race-flavored Pringles: once I popped, I couldn’t stop. Just go scroll down in slack-jawed amazement. I used to think he and Ezra Klein were neck-and-neck in the competition for “liberal blogger whose comment section was made most useless by Al-bots and such,” but the tireless efforts of Steve Sailer and “Fred” have put Yggles over the top. Kudos!

UPDATE: Ezra Klein’s commenters have objected that they don’t actually suck. This objection has merit; those guys have reasonably substantive conversations about health policy nowadays. I was really thinking of Ezra’s pre-Prospect blog, which had an Al, the Fred who I think is now Yglesias’, and Captain Toke–it was horrible. So Ygelsias’ blog is more properly considered as being in the running with Kevin Drum’s site, but he nonetheless retains the olive branch.
ἄριστον μὲν ὕδωρ, ὁ δὲ χρυσὸς αἰθόμενον πῦρ
ἅτε διαπρέπει νυκτὶ μεγάνορος ἔξοχα πλούτου:
εἰ δ’ ἄεθλα γαρύεν
ἔλδεαι, φίλον ἦτορ,
μηκέθ’ ἁλίου σκόπει
ἄλλο θαλπνότερον ἐν ἁμέρᾳ φαεννὸν ἄστρον ἐρήμας δι’ αἰθέρος,
μηδ’ Ὀλυμπίας ἀγῶνα φέρτερον αὐδάσομεν…
(Translation here.)

The first parts of two rather mournful pieces on Radio 4 this week. A sad account of the last few years of Kenneth Williams (they all had it in for him, especially, apparently, Philip Larkin who, cruelly, managed to convince him out of his faith in God in his last years, an act which confirms the suspicion that his moral character was as bad as his poetry was good) presented by Rob Brydon. And a much kinder, so far, discussion of the SWP presented by Geoffrey Wall who says that, as an ex-member he can “ask the awkward questions” which, in part 1, he singularly refrains from doing. One can only presume that part 2, in which he asks how they managed to provoke the Euston Manifesto, things will get more exciting.

Oh, and if you want cheering up, and have reached a certain age (about 20 years older than my chronological age, which, culturally, is about where I belong), the Saturday Play was fabulous. David Jacobs got a promotion!

Two Colberts

by Kieran Healy on April 14, 2008

Here is a Stephen Colbert interview with Bill O’Reilly from last year. A friend drew my attention to an intriguing exchange they had. Eary in the interview O’Reilly gives Colbert some stick for the slient ‘t’ in his surname, saying “You’re French” and that “You used to be Stephen Colbert.” Colbert claims he’s even more Irish than O’Reilly. The conversation moves on, then at 5’45” this happens:

BO’R: Now, your middle name is “Tyrone.”
SC: It is.
BO’R: How could that possibly happen?
SC: Because I’m Irish, Bill. Have you ever been-
BO’R: You’re French.
SC: Have you ever been to Tyrone?
BO’R: There isn’t one Irishman …
SC: Have you ever been …
BO’R: … on earth named “Col-bear.”
SC: Have you ever – Colbert! Con Colbert of the Easter Rebellion of 1916.
BO’R: Oh, now you’re Colbert again!
SC: I thought you had researchers.
BO’R: WHO ARE YOU? Are you Colbert or Col-bear?
SC: Bill,…I’m whoever you want me to be.

And, indeed, Captain Con Colbert was a participant in the Easter Rising, and was executed by the British for his efforts. That seems like a very obscure thing for him to know off the top of his head. I suppose maybe Colbert has very good researchers (unlike O’Reilly), and they fed him this to bash O’Reilly with. But he does come from a large Irish family, so maybe he knew it himself. He also (again unlike O’Reilly) knows how to pronounce “Tyrone” properly.

I have a post up at the Guardian blog noting that with no activity on its weblog on the last six weeks, the manifesto itself closed to new signatures and nobody so much as remarking its second anniversary, the Euston Manifesto appears to have gone the way of all flesh and most leftwing political tendencies. I suggest, perhaps a little uncharitably, that the cause of death (which I suppose I might be premature in announcing, but really, it doesn’t seem to have much life in it) was the Manifesto Group’s consistent refusal to ever move on from their platforms and slogans to having any concrete program at all[1] (and that this was in its turn probably due to the need to keep together a coalition which, in as much as it extended beyond a very small clique of pro-war ex-Trots, had very little to hold it together other than a personal dislike of George Galloway). If I had the piece to write again, I suspect I might have given more airtime to the other big psychological impetus behind the Paul Berman/Euston/”Decent” tendency, which was genuine trauma at the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks. But I certainly wouldn’t walk away from my assessment of the central motivation – a desire on the part of people who had been wrong for decades during the Cold War to be on the right side of history for once.

In terms of their contribution to British political debate, my epitaph for the Euston Manifesto is basically Byron’s on Castlereagh. For whatever reasons, as a political movement it was never able to get over the personality issues involved, and chose to promote its views by the same tactics of condemnation, excommunication and inflated rhetoric which had served it so badly during its past on the left[2]. But the current of political thought that Euston represented in the UK was not entirely bad or even entirely wrong. What would their legacy be?
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Biffos and Buffalos

by Henry Farrell on April 14, 2008

The concept of “BIFFO,” long known to those of us from a small island on the western periphery of Europe, hits the “political science blogosphere”:http://fruitsandvotes.com/?p=1635. As Matthew Shugart notes:

Ireland’s new Taoiseach will be a “Big ignorant fellow from Offaly.”

This explanation of the acronym very nearly accords with the more usual explanation that I’ve heard back home, with the prominent exception of the third word. More usually “fellow” is replaced by another word beginning with ‘f.’ Matthew fails to mention that the new Taoiseach, Brian Cowen1 is also a BUFFALO, or Big Ugly [Fellow] From Around Laois-Offaly. Important to know should you ever meet him and wish to preserve the diplomatic niceties of appropriate nomenclature &c.

1 No relation to Tyler, who was bemused when I told him a few years back that an Irish politician shared his surname; apparently it is a quite unusual name when it is spelled with an ‘en’ at the end rather than an ‘an.’

I was part of a conversation about No Child Left Behind the other day. Like most people, I have plenty of negative things to say about NCLB, but because the event took place in our School of Education where most students will never have heard a good word about NCLB, and because, frankly, I hear a lot of criticism of NCLB which is completely off the rails, I thought I’d say something positive about it. For excellent criticisms of NCLB see Richard Rothstein. For my muted two cheers (the text of the talk I gave) see below the fold. I’ll follow up in a couple of days with an explanation of why one of my students was completely unfairly impressed with my powers of foresight.

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I mentioned this piece in comments a while ago and some interest was expressed. It should come out in the Australian Financial Review fairly soon, but there’s still time for me to benefit from comments and constructive criticism.

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Tom Lehrer is 80

by Kieran Healy on April 11, 2008

I am responsible for the Ayn Rand/charity beat at Crooked Timber and here’s another story on the subject. This really doesn’t look like it’s going to end up well. A large charitable foundation attached to a bank has given the University of North Carolina Charlotte, among others a donation in return for making “Atlas Shrugged” compulsory reading. Most tragic rationalisation:

BB&T donated $500,000 last year to Johnson C. Smith University to help endow a professorship on capitalism and free markets, with lessons including “Atlas Shrugged.” It’s the fourth endowed chair at the historically black college in Charlotte.

“I don’t believe I have to advocate that people accept Ayn Rand’s philosophy,” said Patricia Roberson-Saunders, who holds the chair. Roberson-Saunders, who will present Rand with other texts, said students will benefit from reading about a world view held by “people with whom they will have to work and for whom they will have to work.”

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Faint praise and damnations

by Henry Farrell on April 11, 2008

Doug Feith, the “stupidest fucking guy on the face of the planet”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Feith, has a new book out, and the “back cover blurbs”:http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/04/advance_praise_for_war_and_dec.php are … interesting. Says Jean Edward Smith

“The fact that the policy to which he contributed was flawed from the outset in no way diminishes the historical importance of this firsthand account.”

Robert Gallucci, who hired Feith as a professor of practice at my alma mater, Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, against “vehement faculty opposition”:http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/25/news/teach.php, is scarcely more enthusiastic.

“Douglas Feith has written what will be a controversial book. It will certainly anger many readers because it takes a different position that most other accounts on the wisdom of going to war in Iraq, on what mistakes were made, and on what made them. But Feith’s is a serious work, well-documented, that presents the best defense to date of the defining policy of the Bush presidency. It is a readable account that deserves to be read and its argument debated.”

Nor is Henry Kissinger precisely fulsome in his praises (and if you’ve lost Henry Kissinger …)

“The fullest and most thoughtful statement of the Pentagon thinking prior to and in the first stages of the Iraq war. Even those, as I, who take issue with some of its conclusions will gain a better perspective from reading this book.”

And these were the blurbs they chose to promote the book …

More generally, consider this an open thread on dubious blurbs and promotional snippets taken from book reviews. My favourite example of the latter being the Irish Times‘ review of Iain Banks’ _The Wasp Factory._ (“Powells”:http://www.powells.com/partner/29956/s?kw=Iain%20Banks%20the%20Wasp%20Factory, “Amazon”:http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FWasp-Factory-Novel-Iain-Banks%2Fdp%2F0684853159%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks%26qid%3D1207883741%26sr%3D8-1&tag=henryfarrell-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=9325 )

It is a sick, sick world when the confidence and investment of an astute firm of publishers is justified by a work of unparallelled depravity. There is no denying the bizarre fertility of the author’s imagination: his brilliant dialogue, his cruel humour, his repellent inventiveness. The majority of the literate public, however, will be relieved that only reviewers are obliged to look at any of it.

How could you possibly, possibly refuse to buy a book with a blurb like that?

Stabs in the dark

by Henry Farrell on April 10, 2008

Clive Crook is probably my favourite sort-of-conservative big media commentator. But his “new piece”:http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803u/no-american-exceptionalism on ‘the End of the American Exception’ seems to me to be seriously out of whack.

That the United States stands apart is something Americans and Europeans have agreed on for a long time … Modern America has limited government, weak unions, high-powered incentives, capitalism red in tooth and claw. Post-war Europe has tax-and-spend, transport strikes, six-week vacations, and the welfare state. …Caricatures are well and good, but this one is just too much. In economic matters, America is far more like Europe, and Europe more like America, than either cares to admit. … health care … is America’s biggest social-policy exception …And it is marked for abolition. … . Consider regulation of business and finance. Few seem to question that the weight of regulation is less in the United States. In one area, anyway, this is true: Worker protections are weaker in America than in Western Europe … But think about product-safety regulation, or environmental regulation. … On regulation of corporate governance, Democrats are still calling for stricter rules … since Sarbanes Oxley, American financial and corporate regulation has been probably the most stringent and complex in the world.

…The unions are weaker here, it is said. To be sure, they have fewer members as a proportion of the workforce than in Britain, or (even more so) continental Europe. … proposed card-check legislation is expressly intended to slow and reverse the decline in union membership. This is a goal which few European governments would any longer think to embrace. In Britain it would be regarded as crazy … American unions remind me of the old-fashioned British kind. They seem anachronistically angry and assertive. … See what America’s unions have done to the auto industry. The Writers’ Guild just shut Hollywood down for several months. …I cannot think of a British union that any longer has that kind of muscle, or would think of exerting it if it did. In much of the rest of Europe, unions have become a quietly co-operative part of management more than militant champions of workers’ rights.

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Linkage

by Henry Farrell on April 10, 2008

The OSI has a “new fellowship program”:http://www.soros.org/initiatives/fellowship that may be of interest to some CT readers.

The Open Society Fellowship supports outstanding individuals from around the world. The fellowship enables innovative professionals—including journalists, activists, academics, and practitioners—to work on projects that inspire meaningful public debate, shape public policy, and generate intellectual ferment within the Open Society Institute.

The fellowship focuses on four themes: National Security and the Open Society; Citizenship, Membership and Marginalization; Strategies and Tools for Advocacy and Citizen Engagement; and Understanding Authoritarianism. OSI also supports a limited number of fellows whose work focuses on other topics within the scope of its mission.

Also, I’ve been meaning for a week to link to the inimitable “Kathy G.”:http://thegspot.typepad.com/blog/. Those of us who’ve known her in other contexts have benefited greatly from her mixture of shit-stirring feminism, sociological chops and interest in political economy; it’s great to see her join the blogosphere. “Here”:http://thegspot.typepad.com/blog/2008/04/note-to-megan-m.html and “here”:http://thegspot.typepad.com/blog/2008/04/monopsony-in-mo.html she explains to Megan McArdle what monopsony actually involves. And “here”:http://thegspot.typepad.com/blog/2008/04/can-someone-ple.html she asks with some justification if anyone can tell her why _Salon_ is publishing the “twisted, misogynist, bizarrely self-obsessed ravings of a freak like Camille Paglia?”

The death of Flickr?

by Chris Bertram on April 10, 2008

Obviously, I’m not Crooked Timber’s resident expert on the sociology of online communities, so here’s hoping that Kieran or Eszter will be along in a moment to reassure me, but, as a keen Flickr user, I’m perturbed by their decision to start allowing video. Flickr (owned by the troubled Yahoo, of course) probably has two (overlapping) kinds of user: the person who wants a repository for their snaps to show to friends and family and the person who is into photography on at least a hobbyist level who wants to interact with similar others. It also has thriving groups of various kinds based on shared interests or locality: for example my local group has 1000+ nominal members, dozens of active members, and a fairly thriving offline complement of activities (monthly meets where much beer is consumed, photowalks etc.).

All of this is threatened by the addition of video. As the photographic element is diluted and the YouTubers arrive, some photographers will find it less congenial and will choose to go elsewhere; as they go, the pool will become more dilute, leading others to take the same decision. In other words, I predict the kind of cascade effect the Mark Granovetter and others have written about. Of course, I could be wrong, and maybe the Flickr community is more robust and adaptable than I’m allowing for. SmugMug and Pbase don’t (yet) have local groups of photographers who hang out together, critique one another’s pictures and so on. But this seems a rash decision for Yahoo to make. Does it have to do so with the Microsoft bid? Maybe.

Stupid, stupid upgrade creatures

by John Holbo on April 10, 2008

I just upgraded to MS-Office 2008 for mac. God help me. I did it without reading the reviews. Now I discover custom macros are history. I don’t really care so much, except I worry that EndNote won’t play nice now. (Won’t that be lovely?) And I used to have a custom macro for converting ascii/plaintext – i.e. stripping out all the hard returns. So I could cut&paste email or a Gutenberg book, select one menu item, and get the lines to wrap instead of being all sullen and jagged out there on the right. It’s such a common problem. Now how am I going to solve it?

What’s a simple fix for converting ascii/plaintext to MS-Word?

UPDATE: OK, on reflection it’s pretty clear how to make a 4-step fix using find&replace. Having bothered to figure this out, I’ll just put the simple solution under the fold. [click to continue…]

A Country Life

by Henry Farrell on April 10, 2008

It seems to be children’s TV and organ procurement week here at CT; before I get started into something new I should probably note that Russell Arben Fox has “said everything I wanted to say”:http://inmedias.blogspot.com/2008/04/henry-farrell-and-keiran-healy-are.html in my earlier postbut has put it far more thoughtfully and eloquently. As the father of a two year old with an interest in the topic (albeit one whose TV diet is restricted to 2 hours on weekends, much to his disgruntlement), I’ve become much more intimately acquainted with the offerings of US children’s TV than I ever imagined possible or desirable. I’m especially interested in how US TV deals with the product of foreign cultures. Sometimes, it improves on them, as in the three dimensional _Noddy_ show. Not that it’s much good or anything, but the original books weren’t much cop either, and the frank racism of the original has been replaced by a soothingly multicultural Toytown in which PC Plod, oddly enough, is the only character to maintain a real English accent (I suspect serious dubbing of the UK original).

As an Irishman, I’m naturally more interested in _Jakers: The Adventures of Piggleywinks_ which is probably the most influential depiction of my native culture that millions of American children will ever be exposed to. And it’s surprisingly well done in my opinion – not classic Sesame Street good, but still not at all bad – you feel that the creators have taken some care in putting it together. Bits of the background, such as the national school ring reasonably true to my own upbringing, and even if it’s a concatenation of cliches, they’re well researched cliches. Most of the characters even have real Irish brogues (unlike “other shows with bigger budgets”:https://crookedtimber.org/2007/10/19/bad-accents/), although the grandfatherly narrator seems to have mysteriously picked up a pronounced Dublin working class accent somewhere in his peregrinations between Raloo Farm and Amerikay.

Still, there’s one glaring omission from its depiction of rural Irish life in the 1940s – there’s no mention (at least in the episodes I’ve seen) of the Roman Catholic church, or any other church for that matter. Apart from their occasional utterance of the eponymous expression of surprise, you’d think that the villagers were as godless a crowd of humanists as ever warmed the cockles of PZ Myers’ heart. I can understand why the program producers made this choice – it would be hard to tackle the role of the church in 1940’s Ireland without falling into the one set of cliches or the other, and the bits after the main show seem designed to highlight the universalities of the immigrant experience rather than the particularities of one small country. But it still feels odd to me every time I watch the program; having grown up in a small market town with less than 2,000 inhabitants myself, I can testify that the Catholic church was not only important but omnipresent. It organized and disciplined the community in good ways and in bad. When I was around nine years old or so, we were told by the headmaster of the local Christian Brother’s school (the unloved Brother Ryan – I sometimes wonder what’s happened to the vicious old bastard since) that the local cinema was to be boycotted because it had dared to show _The Life of Brian._ One boy who broke the boycott, and was caught, got several strokes of the stick in front of the class for his pains; none of us found this at all remarkable at the time. Of course, the country (and the town, on the couple of occasions I have been back through it) have changed dramatically in the interim, and not entirely for the better; while I wouldn’t want to go back to the Ireland of the 1970s, let alone the 1950s, I find the consumerism and materialism of the new Ireland pretty unpleasant in its own way too.