Month: February 2011

by Zoe Pollock

Choire Sicha mourns the end of that era:

But with the ability to access every possible person in the world who's into, say, hardcore Nazi-inflected furry torture, and with everyone so willing to amuse and be amused, why aren't we seeing more gross-out bubble to the surface? The obvious answer seems sort of sad: there's no business in it.

The enjoyable and more mainstream websites that propagate meme-related stuff on the web, like Urlesque (currently most-popular: Cab Driver Does Spot-on Michael Jackson Impression) and Buzzfeed (most popular: Top 10 Crazy Texts From Parents), are actually grown-up entities and can't and won't handle actual shock material, as seems quite correct.

Bronx, New York, 6.30 am

Today on the Dish, Chris covered the new face of Tahrir Google exec Wael Ghonim, Derek Vertongen recalled an older Egypt, and Chris collected the dirt on Mubarak's consigliere Suleiman. Reza Aslan wondered if Egypt would reignite Iran's Green Movement, Sumit Ganguly predicted Pakistan wouldn't follow the rush of uprisings, and Eurabia was farther way than assumed. Samer Shehata dissed the dialogue Suleiman had set up, and Tel Aviv was going to miss Mubarak.

Republicans stood up to the Patriot Act, the CIA promoted torturers in their ranks, and Afghanistan was heating up. Conor urged conservative media to let their viewers in on the joke, Reagan wouldn't have had gay marriage as a litmus test for conservatism, and Rumsfeld was Teddy Roosevelt in reverse. Massie outed fake Reaganism, oil peaked early, the market didn't react, and Savage sighed over Iowa's Jim Crow bill for gays. Paywalls could mean HuffPo beating the NYT, sexting in Texas was outlawed, and professional licensing does some harm consumers. Police officers can legally lie to you, humans may not be wired for war, and Conor wasn't going clubbing here. Self-promoting women are looked down upon, all the low-hanging scientific facts have been found, and Will Wilkinson defined the pwn. Great writing doesn't happen on the first try, Nicholas Lemann mastered the observation, and the past beckoned (but not for a memoir). Lovers don't usually marry for the tax break, but some Dish readers do.

Amazing photos from Egypt here, VFYW here, commentary on the contest here, map of the day here, MHB here, blind visual artist here, and FOTD here.

–Z.P.

by Conor Friedersdorf

Over at Sex, Drugs, And Bottle Service, we're presented with this rant:

Everyone always wants to be where they think they aren’t allowed.  Every night in my current job self proclaimed socialites are trying to get into the back rooms.  They seem to think there is a secret party room filled with models and celebrities drinking free Krug and blowing lines down there.  In reality what is down there are offices, liquor storage,  and boxes of napkins and candle votives, none of which are hiding Kate Moss.  These same people are the ones who come up expecting a free drink because they are friends with one of the owners.

“That’s fifteen dollars, sir.”

“Oh, but I’m friends with Redacted.”

“Really! So am I! Why don’t we text him? What’s your name again? Better yet, why don’t we go to his house and steal his flat screen? Cause it sounds like you are such good friends with him that you are allowed to steal from his business, so why not his home too?”

PS-Just because you did coke in the bathroom with an owner of a club at some point doesn’t mean you are friends with said owner.  Do you know how many people have done coke in bathrooms with these guys over the years? They don’t know your name.

Huh. I wonder why these customers are under the illusion that they're friends with the owner, that there are secret rooms filled with models and celebrities, and that doing coke in the bathroom with a club owner is an intimate act. Overpriced clubs that overcharge deuschy coked up customers for suckers vodka aren't exactly my scene… but I have a funny feeling that customers have these illusions because everyone employed in the author's industry labors mightily to create them. Is the cult of exclusivity absurd? Yes. And if you're working in bottle service you're an even bigger part of the problem than your customers.

by Zoe Pollock

Adam Shatz adds Tel Aviv to the list:

Mubarak and Omar Suleiman, now the interim vice president, worked closely with Israel on everything from the Gaza blockade to intelligence-gathering; they allowed Israeli warships into the Suez Canal to prevent weapons smuggling into Gaza from Sudan, and did their best to stir up tensions between Fatah and Hamas. The Egyptian public is well aware of this intimate collaboration, and ashamed of it: democratisation could spell its end.

A democratic government isn’t likely to abolish the peace treaty with Israel – even some of the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood have said they would respect it. But Egyptian foreign policy would be set in Cairo rather than in Washington and Tel Aviv, and the cold peace would grow colder. A democratic government in Cairo would have to take public opinion into account, much as Erdogan’s government does in Turkey: another former US client state but one that, in marked contrast to Egypt, has escaped American tutelage, made the transition to democracy under an Islamist government, and pursued an independent foreign policy that is widely admired in the Muslim world.

Kaiapo Indian Chief Raony attends a protest against the construction of the Belo Monte hydroelectric dam in Brasilia, Brazil on Tuesday February 8, 2011. A Brazilian environmental agency has given approval for initial work to begin on a massive hydroelectric dam planned for the heart of the Amazon jungle. The 11,000-megawatt project to dam the Xingu River, which feeds the Amazon, would be the third-largest such hydroelectric project in the world. By Eraldo Peres/AP.

by Chris Bodenner

Even the Muslim Brotherhood is running from Khamenei's words of support for the Egyptian uprising:

[In] Ikhwanweb, the Muslim Brotherhood’s official English website, editor in chief Khaled Hamza has stated that the current uprising in Egypt is a revolution of the Egyptian people and is by no means linked to any Islamic tendencies, despite allegations nor can it be described as Islamic.

Hamza stressed that the revolution is peaceful and calls solely for reform and a democratic civil state initiated by the youth through the social networking service Facebook and is far removed from any Islamist groups.

He criticized allegations and reiterations by some countries that the uprising was Islamic and denounced claims by the Iranian Supreme Leader Mr. Khamenai that the protests are a sign of an Islamic Awakening inspired by the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran.

by Patrick Appel

Fred Kaplan pans Rumsfield's new memoir. As does Tom Ricks, who criticizes Rumfield for dithering when Iraq went to hell:

Rumsfeld, in retrospect, embodied the opposite of the old Teddy Roosevelt maxim: He spoke loudly and carried a small stick. He continues to do that in this strikingly dull book, which might better be called Not My Fault. 

by Zoe Pollock

John Horgan makes the case that "Sebastian Junger's documentary film Restrepo deserves an Oscar, but his theory of war is wrong." One of the examples he cites:

The evidence that war is in our genes is flimsy to nonexistent. Lethal raiding among chimpanzees, our closest relatives, is often cited as strong evidence that human warfare is ancient and innate. But as I pointed out in a previous post, scientists have observed a total of 31 chimpicides over the past half century; many chimp communities have never been observed engaging in deadly raids. Even Wrangham has acknowledged that chimpanzee raids are "certainly rare."

by Patrick Appel

Alan Taylor is featuring incredible photographs from the last three weeks.