Month: March 2011

Taking up fire-breathing not the best idea.

Richard Rushfield contemplates it:

The how-does-the-show-survive-without-Cowell talk was probably overstated to begin with. Before a show begins, people will always look backward at the seasons past, but once it starts, they engage—or don't—with what's in front of them. That said, Tyler's unhinged goofy energy has seemingly wiped Cowell's memory off the boards. And Jennifer Lopez thus far has proved a magnetic presence, doing nothing to embarrass herself, if little yet to truly distinguish.

The challenge ahead:

In the end, the season's true test won't play out until many months after the winner is declared; if the show can, once again, as it did so often in its first five years, produce a true star, Idol's comeback will be one of legend.

I've been sucked right back in, not just by the surprising wit and judgments of Tyler, but also Randy Jackson being forced to say more than "Little pitchy, dawg. Didn't work for me. Sorry." Then there's the actual talent. This season they cut down the freak show of the early stages – which had begun to seem like exploitation of the socially maladjusted or psychologically ill. And the quality and diversity of the voices is really, in my view, the best of the entire run of the show. And of course, I back the bear with the bass.

Arnold Kling offers some in response to Tyler Cowen's lists of blind spots for left and right-leaning economists:

What I think left-leaning economists should do more:

Look for structural reasons for policy failure, rather than attribute it always to misguided ideology. Consider the implications of imperfect knowledge on the part of government actors. Also, consider that the existence and growth of special interests is at least partly endogenous with respect to policy.

What I wish that right-leaning economists would do more:

Look for structural explanations for the growth of the state, rather than attribute it always to misguided ideology. Consider the implications of urban density. Consider that as the economy becomes more complex, the potential dispersion in wealth due to differences in ability, information, and luck becomes very large, while the ability to overcome such differences with sheer effort probably declines.

The Master Of The Republican Universe has discovered unemployment benefits, and he does not like them:

We all know Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid, but unemployment compensation? The payment of unemployment benefits is almost as high as Social Security in this country.  Folks, we are not going to survive as a nation, not the way we've been founded, with this kind of sloth and laziness and feeding at the public trough. It just cannot happen.  And to even call this "wages" — I'm actually kinda glad they did because it points out how ludicrous this is and how dangerous it is.  "Handouts," handouts, the redistribution of wealth "makes up one-third of US wages."  Social welfare spending has increased three and a half times since 1960. 

We declared war on poverty, and it's given us this.  We declared war on poverty, and what do we have?  Thirty-five percent of our people living on the dole!  Thirty-five percent of American citizens living on "handouts," and where are the handouts coming from?  Their fellow citizens… I know it's depressing, folks.  I mean some people are so lazy that they will only be unemployed if they're paid to be unemployed.

After this diatribe, an anxious listener called to confess his sins:

I'm kind of caught between a rock and a hard place.  I've been a conservative all my life. I don't agree with the welfare state — of our country. I ran into a little bit of an issue a few years ago when I got some severe cancer and battled it for a couple years.  I'm cancer free right now, but unfortunately I cannot work and I had to go on disability.

Here's how Limbaugh responded:

Do you think I actually think you ought to be denied stuff? Okay.  I don't think that.  I'm not talking about people like you, but there are people who fudge this disability business.  I had a story not long ago about a bunch of drunks in jail getting disability payments because they were alcoholics. Well, we are a compassionate country.  There is not a person in this country that does not want somebody who cannot provide for themselves to go empty.  There's not a person in the world who wants that. You don't fall under the headline definition freeloader or what have you.  And if you're bothered by it, it's life. 

A lot of things affect a lot of people.  But we're not talking about you.  And you are not the majority of that 35% on the dole anyway.  You're a small percentage of it.  You're not the problem we're talking about.

One way to look at this is that when Rush Limbaugh really thinks the "sloth and laziness" of Americans mostly consists of jailed drunks on disability and equivalent cases. Another interpretation is that he lacks the courage of his convictions the minute matters move from the abstract to the real.

What prompted the tears – recalling a Muslim rescuer on 9/11:

“Mr. Hamdani bravely sacrificed his life to try to help others on 9/11. [Pause] After the tragedy some people tried to smear his character [pause] solely because of his Islamic faith. Some people spread false rumors and speculated that he was involved with the attackers because he was a Muslim. But it was only when his remains were identified that these lies were exposed. Mohammed Salman Hamdani was a fellow American who gave his life for other Americans. His life should not be just a member of an ethnic group or just a member of a religion, but as an American who gave everything for his fellow Americans.”

The best rebuke to that terror-sponsoring McCarthyite, Pete King.

(U.S Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) becomes emotional as he testifies during a hearing before the House Homeland Security Committee March 10, 2011 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. The Homeland Security held the hearing to examine 'The Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community's Response.' By Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Skip to the 30 second mark. Via Boing Boing, where they quote Geven Tulley: "This might just be the most beautiful piece of collaboration between nature and industrial agriculture that I have ever seen."

But of course: Eminem!

Paul Krugman and Kevin Drum have admitted they don't read many right-leaning voices any more. James Joyner, who considers himself a conservative blogger, is in the same spot:

I prefer rational, facts-based analysis and find more of it across the aisle than on my own side. Partly, it’s a function of the fact that academics and policy wonks with strong academic backgrounds are more likely to produce the kind of writing I find interesting and those groups tilt to the leeward side.

But I’m not the only conservative who has noticed that even mainstream journals on the right have gone crazy. And the David Frums, Bruce Bartletts, and Daniel Larisons have largely been written off as RINOs angling for invites to liberal cocktail parties. Are the rational conservatives simply being outshouted? Out-promoted? Or are there just too few to matter anymore?

The right is paying a high cost for its unholy marriage to Limbaugh-style rhetoric. It just hasn't fully realized it yet.

Will Wilkinson unleashes a brutal review – with more to come! Money quote:

Brooks supplies neither drama, high emotion, nor the mindbending metaphysics of aging without time. He serves up instead a shapeless story of ruling-class, Davos-goers so tedious, so lacking in passion and intensity, one begins to hope Harry and Erica will be pursued by proletarian lynch-mobs, revealed as rubber fetishists, or at least stranded at sea one ominous afternoon on a friend’s yacht, just so one may be sure these cardboard cutouts have functioning cardboard hearts.

A reader writes:

I recently graduated from BYU, and the Beard Clause. The irony of Jesus and Brigham having beards has not been lost on the student body. There's a giant beardless statue of Brigham in front of the administration building – he was beardless when young, but the majority of his adult life was heavily bearded, making many wonder why a statue of him without a beard would be chosen.

There is, however, a bearded statue of Karl G. Maeser, one of the school's early advocates. (I often joked that I was going to take a grinder to his beard to make him Honor Code compliant.) To enhance the irony, there is a famous quote by Maeser about integrity that is frequently used on posters reminding students to keep the Honor Code (yes, there are such posters everywhere).

The overwhelming majority of students obey the heavy parts of the Honor Code – premarital sex, alcohol, etc. Since those issues are specifically linked to actual LDS Church doctrines, this is no surprise (and, believe it or not, most students find it easy to keep those rules). But the Beard Clause is the most frequently stretched.

Many male students dislike the rule and many professors hate enforcing it (they are supposed to ask you to shave if you haven't, though most only do so when you're at least a week out, if even then). I complained about it loudly, but I dutifully shaved anyway.

Your other reader is correct that the rule comes from the era of hippies and the Cold War – only commies and hippies have beards! But now, the most important communist countries seem to have a no-beard culture.

The whole thing's pretty funny, but BYU is a great school with a great environment (for people who don't mind the rules, i.e., Mormons). I could go on about the travails of being a non-Romney-supporter at BYU in 2008, but I'll spare you for now.

(Photo by Flickr user Spaz Du Zoo)