Month: July 2009

by Conor Friedersdorf

The Huntington Beach City Council, which two years ago ignored protests from thousands of residents and allowed wrecking crews to demolish the historic Golden Bear nightclub, is actively soliciting an operator for a new, privately owned entertainment club in virtually the same location. Plans for the club, which would be at least 3,000 square feet and seat at least 150 people, are part of a $22-million commercial, office and condominium project called the Huntington Pier Colony. —The Los Angeles Times, 1988

This travel piece on Huntington Beach that The New York Times just published is an excellent example of why one shouldn't write a piece on a municipality by relying on the official narrative from city hall. "What was once simply a surf city in the U.S.A. has rebranded itself Surf City USA, after a heated legal battle with Santa Cruz over the coveted title," reporter Chris Colin writes. "With the reinvention has come a flurry of development, designed to capitalize on the city’s reputation as a surf capital." This is naive. The oceanfront property next to the Huntington Beach pier would've attracted developers during California's long-running real estate boom whether or not the city mounted a re-branding effort — and Huntington Beach hardly needed to wage a public battle with Santa Cruz to count "surf mecca" as an obvious part of its character.

The actual story of Huntington Beach's redevelopment is a lot more interesting, but telling it would require interrogating whether the area near the pier was ever actually blighted, whether the city screwed over existing business owners as it pushed its perennial redevelopment plans, how it came to be that the always popular Maxwell's restaurant didn't get its lease renewed for the spot at the foot of the pier — in other words, presenting officially sanctioned "redevelopment and re-branding" as the controversial and fraught process that it actually is, rather than as a fairly tale about the town that embraced its heritage of surfing. Think about it for a moment. Does anyone really think that with hundreds of millions of dollars of prime real estate at stake, coastal land with oil underneath it, and incentives to pack sales tax earning retail space onto Main Street, "being surf city" was the primary force behind Huntington Beach's reinvention? Or even the most interesting one?

Later in the piece, the author writes:

But this is not what city planners are asking themselves — they're asking themselves how they can maximize sales tax revenue, satiate the most well-connected commercial real estate developers, maintain maximum influence over downtown business owners, etc.

The author finally recommends, in the "Where to Drink" footer, that you visit Sharkeez, "worth a visit if you’re the sort who wonders what spring break in Daytona Beach is like. Loud and cheesy but eye-opening and open late." For God's sake. There is no one reading the New York Times travel section who should visit that bar under any circumstances, and it's only eye-opening if you're utterly unfamiliar with cliched bars. If you must drink in Huntington Beach, make it on a weeknight, and try to nab one of the firepits at Fred's or else on the patio of the restaurant/bar right beside the boardwalk (underneath Duke's).

by Chris Bodenner

More here.

by Patrick Appel

Nate Silver thinks that the House may be a bigger hurdle than the Senate:

1. Yes, the Blue Dogs really do have some leverage here. It's at least conceivable that the House would be unable to approve health care while the Senate would be.

2. And/but — if the bill passes by a narrow margin in the House (even by just a few votes) that will not necessarily doom its chances of overcoming a filibuster in the Senate. Nor does the fact that the bill is having some trouble in the House necessarily mean all that much in terms of its prospects in the Senate. The Senate Democrats operate within a much more narrow band ideologically — there are proportionately fewer true Blue Dogs, and also proportionately fewer uberliberals. If the White House could get assurances that a few key senators like Nelson, Landireu and Snowe won't filibuster health care — they don't actually have to vote for the bill — the Senate landscape actually starts to look reasonably favorable to the bill, possibly more favorable than the House's.

According to the WSJ, Dashale has said: "I think the risk of failure goes up consequentially if we don't get it done by the August break." DiA parses.

by Chris Bodenner

Greenwald responds to the latest reports that Holder is looking to scapegoat – er, prosecute – only those who tortured outside the dictated lines drawn by Yoo and Co:

Though there is the potential benefit that a prosecutor could follow the trail to high-level officials notwithstanding Holder's attempts to limit the investigation (a result I think is quite unlikely), there is a strong argument to make — as I made here — that prosecuting only low-level "rogue" interrogators would be worse than no prosecutions at all, as that would only serve to further bolster our two-tiered system of justice.

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

I edit a website that covers the paintball industry. Your post "Paintball Police" covered an interesting concept.

If paintball gear is indeed being used for the purpose you describe, it probably isn't that effective or widespread. Marking folks with paintballs has proven to be mostly impractical (unless indelible dye and/or flourescing dye is used, and if the paintballs came from PEVS, it isn't either of those). Paintball guns are also notoriously inaccurate from any decent, stand-off distance (this is why we shoot high volumes – 'accuracy through volume').

Just prior to the elections, Iran hosted an international paintball tournament (PALMS), at which PEVS Paintball had a presence. (An American team won the event.) However, I have no doubt that the folks at PEVS are unaware of how their supplies are allegedly being used against demonstrators.

If the regime does use that tactic, Iranian protestors could counter it fairly easily by obtaining a few paintball guns  themselves (my understanding is that the sport is fairly popular over there) and surreptitiously marking everyone and everything – including 'plainclothes' police. I don't know how well that tactic would play out in the real situation going on over there, but it, or some variation of it, would certainly help to confuse the issue.

Also, the regular fill in paintballs washes off fairly easily – a roll of paper towel is sufficient to clean off numerous hits (indeed, some players can wipe off hits during a game, right under the eyes of game officials). And another old tournament tactic – multiple layers of clothing – might also be of use. (Simply pull off the shirt with the hit on it.)

Another writes:

These are called "marker rounds" in the states. They are an extremely popular "crowd control" tactic (for instance, recently in the Twin Cities, where I live and protested during the Republican National Convention last September). They hurt a lot, scar, and maim, but probably won't kill you. They are thus known as "less lethal" weapons.

Update: A third reader responds:

It is not paintball pellets that are being used in the US. The authorities use special marking rounds produced by Defense Technologies/Federal Laboratories.

by Chris Bodenner

Ahmadi isn't caving to Khamenei's call to nix Mashaie, his controversial pick for VP. As Nico puts it, "This is getting interesting."

"I like Rahim Mashaie for 1,000 reasons. One of the biggest honours of my life and one of the biggest favours from God to me is knowing Rahim Mashaie," Ahmadinejad said. "He is like a pure source of water," the president said in an address at a farewell function for the aide after he officially resigned from his position as vice president in charge of tourism to take up his new post. […] "Unfortunately not many people know him."

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

If you're going to post that ad, you should probably give credit where it's due. Takeuchi Taijin's "A Wolf Loves Pork" is an even more delightful example of this kind of stop-motion animation, using the terrain as backdrop to individual photographs, and he's generally agreed as being the inventor of the technique. I don't discredit advertisers for stealing good ideas, but in the age of the Internet, it's nice that we can point back and say, "You got that from Taijin-san!"

The Dish posted "A Wolf Loves Pork" a few months back as a MHB; it's awesome. But I do think the Olympus ad took it  to a whole new level, especially the way it combined the movement of stop-motion with the idea of personal photos taken over the years. I think the ad is a good example of a company that not only recognizes the brilliance of art on the Internet but adapts it to its own product. Another reader, however, points to a more pressing concern:

From the commentary on the video it's pretty clear that he wasn't compensated for their appropriation of his idea.

by Robert Wright

Matthew Lee (whose edgily eccentric coverage of the UN deserves more attention than it gets) recently discovered that covering world affairs can alter them. As he tells the story, he may have inadvertantly kept the Uighurs of western China from getting their day in court. 

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

As I'm sure many comic fans are writing in to tell you regarding this reader's email, the monstrous and orientalized depiction of the Persians in the film 300 is right out of the comic of the same name, written and drawn by Frank Miller.  I have no idea if Miller read Shanameh, before or since making 300, but his bizarre, grotesque, homoerotic Xerxes is all his own, for better or for worse.

The blockbuster film did cause some controversy when it was released in the spring of '07. The Ahmadinejad regime called it "part of a comprehensive U.S. psychological war aimed at Iranian culture." Touraj Daryaee, a professor of Ancient Studies, had a considerably calmer critique:

What do you get when you take all the “misfits” that inhabit the collective psyche of the white American establishment and put them together in the form of a cartoonish invading army from the East coming to take your freedom away? Then add a horde of Black people, deformed humans who are the quintessential opposite of the fashion journal images, a bunch of veiled towel-heads who remind us of Iraqi insurgents, a group of black cloaked Ninja-esque warriors who look like Taliban trainees, and men and women with body and facial piercings who are either angry, irrational, or sexually deviant. All this headed by a homosexual king (Xerxes) who leads this motley but vast group of “slaves” known as the Persian army against the 300 handsomely sculpted men of Sparta who appear to have been going to LA (or Montreal) gyms devotedly, who fight for freedom and their way of life, and who at times look like the Marine Corps advertisements on TV? You get the movie “300.”

He then provides some useful historical context:

[T]he Persians had no plan or desire to go into Europe. The tiny Greek archipelago was probably almost beneath the notice of the Persian king. But then an Athenian attack on a major  Persian province, which culminated in the sacking and burning of the city of Sardis, naturally alarmed the Persians. It is this destructive event that started what is known as the Greco-Persian Wars. It was not an unprovoked Persian invasion of Greece. Nor did Aristagoras start this trouble for “freedom” or “democracy,” but rather as step in his intrigue to take control of another Greek city (Naxos) on the Anatolian coast. The Athenians did not bring freedom or democracy to Sardis either. It was burnt and looted. […T]he subsequent battle between Xerxes and the Greeks is taken out of context, manipulated, and the freedom-loving, democratic Greeks are set against the slave empire of Achaemenid Persia. Is this is a fair and balanced view of history?

I also found this passage about the role of women interesting:

The sentence [in the film] “We are the mothers of men” was actually never said to the Persians in history, but rather was part of a completely Greek debate on the position of women, regarding the fact that Athenian women were forced to stay in the andron (inner sanctum of the house) so that their reputations would not be tarnished. Spartan women were different than the Athenian women, but Persian women of this period had more freedoms than either the Spartans or Athenians and interceded not only in political matters, but also joined with the army, owned property, and ran businesses. The only time Persian women are shown in the film is as the usual fanciful Odaliskic Oriental women who do nothing but crawl on the ground, perform sexual acrobatics to fool the Western man, or just swarm around the water-pipe, high and happy.

But another scholar of ancient history, N.S. Gill, shows how the film can be interpreted a much different light:

It should be noted that in the movie, Persians try to spare lives — offering peace and power, instead. The Persians keep offering the Spartans the opportunity to become part of the Empire. Leonidas would hold power within the Empire. It is the Spartans who do the uncivilized and unthinkable when they toss the ambassadors into the bottomless put. It is the Spartans who are eager for killing. The Spartans, the losers in this battle, are the ones behaving like wild barbarians to the cultured, civilized, mostly sedate Persians. It is the rare Spartan who only in an un-Spartan emotional breakdown laments that he never told his son he loved him. It is a Spartan who rapes (or at least sodomizes) the queen, not a Persian. The Spartan ephors are described as inbred. The two traitors are Greek. The Persian allied forces dress elegantly. They are an inclusive group who don't toss their imperfect babies off a hill at birth. Et cetera.

by Conor Friedersdorf

In 2007, I studied under Mark Oppenheimer, whose writing on religion and other topics is worth your while, or so I've thought ever since I encountered his New York Times Magazine piece on an evangelical college hosting its first ever student dance. The course I took included units on snake handling Pentecostals, Mormons, Scientologists, and many others. A semester long journalism school course is obviously too short to convey all the information needed to write knowledgeably even about a single denomination. What it afforded, among other things, were lessons on the attitude one must assume to write well about any religion — a mix of open-mindedness and skepticism, appreciation and critical distance, empathy and rational judgment, generosity and commitment to writing the truth.

Mark's work possesses all these qualities, due in large part to the intense curiosity he has about whoever he is writing about. A religion writer must, by the nature of his beat, dilligently grapple with truth claims that are unverifiable at best, and certainly wrong most of the time, if only because he covers sundry religions making contradictory claims. So it excited me to learn that my old professor recently published a series on two prominent American Holocaust deniers. How would a Jewish writer with Mark's particular skill set navigate a subject as fraught and absurd as that one?

The short answer is "like a pro." Less talented hands have often enough written polemics against subjects like Bradley R. Smith and Mark Weber, prominent Holocaust deniers who've made their careers in one of humanity's most abhorrent subcultures. Oppenheimer exerts the time and effort to understand what motivates these complex characters, and reaches conclusions I've never before seen (though I haven't read deeply on this subject).

Though four pages long, the article is a fascinating read, and isn't a bit hard to get through, especially given the conflict inherent in a piece about two feuding Holocaust deniers being interviewed by a Jewish writer about their public falling out.

An excerpt from earlier in the piece to whet your appetite:

Once we were both seated at the coffee shop, I tried to ask Smith about possible flaws in the works of great Holocaust historians.

“You’ve read all the standard accounts,” I asked, “like Lucy Dawidowicz and Raul Hilberg?”

“Yeah,” Smith said, “that’s what I started with, I read Hilberg. I didn’t read them very closely. Because I’m not really interested in the history of the period.”

I was a little shocked. “I mean, you read Lucy Dawidowicz’s book on the period? You read David Wyman?”

“Not thoroughly,” Smith said. “Wyman, I didn’t read. He came a bit too late.”

I was astounded. “But that’s kind of amazing, right? Because here are these classic works of Holocaust literature that purport to show it all and you say you haven’t read them closely. So you have read Arthur Butz, who’s a nobody in the field, closely, but you haven’t read the great titans in the field closely?”  “You know what? I’m not interested in the story,” he replied. “Revisionists have written very detailed documents about the holes—”

“So what are you interested in?”

“In a free exchange of ideas.”

“But you aren’t interested in trying to find out which ideas are right?”

“Not particularly. You know what I’m really interested in? Every generation has its taboo, and I happen to be here with this taboo. I happen to be here with this one. And I can see how it’s exploited, and who benefits from the exploitation.”

If you make it through to the end, you'll better understand what motivates both men, including a scoop in the piece: the fact that both have at various times in their lives deeply loved Jewish women. Start here. The link to the other parts follow in the footer.