Month: October 2007

Eh: not so much.

Ross tipped me off to a great treat of a blog-post by Alex Massie, who once guest-blogged for me (and exceedingly well). The gist is the following:

None of this is meant to suggest that I think the British media a wholly admirable beast. It may too often sacrifice rigour for colour or facts for wit. It’s played a part – collectively at least – in the coarsening of British life and it’s frequently absurd, foolish or downright hysterical. But it does have life and perhaps it has the merits of reflecting us as we are rather than as we might like to consider ourselves.

The same may perhaps be said of the netroots and the blogosphere.

Alex defends the vulgarity of some blogs, the extremism of their passions and dislikes, and the free-wheeling, post-and-be-damned element of blogospheric discourse. He sees it as the US equivalent of Fleet Street:

Atrios (Duncan Black) for instance, is a tabloid columnist manque. He has exactly the right combination of spite, sneering and bullying for the job. It’s ferociously partisan and bracingly, gratuitously unfair, mean-spirited, sexist, wearisome, entertaining, etc etc. That’s why his blog is gripping. In other words: it works. If you were to put a British tabloid in Washington, Atrios would be right at home on its op-ed pages (and his presence would add greatly to the gaiety of the nation). His "Wanker of the Day" feature is a stylistic flourish that would be right at home on the pages of Britain’s best-selling newspapers. It’s also easy to imagine the Firedoglake collective on the pages of a British mid-market tabloid.

The obvious parallel is Drudge, the most British of all American bloggers. This blog’s evolution was definitely inspired in part by Fleet Street, Private Eye, the Spectator, Kinsley’s TNR and the general comfort of many British hacks in laying it on thick. I try and keep things civil, and I also try and air viewpoints that don’t quite match my own. If I make a hideous error, I make sure to make amends. But I do not apologize for having some fun, and the occasional eye-brow-raising hyperbole. We’re waaay too deferent in the Washington press corps. (Arianna gets this too, because she’s a closet-Brit.) But I also think that, in some ways, the US media has one up on London. We have our "serious papers" and our "serious columnists" and then we have the bloggers. You know where you are. Vive la difference. Now where was I on She Who Must Be The Front-Runner?

Jonah Goldberg says it’s why he’s pro-life. To which comes the rather obvious reply:

Why is it seemingly only in the context of abortion that Jonah believes uncertainty militates in the direction of governmental activism on behalf of those whose lives could be at risk?

The counter-examples cited include:

bans on smoking in public places, stricter gun control, motorcycle-helmet laws, and even spending on social programs like S-CHIP.

The equally obvious rejoinder is that non-fetal humans can look after themselves. Life is indeed a principle worth defending, when there’s doubt as to whether a recognizable human person exists at all. Better safe than murderous, right? But the sheer fragility of early pregnancy, and the ubiquity of zygote death in the womb suggests that nature’s standards are somewhat more lax than today’s conservatives’ when it comes to life in the first trimester (it’s all there in The Conservative Soul, if you’re interested in a doubt-based conservatism on the question of abortion). What’s lacking among today’s conservatives on the question is a sense of prudence and restraint that stems from doubt. And a general refusal to allow government to boss human beings around in their most intimate and difficult decisions. Aquinas was more persuasive. And he knew far less.

Or how to get your employees out of a slump:

If someone sees their time as having a financial worth, then it follows that any time they don’t spend earning money is essentially lost revenue. DeVoe and Pfeffer found that of over 10,000 employees, those who were paid by the hour were significantly more likely to say that, given the choice, they would choose to work more hours for more money, rather than fewer hours for less money.

Er, yes: and they are becoming one of science’s prime objects for understanding sleep disorders.

Who says they are incompatible?

"I don’t read a lot of books (any actually) that have the words "conservative" or "liberal" on the cover but "The Conservative Soul" is not a fire-breather or a back-slapper or a bunch of anecdotes strung together to mock the other side. [It’s] a fucking book with a capital fucking B.

I think a lot of people in America are going to be better for reading it. I know I am," – Matt Stone, co-creator, South Park.

A reader writes:

I’m a young, newly-minted assistant professor here at a large state school in Mississippi and I’ve got to say I’ve had just had an interesting conversation with one of my more conservative students. As far as I can tell he’s a pretty ‘die hard’ Republican. He’s really big into state and local politics and is even participating in a big way in a statewide campaign – and not for the first time. He is bright, sophisticated, and probably a future power in state and local politics here in Mississippi. What surprised me was both his anti-war attitude and, moreover, his positive view of Obama versus Hillary. Though I did not ask, as it was not my place, who he intended to vote for, it seemed clear to me that he recognizes that 2008 is going to be a disaster for the GOP outside of the deep south and that Obama was probably the best the Democrats had to offer in terms of leadership potential. What most impressed him, he said, was that Obama was against the war from the beginning – giving credence to the effectiveness of the ‘Obama has superior judgement’ meme that is being put out by Obama’s campaign.

Andrew, this is a young, white, male conservative, from the deepest of the deep south professing support for an intellectual, African-American liberal from Chicago. Democrats have written these folks off for decades.

A Hillary candidacy would merely continue this tradition and would represent a return to the familiar, divisive politics that has divided the baby-boomers for decades. Reagan and then the ’94 election killed the ‘old left’ in this country. Let’s hope 2008 and Obama kills the ‘old right’ because, like Dick Gephardt and the UAW, movement conservatism has outlived its usefulness. Maybe once both these old boomer ideologies are well and truly discredited something new, from both the left and right, can emerge.

An Obama presidency would be a stake through the heart of the vampire politics bequeathed to this country by the baby-boomers inability to set aside their differences over Vietnam and the cultural changes that shook this country to the core in 60s and 70s. We cannot be rid of their influence soon enough.

Some bracing impressions from Jim Fallows, back in the States from a long stay in China:

Once again, the beauty, wealth, polish, finished-ness, natural abundance, cleanliness, order, consumer choice, etc of America’s polished cities is just stupefying. Yes, this was a clear and perfect autumn afternoon in a prosperous capital. Still: my wife and I walked into a run-of-the-mill drug store and stood for a moment, stunned: there was a wider array of stuff on shelves within our immediate range of vision than we’d seen in months in Shanghai, the cosmopolitan pride of China.

Americans read so many reports about the dynamism of China’s industries and the skyscrapers of its big cities that they may begin to think there is some overall comparability between the two economies. No. There isn’t. Not to mention: at the friends’ house where we’re staying, we drank water… out of the tap!

Frank Capley (R) and his partner Joe Alfano hold signs during a same sex marriage demonstration October 15, 2007 in San Francisco, California. About a dozen same-sex couples held a demonstration in opposition of California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s decision to veto California state assembly bill AB 43, the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act, which would have granted same-sex marriages in California. By Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.