Month: November 2010

Gregg Easterbrook touts the UN Human Development Report, which he calls "one of the world's most significant documents." Good news:

“Overall, poor countries are catching up with rich countries” on nearly all central measures, the report finds.

Since 1970, income in the developing world has risen 184 percent (all money figures in this column are adjusted to 2010), versus a 126 percent income rise in the OECD nations in the same period. Literacy in the developing world has risen 61 percent since 1970. School enrollment and life expectancy have risen sharply in most developing nations. An overall Human Development Index, which weighs the leading indicators of life, is up 57 percent in the developing world since 1970, and 23 percent since 1990. (See page 28 of the report.)

Many other measures are encouraging. In 1970, just a third of nations had true democracy; today, the fraction is 60 percent. World literacy was 73 percent in 1990, is 84 percent now and continuing to climb. Half a century ago, the typical developing world person attended two years of school. Now it’s six years, and still rising. Most gaps between rich and poor nations are shrinking. For example, compared to 1970, Norwegians now live seven years longer – and Gambians live 16 years longer.

Paul Waldman nails it:

Just a few years ago [Sarah Palin] was the mayor of a tiny town in Alaska, and today she's one of the most famous people in America. Despite her modest talents, there are millions of people who believe, and tell her constantly, that she ought to be the most powerful person on planet Earth. She's made millions of dollars in the last two years, for the easiest of things — giving some speeches, having ghost-writers pen a couple of books, doing appearances on Fox, letting cameras trail her around while she goes fishing. And yet she can barely open her mouth without going on and on about how terribly victimized she is, and how everyone has done her wrong.

Alex Massie is fond of the idea of having Republican partisans moderate the GOP debates: 

[A] Levin and Limbaugh moderated debate would be more interesting and probably more fun than most such affairs. Who doesn't look forward to the spectacle of Mitt Romney sucking up to talk radio hosts while simultaneously trying to appear loftily Presidential and above the fray? It could be delicious. Indeed, this kind of debate might be much more illuminating than most "debates". Which candidate, if any, will dare to suggest, even mildly, that the Great Limbaugh might be mistaken about anything? More probably, which candidate would most thoroughly abase themselves before their inquisitors? 

Bernstein sees both sides.

He explains why suicide might seem perfectly rational from his perspective:

Try going through a day in the life of a gay teen. Every day you hear someone use your sexuality — a part of you that, no matter how desperately you try, you cannot change — as a negative adjective. That hurts.

You fear looking the wrong way in the locker room and offending someone. Politicians are allowed to debate your right to marry the person you love or your right to be protected from hate crimes under the law. Your faith preaches your exclusion — or damnation. And no one does anything to stop it. Recently, the Archbishop used money donated by an anonymous source to denounce same-sex marriage.

That's right: a major religious leader used non-Church money from a questionable source to publicly condemn your right to express your love in a public and binding manner. A public school district nearby — after a wake of suicides by kids much like yourself — cannot bring itself to put your protection from bullying into its policies. Members of the district fear your kind and how you might brainwash their children into thinking that your behavior is appropriate or to join your kind.

A political party makes its position denying your right to marry one of its main voting points. And your nation voted this party in office.

But he begs his fellow teens to hang in and fight. For his eloquence the administrators of his school asked him to remove his piece from the school newspaper which he helped edit.

"Let’s imagine that some thug rows me out to an island and tells me I can’t ever go home unless I dismantle the memoir chapter [in Hitch-22] where Hitchens doubles down on his support for invading Iraq. Let’s say the thug tells me I can only bring one book to the island. Easy choice. I’d bring Hitchens’ memoir. I’d bring it because the Hitchens of the Iraq chapter wouldn’t stand a chance against the Hitchens of the non-Iraq chapters," – David Quigg, responding to a review of "Hitch-22" by the poisonous Eric Alterman.

Every now and then, in some of the bleakest times, a shaft of sunlight pierces the clouds, and reality walks backward onto a Fox News Set:

Praise be.

A reader writes:

I don't know if I am alone in my approach but, having risen to adulthood in the digital era, I have been connected to institutions through bloggers.

Consequently, I have subscribed to print magazines (after having bought an iPad, using Google Reader, and subscribing to RSS feeds) because I have had the opportunity to engage with individuals at these publications through their blogs and have wanted to support the institutions that provide a platform for the production of good content.  I didn't subscribe to The Atlantic until I had read your blog for more than a year and now I look forward to receiving my magazine every month.  And the same is true for other institutions as well. Maybe I am outside the norm but instead of starting my day with the NYT or WSJ – I start it with bloggers who are, consequently, attached to institutions that I have come to respect. 

Simply put, maybe the staples of this era are the individual journalists and bloggers who are great at what they do.

Another writes:

Not sure if you'd be be interested in this, but I wrote a six part (!) series recently on the importance of creating a solid blogger network based on the quality of the writers rather than page-views in the realm of soccer writing. I proposed a partnership between newspapers and independent soccer bloggers for mutual benefit. Sort of caused a minor stir in the soccer blogging community, including a lengthy article discussing the idea in venerable British football magazine When Saturday Comes. Anyway, yeah.

Alex Knapp argues, along with Jon Stewart, that the media professionals should ignore the Willow story:

No matter how much you may dislike her famous mother, a 16 year old should be able to say something stupid on the Internet without it becoming national news. And she should certainly be able to say something stupid without having it analyzed, criticized, or defended by adults she’s never met and likely never will meet.

Saying stupid things is a part of growing up. Let her find her own way in the world which will mean that, yes, sometimes she will say things that are cruel, or thoughtless, or stupid. I’ll wager you said some pretty stupid things when you were 16, too. So lay off.

What if she had written "ni**er?" And one has to note that her mother has put all her children into an unforgiving spotlight, even subjecting them to reality show exposure. The idea that we should all abide by rules that Palin herself freely violates – her family "privacy" my ass – is surrender to her double standards. Palin cannot cite her son, Track, in every stump speech and not have his history examined. She cannot parade a child with Down Syndrome like a campaign poster and not have any questions asked about the kid's journey into this world. She cannot push one daughter into a reality show and an abstinence campaign without allowing that person's past and present to be a story. If Palin kept her family private, it would be one thing. But she relentlessly exploits them when it suits her and then acts offended if there's any pushback or scrutiny. Screw that.

Weigel, meanwhile, was ignoring the story until GOProud decided to issue a "get-out-of-slur free card."

It's perfectly defensible to have a principled opposition to federal funding for journalism. But this is absurd:

House Republicans announced today that they will force a floor vote to eliminate taxpayer-funded support for NPR in response to the firing of Juan Williams. A proposal to defund NPR was the winner in the GOP’s weekly “YouCut” contest, in which the public votes online for various spending cuts — GOP leaders have pledged to force votes on the winning items (so far nearly every such vote has failed to pass the Democratic-controlled House).

They're making a decision about whether to end federal subsidies to a decades old news organization because of Juan Williams? More to the point, the GOP rank-and-file could force a vote on a federal spending cut, and they picked NPR? I have a sinking feeling that this is what the GOP intends to do for two years: ride populist base fads into trivial nicks in spending, while never facing up to fiscal reality.