I just spent an hour trying to make my way through the Popage – I had forgotten that the papal procession would be wending its way along Pennsylvania Avenue, which inconveniently cuts between my Metro station and my office. Eventually, the Pope made his way through, waving at the cheering crowds on both sides of the street, but even afterwards the street was closed (for some unexplained reason which I suspect had more to do with DC police overtime than security needs, they aren’t letting people cross the street again for another couple of hours).

It was an interesting contrast with the last time that I had seen a Pope in person – when John Paul II came to visit Ireland in 1979, I, along with a very significant chunk of the rest of the population, went to see him. This was probably the high-water mark of the Catholic Church’s influence in Ireland – the 1980s saw a series of largely successful defensive actions against encroaching secularism, while the 1990s saw a series of unsuccessful ones against teh gay (finally legalized in 1993), the introduction of condoms (which had previously been available only by prescription in order to try to limit their use to married couples), divorce, and the right to travel to obtain an abortion.

In particular, I was struck by the similarities between the 1979 Popemobile and the 2008 version – either the engineers haven’t much imagination, or there isn’t all that much you can do to improve the basic design (although I don’t remember the original having bulletproof glass). Nor was the 1979 experience complicated by evangelical Christians with bullhorns vigorously denouncing ‘false religion’ and telling the cheering nuns and folks in Pope Benedict t-shirts that they were all going to go to hell unless they were born again in Christ. Finally, I was intrigued by this sign (apologies for blurriness of photo; the camera on my phone is garbage), which seemed to me to have dark undertones that were presumably not intended by the person who was waving it about.

Who would win in a fight between the Rhythm Bug and the Rhythm Thief? (By the by, I think the Swingology Prof. of Katnip Kollege could go toe to toe with Roosevelt Franklin any day.)

This being a blog with global reach, you never know whether what you take to be exotic isn’t mundane in the region where your snarky fellow-blogger or commenter lives or comes from. So, with that caveat, I report that I had “squirrel cocotte” for my dinner last night, with, appropriately enough, hazelnuts. Now I’ve ticked it off the list of stuff I’ve eaten, I probably won’t choose it again from a menu, but nor would I turn it down if offered by a friend. Dark, intense, a bit like venison, with hints of chocolate (since you ask).

I know that last week was children’s television week at CT, but I thought I’d just note that the Richard Greene version of The Adventures of Robin Hood is finally out on DVD in the US (it’s been available for years in the UK, and a few episodes have been available on region 1 in dollar stores for a while, but not the whole first series), and is almost free at amazon. This was Lew Grade’s first real foray into making ambitious television, and was written, in large part, by blacklisted and self-exiled Hollywood writers (I met Norma Barzman several times when I lived in LA; I was somewhat in awe of her and am only glad that I didn’t know then that she wrote for Robin Hood, or I would have been an embarrassing wreck. Like most Europeans of my generation I’m intensely grateful to the blacklisters for sending all those talented and decent people to start up TV for us). Watching it today, it holds up amazingly well — the film quality is excellent, the scripts are wry and well-plotted, and the acting is excellent (for a kid’s show) with major future stars turning up in nearly every episode. It compares very favourably with Disney’s Davy Crockett, which I also watched with my girls. Robin is a socialist, of course (very much in the Bows Against the Barons mould) and never commits violence in excess of what is needed, whereas Davy Crockett is full of morally dubious bloodbaths, and scripted….lightly. Highly Recommended — whether you have kids or not, frankly.

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!

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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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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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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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?