Month: March 2011

Arizona? And yes, dear Washington, she's running.

Lindsay Beyerstein says that Dueholm "starts off with a pretty good summary of Savage's recurring themes: Disclosure, autonomy, reciprocity, and a minimum standard of sexual performance" – but misconstrues Dan's view of monogamy:

Savage's main point is not that monogamy is bad, or even unattainable. He just knows that it's hard work for most people. He wants to debunk the myth that if you're a normal person, and you really love your partner, you will never want to have sex with anyone else. Savage wants people to stop torturing themselves because their desires don't line up with an arbitrary social ideal.

As he sees it, there are two ways of dealing with this predicament.

You can either embrace monogamy as a difficult but worthwhile project because you like to live that way, or you and your partner(s) can figure out some other arrangement that you like better. The first step is being honest with the people you date and choosing people who want what you want. That's one reason why Savage is always harping on disclosure. It's no longer ethical, or practical, to assume everyone wants the same thing. 

Dueholm sees all this as bleak and transactional compared to traditional sexual mores. He thinks Savage is a perfect ethicist for a consumer age. I think he misinterprets Savage as being an ultra-individualistic hedonist. The "Love" part of "Savage Love" isn't incidental. Savage thinks people should be free to seek sexual fulfillment, but that doesn't conflict with his emphasis on community, respect, affection, and love.

Amanda Marcotte is harder on Dueholm and concludes:

By now, it should be well-understood that red states have higher divorce rates than blue states, and part of the reason is that the “old restraints” are far more prevalent in red states, which means more people are creating marriages where there’s poor communication and a lack of looking at each other as individuals, and subsequently more cheating and casual cruelty occurs.

Dan chimes in to clarify his own relationship as "monogamish" and hopes to popularize the term.

Greenwald shoots and scores! From today's NYT:

After the Nazi invasion of France, Mr. Hessel fled to England and then flew secretly into occupied France as a Resistance officer. Captured by the Gestapo, he spent time in concentration camps.

Asked how he survived torture, he said, “The third time of waterboarding, I said, ‘Now, I’ll tell you.’ And I told them a lie of course.” He added: “One survives torture. So many people unfortunately have been tortured. But it’s not a thing to recommend.”

Torture? Waterboarding is just an "enhanced interrogation technique," no? Or an example of harsh or brutal treatment. At least according to Bill Keller. Well, not exactly. Keller's position is even more pathetic:

[D]efenders of the practice of water-boarding, including senior officials of the Bush administration, insisted that it did not constitute torture.

So the NYT defers to government power – even on an issue as profound as torture – rather than report the truth in plain English. And it does so solely with respect to the United States (and to a lesser extent, Israel).

There is one word for this: corrupt.

Ben Armbruster highlights a Daily Show segment on King and adds:

King defended his support for the IRA, saying, “I understand why people who are misinformed might see a parallel. The fact is, the I.R.A. never attacked the United States. And my loyalty is to the United States.” By that logic, perhaps King also supports other terrorists groups, such as ETA, that also have not attacked the U.S.

Debunking one of King’s main justifications for his hearings, CAP’s Matt Duss reported yesterday on the Wonk Room that a new study by the Muslim American Public Opinion Survey (MAPOS), the largest study of Muslim Americans ever done, “finds that involvement with the mosque, and increased religiosity increases civic engagement and support for American democratic values.”

Elspeth Reeve rounds up more self-inflicting quotes from King. My sister and mother live in Guildford, where the IRA once bombed a pub, killing four and injuring over 60 people. I take a different from from King's, a classic Irish Catholic bigot.

Jeffrey Goldberg searches for one:

I asked a memory expert I know, Joshua Foer, the author of Moonwalking With Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything, if it is possible to force forgetfulness, particularly of crappy songs. This is his answer: "There's actually a scientific term for jingles that get lodged in your head: earworms. … A study published earlier this year (the researchers gave subjects the 'Catchy Tunes Questionnaire') found that the worst way to get rid of earworms is to try to get rid of earworms. The more you think about trying to forget them, the deeper they burrow. This is pretty much true about consciously trying to forget anything. There's even a name for the phenomenon: ironic processing. The best advice I've heard for making earworms go away is to just stop being irritated by them, and come to peace with the fact that you're humming Britney Spears."

A reader writes:

Not that you'll notice, but I thought I'd inform you and your wonderful crew that I'm giving up your blog for Lent.

I tried it last year, and it was actually a wonderful break. I was more productive at work, I was less pensive about the current state of the world and less outraged at the current shamefulness that is today's GOP. But I was also less informed about all sorts of interesting issues, from illuminating insights on faith (who knew that a gay Catholic could provide so many challenging, thought-provoking and ultimately growth-inducing writings and links to writings for my semi-Evangelical self?), to pop culture and bear(d)s. It was a fun return that day after Easter, as I ate my lunch hunched over in my cubicle, catching up on all that I missed.

Looks like I'll have to find your blog on a new site when I return. I'll miss reading your work next to your wonderful blog colleagues at the Atlantic, especially Fallows, Coates, Goldberg and McArdle. Have a thoughtful Lent and a wonderful Easter! I'll see you guys the Monday after.

Cats going crazy for the Magnetic Fields:

Absolutely Cuckoo Cats from SINLOGO on Vimeo.

Issandr El Amrani explains the importance of Egypt's state security raids:

What it boils down to is that a vast bureaucracy existed simply to perpetuate itself and those in charge. Consider the neat categorizations of the population–“Muslim Brothers”, “Communists and human rights activists,” etc.–or the recent allegation that the Ministry of Trade paid a monthly retainer of LE174,000 to its own state security watchers to get them to write positive reports.

He wants "something akin to a truth commission to hear people's testimony — both victims and abusers — and then move on to building a better Egypt."

No, not the beard kind. Best of Wikipedia relays the definition:

The Sullivan nod is a theoretical sales technique used to create a subconscious suggestion to a customer to purchase one particular item out of a list of like items. It is used most frequently by bartenders and waiters when reciting lists of items (such as alcohol or wine) in the hopes of getting the customer to select a particular brand.

A reader writes:

I think you, Joyner and Avent miss the big picture regarding Vilsack's reply to Klein: Iowa's role in the 2012 presidential election. The new governor of Iowa is Terry Branstad, a former four-term Republican governor of the state.  Iowa is also ground zero for many culture-war issues the Republicans will be detonating in the next election.  Having a former moderate, two-term, Democratic governor remind Iowans that Obama's administration is small-town friendly is smart politics, and an attempt to marginalize the right-wing nuts.  If the Republicans lead with or nominate incendiary politicians, that won't play well in the Midwest.

Klein thinks politics leans rural:

The Senate is overwhelmingly biased toward rural America, and the House is biased as well (by population, Wyoming should have 1/68th as much representation as California, not 1/53rd). That has important affects for public policy, but rather than discuss that openly, we tend to talk wrap the residents of rural America in many layers of rhetorical gauze and justify policy towards them in terms of values. But as someone who chose to move to a city rather than to a rural area, I don’t think rural America’s values are better or superior to urban America’s. Cities breed a tolerance and openness that’s of great importance to our increasingly polyglot nation, just as rural areas inculcate an ethic of service and patriotism that’s deeply valuable in a perennially fractious nation.

(2008 Iowa election results chart: NYT)