Month: September 2010

by Chris Bodenner

Matt Stopera tracks down 29 of the "most uncomfortable, miserable back to school pictures I could find." Any Dish reader submissions?

by Chris Bodenner

James Ledbetter chronicles the company's enduring success:

What is it about Netflix that causes critics to misread it so badly? Call it the innovator's paradox: Netflix forged an identity by building a simple business—DVD delivery by mail—that had never been done before. The very fact that this DVD-by-mail idea connected so deeply with consumers led many observers to think that was all that Netflix could or would ever do. Instead, the DVD delivery service—while still vital to Netflix's revenue—looks more like the Trojan horse of a much wider strategy designed to change how Americans watch filmed entertainment.

There's a reason they called it Netflix, not Mailflix. I for one watch far more content over the streaming feature than I do the DVDs.

by Conor Friedersdorf

A reader writes:

I attended Wharton and worked for one of the top strategy consulting firms for four years before heading off to a successful Wall Street career.  During my career, I had a chance to recruit and interview literally hundreds of top-5 b-school MBA's.  So you could say I have had a lot of exposure to the "elites".

My take is that top schools prepare individuals to be "carrerists".  That is, they train them to do what it takes to obtain the highest-paying secure job possible.  To do this, they must have adequate (but hardly brilliant) analytical skills and be fairly personable (again, not off the scale).  Most important, they must give off an aura of rock-hard determination and cold confidence. It is this impression which matters in trading floors and boardrooms.  You could say that the elites have developed an extra sense, a pair of finely tuned antenna that can tell whether someone they meet really is that determined. 

The problem, of course, is that entitlement goes hand in hand with this confidence/determination.  In fact, if the basic evidence of determination is the ability to delay gratification, then the elites feel like that gratification must be eventually be proportionate to their willingness to suffer (that is, enormous).  In this basic value, there is little difference between Washington and Wall Street elites, even if their politics might be different. 

There are two problems with the elites as described above.

One is that Washington elites envy their fellow Wall Street (and corporate) elites their out-sized compensation.  To compensate for their inadequacy on this front, Washington elites must have more power; to have more power, they must make more and more decisions that affect more and people's lives. Since their basic value is determination, then they will run over any principles necessary to achieve their goal.  This is why the Obama administration seems mystified over public dissatisfaction with the bank bail outs: after all, they "worked", so why should anyone care if they were "fair"?  Or why a 2000-page banking bill with nebulous effects can be trumpeted as a "victory" when it doesn't address the basic transgressions by banks that caused the crisis.  This tunnel-vision will come at a high cost, IMO, as voters feel ignored in the process.  BTW, I voted for Obama.

Second, determination comes at the cost of other positive attributes, mainly creativity and a basic humanity.  I've read how some commenters on the Dish have praised the academic work ethic of elites.  My favorite question to ask consulting firm candidates was, "what was your favorite course in college?"  Most, uncharacteristically, would stammer.  They had no favorite course.  They were at an Ivy to prove they could work hard, not to enjoy learning.   Many even acted like it was simply an unfair question–one they had not been given a chance to prepare for.  They were not "robots", but that description wasn't completely inaccurate either. So we end up governed by coldly calculating elites that lack creativity, curiosity and humanity. 

Other than that, it is a great outcome…

Finally, I would say to any college age Dish readers: don't strive so hard to sit in that interview chair across from the likes of me.  The fact is, the life of the elites shouldn't be subject of envy.  I sounds like a cliche, but having been there and done that, I can tell you I wasn't exactly surrounded by happy, well-adjusted people. There are better ways to be successful, and most of these involve risking security.  If you can stomach that, then don't follow the "elites" path.

by Conor Friedersdorf

A reader writes:

Although I went to a fully-accredited Holistic Healthcare College for 4 years to achieve that title, most people either confuse my profession with Eastern Chinese Medicine or simply have no clue what an herbalist is. The most insulting are those who think it hilarious to call me a "witch doctor." Yet quite often, these same people will later ask for my advice or a consultation, as if mocking my profession has been forgotten, or was to be expected and therefore excused. An estimated eighty-five percent of the world's population utilize herbs as their primary medicines for minor, acute and chronic health issues, making plant and plant-based medicines the most widely used remedies in the world today. While herbalists are not allowed to be licensed in the United States and our pharmacies are stocked with mainly synthetic chemical remedies, pharmacies in most parts of Europe dispense herbs prescribed by both physicians and licensed herbalists.

Even here in America, many of the larger pharmaceutical companies offered a wide variety of plant-based medicines in tablets, liquids and ointments as recently as the early 1950's. Today, holistic healthcare and natural remedies are booming, yet people still have outrageous misconceptions regarding natural, plant-based remedies and those of us who employ them. The American Botanical Council here in Austin, Texas exists in part to dispel myths in the media regarding the efficacy and safety of herbal medicine. Yet even with all of the science-based information available today, many people are completely ignorant of what an herbalists does—or worse—feel it is something to be mocked and ridiculed. Until they need our help, that is.

by Chris Bodenner

Leon Wieseltier stands beside Imam Rauf:

In a time when an alarming number of Muslims wish to imitate Osama bin Laden, here is a Muslim who wishes to imitate Mordecai Kaplan. Turn away, from him? But he may be replaced at his center by less moderate clerics, it is said. To which I would reply with a list of synagogues whose establishment should be regretted because of the fanatical views of their current leaders.

Andrew Sprung sits "in awe of [Leon's] moral clarity":

Wieseltier notes in this piece that Imam Rauf has recited the Shema, and he alludes to his proclamation at a memorial service for Daniel Pearl, "I am a Jew" (which, as Jeffrey Goldberg has pointed out, could get him killed).  Here Wieseltier returns the favor, placing Jewish crime [e.g., the Baruch Goldstein massacre at Hebron] beside Muslim crime, and Muslim rights beside Jewish rights.  This gesture lends him the authority of someone immersed in his own tradition but not besotted by it.

by Conor Friedersdorf

Apropos yesterday's post about E.D. Kain's break with conservatism, I want to add something: ideological conversions are often interesting to discuss, as evidenced by Daniel Larison's post here and Mr. Kain's response. And it's always refreshing to read someone who is forthrightly working through their beliefs in public, especially when that includes grappling with critics in an earnest attempt to arrive at the right answer.

But it's worth remembering that what a writer ends up calling himself shouldn't ultimately matter nearly as much as it does. An insightful mind remains so regardless of ideological affiliations. Arguments should be evaluated on their merits, as opposed to whether the idea therein or the proponent advancing it is authentically liberal, conservative, or libertarian. Heretic hunters on the right and the left very much resent it when dissidents lay claim to an ideological label. Almost always it is irrational when they do so.

So long as Mr. Kain persists in offering intellectually honest writing that advances conversations, I'll follow his stuff wherever it's published, regardless of whether he calls himself a liberal, an independent, a socialist, a centrist, a neocon, a neo-liberal, a conservative, an atheist, an Islamic bridge builder, or a centaur advocate. The thoughts he expresses on any given issue are themselves a lot more important and informative than whatever label he finds most accurate, and I don't see why I'd ever rely on a vague proxy to judge one of his pieces when I could just read it and agree or disagree as appropriate.

In the left blogosphere, you'll find people who resent the fact that Mickey Kaus calls himself a liberal. On the right a whole cadre of bloggers is apoplectic about the fact that someone like Andrew Sullivan dares to invoke the c word. An astonishing number of people have had long arguments about whether or not Mr. Sullivan is truly a conservative. I don't begrudge them those debates, inconsequential though they may be. The point is that whatever label fits him best, it is insanity to imagine that anyone is going to come away from his writing unaware of the fact that he's a gay, British born fan of President Obama who persists in a complicated relationship with Catholicism, loathes torture, harbors a profound distrust of Sarah Palin, has a soft spot for Margaret Thatcher, passionately wants to see gay marriage legalized… and the list goes on.

I use Mr. Sullivan as an example because Dish readers are familiar with his work, but the same can be said for any commentator who has spent enough time writing for public consumption to provide an infinitely better idea of where he or she is coming from than even the most accurate ideological label could possibly offer. (This even applies to ideological hacks, who couldn't hide their affiliations if they tried.)

The success some have had elevating ideological labels and boxing complicated writers into them is a shame, a disservice to the audience, a failure for which readers share responsibility, and a trend that ought to be resisted.

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

Your hip Christian posts are great. I consider myself to be one! (gay, progressive, evangelical) Sounds like a contradiction of terms, but it’s the reality I deal with. Musically, I love the work of Derek Webb. A former member of folky-pop Christian mainstay Caedmon’s Call, his solo work is awesome and quite progressively pointed. Here is a video of a single from his latest work. He drops the S-bomb and talks about the systemic mistreatment of gays. It’s good stuff.

Webb talked about his faith with Beliefnet in 2009:

My first question: in addition to the cursing, why pick the topic of homosexuality, one of the major sins in American Christianity, to write a song about? It’s such a hot topic.

I guess it is. Maybe it should be, considering that according to the Barna Group over 90% of non Christians in our American culture hear the word Christian and think “gay hater”. So maybe it’s not a big enough topic, if you’re asking me.

Or maybe the discussions we’re having about it are not nuanced enough. When I think about that statistic, it does make me want to curse a little bit. I’ll be honest with you. And it should make any follower of Jesus really concerned with the things that he prioritized in his life on earth maybe want to curse as well.

The reason that I brought it up is because it’s really personally important to me. My best friend is homosexual. That issue, in fact, probably for the last almost 10 years, has been a major issue for me that I have been concerned with, and I have been concerned with the way the church deals with it and I’ve been concerned as I watch the church fumble a little bit in dealing with it.

And I have always felt as though there would be a moment when I would need to speak about it. And I would need to basically say what I can say without alienating myself too much from the people who I hope are listening to me.

by Patrick Appel

A reader writes:

I think you're digging too deep on your analysis of a modern place for engagement rings. It can be this simple: men and women both grow up associating the symbol with the emotions it implies. This association cements long before we develop notions of social justice, and long before we'd think to apply them to classic symbols. I see nothing wrong with that. Symbols have value even if, at a higher level of consciousness, some part of them becomes questionable.

Another reader:

My best friend decided she didn't want a diamond ring – the one she liked was $60 at Fire&Ice. Her boyfriend was befuddled by this, partly because he had two grand he'd saved up to buy a ring, and suddenly nothing to spend it on.

So he bought and proposed to her with a MacBookPro. (She's an aspiring writer)

Several readers wrote something along these lines:

I was always suspicious of the diamond engagement ring — but like many men realized my then girlfriend, now wife, wanted and expected one and i wasn't going to disappoint her.  but i'll say this — it's not "merely" symbolic — I got her a ring for $5000 — I don't know how much it should cost or what it's worth absent artificial monopolies – but I will say that the ring is absolutely beautiful, it sparkles, it shines, it catches my eye all the time, and other people's eyes — it's no lavish ring, not by a long shot — but i've come to realize that for all the bullshit that surrounds the industry and cultural practice, the diamond is a beautiful stone.

And several more had this reaction:

I did not receive a diamond as an engagement gift. I would have been horrified – I would have reconsidered the engagement – if my beloved had spent that much of our hard-earned money on something so spectacularly useless *which I don't want.* I rarely wear jewelry beyond my wedding ring and a necklace he gave me early in our courtship. For him to spend a huge chunk of cash on something I don't want and won't wear rather than the two of us jointly deciding the wisest use of that money (car payment, house payment, diapers) tells me that he doesn't understand the woman to whom he wants to commit himself. I am a practical person. I don't want a useless gift. And I *really* don't care what the rest of the world thinks, because the rest of the world is not volunteering to make my car payments.

A signal of commitment would be moving in together, buying a house together, proposing and accepting the proposal, getting married, adopting a pet together. A big shiny useless rock? To me that means he has more money than spine, and she has more vanity than sense. Commitment doesn't happen to your finger; it happens to your heart.

A reader in the industry:

I'm a jeweler's daughter, granddaughter, niece, cousin, and sister, so I perhaps have a slightly different perspective on the whole engagement ring issue.  I do understand and appreciate the concerns about blood diamonds.  I'm also an assistant professor, so I've done the research both about the situation today and on the diamond mines in South Africa in the late nineteenth-century, my area of expertise.  We try to be as ethical and careful as possible about who we buy diamonds from; we buy from reputable dealers, try to use GIA certified stones, or reuse stones people bring in.  Do we always succeed?  Probably not, but we try. 

I also appreciate the argument about people simply wanting an expensive ring for the status and not because of what it symbolizes.  One of my favorite sad jewelry stories is of the guy who bought a relatively inexpensive, small engagement ring for his girlfriend, despite knowing she wanted a larger, much more elaborate ring we had.  He did it to make sure she wanted to marry him.  She actually told him she hadn't spent two years of her life waiting for a little ring.  Needless to say, they didn't stay together.  The jewelry business is a racket, and much of it is about status.

But, engagement rings aren't just the stone or a status symbol.  When you buy a ring, particularly a custom made one or a vintage piece, you're buying a piece of craftsmanship.  The knowledge of how to temper metals, of how to bend and secure prongs, and of what temperatures you can't go past before you frost a stone or melt a setting is highly specialized. When you buy a ring, you're paying for someone's time, labor, and care not just a pretty bauble.  And perhaps more so than other objects, people imbue jewelry with special meanings.  Perhaps we shouldn't do so, but we do. I know we (my family's store) treat engagement rings differently than other pieces.  We want them to be special because we know that they mean more to the people exchanging them.  (It probably also has something to do with the fact that my father and grandfather so ardently believed in marriage.)

A final reader, for now:

This is in the response to the reader who "finds all wedding expenses unnecessary."

Of course it's possible "to marry and have kids and have a more or less normal life without big rings or big weddings."  It's also possible to do all that without taking a plane for a weekend in Vegas on a whim, without buying completely useless lingerie from a trashy adult store, without drinking too much champagne after a Saturday night date and having giddy drunk sex that night and a terrible hangover the next morning.  And in a lot of ways you'd be better off: jets emit greenhouse gases, most lingerie last one or two times through the wringer (if you're doing it right), and it's hard to justify hangovers on the morning after.

But what a fucking drag life would be.

The engagement ring I got my wife was quite expensive, although the main stone itself was relatively inexpensive (a blue topaz for about $150; we're both November babies, so topaz is our shared birthstone).  It's platinum with complex filigree and small diamond chips embedded around it.  My ring is engraved platinum with beautiful swirls and flourishes. Did we need to do that?  No, but it's one of the most important and personal symbolic purchases of our lives (also, I was pretty flush with cash from the dot-com boom at the time).  We still look at our rings together and talk about how beautiful they are and how much they mean to us as symbols of what we started almost 10 years ago now.

Our wedding was a big production, not because our parents had expectations that we HAD to have some big church wedding, but because that's what we wanted.  My future wife and I met at shows by her brother's band, which had subsequently broken up and scattered around S.F., down to L.A., and as far as N.Y.C.  We had friends in S.F., L.A., Seattle, Denver, New York, Boston, Florida, Paris, and many other places around the world.  Making our wedding a big deal was both symbolic of the fact that we thought our marriage itself was a big deal and a way to reward and celebrate the time and effort of our friends in coming together for that celebration.  So we flew the whole band into town and had them play the reception, had a beautiful service performed in the chapel on Treasure Island in the middle of San Francisco, and had the reception and party in the old Officer's Club on the island, with picture windows looking out at downtown San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge on a beautiful crisp summer day on the Bay.  To this day, it's one of the best parties I've ever been to and certainly the only time in my life that just about everyone special and important to me–all the way from my childhood through my adult life to that point–was all together in one place at the same time.

The drabness and routine described by your reader makes it sound as if, for him, getting married was about as important as settling on a kitchen appliance.  For our part, it was a much bigger deal. We have never for a second regretted the expense and trouble of our rings, wedding, or the accompanying festivities, EVEN THOUGH the simplest part (for us as a straight couple of course), getting our marriage license at S.F. City Hall, was also special and memorable for the quietness and routine of the moment.

 

by Conor Friedersdorf

Reihan Salam is blogging up a storm on vacation policy at The Agenda. Especially see that last link where he talks about the Netflix vacation policy. I'll bet its employees now work more than they would under a traditional system.

by Chris Bodenner

Tracy Clark-Flory rolls her eyes at school administrators across the country who are banning rubber bracelets supporting breast cancer activism because they read, "I (heart) boobies":

But, you know what? I'm offended by the bracelets, too — just for a very different reason.

A growing number of activist campaigns are attempting to raise awareness (and perhaps other things) by simplifying the fight against breast cancer as a fight to save breasts. Not people, but breasts. Of course the implication is that lives will also be saved, but "boobies" are treated as the real star of this show. There was the infamous "Save the Boobs" ad, with a pair of bouncing bikini-clad breasts; the Men for Women Now campaign, which features famous(ly fratty) male celebs waxing poetic about breasts; the push for women to reveal the color of their bra in a Facebook status update; and the Booby Wall – just to name a few. 

I've always found this approach to awareness-raising rather tasteless, but it wasn't until my mom was diagnosed with metastasized stage IV lung cancer that they became truly enraging. Not only are women reduced to their breasts, but men are reduced to their love for breasts — as though they will only pay attention to the cause if presented with a pair of luscious, jiggling tits.