Month: November 2009

Accidental Celebrities

Newsweek compiles a list of ten. Nick Hornby writes the entry for #10:

Levi Johnston flew blindfolded into a perfect—and perfectly contemporary—storm. He found himself at the center of a swirling mess: an inexplicable Republican misstep, the Christian right, an unstoppable presidential campaign, Facebook, the bewildering pervasiveness of modern media. If there are any other Alaskan teenagers who have somehow managed to invoke that sorry lot after an evening (or two) of careless lovemaking, I can’t think of them. A nut ad and a song are the least he deserves for his troubles.

Creating The Clash

Marc Lynch on the Ft. Hood shooting:

The grand strategy of al-Qaeda and its affiliated ideologues is, and has always been, to generate a clash of civilizations between Islam and the West which does not currently exist.  Their great challenge is that the vast majority of Muslims reject their theology, ideology, strategy and tactics.  That's especially true of American Muslims.  They therefore feel the need to change the environment in which Muslims live in order to change their calculations about the appropriateness of extremist identities and ideologies and actions.   

Terrorism is a means towards that end.  The object is to create a violent, polarized environment in which Muslims are forced to embrace a narrow, extreme version of Muslim identity.   They want Muslims to accept a master narrative in which the Islamic umma is existentially threatened by Western aggression, and the only theologically and strategically appropriate individual response is to join the jihad in the path of god (as they have defined it). 

The Obama-Clinton Administration

“It’s not important to be perfect here, it’s important to act, to move, to start the ball rolling, to claim the evident advantages that all these plans agree with, and whatever they can get the votes for, I’m gonna support. I think it is good politics to pass this and to pass this as soon as they can. But I think the most important thing is it is the right thing for America. The worst thing to do is nothing,” – president Bill Clinton, on the Hill today.

How many of us a year ago would have foreseen the fusion of the Clinton and Obama brands in this administration? It speaks well of both parties, it seems to me. And Hillary’s globe-trotting role as a new kind of public diplomacy secretary-of-state is one the more astonishing things in the last nine months. What she did in Pakistan was quite something.

The Leno Experiment

Uh-oh:

NBC's Leno experiment is a fascinating harbinger of things to come. Fragmented TV audiences, especially in the 10PM slot, are a Catch-22 for networks. Keep the current hour-long-drama model, and they risk lose money. Or ditch the model for something with lower expectations and lower overhead, and they risk losing affiliate support. TIME magazine called Jay Leno the future of television. Everybody who works is television is probably hoping TIME magazine is wrong.

Correction

A reader writes:

When you said that “no black person could be a Mormon,” that isn’t factually correct.

 Until 1979, blacks could become members of the church, it’s just that black men couldn’t hold the priesthood, something that all male members of the church about age 12 (I think) are allowed to hold.  From 12-18, you are “ordained” into the Aaronic priesthood as a deacon.  At 18, you join the Melchizedek priesthood and become an elder.  Because priesthood membership is required to participate in most of the church’s important rituals (marriage, temple work, etc.), black people were shut out of full membership.  It wasn’t even second-class citizenship — more like seventh- or eighth-class.

And the Mormon church also opposed the civil rights movement. (Romney’s dad was an honorable exception, and he backed King despite severe pushback from the Mormon authorities). They are consistent in opposing the civil rights of others deemed inferior by their religion.