Month: September 2010

A reader writes:

Fred Fox mistakes Jumping the Shark for a point of decline in popularity. Actually, it is about the aesthetic integrity of a character or show. Fonzie’s jumping of the shark was the moment when the character Fonzie became not just self-parody, but even worse – an unaware self-parody. The character had destroyed that which made it interesting, or if you like, cool.

The phrase has nothing to do with popularity; it is a marker of when a show goes outside of its boundaries and in doing so destroys some of its characters’ integrity. If you like, it marks the end of the beginning rather than the beginning of the end for a show.

Andrew Gelman analyzes voting preferences:

Those 10% or so of voters who plan to vote Republican—even while thinking that the Democrats will do a better job—are not necessarily being so unreasonable. The Democrats control the presidency and both houses of Congress, and so it’s a completely reasonable stance to prefer them to the Republicans yet still think they’ve gone too far and need a check on their power.

I find the current GOP about as repellent as anyone. I can also believe, as I do, that the stimulus of the last two years was a sadly necessary measure to prevent the bottom falling out in ways no one could have controlled, once started. Now I want a focus on long-term debt reduction. Do I trust the GOP on the debt? Is the Pope gay? Do I trust the Dems? No. Do I think Obama is suited to forging a sane compromise out of the debt commission? Yes. Do I think the GOP can rise to the occasion? Probably not.

But in a strange way, the more anti-debt and anti-spending their rhetoric becomes and the plainer it is that serious defense and entitlement cuts are necessary for the problem to be solved, the more I’d like to see the GOP be deprived of their obstructionist no-responsibility posturing of the last two years. I’d like to see their bluff called on spending to escape the current impasse and get to a real debate rather than a phony one. If they win back the House, as it seems inevitable they will, they will have to offer something at last instead of criticizing everything in comically tired tropes and waiting for 2012, as the president is stymied from enacting the reformist change we elected him for. 

So you throw some tea into the mix. The point is not that voters are somehow in an fit of pique backing a party whose policies they actually reject. It is that they want to break the logjam of one-party rule where the opposition party is strong enough to sabotage but denied the responsibility of actual government. And if the Republicans blow it like they did in 1996, Obama is revealed as the transformative pragmatist he has the potential to be – something now obscured by the FNC-RNC’s risk-free inflammation. There is, after all, something quite disturbing about a political party as extremist as the current GOP both dominating the debate while bearing no responsibility for anything that actually gets done in the country or world.

And in a real debate between the GOP and Obama on the economy – like that memorable interaction with the Congressional Republicans over healthcare – Obama wins on most points, and where he loses, he deserves to. He is, in my view, at his best when he is directing conservatives toward logical reality, and guiding liberals toward what can actually be done. And a Republican victory might bring those very virtues to bear in ways so far prevented by conservative ideology and cynicism. 

Well, it’s a hope, anyway. Maybe a forlorn one – but I’m trying.

(Photo: Ishara Skodikara/AFP/Getty.)

It's the most absurdly over-valued experience of our time: celebrity. And it seemed to me that David Letterman never quite got what Mr Phoenix was up to, and Mr Phoenix never got it entirely either, which was part of the absurdist point. So this mockumentary – noted by TNC – where Casey Affleck "directs" "Joaquin Phoenix" entering the twilight zone is something I must try and see:

For the record, Affleck never owns up onscreen to the artifice, and the supporting players (Antony, identified as “friend and general assistant,” and Larry, “friend and caretaker”) convinced me that the abuse they were taking was as real as … as … their large penises once or twice on display. Phoenix, meanwhile, babbles and cackles, sucks on joints (real?), Hoovers up cocaine (real?), and extols the “buttholes” of online prostitutes (real!). He grows pudgier and pudgier. He vomits prodigiously. He didn’t make me squirm, though, the way I do watching Borat humiliate his marks or Larry David on Curb Your Enthusiasm endlessly reshuffle his small deck of neuroses. There’s a thrilling madness to Phoenix’s Method.

Michael Lewis has an eye-opening article on Greece well worth reading in full. What form of journalism can Michael not do better than almost anyone else? From the conclusion:

The question everyone wants an answer to is: Will Greece default? There’s a school of thought that says they have no choice: the very measures the government imposes to cut costs and raise revenues will cause what is left of the productive economy to flee the country. The taxes are lower in Bulgaria, the workers more pliable in Romania. But there’s a second, more interesting question: Even if it is technically possible for these people to repay their debts, live within their means, and return to good standing inside the European Union, do they have the inner resources to do it? Or have they so lost their ability to feel connected to anything outside their small worlds that they would rather just shed themselves of the obligations?

On the face of it, defaulting on their debts and walking away would seem a mad act: all Greek banks would instantly go bankrupt, the country would have no ability to pay for the many necessities it imports (oil, for instance), and the country would be punished for many years in the form of much higher interest rates, if and when it was allowed to borrow again. But the place does not behave as a collective; it lacks the monks’ instincts. It behaves as a collection of atomized particles, each of which has grown accustomed to pursuing its own interest at the expense of the common good. There’s no question that the government is resolved to at least try to re-create Greek civic life. The only question is: Can such a thing, once lost, ever be re-created?

A reader writes:

I appreciate that you were able to disconnect for a little while during your vacation, but I must admit that I was looking forward to the more thorough and comprehensive response to Goldberg’s Atlantic article that you hinted at prior to your vacation.  With the fine show of peace talks now taking place, I do think it is important that some of these issues see the light of day.

Agreed. I'm working on it. I just need to absorb not just the piece but the varied critiques of it. Soon.

“A gay relationship is like decaffeinated coffee, you do not wake up,” – Father Gonzalo Miranda, a bioethics professor at Regina Apostolorum University.

Which makes celibacy sanka?

"This is an unusual problem. It's devastating. This is one of the more creative and salient Google issues I've ever seen," – Michael Fertik, CEO of ReputationDefender, which specializes in helping individuals maintain a positive Web presence, on the slippery issue facing Rick Santorum's presidential hopes.

Sometimes this is the only appropriate response to fringe Christianists like Terry Jones:

Bradford Plumer describes the Environmentalist's Paradox: humanity doing better while the Earth does worse. Dave Roberts expands on that thought:

There's no contradiction in noting that coal is both bringing people out of poverty in China and insuring the suffering of future Chinese. Today the net welfare gains of coal use in China seem greater than the net losses, but that's only because the gains are immediate and the losses are deferred for a while. In our lifetimes, that will change — the losses will come due. The dangers of responding too late to that inevitability are far, far worse than the dangers of acting too early.

The environmentalist's paradox is a function of our parochial perspective. We're just not accustomed to grappling with problems of global scope, decadal time lags, and irreversible impact.