Month: July 2010

by Patrick Appel

Drum believes that political candidates will shun the press in greater and greater numbers:

I'm putting my money on the Palin-ization of politics. Partly this is because the mainstream press is dying anyway, and partly it's because Palin and others are demonstrating that you really don't need conventional press coverage to win. In fact, as Rand Paul and Sharron Angle can testify, it's a real risk. Between YouTube and Twitter and Facebook and blogs and friendly talk radio hosts — as well as more conventional things like TV ads and database-driven phone outreach — who needs the New York Times? Increasingly, I'll bet the answer is, no one.

by David Frum

Why does Mark Levin keep taking the bait?

Watching the exchanges between Conor Friedersdorf and Mark Levin is like watching a boy toss stones at a caged rhinoceros in the zoo. 

Plink, plink, plink: the first two, three, four stones bounce off the grazing brute’s leathery head. But at last the beast can endure it no longer. He charges at his tormenter – and crashes right into the zoo fencing. 

It happened again yesterday.

FrumForum blogger Alex Knepper cited Levin as a negative example in a critique of what Knepper called “talking point conservatism.” Conor quoted and linked to Knepper on the Atlantic site.

That afternoon, Levin erupted on his Facebook page against “malcontents,” “mental contortionists” and “pseudo-intellectuals” who did not sufficiently appreciate his book Liberty and Tyranny, a book he unironically describes as a “classic.”

Now the question again: Why? Why doesn't – why can't – Levin control himself? Surely he must recognize he would do better to preserve a dignified silence? As Levin will be the first to point out, his book sold many hundreds of thousands of copies. Maybe not so many as Jonathan Livingston Seagull, but still … a lot. Why not cash the checks and enjoy the proceeds? Why explode just because a handful of “malcontents” think your book is dumb?

It’s a fascinating question, and the answer does Levin some credit. Whatever you may think of his radio persona, Mark Levin is not a stupid person, and he is not a cynical person. He can’t laugh his way to the bank. He wants more than the money. He wants to be regarded as the author not just of a commercially successful book, but of an intellectually important book. Unfortunately for Levin, people like Conor have disproportionate sway over the accolades Levin covets. A Sean Hannity would not understand. A Glenn Beck would not care. But Levin does understand, and does care.

So he reacts. Unfortunately for him, Levin is not a very nimble debater. He's a monologuist. But when he tries to make a point in an environment where he does not monopolize the microphone, he is awkward and unsure. Shouting "Hey Friedersdork – you're a jerk" does not wound Conor's feelings. It does not impress the audience Levin so desperately wants to impress. 

Yet Levin cannot help himself. It’s all too provoking! Levin tells his critics they are “eviscerated.” But they don’t look or act eviscerated. Levin insists that his book is “sophisticated.” But he notices that the people who read the books generally regarded as sophisticated do not agree with his self-assessment. And so he paws the ground, lowers his tusk – and charges, thud, against a blank wall. 

The bellowing stops. The dust settles. The stunned rhinoceros regains its footing. And then the sound resumes: plink, plink, plink. 

by Patrick Appel

Jack Balkin runs through six scenarios.

by Chris Bodenner

Dan Savage insists that personal accounts like this one (from a Dish reader) distort the debate:

[A]s you read the sad stories about failed open relationships that are being offered in (over)reaction to Sex at Dawn—the authors don't actually advocate open relationships—please bear in mind that the voices of happy, content, and successful non-monogamous couples are almost entirely absent from this debate. … While the successfully non-monogamous keep their mouths screwed shut—the tribute a presumed vice is bullied into paying an overblown virtue—survivors of failed non-monogamous relationships 1. never shut up and 2. see their stories highlighted by moralizers as proof that non-monogamous relationships never work out.

by Patrick Appel

Bradford Plumer weighs the evidence:

The company has a long record of safety violations—in 2005, an aging BP plant in Texas exploded, killing 15 people, and an after-action report blamed "organizational and safety deficiencies at all levels of BP." Then came a large leak that poured 267,000 gallons of oil into Prudhoe Bay, Alaska in 2006, thanks to poorly maintained pipes. And just this year, federal inspectors have found 62 safety violations at BP's Ohio refinery. Yet BP never underwent the same cultural shift that ExxonMobil underwent.

Fallows compares BP to Shell here, here, and here.

(Image: An American flag lays in a slick of oil that washed ashore from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on July 4, 2010 in Gulf Shores, Alabama. By Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

by Chris Bodenner

John Cloud presents new research showing how evolution "has encouraged women to be more sexually active as their fertility begins to decline and as menopause approaches":

This age group — 27 through 45 — reported having significantly more sex than the two other age groups in the study, 18 through 26 and 46 and up. Women in their middle years were also more likely than the younger women to fantasize about someone other than their current partner. The new findings are consistent with those of an earlier Buss paper, from 2002, which found that women in their early 30s feel more lustful and report less abstinence than women in other age groups.

In both studies, these findings held true for both partnered and single women, meaning that married women in their 30s and early 40s tend to have more sex than married women in their early 20s; ditto for single women. Also, whether the women were mothers didn't matter. Only age had a strong affect on women's reported sexual interest and behavior.

by Patrick Appel

Jonathan Cohn begs Kathleen Sebelius to read Mariah Blake's article:

You might be wondering why, after all these years, hospitals don't simply turn their back on the GPOs and buy directly from companies selling better, cheaper wares. It's not clear, but the likely answer is a combination of inertia (hospitals have always done it this way, so they keep doing it) and corruption, of the moral if not legal kind (hospitals still have personal and perhaps financial ties to the GPOs). Of course, it helps that lobbyists have fought to give GPOs so much leeway–and that Congress has gone along.

But there's a silver lining here: Health care reform seeks to reduce spending, in part, by rewarding hospitals that have low infection rates. It will also reduce payments to hospitals, by a substantial amount, on the theory that hospitals can cut their prices without cutting quality. Blake's story suggests there's plenty of room to do just that.

by Chris Bodenner

A reporter interviewing MS sufferer Montel Williams channels the unseriousness of the MSM on marijuana:

by Patrick Appel

A reader writes:

I think there is a large missing piece to the argument that veganism is just an extension of the neurosis of picky-eating. When I went vegan (nearly 2 years ago), I was afraid that my options would be limited and I would be eating the same things over and over again. But my fear was really just an extension of the “vegans only eat salad” argument that some ignorant omnivores use. Since I cut out all animal products, I have discovered a number of delicious plant-based foods that I never would have otherwise. I had never tried beets before I went vegan, and now I love them. Same with eggplant. And rainbow chard. And wild greens like sorrel or stinging nettles. Not to mention the myriad uses of tofu! The point is – once you embrace your veganism, you realize that it can be a vessel to try all kinds of new things. In my experience, it is the hard-line meat-eaters who have a limited palate – not the vegans. How creative can you get with a steak anyway?

I flirt with vegetarianism from time to time, and my experience mimics this reader's. But then I enjoy cooking and experimenting with new dishes. Another reader adds:

I'm afraid you've lost me a bit when you say, "Moral arguments are more compelling the less you like what you are giving up."  Isn't it the other way around? Someone who struggles to make a moral choice in resisting a strong temptation seems to me much more likely to be acting genuinely from an ethical perspective, since if he weren't, he would give in to the temptation.  Someone who doesn't have the temptation might well be making the choice for that reason and dressing it up in moral clothing.

I should admit I have a selfish reason for making this argument: I've been a vegan for just over two years, and I would gladly eat dairy in some form every day if I could, all other things being equal.  But I reached the point where I couldn't overlook the fact that essentially dairy means impregnating animals solely to get them to give birth to children so they will produce milk–and then drinking the milk ourselves, taking the children away from their mothers, and either selling them to be killed almost immediately (as veal) or raising them to take their mothers' place as dairy cows.  Our human consumption of cows' milk is a bizarre and frequently inhumane practice, and despite my taste for and enjoyment of milk and cheese, I couldn't stomach it any longer.  How does that make my moral reasoning less compelling, rather than more so?

Perhaps "compelling" was the wrong word. My basic point was it takes less willpower to give up something you already don't like. You need a nudge rather than a shove in the right direction. Several vegetarian friends have told me that they have never liked red meat – even as children. Cutting other meat out of their diets was therefore less difficult. These vegetarians often have moral reasons for opposing meat consumption, but this moral grounding is typically less developed and stated less forcefully than it is by formerly meat-loving vegetarians or vegans.

It's important to keep in mind that vices do not tempt us all equally. When vegans or vegetarians tell me that their lifestyle is easy to maintain, I often wonder if they are projecting their own inherent dietary preferences onto me or if their moral fiber is simply stronger than mine. The ethical and environmental case against meat consumption appears solid to me, but I've been unable to stick with vegetarianism and have instead attempted to cut down on, rather than cut out, meat-eating.