Month: December 2004

Christopher Caldwell paints a dire portrait of Holland. Theo van Gogh’s murder at the hands of Islamists has shattered the multicultural consensus, and the country is in the grip of what might be called a 1930s moment. Political certainties have been undermined. Populist resentment of foreign-born Muslims, many of whom have built a kind of authoritarian counterculture in the home of “post-Christian” avant-garde tolerance, resonates widely. The threat of low-level civil war hangs overhead as outspoken opponents of the Islamists surround themselves with armed guards. It makes you think America’s woes are pretty damn manageable.

This is the nightmare flipside of the West’s acquiescence in tyranny outside its own charmed circle. President Bush, whatever else you may think of him, has broken with this, if only out of necessity. For many in Europe, this acquiescence has, bizarrely, become a source of moral vanity. These dictatorships we can’t hope to understand, their sovereignty sacrosanct, beget chauvinism and desperate poverty, which in turn begets the emigration of spiritually battered, xenophobic, and occasionally violent people. The chickens are coming home to roost.

Sasha Polakow-Suransky, a good friend, approached the issue from a very different angle two and a half years ago in The American Prospect. See what you think.

THEORY OF GRAMBO: I’ve been puzzling over Whatevs.org. I’ve been struggling to understand exactly why this website is so transcendently dope. Is it the endless hilarity? Of course, that’s a part of it, but there’s something else. Consider that celebrity gossip has long been seen as the province of women. Because said gossip is central to Grambo’s beat, you can say there’s something “feminine” about his work. At the same time, he clearly lusts after a wide array of “gamtastic” celebrity stunners, as evidenced by the many salacious snapshots that pepper Grambo’s electric prose. This is classically coded as “masculine.” His synthetic language-call it the “Grammar of Grambo,” “Gramboese”-represents an unlikely fusion of girlish tween-speak and frat-boy argot. He represents The D with a ferocity unmatched by the most formidable Kabbage Patch Piru or Ujima Village Blood, and yet I understand him to be a college-educated advertising executive. What gives?

I’ve determined that Whatevs.org represents a sustained assault on our collective mind-state, and that it threatens to reverse the technicization of the lifeworld, in the process obliterating industrial civilization and restoring the planet to a prelapsarian state, when man lived peacefully with dinosaurs in “clans” not unlike the “Clan of the Cave Bear.” The process is, by this point, irreversible.

Or it could be that Grambo, by reversing our deep structure polarities, heightening the contradictions, and making a mockery of our binary loboto-brainwaves-urban/rural, highbrow/lowbrow, master/slave, hightop/lowtop, Portman/Knightley-will hasten the Millennium, which is to say the Apocalypse. Either way, I suggest you wear a hat. Bovs on your tees, tchotchmikas. Bovs on your respective tees.
— Reihan

In a recent essay on humility, Christopher Caldwell reminded readers of the Jonathan Franzen brouhaha. When Oprah vaulted The Corrections into the sales stratosphere by recommending it to her loyal army of viewers, Franzen, clumsily and haltingly but with no malice, thought out loud about what commercial success means for a writer “in the high-art literary tradition.” Critics blasted Franzen for elitism, and one couldn’t help but be sympathetic. But in a very neat pamphlet, Revolt of the Masscult, Chris Lehmann wonders why. At what point did we identify market imperatives with cultural democracy? Lehmann is an egalitarian of the left, and yet he raises serious questions for conservatives.

Is it fair to say that Hollywood is giving “the people” exactly what they want? By criticizing the entertainment-industrial complex for its excesses while cheering robust increases in shareholder value-all the while watching Desperate Housewives-are conservatives engaging in rank hypocrisy? By now, Thomas Frank has turned this line of attack into a cottage industry, and with good reason: there’s something to it.

FREE THE CULTURE: For Frank, at least, the “culture war” is so much posturing, a sideshow. The real struggle is class struggle. Lehmann, I believe, would like to see a politically engaged criticism that sees through the false populism of “popular culture,” more a transmission belt designed to maximize profits than a truly “popular” phenomenon.

Conservatives ought to take a different route. Recognize that the culture industry is an industry, no more evil than the others, but no less so. Media conglomerates are as opportunistic as the rest. Unchecked, Hollywood’s coarsening influence is a problem, and something should be done about it. Rather than go down the route of censorship and intimidation, the best move-very much in tune with the best conservative instincts-would be to democratize the culture. Break the stranglehold of Big Media by reversing copyright laws that stifle free expression. Strengthen the hand of the innovative entrepreneurs behind peer-to-peer networks, spread-spectrum radio, and other technologies that have the potential to restore creative power to individuals and communities. Over time, you’ll see a more diverse media culture that will be far more in tune with-here it comes-our shared values. Larry Lessig‘s notion of a “free culture” has a lot to offer conservatives vexed by the cultural hegemony of a narrow corporate elite.

ODE TO ENLIGHTENED DESPOTISM: One has to wonder-why are conservative Republicans kowtowing to Big Media? The obvious, and largely correct answer, boils down to political economy. Campaign contributions make a difference. So does ignorance or indifference. Industry flacks line the corridors of K Street, but congressional staffers aren’t being harassed by deep-pocketed Lessig epigones, so why bother exploring alternatives?

This is cynical, but it approximates reality. Still, it begs the question: Why wouldn’t conservative Republicans tether themselves to emergent technologies? Big Media incumbents have deep pockets now, and yet that directly derives from an industrial policy gamed to their benefit. Besides, those deep pockets tend to benefit liberals. Is it crazy to cut them loose, relying on, I don’t know, contribution from oil and gas companies to tide you over while you cultivate smaller, nimbler media outfits by creating a framework for open competition?

For that to happen, you have to be far-sighted, and you need centralized corruption rather than decentralized corruption. (Andrei Shleifer and Robert Vishny wrote the book on this stuff.) If Karl Rove really could quash the hopes and dreams of every two-bit state legislator, he might be able to maximize the take from saps and suckers.

As Nixonian as this sounds, an Enlightened Despot could do a lot of good for the Republicans or the Democrats. She could expel the MoveOn.org gang from the Democrats and the Starve-the-Beasters from the Republicans. (“Who’d be left?” The rest of the country minus a few thousand rich people.) That or we could think about effective campaign finance reform.
— Reihan

Left2Right, the blog for left-wing academics who don’t like Bush — they have a lot of contributors, needless to say — started out annoying but intermittently amusing (amusing enough, in fact, that I’ve been writing a brief article about the site). Of late, though, they’re mainly just annoying-without-any-qualifiers, as my colleague Nate Littlefield ably points out.

You know you’ve gone wrong when you’re trying to score points against the Right, and you only end up ticking off Brad DeLong.
— Ross

Cheer up, Blue America! Sure, your birth rates may be a tad lower than in the glowing-like-an-expectant mother Red States . . . but at least you aren’t Russia!

Nicholas Eberstadt, demographer-to-the-stars, reports.
— Ross

“I remember that my old schoolmaster, Dr. Peabody, said, in days that seemed to us then to be secure and untroubled: ‘Things in life will not always run smoothly. Sometimes we will be rising toward the heights — then all will seem to reverse itself and start downward. The great fact to remember is that the trend of civilization itself is forever upward; that a line drawn through the middle of the peaks and the valleys of the centuries always has an upward trend.’ … And so today, in this year of war… we have learned lessons — at a fearful cost — and we shall profit by them. We have learned that we cannot live alone, at peace; that our own well-being is dependent on the well-being of other nations far away. We have learned that we must live as men, not as ostriches, nor as dogs in the manger… The Almighty God has blessed our land in many ways. He has given our people stout hearts and strong arms with which to strike mightily blows for freedom and truth. He has given to our country a faith which has become the hope of all peoples in an anguished world.” – president Franklin Roosevelt, January 20, 1941.
– Andrew

Read this “sordid history of the biggest taboo in sports” to find out why.

GRAMBO IS SUBLIME: I shat you nizz.

WILL IN THE WORLD: Whenever I want hard-hitting legal analysis, I look to Will Baude. Hard-hitting analysis or news about whales. That’s deep, man. Too Deep.

NEW LABOR: Steve Rosenthal, the brains behind uber-527 America Coming Together, is planning on souping up his operation for 2006 and 2008. He figures there are votes to be found in Republican-leaning exurbs “among teachers, police officers and other public employees who can’t afford the close-in suburbs.” What if the aforementioned public employees don’t want to live in the close-in suburbs for the same reasons they don’t want to live in the cities? Crime, crowded schools, congested roads, and a general perception of disorder, not to mention high taxes, might have been enough to drive them out. My guess is that the ACT will have a tough time.

Reaching out to the exurbs is worth a shot, but Rosenthal and his allies in the union movement might want to think about retooling the union movement itself. Instead of relying on constant growth in the number of public employees-trust me, conservatives are finding ways to outsource key functions to the private sector, and it’ll probably save money-why not create service-oriented labor unions focused on lifelong learning? Virginia Postrel had the right idea in 1998. Rather than shackle members to a particular employee, these unions would enhance labor mobility. They’d act as talent agents for regular workers, working aggressively on their behalf by upgrading their skills, negotiating better deals, and finding new opportunities.

DONNELLY RUNS DE-FENSE: Think disbanding Saddam’s army was a disastrously bad idea? Think again.

Before jumping off the bandwagon, don’t forget Jon Lee Anderson’s case for the prosecution.
— Reihan

I spent the first several years of my life speaking an impenetrable patois of Bengali and Brooklynese; my desperate pleas for food or water were answered only by puzzled expressions and, in time, utter indifference. That I survived is a minor miracle. That I remain incomprehensible is a minor tragedy.

Kevin Drum writes, “I guess I might as well step up to the plate and confess to Reihan Salam that I don’t understand about half of what he writes.” Faced with this meandering monstrosity of a post, his best guess is that I’d scrap Social Security if I could. And he’s right-sort of.

THE RIGHT KIND OF REDISTRIBUTION: Redistribution can be a very good thing. Hayek thought so, and so does card-carrying libertarian Will Wilkinson. But to build a decent society, we need to go beyond cutting checks. We need to strengthen citizens and communities by giving them the tools to thrive. Social problems like the unusually high rate of black male unemployment require serious policy interventions, and that means spending serious money. And then there’s health care. Like a lot of conservatives, I think we need consumer-directed health care. Mandatory health insurance, as proposed by Ronald Bailey, is one way to get there. As Bailey suggests, that means subsidizing coverage for the poor-a very expensive proposition. Finally, there’s the fact that many Americans, despite working hard and playing by the rules in Bill Clinton’s memorable phrase, remain in poverty. That undermines the legitimacy of the market economy. When that happens, the threat of class warfare looms large. Wage subsidies for low-income workers are one way to solve that problem. (Ask Ramesh Ponnuru, National Review‘s wonk-in-chief.)

If we could alleviate the social isolation faced by the inner-city poor, secure health care for all Americans while preserving competition and preventing a government takeover, and see to it that hard-working parents can earn a decent wage, we’d go a long way towards healing deep divisions that have plagued this country for a long time. That’s worth a lot of money, particularly since a lot of these programs would eventually pay for themselves-by making us healthier, by fostering innovation, and by reducing crime. This is real demand-side conservatism: spend money now to save money later by nudging people in the direction of self-reliance.

SCRAP SOCIAL SECURITY: Alas, while it’d be great to buy every man, woman, and child a Segway (in homage to GOB, style icon), there’s only so much government can do apart from providing for the common defense. If asked to trade, I’d choose improving the life chances of the poor, making us all better off in the process, over transferring vast sums of money to the elderly.

Which is why I’d scrap Social Security if I could. Will Wilkinson breaks it down here. To the extent possible, encourage self-reliance. Create Personal Security Accounts, provide supplementary retirement benefits to poor retirees, and make sure that no one falls through the cracks. Just don’t tell me there’s a God-given right to wage-indexed benefits as far as the eye can see.
— Reihan

In response to this post on the notorious Kansas murder/kidnapping, a reader writes:

I think you’re off-base on your harrumphing over the press’s language in this fetus case . . . It’s far less complicated (or inconsistent) then you make it out to be. It was a fetus until the moment this bastard ripped it out of its dead mother’s womb. At that point, it became a baby. Similarly, if a pregnant woman gives birth conventionally, her fetus turns into a baby the moment it slides through the birth canal. So it is accurate to write about the theft of the fetus, but the discovery of the baby. I don’t think abortion politics really has to play into it, it’s just a matter of precise language.

It’s true that the absurd sentence that Rich Lowry cites — in which the woman is described as “cutting out the fetus and taking the baby back to Kansas” — is technically correct under this rule. (Headlines that trumpeted a search for a “missing fetus,” on the other hand, seem more dubious.) But the larger point is that the “precise language” is itself absurd, because it treats a shift in location (from womb to outside world) as though it were a developmental distinction. “Her fetus turns into a baby the moment it slides through the birth canal,” my correspondent writes. By what magic, exactly, is this “turn” achieved? Obviously, the English language is filled with small absurdities, and the strange “baby-fetus” distinction (which is hardly universally hewed to, I might add) wouldn’t matter much — except that as a matter of law, one can kill a “fetus,” whereas a “baby” is deemed worthy of legal protection. So when a case comes up that highlights the absurdity of this distinction, the press’s difficulties in describing the fetus/baby/unborn child/clump of cells has everything to do with abortion politics – even if reporters themselves don’t know it.
– Ross

They’ve been debating, over at the Corner, the funniest book ever. I’m not really a connoisseur of humor in the novel (though the best literary critic of the present moment is interested in the subject, so perhaps I should be too), but I’d probably join John Derbyshire in his assessment of Portnoy’s Complaint, which is, indeed, inutterably hilarious. P.G. Wodehouse, on the other hand, tends to leave me cold — which automatically disqualifies me from membership in the Club of Conservative Aesthetes, I know (as does my disdain for Brideshead Revisited). I tend to prefer my mid-century British humor leaved with a little more seriousness than Wodehouse brings to the table — give me Anthony Powell any day, or some of the non-Brideshead Waugh.

I should add that there are passages of David Copperfield that I recall being as funny as anything I’ve ever read. Nabokov, too, is brilliantly witty, though rarely in a fashion that makes you laugh out loud.

And if you’re looking to laugh at a novelist, well, there’s always James Fenimore Cooper.

— Ross

I know, it’s enough already — but how can you resist a James Lileks–James Wolcott steel cage death match? That’s right, you can’t.

Also, Mark Steyn’s Christmas column is typically entertaining (though you have to register to reach it, I’m afraid).

— Ross