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The Outrage Manufacturing Process

by Michelle Dean

Slate has a big package today about “The Year In Outrage.” It’s thought-provoking, worth your time and effort.

I’d rather talk about it laterally, though, than re-litigate old social media controversies. There’s plenty enough of the latter in the Slate thing. Let’s, instead, consider the outrage manufacturing process, which I think is more complicated than usually described. You can do it half by accident. You know, by joking on Twitter.

For example: Last night I was reading Twitter when a link came into my feed. It was to an Los Angeles Review of Books essay about Joan Didion. I clicked.

The first sentence of the piece was a run-on sentence. Then it made proud reference to the author’s attendance at literary parties. I persevered. I was then rewarded with this paragraph:

I hope I don’t seem too outraged to you when I say that this is not a good paragraph about Joan Didion. It tells you nothing about Didion. It also doesn’t tell you much about the writer, Emmett Rensin, other than his lack of apparent shame. It would be a pretty embarrassing paragraph to record in your private journal. But there it was, published by the Los Angeles Review of Books. The Los Angeles Review of Books is edited. An editor read this paragraph, and published it.

I have, in the course of researching a book that touches on Didion, read a great deal of writing about her. It is worse than you’d expect, and a lot of people expect bad writing about Didion. I like to point out a 1970 Los Angeles Times profile that called Didion a “haunted elf.” There are a lot of reasons why this writing is bad, but one is certainly the strong personal feelings Didion’s work seems to evoke. These personal feelings – say, “desire” – then run away with whatever self-control the writer-about-Didion ordinarily possesses.

There is probably a good, self-aware piece to be written about all of that. This Didion piece is plainly not that piece.

I found this paragraph so bad, in a funny way, that I took the screenshot you see above. Then I posted it to Twitter. People responded. My friends and I made some jokes. I decided to add, “My cat just threw up. I think she saw the paragraph about Joan Didion.” I felt momentarily better after a long day. I went to bed.

Because now, waking up this morning and watching everyone chatter about outrage, I feel culpable. In fact, I’ve now deleted that second tweet because it feels mean, the morning after. Obviously we’re talking about a much smaller scale than social media controversies tend to reach. But I’ve done just what everyone typically describes as a gesture of outrage: I’ve found something I think is bad, I’ve lifted it out of context, and I’ve explained why. As a data point, I don’t feel particularly angry about it. More… bemused.

But someone else might think I’m stoking outrage. And then write an editorial about what a terrible person I am for posting this out of context. And then: here I am, who with my laughter at this bad paragraph about Joan Didion, am participating in a force that is destroying culture.

Or… not?

Terrorstan

by Dish Staff

Before Tuesday’s horrific attack on an army school, Carl Bialik grimly notes, Pakistan’s terrorism problem was on a downward trend, from utterly horrifying to just god-awful:

More than 3,000 Pakistani civilians died in terrorist attacks in both 2012 and 2013, according to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, which monitors violence in the region. This year, through Sunday, 1,595 civilians had died, including 26 this month. Twenty-six is a horrific total for most countries in a year — 20 more than the number killed in all of 2013 in the U.S., which has roughly 75 percent more residents than Pakistan. But it’s also a monthly rate of about 58 civilians, the fewest killed in a month in Pakistan since 56 civilians died in August 2007. Tuesday’s attack reversed that modest progress; December now is the deadliest month since February.

So how did Pakistan become so unmanageably violent? In part, Matthew Green blames the government’s longstanding policy of cultivating ties with some militants in order to fight others:

First, and most important, Pakistan’s security establishment has to make a permanent break with its decades-long romance with jihadi proxies. The distinction that some in the nation’s security apparatus draw between “good Taliban” — shorthand for groups who serve their regional interests — and “bad Taliban” — militants at war with the state — must end. … The upshot is that religious extremists and allied Kalashnikov-toting thugs now wield a far greater degree of influence over Pakistani society than their small constituencies might otherwise project. As long as nobody is quite sure where the military and its feared intelligence agencies stand in relation to jihadis, liberal politicians, community leaders and moderate religious voices rightly assume they will live longer by keeping quiet.

“When a government coddles and finances terrorist groups for this long,” Omer Aziz argues, ” it is only a matter of time before the jihadists start attacking their masters and eventually their fellow citizens”:

It was not always so. In the 1970s, Pakistan was a fairly liberal society. When Paul McCartney landed in Pakistan in 1964, he was swarmed. That there was once a vibrant Jewish community in Karachi has all been forgotten. The same Peshawar where militants roam freely was even once part of the famous ‘Hippie Trail’ that brought adventurous Westerners to South Asia. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, a barrister trained in England who founded what was then named the Dominion of Pakistan, told his newly independent nation: “You are free to go to your temples. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed.” This imagined community of liberal Muslims has been extirpated in favor of a conservatively Islamic state.

While successive Pakistani governments supported terrorist groups, so they also embarked on the politically expedient but morally criminal mission of Islamizing the country, transforming Pakistan from a state for Muslims into a Muslim state. … An entire generation was born into a society coarsened by years of religious fundamentalism where it remains a widely-held opinion that Malala Yousefzai is a CIA spy.

It’s also high time, in Juan Cole’s opinion, for Pakistan to take real responsibility for governing and developing its dirt-poor, lawless northwest:

[T]he Federally Administered Tribal areas or FATA need to be made a province and integrated into the Pakistani state. The standard of living of people in Waziristan is extremely low. Maybe some of the investment of China in Pakistan could be slotted for FATA. This is an area where some 800,000 people have been displaced by the Pakistani military campaign against militants in North Waziristan. There are torture facilities and bomb-making workshops. These need to be rolled up and FATA needs to be developed.

In response to the massacre, Pakistan will step up its anti-terror operations:

“We cannot take a step back from this war against terrorism,” Nawaz Sharif said, addressing a hastily called meeting of political parties in Peshawar, where Tuesday’s horrific school attack occurred. The fight would spill over “on the Afghan side of the border,” he added, after speaking with Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. It was not clear what actions that might entail. But such a cross-border offensive would mark a significant shift in Pakistan’s tactics against Taliban militants, whose strongholds and supply lines straddle the frontier.

Rogin and Lake expect the US to deepen its involvement:

Inside the Obama administration, officials have been divided between those who believe that the TTP represents primarily a threat to Pakistan and those who believe the U.S. has a real national-security interest in helping the Pakistani military destroy the group. But due to the seriousness of this attack, the Obama administration will now feel compelled to more heavily support the Pakistani military as the war against the TTP escalates and the implications for the entire country’s future become more pronounced.

That may be especially true now that the TTP, as Sami Yousafzai and Christopher Dickey report, claims to be coming for us next:

In fact, the terror networks to which the TTP is linked have grown more complex and treacherous than ever, with some factions connecting not only to al Qaeda but to the so-called Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL) that now controls large swathes of Syria and Iraq. And while analysts think it is unlikely the TTP can mount an attack against American targets inside America again soon, the TTP said it butchered the children in Peshawar specifically because of the U.S.-backed campaign against it.

Amanda Taub, meanwhile, offers another possible explanation for Tuesday’s carnage, namely internal power struggles within the Taliban:

The TTP has split into multiple factions in recent months. A number of moderate factions have made peace with the government, Staniland explained, so that what is left behind is an increasingly radical core that is splintering into different groups. That process was accelerated when Maulana Fazlullah, an outsider who formerly headed a group of militants in Pakistan’s Swat district, took command last year. He has been a divisive leader, causing the powerful Messud family to leave and form its own organization. Competition for power within an armed group or between different splintering factions often leads to increased violence, as leaders jockey to prove their authority and improve their reputations by carrying out ever more audacious or brutal attacks.

But Saim Saeed can’t imagine how the TTP will score PR points by butchering innocent kids:

the Taliban have just taken on the unenviable task of explaining how murdering scores of innocent children is a good thing for Islam. No one, no one, will support the Taliban after this. The attack was even condemned by Hafiz Saeed, whose Jama’at-ud-Da’wah is the subject of United Nation’s sanctions. Hardline mullahs may have twisted and contorted Islam to endorse blasphemy laws, child marriages and jihad against America and India, but even they will have a tough time arguing that this attack somehow fulfills their purpose. They could perhaps argue this was an Indian or American conspiracy, but that argument is also slowly losing credibility, not least by the Taliban’s own desperate attempts to claim this attack.

The depressing situation leaves Pankaj Mishra at a loss:

Something more than just economic and political distress must explain the worldwide proliferation of men who espouse spine-chilling convictions and fantasies of mass murder. We cannot afford to renounce the possibility of achieving a more democratic, free and just society through political change. Yet we can no longer believe that the enabling conditions of nihilistic violence or the apocalyptic mind-set can be removed by reform or modification of public policy alone, let alone by military retaliation.

The blood of innocent children rouses us to drastic action. But it is not cowardly to acknowledge problems to which there are no stock sociopolitical remedies, and to grasp the unprecedented nature of the threats in our time to human life, freedom and dignity. Certainly, however deep our revulsion to atrocities perpetrated by all sides — sectarian or secular, governments or terrorists — it won’t help to blame religion for a phenomenon that is so clearly rooted in a catastrophic loss of the religious sense.

Dissent Of The Day

by Will Wilkinson

A reader rebuts me:

Wilkinson’s argument amounts to saying that a president with personal connections in government (via a dynasty for example) would be a good counter to overly independent, unaccountable bureaucracies such as the CIA. The Bush dynasty is the perfect example of the reverse. George HW Bush was the director of the CIA. Before Dick Cheney was George W. Bush’s vice-president and man behind the curtain, he worked in the White House under Nixon and was GWHB’s Secretary of Defense. Does Wilkinson think that Dubya’s personal connections made the CIA more accountable? Probably not. And Dubya would be one more personal connection between Jeb and war crimes. All that would make torture and CIA unaccountability more likely, not less.

He closes with the glib pontification, “And the enormous, deadly, often malign power of the sprawling American security state makes it worth asking whether a decent president who isn’t really in charge is better than an odious one who is.” To which the answer is yes. Of course. I’ll take things not getting better over things actively getting worse any day. As depressing as a Jeb vs. Hillary race may be, the personal connections to the CIA are one of the best reasons there is to vote for anybody but Bush.

At best, Wilkinson could argue that personal connections in government amount to more power (but if that’s what he meant, it’s so obvious it’s trivial). But that only makes it more important to critically examine what those connections are.

These are all great points. As I said, these were speculative thoughts, and I’m not at all happy about where they lead. But I think the possible strengths of dynastic presidents are worth taking seriously.

It had occurred to me that George W. Bush puts a hitch in the argument. With W., I think we have a case of a president who is somewhat oddly idealistic and ideological, given his father’s very realpolitik background, who really believes his own airy nonsense about the axis of evil and the universal desire for democracy, that America really is an agent of providence in history. In his case, I think his starry-eyed softness was exploited by flinty Bush-machine consiglieri, such as Cheney. So it may well be that a slightly oblivious dynastic president, by bringing with him so many well-connected Machiavellian old hands, is more likely than an inexperienced but shrewd newbie, such as Obama, to get played by his team. But Jeb is the smart Bush, right?

And what about Obama’s dismal failure to make good on his campaign promises about Guantanamo and the wars and transparency and torture and on and on and on? I don’t think Obama was insincere in those promises. I think he got into office without much of an independent network in place and the doyens of the security state were able to scare him into believing that the only responsible thing to do was what they wanted to do. Now, it may well be that Hillary or Jeb would want to do what the generals and spies want, anyway. But if they don’t, they’ll be in a better position to do it.

But How Will It Play In Miami?

by Dish Staff

The supposedly implacable, politically powerful bloc of Cuban exile voters in southern Florida has long been one of the obstacles to a rapprochement with Cuba, but Annie Lowrey points out that this bloc isn’t as solidly Republican or pro-embargo as it used to be:

Is there a chance that President Obama’s policy might swing some Cuban-Americans back towards the Republican Party? Certainly, and we won’t know for sure until we get new polling data, likely in a number of weeks. But it is worth noting that those younger Cuban-Americans tend to be much more supportive of diplomatic normalization than their older counterparts. A recent Florida International University poll found that 90 percent of young Cuban-Americans in Miami-Dade County — 90 percent! — favor having diplomatic relations with Havana. A similar proportion support lifting the travel ban, and just more than 60 percent of young Cuban-Americans support ending the embargo.

Nate Cohn looks at some other evidence that Cuba just isn’t that much of a political flashpoint in Florida anymore:

It’s hard to know whether Mr. Obama’s decision will move the needle among Cuban-American voters. Polling data reflecting Mr. Obama’s decision, which will arrive in a few weeks, will tell us more. Nonetheless, the available polling data suggests that many Cuban-American voters are receptive to restoring diplomatic relations with Cuba, including 68 percent in an F.I.U.poll and 79 percent in an Atlantic Council poll (although the sample was extremely small).

Perhaps the more telling evidence, though, is that Mr. Obama managed to make substantial gains among Cuban-Americans even though he was open to revising Cuba policy. Mr. Crist also ran on a more open Cuba policy and won the Cuban-American vote in the exit polls last month. The fact that Mr. Crist’s advisers thought it strategic to emphasize the issue may be an indication of what their polling data showed. The uninspired Republican response in prior campaigns may be telling in its own right. Republicans didn’t exactly blanket the Miami media market with ads about Mr. Obama’s Cuba policy, which might also be an indication of how they think the issue plays.

Tell that to Marco Rubio, who could very well run for president wearing this issue on his sleeve. Russell Berman doubts such a strategy would get him very far, though:

Polls show more and more Americans support normalizing relations with Cuba, and the trend even extends to Rubio’s cohort of Cuban-Americans. Rubio dismissed talk of the 2016 race on Wednesday, “out of respect for the gravity of the issue,” he said. And he didn’t have much to say about the polling, either. “This is not a political thing,” he said. “I don’t care if polls say the 99 percent of the people support normalizing relations with Cuba.” It’s a principled stand, sure, but it probably won’t make his increasingly arduous journey to the White House any easier.

Larison shakes his head at Rubio’s insistence that opening diplomatic channels with Cuba is beyond the pale:

It’s important to repeat again and again that establishing normal diplomatic relations is the bare minimum of engagement with another country. The U.S. maintains normal relations with all kinds of governments, including some of the very worst in the world. That isn’t because we approve of everything they do, nor is it because we are doing them any favors by having normal relations, but because this is the kind of relationship all governments seek to have with each other except in times of crisis or war. There is no good reason for the U.S. and Cuba not to have normal relations today, and so we should have them. If the U.S. refused to have normal relations with every state because of its authoritarian character or the abuses it has committed, as Rubio claims to want, it would have to shut down its embassies in half the countries around the world.

(Chart from Philip Bump.)

Losing Your Faith In Santa

by Dish Staff

When did you stop believing in Santa Claus? Email us your tales of childhood disillusionment and we’ll post the most interesting ones. To start us off, here’s a handful of stories from Dish staffers. Managing editor Chas:

Through a stroke of creative genius, my parents delayed my realization about Santa by at least a few years. When I was 4 or 5, they forged a letter from Santa in which they not only thanked my sister and me for leaving some food, pizza, for the reindeer, but they actually printed, in pizza sauce, a single hoof print on the letter. This became irrefutable evidence of the existence of Santa and his reindeer, which I held tight to for years as more and more classmates and friends learned the truth and attempted to convince me. I remember actually citing the letter in one particularly contentious debate around the lunch table in 4th grade. Finally, as with many, it was my own snooping around for presents that finally exposed the lie. I found a Sega Genesis box with a price tag in my parent’s closet, and then on Christmas morning it was one of the gifts I’d received from Santa.

Thinking back I think the hoof print was actually from one of our cats, so how I mistook it for a hoof I have no idea. Also, you’d think the similar handwriting would be a dead-giveaway too.

Dishtern Phoebe:

As a child – not sure how old – I was at a Christmas party for my father’s work, and I confessed to the Santa that I was Jewish. The man in the Santa suit, a colleague of my father’s, told me not to worry – he was Jewish, too.

Associate editor Tracy:

As a four-year-old, I had the bright idea of asking Santa to sign the note I left out with his milk and cookies. So with my parents’ help, I drafted an entreaty along these lines:

Dear Santa:
Are you real? If so, please sign below.
Love,
Tracy

No signature, I reasoned, no Santa. So I was delighted to see the letter signed in big block letters on Christmas Day.

It wasn’t long before I realized that I could use the same method to determine whether God existed. And since God was a) invisible and b) knew everything, I decided to hide my letter in the bottom of a stationery drawer, telling no one. So I crossed out “Santa,” wrote “God,” and waited overnight for the Big Guy to work his magic.

When I saw the letter unsigned the next day, I handled it with aplomb. I was less disappointed that God evidently didn’t exist – even then I had my doubts – and more pleased that my little experiment had worked. And besides, I still had Santa.

Literary editor Matt:

My fall from faith in Santa began with a simple question: how did Santa deliver my gifts if our house didn’t have a chimney? A chimney was necessary, of course, because Santa and his reindeer landed on the roof, not in the street. It didn’t make sense for Santa to shimmy down the side of the house and walk through our (presumably locked) front door. My parents told me Santa handled it by touching his nose – a move that magically placed the presents under the tree. I was placated for awhile, but the seeds of doubt were sown.

Why Not Release The Interview Online?

by Dish Staff

James Poniewozik wants the film made available on demand – now:

Maybe Sony is waiting to see if it can put the film in theaters later; maybe it’s afraid of further cyber repercussions. But if this is an issue of principle, then act like it. Americans have broadband, big-screen TVs, and plenty of free time around Christmas. Give us the chance to make our own statement, if we so choose, to show that we don’t want bullies squelching our expression.

Artists and audiences lost an unprecedented battle here. But we can still win the war, even if we have to do it in our living rooms.

Aisha Harris agrees:

People started floating this idea more than a week ago, but it has picked up momentum in the wake of the latest threats, with screenwriter Arash Amel and BuzzFeed’s Matthew Zeitlin both suggesting it on Twitter last night. On Wednesday morning The Verge made the case.

And they’re right: By releasing The Interview on demand, Sony will allow the public to view the film (or not) without the fear of any possible retaliation at a movie theater. And it will make clear to those behind the hacks and the threats that they cannot force censorship of this film. It may be a goofy comedy, but it is still expression, and Sony should stand behind its right to exist.

Walt Hickey notes that “nobody’s been willing to release a major, heavily advertised motion picture straight to without hitting theaters first”:

The closest thing we have to data on VOD’s potential is “Snowpiercer,” the 2014 sci-fi movie/class parable that the Weinstein Co. made available for digital purchase two weeks after its theatrical release. The results were really interesting. The film made $3.8 million in its first two weeks on VOD, compared to $3.9 million over its first five weeks in theaters, according to Variety’s reporting.

That’s a data point, but it’s not enough to draw any conclusions. We don’t have multiple instances of studios seriously kicking the tires of VOD for major theatrical releases. And that’s the kind of data that — hypothetically, if VOD is really worth the hype — could potentially persuade studios to look into the distribution medium as their first avenue of release.

David Sims’ take:

[B]ecause of on-demand technology, The Interview could very well benefit, in a cruel and unusual sort of way, from all this bizarre publicity. Were the situation not so financially harmful and publicly embarrassing for Sony, it’d be easy to conspiratorially regard it as some kind of high-concept publicity stunt to convince us of The Interview’s political bravery.

Evie Nagy throws cold water on this plan:

Despite being an enormous entertainment corporation, Sony Pictures does not work alone in distribution, and this includes in VOD technology. Sony could upload the movie to the web on its own—but in order to get The Interview onto your connected TV, Roku, Xbox, or other streaming-enabled device, Sony has to work with partners who own the technology and platforms. The one platform they do own—PlayStation—does not have a large enough user base to get the film to the masses.

The risk to those partners with this particular film is, of course, becoming the target of a new cyber attack. And despite the cutting-edge aspect of being part of such a release, the payday likely wouldn’t be worth the risk: According to sources who work in the VOD space (who asked not to be identified by name), all seven major studios command very large royalties—in the 80% range—for the first two weeks after release. Sony could lower that rate for The Interview, but if they do that once, it’s possible that no one would ever pay them that much again.

The End of Serial, Part Two

by Michelle Dean

Well, it’s over. And naturally, in the way of Serial, my view on it is an internally incoherent, conflicted mess.

I suppose if you are afraid of spoilers you’d better stop reading here, though I’ve always thought the idea of being “spoiled” maps awkwardly onto non-fiction.

But I can’t write about Serial without calling today’s episode “meandering.” Over close to an hour, Koenig wandered through new interviews that didn’t resolve any questions, dropped a quick serial killer theory into the mix and digressed for quite awhile about AT&T billing practices. And then she came to a careful, qualified and ultimately inconclusive, er, conclusion:

If you asked me to swear that Adnan Syed is innocent, I couldn’t do it. I nurse doubt. I don’t like that I do, but I do. I mean most of the time I think he didn’t do it.

My first thought was that a lot of people are going to write editorials about how unsatisfactory an ending this was. That was a theme of Serial commentary for the beginning: people were begging for the catharsis of a good ending. They were maybe begging for it a little too hard, myself included. Some people wanted a good story; others wanted good reporting. I tend to agree with the Texas Monthly‘s Pamela Colloff, who I interviewed for the Guardian last week about Serial. I think it’s better to have some idea where you’re going with a story, as a reporter, before you put it in front of the public.

But overnight I got to thinking about the analogy people sometimes draw between Serial and the Paradise Lost documentaries about the West Memphis Three. It’s certainly true that the first of those did more or less what Serial did. Gathering a great deal of information about an unsatisfying case up in its arms and then dumping it onto the screen, the documentarians Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky simply sowed doubt. In fact, the first two documentaries point the finger at what was ultimately determined to be the wrong alternative suspect, if anything. They were just as digressive and speculative as Serial. And yet: those documentaries did ultimately lead to the West Memphis Three getting out of prison.

Though even now, after their release, it’s still not clear who murdered the three children in Robin Hood Hills. And even though it pretty clearly wasn’t Damien Echols, Jesse Miskelley, and Jason Baldwin, technically, on paper, they haven’t been exonerated. They entered an Alford plea, which is something of a declaration of stalemate where the truth is concerned. So even the catharsis of that ending was a little false, a little ersatz.

A lot about innocence and guilt is about gut feeling. Jurors vote based on gut feelings. And at least Koenig’s honest about what’s animating hers:

For big reasons, like the utter lack of evidence but also small reasons, things he said to me just off the cuff, or moments when he’s cried on the phone and tried to stifle it so I wouldn’t hear.

I also have this gut feeling that Syed is innocent, particularly if I’m answering the narrow question of whether he should have been convicted here. There was a really thin evidentiary record. Really thin. Like most Serial obsessives, I’ve looked at far more documents than the show provided. They make it clear that the state’s theory of the case is complete hogwash. Syed was convicted mostly because of the alchemy of the trial. He was screwed, judicially speaking, by the witches’ brew of a disorganized defense lawyer, an eyewitness who seems to have been relatively convincing on the stand but who was also clearly coached (outside the view of jurors) to get his testimony to match a cell phone call sheet, a certain amount of ignorance on the part of the jurors about Islam and a charming, lucid defendant who was instructed not to take the stand.

But just as I have views of how the evidence was presented at trial, I’ve found some of Serial’s choices utterly baffling. The worst one, by my lights, was that we got no context on the wider picture of justice in Baltimore in 1999. Koenig dutifully related that the prosecutor had stepped out of line when he provided the main state’s witness, Jay, with free private counsel. What she either could not or did not explain was whether prosecutorial misconduct of this kind was rampant in Baltimore. She also seemed rather late to the party in only addressing the role of prejudice against Muslims in the case. She got to it in episode 10 of 12, in a case where Islam was the explicit lynchpin of the motive. And even then, her coverage of it was cursory, glancing. It was too little, too late.

Other versions of that sort of criticism appear here, and here. I mostly held my tongue on it until the end because I agreed with those who said that it seemed a little unfair to ding Serial for it until the show was over. There was always the possibility, I agreed, that Koenig wanted to bring it up later for story structure reasons, for clarity. I might quibble with how she presented things but I couldn’t make any definitive statement while there were still new episodes left.

But here we are at the end, and: nothing about the larger criminal justice system in Baltimore was said. The religious bias questions were never touched again.

Even writing this I feel a little churlish. As I said yesterday, I’ve done enough reporting to see that Serial simply dramatized what an imperfect quest for the truth reporting can be. That’s why journalists, in particular, are obsessed with it; they see their own flaws reflected back at them, I think, though only the best are willing to admit it.

And even if the Monday-morning quarterbacking was annoying at times, I think it was also part of the point. Half the point of serializing any story is inciting the fervent, week-by-week breathless curiosity of the masses. You can’t fault them for responding accordingly. I’d hoped at some point Koenig might acknowledge it in the show itself, talk about how it might have shaped her. But she’s clearly not much for self-conscious meta-journalism. She insisted to the New York Times magazine, “I’m a reporter.”

And I keep thinking about how she said that one “bare fact” was key to her gut feeling:

“Why on earth would a guilty man agree to let me do this story, unless he was cocky to the point of delusion?”

Five million listeners, countless hours of human effort expended and no exoneration on the horizon later, it’s still a good question.

(Photo of Adnan Syed from Serial.)

Jeb’s Electability Argument

by Dish Staff

Kilgore finds it wanting:

[D]espite his name ID, his resume, and his “centrist” positions on at least some subjects, this on-paper “winner” is not very popular with the general electorate. In two solid years of being pitted against Hillary Clinton in polls, Bush has not led a single one, and trails her in the latest RealClearPolitics average by over 9%. That’s a poorer margin than for Ryan (6%), Christie (7%), and Huckabee (8%), and about the same as for Paul. Ted Cruz is the only regularly polled putative GOP candidate running significantly worse than Bush against HRC (an RCP average gap of 13%), and that’s largely because he’s far less well-known.

Hillary may currently beat him in the polls, but Frum insists that Jeb entering the race is bad news for her:

Republicans nominate septuagenarians like Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole, and John McCain; Democrats nominate spry 40-somethings like John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama. The presidential campaign of yet another Bush epitomizes the Republican tendency to look backwards. Yet Hillary Clinton, who’ll be nearly as old on Election Day 2016 as was Ronald Reagan on Election Day 1980, epitomizes an equivalent Democratic tendency—and even more so. “To those who say it was never so, that America’s not been better, I say you’re wrong. And I know because I was there. And I have seen it. And I remember,” Bob Dole said in his acceptance speech at the 1996 Republican Convention. Hillary Clinton likewise rests her political case on nostalgia for days gone by, in her case, the 1990s. Republicans understandably speak to the old: Those are their voters. Democrats need to mobilize the young. The more often Democrats hear the 2016 race compared to that other Bush-Clinton race a quarter-century ago, the more they’re liable to wonder: Shouldn’t the party that talks most about “change” be able to offer something a little more fresh?

(Chart from HuffPo)

On The Right Not To Be “Triggered”

by Will Wilkinson

Michelle’s post on the the difficulty of teaching rape law in this, the age of the “trigger warning,” put me in mind of my graying Gen-Xer suspicions that kids these days are entitled precious overdramatic snowflakes too poignantly damaged by their not-very-harsh lives to conduct adult conversations about adult topics, and that this triggering business is bosh.

Trauma is all-too-real, and experiences that throw those who have been traumatized back into painful memories of their trauma are all-too-real. But how common is it, really? How important is it, really, to avoid triggering events? Is not being reminded of a trauma others cannot be reasonably expected to know anything about the sort of thing to which we might be morally entitled? Does anyone have a right not to be triggered, such that we’re all obligated not to do it? Is there any science about this that might help answer these question? It turns out there is! And because it confirms my biases I am eager to share it with you.

According to this useful round-up of the relevant research by Richard J. McNally, a Harvard professor of psychology, here are the main nuggets about triggering. So, most people who have been traumatized don’t develop post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD is fairly common among victims of sexual assault, though about half of those who have been raped recover from their trauma in a few months. But what about the “triggering” stuff? That’s what I’m most interested in. Here’s McNally:

Trigger warnings are designed to help survivors avoid reminders of their trauma, thereby preventing emotional discomfort. Yet avoidance reinforces PTSD. Conversely, systematic exposure to triggers and the memories they provoke is the most effective means of overcoming the disorder.

Enabling avoidance may make PTSD worse. Sarah Roff, a psychiatrist, has sounded the same note in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

As a psychiatrist, I nonetheless have to question whether trigger warnings are in such students’ best interests. One of the cardinal symptoms of PTSD is avoidance, which can become the most impairing symptom of all. If someone has been so affected by an event in her life that reading a description of a rape in Ovid’s Metamorphoses can trigger nightmares, flashbacks, and panic attacks, she is likely to be functionally impaired in areas of her life well beyond the classroom. The solution is not to help these students dig themselves further into a life of fear and avoidance by allowing them to keep away from upsetting material.

Now, this does not imply that we ought to go around trying to trigger memories of trauma in order to confer upon the traumatized the therapeutic benefits of facing their troubles head-on. That kind of intentional confrontation ought to occur in a controlled, clinical context. But it seems clear enough that catering to avoidance by offering speculative warnings and by tiptoeing around possibly sensitive subjects doesn’t really help, and might even hurt a little. It seems pretty implausible that teachers and writers might have some kind of general obligation to do something that doesn’t really help and might even make things worse, doesn’t it?

Roff goes on to make an interesting point that had not occurred to me. Triggering works through a sometimes unpredictable associative logic, making it very hard to avoid stumbling into potentially triggering territory. She writes:

I am also skeptical that labeling sensitive material with trigger warnings will prevent distress. The scientific literature about trauma teaches us that it seeps into people’s lives by networks of association. Someone who has been raped by a man in a yellow shirt at a bus stop may start avoiding not only men, but bus stops and perhaps even anyone wearing yellow. A soldier who has seen a comrade killed by a roadside explosive device may come to avoid not just parked vehicles, but also civilians who look like the people he or she saw right before the device exploded. Since triggers are a contagious phenomenon, there will never be enough trigger warnings to keep up with them. It should not be the job of college educators to foster this process.

Moreover, it will be a shame, and a deep loss, if our educational culture becomes so painfully sensitive, so leery of any subject that might make anyone feel anxious and uncomfortable, that it becomes impossible to intelligently examine the dark side of the human experience in the classroom. We don’t need the pitiless anti-PC provocation to which some conservatives seem to prone, but we do need a firm, mature insistence that the serious, detailed collective exploration of violence, sex, war, pain, and death is simply too important to defer because of any one person’s troubled autobiography.

Would You Report Your Rape? Ctd

by Dish Staff

This reader thread, sparked by Danielle Campoamor’s story, is among the most powerful ones we’ve had this year. So far we’ve heard from a convict who was raped in prison, a white coed assaulted by a black basketball star, a young teenager sexually abused by his teacher, a followup from a woman who told us about her rape, and several others. Our next installment is from a gay reader – with an unexpected twist:

When I was 26, I was raped while traveling to London. I stayed several days longer than my straight friends and decided to go hit up the gay bars after they left. I met a guy from Germany, we danced and decided to go back to my hotel room. At some point he started to try to put it in. I told him that I wasn’t bottoming unless he wore a condom and that I didn’t have any. He held me down and went at it anyway. Which is the dictionary definition of rape, isn’t it?

I did not report the incident immediately and waited till I returned to the US several days later to seek treatment. I was honest with the doctor about what happened. She exerted extreme pressure on me to report the incident and get counseling. The process of trying to report such a crime is horrible. The police engaged in every behavior victim’s advocates dislike; victim blaming, disbelief, and homophobia were a constant.

The counseling service was likewise useless. I didn’t receive a return call about my situation for nearly two weeks. The woman who did call me back made it clear that she didn’t think my incident was worthy and then offered me a time-slot months in the future. I ended up just scheduling an appointment with my normal psychologist to discuss the incident.

I felt horrible and I wasn’t even traumatized by the rape itself. I couldn’t imagine what dealing with this bullshit and an actual traumatic experience would be like. I enjoyed that night with the German – a lot actually. He stayed the night, we hung out the next day and I stayed at his hotel that night. We had breakfast the next morning and said our goodbyes. I’m Facebook friends with him now. I expect to travel to Germany this summer to visit friends and we’re actively planning on meeting up for a day or two in Berlin.

Sex is a powerful experience. Like any powerful experience you can get hurt. I took a risk going out and picking up a random person to sleep with. I could have been very badly hurt but I wasnt. I did not contract any STDs or get physically hurt – both real possibilities. I learned to take some basic precautions and be prepared. I’ve started on PreP. I make sure to qualify hookups more than I used to.

I’ve also learned that I can’t be open about my experience because it doesn’t fit the narrative. I’ve literally had people blow up at me when I admitted that he’s apologized and I’ve forgiven him. I’ve learned never to suggest that other people might feel similarly; that makes me a rape-apologist. In the end, I’m not honest about my experience because too many people think they can cherry-pick ideas that validate their preferred narrative. But that’s the crux of the problem, isn’t it?