Month: November 2010

It's an entertaining interview with Berkeley Breathed, though it doesn't bode well for the future of newspapers:

RUSSELL: Re-reading "Bloom County" now, the sheer rudeness of some of these comics is still sort of breathtaking. What sort of editorial gauntlet did you have to run at the time to preserve what you've called the comic's "up yours" attitude?

BREATHED: Few fights then. Almost none. Interestingly … probably impossible now. Fear rules in the pages today. Shivering, pee-in-your-pants fear that another subscriber will cancel. So the editors edit everything and anything out that could possibly offend. Or be vaguely interesting. A brilliant, sad strategy to speed up the inevitable collapse.

RUSSELL: Could "Bloom County" even exist in syndication today?

BREATHED: "No" is the short answer. Papers would be flummoxed by "Bloom County" now. It was meant for youthful eyeballs — and there be none of those ogling newspaper comic pages now. Old-timers chuckling over "Doonesbury" and "Beetle Bailey" are pretty much all that's left. They clip out their favorites, stick 'em on the fridge, and put the rest under their parakeets to shit on. The good ol' days.

Is there any truly innovative comic today that isn't entirely online?

Chait absorbs the farcical interview above (transcript here):

Aside from "cutting waste," DeMint's one big idea for saving money is to repeal the Affordable Care Act. And what does he attack the Affordable Care act for? Cutting Medicare! So he's essentially conceding that his "deficit-reducing" plan involves increasing the deficit.

Sprung distills DeMint:

It's simple: old Democratic programs good. New Democratic programs bad. Current Democratic initiatives socialism. Prior Democratic initiatives sacred.

An observation from Phoebe:

Highly educated, socially-awkward parents often produce socially-adept but academically apathetic offspring… But mostly, we just don't hear from the lighthearted, popular offspring of the super-serious. They're not writing introspective articles in the New York Times. They're not publishing novels…

The shame of their situation, combined with their lack of writing skills, keeps them from telling their story. We hear lots – as well we should – about the external factors preventing worthy students from making it to four-year colleges. But the fact is that we don't hear about the set who've had every meritocratic advantage, yet who can't make it off the couch.

Her larger point is that, contra Charles Murray, an elite determined by school performance isn't actually self-perpetuating, because sometimes smart parents produce kids of below average intelligence. They just don't talk about it, so we're blind to the phenomenon.

Chait, Cohn, Cottle, Foer, and Judis have chosen their favorite pieces.

The Urbanophile tries to break down some secular taboos:

Though Christianity was originally an urban religion, modern Christianity has always had a bit of a problem with cities, with their licentious ways, anonymity, and the little bit of Babylon and Sodom they all contain… Yet urbanists should take religion much more seriously than they often do. That’s because it plays a much bigger role in the city and civic health than currently believed, and because many urban congregations have mastered the art of outreach and conversion in a way that transit and density advocates can only dream about.

Andrew Leonard doesn't believe the GOP is dumb enough to go through with a government shutdown. Stan Collender isn't so sure:

[T]he fact that the shutdowns were so bad 15 years ago doesn't automatically mean that they will be equally as politically damaging this time, or for that matter that they'll be damaging at all.  In the current take-no-prisoners/politics of obstruction world that exists inside the Beltway (which definitely did not exist in 1995-96), a GOP-induced shutdown is more likely to be seen by the GOP base as a badge of honor rather than the mark of failure it was before. 

And it definitely would be red meat for the tea party types.

Cantor won't rule it out:

QUESTION: Are you willing to say right now we’re not going to let the country go into default, and we won’t allow a government shutdown?

CANTOR:  Chris, look at this now.  The chief executive, the president, is as responsible as any in terms of running this government.

I think the current GOP, which sees only political war and never political conversation, is capable of anything. Under-estimating their radicalism is as dangerous as under-estimating Palin's appeal.

The miracle of medical science – and the human reality behind it:

Razib Khan used to be a fan of gridlock, but now he's not so sure:

[C]onsider Cameron’s austerity drive in the UK or the rollback of Swedish socialism. Public expenditures were 71 percent of Swedish GDP in 1993, and are now 52 percent!

We are a nation of laws first and foremost. But sometimes laws were written and designed for conditions which no longer hold. Over the next few generations we’ll be facing major structural obstacles to the maintenance of current government services. Politicians will need some power to clean house, or the house will burn down.

They have that power. They're just too afraid to use it. It isn't the system that's preventing a fiscal reckoning before it's too late – it's the politicians and the voters who reward the cowards and punish the grownups. 

TNC explains the conversations about police officers that he's forced to have with his son:

We live in a city where officers gun down innocent black men, and on any claim of fearing for their lives, return to work. We live in a city where officers arrest black people, without even writing in charges, in order to please a computer program. We live in a city where honest officers who dare oppose the program, are thrown in psych wards, and when released, stalked hundreds of miles upstate, while those caught red-handed are transferred to the Bronx.

These are facts. A department claiming that "most" of its officers don't make false arrests, is a bistro claiming that "most" of its chefs don't spit in the food, or a hotel claiming that "most" of its rooms don't have rats.