Month: September 2010

by Conor Friedersdorf

A reader writes "in defense of elites":

There is a reason why successful kids and tough schools get those jobs–because the grade/school attendance ratio is one of the best proxies for long term success on the merits.  The kid interviewing from Duke or Harvard or Stanford law school usually has this profile–(1) studied hard in high school and got very good grades, (2) followed by studying hard and getting average or better grades at a top tier college or getting very high grades at a lower ranked college, (3) followed by studying hard and getting good grades at a top tier law school or great grades at a lower ranked law school.  On top of that, they have to be personable, presentable, and have a weird type of work ethic that will keep someone working all night long to find the magic document in 20 boxes of emails between accountants. The work is not for the faint of heart.  It is mentally and physically demanding, and there is almost no moral satisfaction that comes from making sure that Company A, not Company B, gets that big pot of money. 

Furthermore, the analytical skills and creativity that go into making those types of legal arguments are not widely shared… Those creative and analytical skills are more commonly found (not exclusively found) at elite schools because those schools take a bunch of those little high school geeks who actually read all of Moby Dick (including the whaling chapters) and put them in a fishbowl for 4 years in college and then reshuffled them in different schools for three more years in law school, picking up stars from lower tier schools and shedding knucklehead legacy kids who were just coasting in college. 

There is a tremendous amount of learning, sharpening, and growth that happens between classes when those geeks are eating pizza.  Some of the key lessons and skills I learned when at my Ivy League College and Top Tier Law School were from other students who had picked up incredible skills before even getting there.  And I added what I knew to others.  I would like to say that you can get the same level of education out of every school if you are a self-starter, but you can only push yourself so much.  Sometimes you need others to push you as well.  Those elite schools create an environment where you get pushed a lot harder by your peers. 

Yes, I think that is all accurate. And it helps capture the thought behind the question I recently asked conservative critics of the current meritocracy: If you think it's flawed now, what better system do you suggest for replacing it? There's this weird dynamic in the United States where some conservatives will praise the hard working kid who gets good grades in high school, completes all their homework, avoids behavioral and legal trouble, plays varsity sports, takes a leadership role in student government, and studies hard for his SATs… until he or she attends Harvard, at which point they're put in the coastal elite box, especially if they wind up in politics, media, or academia. 

There are nevertheless solid critiques of a ruling class so heavily determined by a relatively small number of elite educational institutions.

More about that in another post.

by Patrick Appel

Douthat hones in on the big one:

[W]hat the war in Iraq has really impressed upon me is the bluntness of military force as an instrument of state, and the difficulty of predicting any of the long-term consequences that flow from a decision to make war. We can spin out complicated counterfactuals that justify the Iraq invasion, and complicated counterfactuals that make it look even worse. We can hope for long-range developments that make the Bush administration’s decisions seem prescient, and worry about long-range developments that would undercut the fragile achievements of the last few years. But I’m more and more convinced that when it comes to judging a decision for or against war, it’s actually better to confine yourself to the short-term consequences rather than the long-term fallout, and at assess the war based on its immediate military objectives rather than its deep strategic goals.

Exum is on the same page:

Andrew Bacevich says "The United States leaves Iraq having learned nothing." I disagree. I think we have learned a lot, tactically, operationally, and strategically, and I think the American people will in the future be more wary of the kind of military adventurism that led to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Bacevich should take heart in this. But honestly, does anyone out there see a U.S. administration ever embracing the kind of neo-isolationism that Bacevich is apparently demanding? And is it just me, or is he crankier than normal lately?

More from Bacevich here.

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

I can't describe my utter joy in your posting of the commercial clips of my favorite freak-tastic drag goddess, Ms. Dina Martina. She is THE must-see show for my partner and me every summer in Ptown. She was especially brilliant this year. And our annual tradition as we drive to his family for Christmas is to listen to Dina's holiday CD. We laugh just as hard as the first time we listened, singing along to all the twisted lyrics (baby Jesus loving baby-back ribs that Mary will serve to the three kings – can't be beat!).

I've also seen her perform live, and that clip doesn't do her justice; you simply have to be there. (Also, I don't know for sure, but that boisterous laugh in the crowd sounds exactly like Andrew's.) For another dose of Dina, go here. The Stranger did a great profile of her in 1999:

The primary fact that one must understand about Dina Martina — beyond her stature as a superstar entertainer without peer — is that she is in possession of not one shred of discernible talent or grace. Her voice sounds like a cat having an epileptic fit on a chalkboard, her body moves like two pigs fighting their way out of a sleeping bag, and her face looks like the collision of a Maybelline truck with a Shoney's buffet.

by Chris Bodenner

Weigel writes a post-mortem on Murkowski:

She voted for the Troubled Asset Relief Program in 2008. In October 2009 she said she was “open” to compromise on cap-and-trade legislation if it expanded drilling and nuclear power. She had a moderate record on abortion, siding with liberals on some matters of federal funding for the procedure. And she occasionally spoke dismissively of Sarah Palin. Tell me if I’m missing something, but I think that’s it. Just like Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah), Murkowski wasn’t so much an unreliable vote, like Arlen Specter used to be, as a Republican in a safe seat who was too often approached for possible compromises by Democrats. And that was unacceptable.

You really have to admire the strategic chops of tea partyers in taking down Bennett and Murkowski. In both cases, they only had to convince a small number of partisans to oust their incumbents. In both cases, they could smooth the path to victory by adding new people to the electorate — in Utah that meant getting tea partyers to become Republican delegates, and in Alaska it meant activating some unaffiliated voters who could vote in the GOP primary.

Steve Chapman reminds us how Murkowski got into office in the first place: “It was the first time ever that a governor had appointed his own child to the Senate, and it was not popular.” No doubt that lingering resentment fueled the anti-establishment fervor that rallied to Joe Miller. You can’t get much more insidery than bald nepotism.

Regardless, the Tea Party win is yet another omen for a Palin nomination in ’12.

by Chris Bodenner

Yes.

by Conor Friedersdorf

A couple years back a close friend landed a job at one of America's most prestigious law firms upon finishing her degree. Then the firm realized that it over-hired. As a result, it didn't retract its offer, but offered her roughly $80,000 to wait a year before starting. She did non-profit work in the interim, and never did wind up going back.

That must seem like an unbelievable story to a lot of people, but despite the economy, that kind of thing is still going on, as this reader explains:

I recently graduated from a top law school and find myself on exactly the path you describe.  Firms do indeed seek out graduates of the most elite law schools because clients want their work done by graduates of Harvard, Yale, Stanford, etc. if only because they have no other way to judge the quality of the newly minted lawyers who will be doing the leg work on their offerings and mergers documents.  You'll probably be deluged with replies critiquing and defending the legal recruitment system so I'll just mention a perverse side effect the current recession is having on the hiring of the public interest lawyers you mentioned in your post.

 

Top law firms are highly constrained by the need to preserve their reputation and relationships with the elite law school that feed their ranks each fall.  It's very difficult for a law school student to differentiate between top firms (called "BigLaw" in the industry) when making employment choices, so any negative press can severely damage a firm's recruitment at a given school.  It's a big reason why fresh law recruits with few substantive skills and even less real world experience command high salaries and are treated with kid gloves as summer associates.  Now, the economic downturn has led to a lot less legal fees for these big firms and they've understandably cut back on recruitment.  But what to do with someone in my position?  I was given an offer of employment but was then told that there wasn't enough work to justify bringing me on board at the market rate for 1st year associates.  Firms in almost every other industry would immediately tell me "sorry but we need to let you go" and I'd be out looking for work like millions of other Americans.  But elite laws firms don't work that way.  They're too worried I'd go back and tell my friends and the recruitment office at my law school that so-and-so firm laid me off before I started.  Then, next fall, students from my school would shun the firm and they'd be unable to hire those elite grads that their clients love so much.  So instead I've been "deferred" from my job till fall of 2011 and am drawing a salary from the firm that exceeds the median income in this country, despite the fact that I'm not working.  I don't claim to be anything other than the luckiest person I know.

And it gets even more ridiculous.  My firm has instructed us that they'd like to see us doing some pro bono work while we wait out our (paid) deferral periods.  This sounds like a noble thing to do, till you realize that now hundreds (thousands?) of newly graduated elite law students are flooding the public interest legal market and can work for literally nothing.  All those kids who went to law school and wanted to do government service, help the homeless, defend the indigent and any number of other worthy causes just saw their chances of landing one of the few top pro bono jobs go up in smoke.  I know I personally put both a legal assistant and a part-time paralegal out of a job when I started volunteering at a non-profit in Manhattan.  It's a boon to the public interest organizations but a disaster for those lawyers who eschewed the big firm, big money path.

A lot of people are predicting that the Big Law model is never going to recover after the current recession. I don't have any insight into that question except to say that I think the United States would be a better country if there were less incentive for so many bright people to spend their twenties doing grunt work at big law firms.

by Chris Bodenner

The new Vanity Fair hit piece on Palin is providing plenty of grist for her critics. Gryphen plucks out the juicier parts. Ben Smith finds the piece embellished, and Weigel backs him up. I find this passage believable (if a tad exaggerated):

“This whole hunter thing, for Sarah? That is the biggest fallacy,” says one longtime friend of the family. “That woman has never hunted. The picture of her with the caribou she says she shot? She got out of the R.V. to pose for a picture. She never helps with the fishing either. It’s all a joke.” The friend goes on to recall that when Greta Van Susteren came to the house to interview Palin “[Sarah] cooked moose chili and whatnot. Todd was calling everyone he knew the day before—‘Do you got any moose?’ Desperate.”

Some Sullivan bait from the piece:

Early in the 2008 campaign, when John McCain’s aides discovered that Alaska-size gaps existed in Palin’s general knowledge (among those previously unreported: she had no idea who Margaret Thatcher was), they from time to time would give her some books to read in hopes of improving the candidate’s learning curve.

And this:

One person who has been a frequent houseguest of the Palins’ says that the couple began many mornings with screaming fights, a fusillade of curses: “ ‘Fuck you,’ ‘Fuck this,’ ‘You lazy piece of shit.’ ‘You’re fuckin’ lucky to have me,’ Sarah would always say.” (This person never saw Todd and Sarah sleep in the same bed, and recalls that Todd would often joke, “I don’t know how she ever gets pregnant.”)

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

Glenn Beck said he wore a bulletproof vest because his wife insisted on it. And I don't understand how Hitchens can call the people at the rally self-pitying white people.  The Iraqi soldier with no hands (who is now training other soldiers in hand-to-hand combat, believe it or not) and the Vietnam vet whose face was burned off were far from self-pitying.  I believe the latter will be on Beck's Friday show, along with other clergymen and women.

I didn't see anyone there who was self-pitying.  I saw many people of all ages and races.  Maybe Hitchens is the one who is protesting too much.  Or maybe he was angry because Beck had 240 clergymen and women on stage with him (ministers, priests, rabbis, and imams), all different races, all holding hands. You should have watched Beck's show yesterday, not the Monday show.  Yesterday he answered Hitchens and every other reporter/journalist who wrote about the rally and got mostly everything wrong.  BTW, the rally raised $5,000,000 for the children of Special Ops.  Yes, what a self-pitying group of white people.

My problem with the Beck segment wasn't his wearing of the vest per se, but rather his martyr-like publicizing of it.

by Conor Friedersdorf

Elsewhere at The Atlantic, an interesting post about craft cocktails and the impulse to protect certain recipes as intellectual property.

Jacob Grier reacts:

Intellectual property exists to promote progress. Its purpose is not to ensure that no one’s ideas are stolen or that creative people can earn a living, unless those things are needed to promote progress in a field. The granting of temporary monopolies in the form of patents and copyrights is the price we pay for progress, not a goal in itself.

It might be completely true that bartenders are shamelessly stealing from each other, and that’s certainly something we should condemn, but we probably shouldn’t get the law involved unless we can show that this theft is causing mixology to stagnate. Along with fashion, cooking, and even magic, we’re in an industry that’s arguably better off with weak IP. This decade’s boom in craft cocktails is a sign that we’re doing OK without stricter protections, and I’d be worried that additional threats of lawsuits would have a chilling effect on the sharing of new techniques and recipes.