Month: December 2010

by Conor Friedersdorf

I'm going to start highlighting the most absurd efforts to use for partisan or ideological gain news events that don't have anything to do with either. Today's example:

The blizzard is definitely a force for conservatism, and not only because it has had the global-warming crowd scrambling for explanations. The blizzard reveals something basic:  Liberals in government want to tell us what to eat, counsel us about how and when to die, and in general attempt to engineer our lives. But when reality knocks, they can’t do the basic stuff such as clearing the streets so that newborns don’t die in bloody apartment-building lobbies. Mayor Bloomberg may be receiving an unfair amount of criticism for his lackluster performance in coping with Mother Nature, given the almost unprecedented nature of the storm, but the unplowed city streets provide a metaphor for the nanny state: It can order us to do anything, but it can’t take care of the basic obligations of government.

In reality, snow storms cut both ways: snow angels are very friendly to religious conservatives, while snow men fervently support efforts to stop global warming.

by Patrick Appel

Gary Shilling believes that housing prices are still falling:

[The] huge and growing surplus inventory of houses will probably depress prices considerably from here, perhaps another 20% over the next several years. That would bring the total decline from the first quarter 2006 peak to 42%.

This may sound like a lot, but it would return single-family house prices, corrected for general inflation and also for the tendency of houses to increase in size over time, back to the flat trend that has held since 1890.

Felix Salmon looks at both sides of the equation.

by Patrick Appel

Joel Wing delivers the bad news:

The new Maliki administration already has too many ministers and three deputy premiers. Adding three vice presidents who are not necessary and would have no real power would only be for symbolic reasons, and to pay off parties for their support of the new regime. The premier said he wants this government to be professional and competent, but the political maneuvers to finally put it together undermine his pronouncements. The new Maliki coalition will have an excess of positions, just like the old one. Those will be divided amongst the various political and ethnosectarian groups and will be a drain on the national coffers as they offer personal fiefs and patronage systems to the officials who run them.

by Patrick Appel

A reader writes:

I think that DADT was better than the status quo for one reason:  it allowed supporters to point out the absurdity of claims by opponents of gay service that it would have any number of negative effects on the military. Specifically, it was the absurdity of DADT itself that made it better than the status quo: allowing gays to serve silently forced opponents to admit that gays are capable of fulfilling the requirements of military service despite their sexual orientation. 

Another reader:

DADT  was the status quo.  Before Clinton took office, if someone outed himself, he was thrown out.  If someone else outed him, he was thrown out.  After DADT was instituted, that exact scenario continued.  It changed nothing.  

One of Bernstein's commenters makes an intriguing point:

In some ways DADT was better and worse. It meant the the question of sexual orientation was not posed as part of the intake process (which did not really change much, since that was really just an informal "Don't Tell" policy). But it did change the rules to allow people to be kicked out of the military just for "telling" whereas before, I believe, there actually had to be a homosxual "act" for a person to be discharged. Under DADT, people were discharged for simply writing letters or emails indicating they were gay even if the person never acted on it. This had the probably unintended effect of changing the way that the military viewed homosexuality from an act (meaning a choice) to something that was an innate aspect of a person (paralleling the same debate in society at large about whether homosexuality is a choice or an immutable characteristic). Without that shift in perspective, I find it hard to believe that the ban ever would have been lifted (or that the gay rights movement would have been as successful as it has been over the last few decades).

by Zoë Pollock

Roger Ebert marvels at this superb example of modern day filmmaking:

This film deserves to win the Academy Award for best live-action short subject. (1) Because of its wonderful quality. (2) Because of its role as homage. It is directly inspired by Dziga Vertov's 1929 silent classic "Man With a Movie Camera." (3) Because it represents an almost unbelievable technical proficiency. It was filmed during the New York blizzard of Dec. 26, and Jamie Stuart e-mailed it to me with this time stamp: December 27, 2010 4:18:18 PM CST.

Ebert interviews the filmmaker about his process and embeds the original Vertov classic. Having missed the storm while staying in Toronto (go figure), I thought this a beautiful capsule of the wonder, humor, and frustrations of snow.

by Conor Friedersdorf

Over at The New Republic, Jonathan Chait continues his long-running jihad against Ayn Rand. One key to understanding the many people who cite her as an influence is that most of them, if forced to confront the whole of Objectivist philosophy, would reject large chunks of it and acknowledge its manifold flaws.

So why do they consider themselves fans?

The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged offer radical challenges to society as currently organized and morality as it is commonly taught. For that reason alone, I'd encourage everyone to read the books in high school or college, along with Marx, Freud, Mere Christianity, The Gospels, and The People's History Of The United States.

The critical reader will come away from all these works cognizent of their flaws. That doesn't mean that useful insights cannot be drawn from them. Indeed, the radical nature of the material helps the reader to question all his or her assumptions, and to come away thinking about the world differently.

We've all met people who invoke Ayn Rand to justify behaving like a sociopath in their personal relationships. I'd still recommend that any adolescent suffering from Catholic guilt read the passages about Hank and Lillian Reardon's relationship as a primer on a kind of manipulation to which they should never succumb. In typically ego-maniacal fashion, Rand use to insist that her philosophy must either be accepted or rejected wholly. Her most sycophantic devotees and her staunchest critics both make the curious mistake of believing her.

by Conor Friedersdorf

"Personally, I have always felt that gay marriage was an inevitability, for good or ill (most likely both). I do not think that the arguments against gay marriage are all grounded in bigotry, and I find some of the arguments persuasive. But I also find it cruel and absurd to tell gays that living the free-love lifestyle is abominable while at the same time telling them that their committed relationships are illegitimate too," – Jonah Goldberg.

by Conor Friedersdorf

Earlier today, I was half-watching a documentary about the people who rate Hollywood movies. It pointed out that by the absurd logic of the MPAA, brief frontal nudity in a scene where a husband and wife are having procreative sex is deemed more desserving of an NC-17 rating than a mass murder scene in a shoot 'em up movie. I suppose there are people out there who concur with the value judgment implied in that decision.

I am not one of them.

America's diversity of moral beliefs makes me think we'd be better off if a bunch of different organizations rated movies, rather than relying on the current system. Another alternative would be to do it HBO style: instead of a catch-all rating, there'd be bullet points that described the various things in a film that parents might want to know about, allowing them to weight the objectionable content independently. 

For more thoughts on parenting and how value judgments about these things differ widely, check out ACT 4 in this episode of This American Life.

Here's the synopsis:

Dan Savage, a syndicated sex columnist with possibly the filthiest mouth of anyone you could ever meet, finds a TV program so dirty, so weird, and so perverted that he won't let his son watch it—even though it's a kids' show, made for kids, and broadcast on a network for kids.

To me, the current rating system does more harm than good by giving parents the illusion that our society has a shared set of values. Better that they critically watch films prior to or alongside their children, or rely on a niche group they trust to do so.