Month: December 2010

Conor Friedersdorf

A reader writes:

Okay, so Alex Garland's pinnacle (and first) novel, The Beach, is not what many academics consider a literary masterwork. But once you get past that initial criticism, you do realize that it is an impressively complex book buried within a thick candy shell of pop cultural accessibility, which is a recipe for a profoundly effecting novel with mass appeal for any twenty-something person with a restless spirit and dreams of escape. The book's primary message – as most people know, if not by reading the book then by seeing the Leonardo DiCaprio movie it spawned – is that of finding Utopia among like-minded vagabonds and travelers, then seeing it squandered and torn apart from within.

For me at the impressionable age of 16, as for most people who encountered it, The Beach was a clarion call for all those gen-xers and gen-yers who could care less about the 60's and the hippies, hated the pre-planned culture of the yuppies, and were generally dissatisfied with the world as it is. The Beach said to us: if you don't like something, change it yourself; if you don't want to be where you are, just leave. Its seductive nihilism invites the reader to find their own paradise, and damn the consequences – with just one catch: don't expect perfection, because perfection does not exist. A Utopia can only go so far as humanity allows it, which, it turns out, is not very far. And this cognitive dissonance shaped my world from that point forward: My political independence, my love of freedom but fear of its consequences, my avoidance of zealotry – all thanks to that novel, a keystone in my life. I would even say that I am now a Dish Reader because I first was a Beach Reader.

by Patrick Appel

Yesterday's window view was from Virginia Beach, not Los Angeles.  One of the many readers who noticed the error:

The View From Your Window posted that is supposedly from Los Angeles must be from a movie set because I have lived in LA for almost 7 years and the only time I have seen even a flake of snow was when they were filming a scene for The Office on my street. There must be a typo because there is nowhere in LA that it has snowed in the entire time I've been here. We have had temps in the mid-60's for several weeks now and quite a bit of rain but, alas, no snow. Sorry, but this photo is definitely no taken in LA and, according to Wikipedia anyway,  the last time it snowed in LA was 1932 and they got a whopping 2 inches … it looks like about a foot in the photo. 

Click the following links to vote for the 2010 Malkin Award, Moore Award, Yglesias Award, Hewitt Award, Von Hoffmann Award, Mental Health Break Of The Year, and Face Of The Year. Also – for the first time -  Chart Of The Year and Hathos Alert are on the ballot. The Shut Up And Sing finalists have likewise been announced; it's now up to you to pick the worst pop song designed to reflect a profound moral conscience. I.e. the smuggest, most pretentious pop song in history.

Among the various contenders for the prizes, a roster of the big names in political and cultural discourse: Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Kos, Justin Bieber, Bill Donohue, Jim Manzi, Glenn Reynolds, Sean Penn, Bryan Fischer, Keith Olbermann, Bristol Palin And The Situation, Larry Kudlow and … Andrew Sullivan.

We're giving readers a week to pick the winners for these prestigious prizes. The polls will close on the first of the year. You picked many of the entries; we just marshalled the very best/worst for your selection.

Vote early. Vote often.

The Daily Dish Awards Glossary

Click here to vote for the 2010 Malkin Award!

Click here to vote for the 2010 Yglesias Award!

Click here to vote for the 2010 Moore Award!

Click here to vote for the 2010 Chart Of The Year!

Click here to vote for the 2010 Hewitt Award!

Click here to vote for the 2010 Face Of The Year!

Click here to vote for the 2010 Von Hoffmann Award!

Click here to vote for the 2010 Hathos Alert!

Click here to vote for the Pretentious Pop Song In History!

Click here to vote for the 2010 Mental Health Break Of The Year!

by Zoë Pollock

Felix Salmon puts an interesting spin on the spat between Glenn Greenwald and Wired's Kevin Poulsen over chat logs between Wikileaks whistleblower Bradley Manning and informant Adrian Lamo:

What we’re seeing here is the professionalization of the blogosphere — Greenwald and Poulsen both get paid to blog, as do I — and the way in which that has led to the less journalistic parts of blogging moving over to the informal and freewheeling venue of Twitter. …

This development is not, in my mind, a good thing.

It robs from the blogosphere much of its naturally conversational element, which has largely moved to Twitter. Back in 2004 or so, it was easy to follow debates back and forth between blogs just by clicking on links; now, it’s much harder, and professional blogs are much more likely to link to straight news stories or just break news themselves than they are to link to other bloggers. Discussions and debates on Twitter aren’t archived in the way that they were on blogs, and they’re functionally impossible to search for if you’re more than a few months away from the event.

This particular debate is big and loud enough that bloggers are following it, archiving it, and linking to important tweets. But most Twitter discussions never reach that level, and therefore will disappear in a way that blog discussions never did.

by Conor Friedersdorf

All her criteria in one song!

(Original item here. Hat tip: Tim Heffernan, one of Esquire's finest.)

by Conor Friedersdorf

Let's talk report cards:

It could be a Zen koan: if everybody in the class gets an A, what does an A mean?

The answer: Not what it should, says Andrew Perrin, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. “An A should mean outstanding work; it should not be the default grade,” Mr. Perrin said. “If everyone gets an A for adequate completion of tasks, it cripples our ability to recognize exemplary scholarship.”

But what if you're taking an introductory algebra class, or learning Spanish, or taking basic macroeconomics? In certain classes, mastery of the subject matter is the point, and if you're at an elite school composed of high school valedictorians with SAT scores in the 97th percentile, I don't see the purpose of worrying if most kids get As. (There are, of course, classes where recognizing exemplary scholarship makes more sense.)

Looking back on college, I am thankful that I didn't intend on ever going to graduate school, even if I later wound up there. Unconcerned with my grades, I put tremendous effort into classes that seemed as though they'd prove rewarding. In doing so, I occasionally stole time from classes taught by subpar professors who assigned senseless tasks, or didn't complete graded homework when I was certain that I had an exceptional understading of the material.

 

by Conor Friedersdorf

A reader writes:

An "aspirational identification" would probably best describe the impact Cool Hand Luke had on me – specifically the scene where Luke and the chain gang are tarring the road.  I never had visions of grandeur for myself.  I always saw myself as just a regular guy.  However, when I watched this scene, it capture so much of who I am and what I would like to be.  The later is easy, just look at Newman, the whit, charm and good looks.  The who I am didn't really come out until later in life, but it was always there.  I like to challenge the establishment, nothing bold or brash, I'm no revolutionary.  I just like sticking it to the man from time to time. It never makes a difference in the larger scheme of things, but it does make me smile.

That is one of my favorite all-time scenes.

by Conor Friedersdorf

A reader writes:

Without a doubt: The Bible. But not in a positive way.  

I was raised a devout Catholic. While in college, I read the Bible from cover to cover, and much of it twice.  I was absolutely astonished at the violence, vengeance, inconsistency, and pettiness of this supposed god.  Bluntly put, the Bible simply did not say what my Catholic education and upbringing said it did.  We were spoon-fed only certain portions and never encouraged to read the rest of the story.  As a nearly-50 adult, I look with dismay and disgust at the intentional damage caused by followers of this book.  That damage far, far exceeds any good that is directly attributable to it.  Followers of the Bible, especially fundamentalists, cherry pick phrases that allow them their biases and use them as a club to humiliate and exclude those who are not like them.  No other work has caused so much hatred, carnage, and downright meanness.

We all know that Leviticus describes homosexuality as an abomination.  But there are other things labeled with the same word that seem to be largely ignored: Wearing opposite-gender clothes (Deuteronomy.22:5) – no more jeans for women!  Lying (Proverbs 12:22).  Most trial attorneys (Proverbs.17:15).  A whole bunch of food (Leviticus 11:4-32) including pork, shellfish, and mollusks – so long Red Lobster!.  My personal favorite, Oppression of others, particularly the poor or vulnerable (Ezek. 18: 6-13)  There is a complete list here: http://richardwaynegarganta.com/abomination.htm.  Oh, and the New Testament isn't immune either, because Jesus himself specifically says not to eat figs: Mark 11:12-14 – So long Fig Newtons!  Why is only ONE of these things reviled today, while the others are clearly celebrated?

Things that are clearly condoned in the Bible are now mysteriously prohibited, such as polygamy, concubines (well, fundamentalists seem to call their concubines mistresses these days), slaves, and incest.  Things that are celebrated, indeed the raison d'être of the New Testament, are totally ignored or even ridiculed, such as foregoing wealth, distributing wealth to the poor, rendering aid, forgiving trespasses, and simply loving one another.

Adherents of the Bible misuse it greatly, and few use it for good.

I'm sure I'll get rebuttals on this one – stay tuned.

by Conor Friedersdorf

A reader writes:

I was born into a Mormon family, and raised by a fairly neurotic mother, who, bless her heart, did everything in her power to keep me involved and active in the church. In addition to the normal methods such as compulsory church attendance up to and throughout my high school years, along with requiring full compliance to all the rules that the church dictated, she was also very skilled at using guilt and shame to control not only myself, but my brothers and sister as well when it came to religion.

I came to fully believe that in every aspect in my life that if there was ever any conflict between what I felt or what I believed, and what the church taught, that I was wrong and that the church was right. This would not have been a problem except for the fact that from early on in my teens, I had tremendous doubts about what the church was, and felt no comfort nor gained any spiritual sustenance from attendance. I therefore, of course, was convinced that there was something wrong with me, and that i wasn't trying hard enough, praying long enough, etc. This consumed much of my thinking throughout my teens, and the inward battle became exhausting. I became quite despondent and hopeless, until I read a book. I had read his more famous book, Catcher in the Rye several years before and enjoyed it, but it was J.D. Salinger's book Franny and Zooey that set me free.

I can still remember exactly how I felt almost thirty years ago while Zooey spoke to Franny over the telephone at the end of the book, and how you could feel Franny silently negotiating her own way out of her religious morass that she was in. Every word that Zooey spoke went straight into my heart, and by the time Franny had hung up the phone and fell asleep, I was weeping like a baby. I had never felt so free. Ironically, I never quite looking for a deep spiritual life, and to some degree have found one, but without that book, I'm quite sure I wouldn't be as far along as I am now. I'm not sure if he just ran out of words, or what happened to him, but the fact that Salinger quit publishing so long ago, along with his death, has always been deeply saddening to me.

Men dressed as Vikings lead the torchlight procession as it makes its way to Princess Street for the start of the New Year celebrations December 30, 2010 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Thousands of people joined in the torchlight procession, followed by the burning of a Viking long ship. By Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images.