Month: September 2010

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

I watched (twice) the Beck rally video you posted and forwarded the link to a few of my Beck-loving and Beck-loathing friends.  I anxiously await their responses.  I do, however, feel compelled to make a comment or two with respect to the video, its producer's motives, and your choice to post it.

I'm no fan of Beck (or of Palin), and the people in this clip certainly represent the types of folks that I come up against every day here in small town NC-USA. But I think it's a bit unfair to use this piece as some sort of us-vs-them commentary on the state of contemporary American politics.  Does anyone (seriously) think that Beck's rally was completely void of thoughtful and intelligent people?  I may not agree with them, or with Beck's brand of conservatism, but I doubt these rubes truly represent the Tea Party types that showed up for this event.

Of course, I'm not surprised that the video exists, or that it was edited as it was.  Conservatives did the same thing with clips from the various Obama rallies in 2008.  I'll never forget the one that showed an unfortunate African-American female celebrating the idea that she no longer had to worry about her bills because "We got Obama!"  Sean Hannity practically dedicated an entire month to it, running it every chance he got.  It turned my stomach to see him imply that Obama voters were nothing more than a bunch of economic illiterates who deserved to be mocked viciously on national television every night. 

And of course, this brings up a more important point: both sides do it.  The right constantly paints the left as commie-loving freaks, and the left never misses a chance to portray the right as Bible-thumping inbreds.  The entire display (from both sides) is despicable.  I've sworn off cable news, talk radio, most blogs, and the NY Times editorial page because not one of them has anything interesting to say anymore.  There is no debate, no analysis, and no neutral commentary.  None. 

I've walked away from Andrew's blog on more than one occasion for the same reason, but lately I've been giving it a second chance.  I like the give and take, the constant revisions, and the interesting stories he tells.  This video, however, and your choice to post it with only an accompanying line of snark to introduce it, again makes me wonder why I even bother anymore.  How about a bit of grace?

The idiom I used to introduce the video, "straight from the horse's mouth," was meant to convey that the most direct, authoritative source on the mindset of aggrieved white conservatives was the rally-goers themselves.  The interviews were important because they bypassed blog commentary and allowed the people to present their own views (unlike this other interviewer).  Of course the video was edited, and selective bias was certainly in play.  But I do believe that the views expressed were largely representative of the crowd and Beck followers in general (and apparently so does the reader: "[they] certainly represent the types of folks that I come up against every day here in small town NC-USA.")

Giving someone a microphone and allowing them to voluntarily voice their views is not an "us-vs-them commentary"; it's an attempt to understand them. I for one didn't laugh or feel disdain for the people in the video. Rather, I felt pathos that people commonly confine themselves to such close-minded views. Also, I thought the young interviewer did show a "bit of grace"; he politely let the people speak and refrained from any snarky commentary, either during the segments or afterward.

But to the reader's larger point, I agree that the media tends to filter out sensible voices in favor of sensationalism.  So the video above is a small contribution to countering that filter.

by Patrick Appel

John McWhorter advocates for the end of the war on drugs:

What will turn black America around for good is not more theatrical marches but the elimination of a policy that prevents too many people from doing their best. After welfare reform in 1996, countless people thought that black women would wind up shivering on sidewalk grates. They underestimated the basic human resilience of black people. In the same way, if the War on Drugs is ended, the same people will assume that young black men will wander about jobless and starving. They will not, because they are human beings with basic resilience and survival instincts as well.

 

by Chris Bodenner

The first ads for medical marijuana hit the airways:

The 30-second ad, paid for by Sacramento-based "CannaCare" and produced by [Fox affiliate] KTXL, shows various people delivering testimonials on the benefits of marijuana when used for medicinal purposes. Text at the bottom of the advertisement indicates that marijuana can be used in the relief of many diseases and illnesses, including diabetes, HIV, Hepatitis C and hypertension among others. Marijuana is not shown in the advertisement, and the word "marijuana" is never used. Instead, patients and the ad itself refer to pot as "cannabis."

Another Fox affiliate, in Rhode Island, tackles the controversy in the news segment above. The female host makes a pretty strong case against the ads by criticizing the direct marketing any prescription drugs, whether they be pills or plants.

by Patrick Appel

Evan Osnos gives the Chinese perspective on Iraq:

China was never fond of the war for both practical and philosophical reasons. It was one of five countries—the others were Russia, Indonesia, India, and Vietnam—that had oil deals in place with Saddam Hussein when the U.S. invaded. It has since recovered its position, and far more, emerging, as the A.P. put it in June, “as one of the biggest economic beneficiaries of the war, snagging five lucrative deals.” While Western oil companies responded coolly to Iraq’s recent oil auctions, Chinese companies shrugged off “the security risks and the country’s political instability for the promise of oil.”

by Conor Friedersdorf

A reader writes:

On December 31, 1999, I along with programmers around the world sat apprehensively in front of my TV watching the date roll starting in the far east.  As each hour passed, and cities still had power, I became more elated.  We had done it!  I think if you had asked most programmers coming up on the date change, we were confident of our company's efforts but not sure whether other companies had accomplished their goal.
 
To hear people refer dismissively to Y2K as a disaster that didn't happen is a misreading of the event.  It's actually a case of people in thousands of companies and many countries working together to avert a potential disaster, and the fact that it looked like nothing happened means that we were successful, not that we were just saying "the sky is falling" when it wasn't!  I hate seeing "Y2K" used as a synonym for unjustified hysteria.  It ought to serve as an example of companies working together successfully to solve a real problem.

Says another:

I'm a systems administrator.  You can look it up; you probably know several of us, at least as voices on the phone; it's a job classification that has existed for a while now, evolved out of other jobs (programmers, electrical engineers and so forth), and has been recognized as a classification unto itself for at least twenty years. Systems administrators run the Internet, for example, so it's not as though we aren't relevant to the modern work- and play-space.  But in spite of that, I'm continually surprised at how few people know what the fuck a sysadmin is, even in the most general terms.

Like a lot of people who work with computer technology, we are subject to a peculiar sort of cultural membrane effect.  As soon as someone hears that I'm a "computer person," they're about 50% likely to make a remark like, "Oh, you can help me with my computer!"  By which they mean their PC running Windows.  (I'm helpless on a Windows machine, and not much better on a Mac.)  If I try to explain, the next thing they say is, "Oh, you're a programmer?"  Well not exactly… but in order to put my work into some kind of meaningful context, I'd have to teach them more about it than the typical casual encounter allows.

So when asked what I do for a living, I've learned to reply in one word, "computers", and I've found that for most people (including virtually all of my family), that's plenty.  There's something about this technology, or the role it plays in our lives, that makes people perfectly content to know exactly as much as they need to know about it and not a bit more.  But there's a catch to my one-word job description.  If the person asking is also a "computer person," they'll react to my response as though I've insulted them.  "AND?" they'll say, in words or body language; as if to say, "What, do you think I'm some sort of ignoramus?  I asked what you do!"  In that case I can be pretty sure that "systems administrator" will be a meaningful title, and they might even know a bit about the specific technologies I specialize in, the kinds of problems I wrestle with, and so forth.

Even if they occupy a space far removed from mine professionally, they're inside that membrane.  To them, "computer people" — the whole range of specialties, technologies, jargon and subcultures — is not some undefined mass that fits neatly behind the blur of a single, unwelcoming word.

Maybe I haven't looked hard enough (or maybe I'm outside of too many analogous membranes), but I'm not aware of other cases where this effect is so pronounced.  People tend to have some grasp of medical specialties, academic specialties, and the varied landscapes of other professions. They don't confuse "engineer" with "mechanic" very often.  I can tell you the difference between a banker and a stock broker (and an equities trader and a commodities speculator…), even though those professions don't have much direct bearing on my day-to-day life.  But as soon as digital technology is involved, some switch flips (so to speak), and a Java programmer, a web designer, a desktop support specialist, and a network engineer might as well all be the same thing.

This worries me a little, not because I have some exaggerated sense of my place in society, but because the growing role of computer technology in so many aspects of our lives seems to be running up against a kind of impenetrable incomprehension on the part of a lot of otherwise smart, aware people.  Granted, the "digital world" is a lot newer than the worlds of finance, medicine and internal combustion, and people haven't had as much time to digest its contours. It also changes too quickly for the casually interested to keep up with the fine print, so I'm not bothered that relatively few people read the tech news, or keep up with the current status of what's possible, practical or commonplace.  But when I read about things like privacy concerns on Facebook, credit card number hijacking, "net neutrality", or efforts by governments to eavesdrop on cell phone conversations, a voice in the back of my head is always reminding me that for some number of people — maybe a large number — the issues involved in these stories are blurred to some extent by that same membrane that lumps me in with my natural enemy, a salesman for Microsoft.  As time goes by and the computerization of our lives proceeds, I wonder if we're going to see "computer stuff" gradually summarized and widely digested the way other once-new pursuits have been, or if there's some new threshold here, something qualitatively hard for people to deal with around the workings of computers, such that a distorting gloss will always accompany digital technology.

by Chris Bodenner

Scott Conroy says that Palin's planned appearance at the Ronald Reagan Dinner in Des Moines on September 17 is the "clearest indication yet that she is seriously considering a run for the presidency." Erik Hayden surveys the speculation.

by Patrick Appel

Ackerman compares:

[T]here’s at least one huge exogenous difference between the U.S.’s ability to help Haiti and Pakistan: sovereignty. In Haiti, the beleaguered and overwhelmed government of Rene Preval had no problem accepting help from its nearby American neighbor. Not so in Pakistan.

In Haiti, “We took over the landing strips. We took over completely the provision of assistance. There was not even a fig leaf of Haitian sovereignty,” observes Christine Fair, a South Asia expert at Georgetown University who just returned to D.C. from three months in Afghanistan and Pakistan. “The Pakistani military in particular is walking a very thin line. They do not want to take responsibility for this fiasco, nor be seen as overridden by American demands and further dependent on a country that a lot of people hate.”

by Chris Bodenner

Regarding Glenn Beck's fear of assassination, perhaps he had on his mind the closing scene of Network (Beck himself embraces the Howard Beale comparison):

Today on the Dish, Afghan men took boy lovers; we learned lessons from Iraq and picked at Obama's speech. More romantic Dish readers pitched in on progressively alternative engagement gifts; immigration could solve the housing crisis; and healthcare could determine November's election. Weigel wrote the post-mortem on Murkowski; political parties are not dead yet; and Andrew got dragged into the argument over Kos's new book, American Taliban.

In the lead up to Labor Day, we heard from pharmacists; mathmeticians; a paid pro-bon lawyer; teachers; a mortician; more sacrificing public sector workers and about how the economic downturn has affected the hiring of elites.

The Vanity Fair piece had some ripe Sullivan bait; we got more of Ms. Dina Martina; and Americans were exceptional.  We counted vacation days and inducted more musicians into the hip church (and synagogue) hall of fame. VFYW here; Malkin award here; MHB here; FOTD here. We enjoyed some snacks and shit (so did tigers); Swedish fathers pushed strollers; and we kept the law out of craft cocktails. Glenn Beck wore a bulletproof vest; bonobos are like humans; and men wooed virtual girlfriends on romantic getaways.

–Z.P.

by Patrick Appel

Ricks was underwhelmed by the speech:

As [Obama] said in the speech, he was fulfilling a campaign pledge to get all combat troops out of Iraq by today. Unfortunately, it was a phony pledge — the mission of the U.S. troops still in Iraq is, if anything, more dangerous today than it was yesterday. And so the core of the speech was hollow.

Meanwhile, in the under-reported Iraq story of the month, the Iraqi army chief of staff said the U.S. military needs to stay in Iraq for another decade. "If I were asked about the withdrawal, I would say to politicians: "the US army must stay until the Iraqi army is fully ready in 2020," said Lt. Gen. Babaker Zebari.