Month: December 2010

A reader writes:

I assume you're not a fan of the Monkees, but I'd hazard to guess that you're largely unfamiliar with their canon and their place in pop music history. I'll leave it up to you to do the research if you're curious, but suffice to say, the Monkees were essentially a repository and an opportunity for some of our greatest pop songwriters of the 1960s (Goffin/King, Sedaka, Diamond, Nillson, etc.), not to mention a result of some of LA's best players (you've heard of the Wrecking Crew?).

In contrast, Kid Rock, while respectfully and sincerely representing Michigan and a midwestern working-class sensibility, is a lousy singer and rapper, and mediocre pop star. He's mostly a good-willed representative of Rock for the Reality TV era.

I love the Monkees and grew up on them, including a pubescent crush on Peter Tork. More on the Monkees' "impact and legacy":

They found unlikely fans among musicians of the punk rock period of the mid-1970s. Many of these punk performers had grown up on TV reruns of the series, and sympathized with the anti-industry, anti-Establishment trend of their career. Sex Pistols and Minor Threat both recorded versions of "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone" and it was often played live by Toy Love. The Japanese new wave pop group The Plastics recorded a synthesizer and drum-machine version of "Last Train to Clarksville" for their 1979 album Welcome Plastics.

A reader writes:

I've been reading your blog for about three years now and I've never written in.  I've been hoping for so long that somebody would pick up on the tragedy of this part of DOMA, but I've felt a little selfish about it because it involves me too.

In 2005, my dream came true, and I was accepted to Oxford to do my DPhil and granted a pretty nice scholarship to boot.  In 2006, I met my partner there, and we had a civil partnership ceremony in 2008.  I finished my DPhil in 2009, and I would like to stay in academia; teaching has always been my passion.  Unfortunately, there are not so many opportunities for teaching at the university level in the UK, and with the budget cuts – which I understand but loathe – it doesn't look like there are any on the horizon. 

For the last two years I have taken some temporary posts, first in Italy, now in the US, and lived apart from my partner.  But soon this won't be feasible because my partner will have our child in February.  I have published, I have paid my dues, I have done everything I'm supposed to do to get a position in academia in the US, and the truth is that probably I would be able to get one despite the fierce competition here. 

The trouble is that my partner cannot come to the States on a spousal visa.  So I am left with the horrible decision of giving up on what I love, what I have worked hard for, what I am really good at, and what a lot of people (UK and US governments included) have paid a lot of money for to be with my wife and future child in the UK.  I am so desperate for work in the UK now that I applied for two secretarial posts this weekend, but you can imagine that I don't get too many looks because I am "too qualified".  To tell the truth, I don't want our daughter (who will be a US citizen from birth thanks to UK law, but anchor babies are myths) to grow up in a country that would treat her parents like this. 

I don't think you've picked up on really the cruelest part of all.  Some of my friends have said that they will marry my partner in order for her to move to the States.  The hard-line right wingers are always saying, "Well, you can have the same rights, you can marry a man."  But immigration will care that my partner was married to me.  And immigration will care that she does not want nor will ever want to sleep with a man, despite (potentially) marrying one, so it isn't true that you can just "marry a man."  They will check to make sure that the two of them are having sex; they will care that they are having sex; the US government will not give her a visa unless they are.  So when they say "marry a man", that's not what they really mean. 

I don't feel like I've done a very good job explaining the ludicrousness of this part, but Dan Savage had a good post on it a few weeks back. I implore you to continue shining a light on this issue as much as you can.

Another writes:

Don't know if you listen to your local public radio station, but Rebecca Sheir (of WAMU's beautifully revamped Metro Connection show) did a heatbreaking story on The Spousal Diaspora a couple weeks ago. The segment is called "Till Death — or Deportation? — Do Us Part".

Gregory Johnsen makes his case against killing al-Awlaki:

[I]sn’t it possible that knowing what we know [al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP )] and its development that as the Obama administration talks about al-Awlaki and as the media focuses on him, AQAP continues to push him forward, hoping to take advantage of all the free advertising? Basically, hoping that his name and association with AQAP can bring them more western recruits.

This would explain his “poorly veiled coming out” and the reason AQAP didn’t talk about him prior to the attempt on Muhammad bin Nayyif and the Christmas Day plot, because he wasn’t integral to either one, including the one on the US. But as the Obama Administration focused on him, AQAP kept pushing him more and more to the front and now, after the parcel bomb plot we have a “Foreign Operations Unit” that he may or may not be the head of.

Now, as I said in the NYT, the Obama administration is in a bind.

Both Thomas and I agree that al-Awlaki is a threat, we just disagree on how significant of one he is. I have often said that there is no “magic missile solution to the problem of AQAP in Yemen.” I still believe this to be true and in much the same way I don’t think there is a single target answer to attacks on the homeland. The US would be mistaken to think it can make the homeland safer by killing Anwar al-Awlaki. 

Jonathan Bernstein defends himself. He insists that what he's saying is not that economically or fiscally that deficits don't matter – merely that politically, they don't. But that of course is exactly what Cheney and Rove were saying. Because deficits don't matter politically, there is no reason to tackle them. Now, I know Jonathan wasn't claiming we should ignore fiscal balance as a matter of principle – merely as a matter of political fact. But that's a core part of the problem. If our political elites only ever respond to short-term political interests, then the deficit will never be tackled. And it has almost never been tackled, except in the early 1990s, because of the heroic efforts of the first Bush and Clinton – against the gale-force wind of supply-side Republicanism.

What I get frustrated by is the use of such political realism/cynicism to mitigate against action. When Jonathan does it, he is merely presenting the facts of political science. When Rove and Cheney did it, they were engaging in the kind of deep cynicism that has helped destroy America's fiscal standing and economic future.

C'mon, everybody. We've got quiltin' to do!:

The latest PPP poll of Republicans finds Palin just at the top of the list of possible candidates, with the highest favorable ratings, followed a little after by Huckabee. Among Republicans, her favorable/unfavorable rating is 68/22. Among the entire population it's 39/52. As the GOP marinates some more and becomes increasingly sealed off from everyone else, those numbers may become even more distant.

I've been watching Sarah Palin's Alaska diligently, although I recommend some form of consciousness alteration if you want to dive in. The latest was quite something, if only as proof that she isn't the only smoking hot member of her family. Former-teen-vandal now soldier Track is a dream-boat (although his facial hair seems to fluctuate from one scene to the next). But he's also clearly useless. I don't know what they edited out, but his alleged attempt to take over his dad's salmon run was obviously a total dud. I counted very few fish. And he seemed unable to get up in the morning and wrecked the boat-trailer wheels.

There was also a rather moving segment with Sarah Palin brought close to tears by the thought of Trig growing up like another, older child with Down Syndrome that we met. I remain as always in awe of those who seek to rear and love children with special needs; and I think the show is worthwhile if only to provide a glimpse (an obviously manicured and propagandized glimpse) of what that means. No, my desire to know the facts behind the pregnancy and labor and birth has not faltered (it's my job to scrutinize strange claims by public figures). But I was moved nonetheless – and if I was moved, other surely will be. Whatever else you say about her, rearing Trig – and including him fully in family outings – is a blessed thing to do.

This is a reality show, of course, however preposterously Palin denies it. Do nature documentaries begin with portraits and names of family members?

And like most reality shows, it tried to coerce what would otherwise be an utterly banal attempt by one family to go fishing (and fail) into some kind of strained narrative. Palin kept repeating it to us – this episode was about Track finally earning respect from Todd. He didn't, obviously. It was silly, obviously. The outtakes would have been much more interesting. But without that arc – and just the sheer hathos of listening to Palin go on and on and on as if silence would kill her – the whole thing would have been beyond dull.

Still, I wouldn't under-estimate this kind of stuff. It's for her base, of course. But the propaganda is powerful, intense and the sheer energy she must expend doing all of this, while tweeting and speaking and flying all over the place is, well, impressive in a deranged kind of way. If anyone thinks this neurotic, delusional force of nature is not going to run for the White House, they should watch the show.

Megan pre-spins news that Wikileaks is going to target a big bank next:

It is, of course, not impossible that someone innocent managed to stumble onto an explosive treasure trove of evidence.  But I'd say it's at least as likely that the documents reveal little in the way of malfeasance, and a great deal of bankers saying things that sound bad: making fun of customers and other bankers, whining about regulators, and so forth.  In other words, much like the diplomatic cables, a bunch of stuff that is embarrassing, but doesn't actually tell us much of anything that we desperately need to know.

"I view it as a little naïve. First of all, you can’t shut down the government. There are public safety, national security issues, that override a well-intended point, I’m sure, that government is way too big. Better to have a plan on how you reduce the debt by reducing the deficit. And that plan is out there… You can create a roadmap where you have declining deficits that would create a whole lot of confidence, a lot more confidence than shutting down government for a couple of weeks and then admitting that its not going to be finished. It’s harder to build consensus around the tough choices that have to be made, but that’s what has to be done," – Jeb Bush, in an interview with Newsmax.

"[The TSA's non-discrimination hiring policy is] the federal employee's version of the Gay Bill of Special Rights … That means the next TSA official that gives you an 'enhanced pat down' could be a practicing homosexual secretly getting pleasure from your submission," – Eugene Delgaudio, an elected official in Loudoun County, Virginia.