Month: March 2011

Cameron Joseph reports that the "Hispanic population surged 43% in the last decade and Hispanics now make up more than 16% of the nation's population, according to just-released Census figures":

Every state in the nation saw a surge in Latinos, and traditional Latino gateways along the border still have the highest percentage, other states also saw rapid Hispanic growth: There are now 17  states where Hispanics make up at least 10 percent of the population, including Utah, Rhode Island and Kansas.

In five states, Hispanics now account for at least a quarter of the population.

Weigel looks at how the minority vote has boosted Obama's reelection chances.  

Eryn Green contemplates hair loss:

The fear of balding continues to persist in an age increasingly obsessed with youth (see: the supposedly Samson-esque follicles of everyone from Tom Brady to Justin Bieber) and the preservation of vitality (see: patriarch of the Kardashian clan, Bruce Jenner). Baldness continues to represent some fundamental, inescapable, awful truths for men: You will get old. It will not be pretty. People will think differently of you. One day you will wilt, and eventually, die. Baldness reminds those of us doomed to it that we are masters of our destiny only so much. We are men, and men can do great, impossible, incredible things. But we can't fight the tide.

I tried for a while: Rogaine, Propecia, and then gave up. Same goes for trying to disguise the gray (actually white) in beard. But so many men tell me they like the balding, bearded, S&P daddy type, I'm beginning to regain some confidence in my late 40s. Oddly, you get more attention from the twentysomethings than from your peers. Exotic becomes erotic, I suppose. Or they need some therapy. Green quotes Professor Luis Garza, M.D., author of a new study that could suggest a cure:

I think it's very likely that by the end of your lifetime, there will be a pill or a cream, kind of like there is for Viagra, which your insurance [might not] cover and you might have to apply repeatedly — but yeah, it'll keep your hair growing.

Ian Crouch salutes the best bald men of literature:

Fiction thrives on physical particularities. As cosmetic medicine thinks of new ways to make us all look the same, we should cling to the notable differences, lest the great characters of our literature come to seem quaintly deformed to readers in the future.

(Video via Copyranter)

An insight into the cocoon, where her own multiple lies are immune from scrutiny because the media is biased. And the irony of this sentence is lost on her:

Even though it often seems like I’m armed with just a few stones and a sling against a media giant, I’ll use those small resources to do what I can to set the record straight.

Palin has a home-studio and salary from the biggest cable news network; her books have been published, without any fact-checking, by Harper Collins, one of the biggest publishing houses in the country. TLC gave her a reality show. She is, by now, a multimillionaire, based on barely two years in office and John McCain's impulsive Googling. She could get booked on CNN or MSNBC or ABC at a moment's notice. But she is beleaguered and alone against media giants? She does have a good line on my friend Bill Maher, though:

(I won’t bother responding to it though, because it was made by he who reminds me of an annoying little mosquito found zipped up in your tent; he can’t do any harm, but buzzes around annoyingly until it’s time to give him the proverbial slap.)

"By he"? But why doesn't she go on Bill's show if she wants to be David against Goliath? Or any show not on the Fox propaganda channel, or on a reality show where she doesn't get to approve the final cut? Btw, if Huckabee doesn't run, Palin and Romney are tied. And if she really wants to set the record straight on any number of issues, she could always call an open press conference and answer everything they ask. But she can't and won't, because her lies are too voluminous and she would simply lie again to wriggle out them.

A reader writes:

Wasn’t it incredible?  My girlfriend and I went to see it a few weeks ago, lucky enough to get tickets in previews (fat chance getting any now).  I’m not sure I’ve laughed so hard at a musical in my life.

The thing that really stirred me is their honesty in the face of the horrors of the world.  My girlfriend, an international human rights lawyer, pointed out that the evil warlord in the show is named after a real (very bad) figure in troubled Northern Uganda.  They make genital mutilation a central plot point in the show.  Would anyone else dare do this in a mainstream production other than these two?  And the genius of getting the message to a wide audience with large heaping of humor in what is at core a very traditional musical.

If only more were willing to stare straight at the evil in this world … and laugh in its face.

A reader writes:

Ugh, you really had to quote Camille Paglia blah blah blahing about lady stars these days vs. the stars of yesteryear regarding Elizabeth Taylor?  A quick google of "Liz Taylor" and "waist size" shows that many lady stars back then were every bit as tiny, albeit in different ways, which have more to do with fashion, the way the movie company machine handled their stars' images, etc.

Another writes:

"[Taylor] was single-handedly a living rebuke to postmodernism and post-structuralism, which maintain that gender is merely a social construct." Taylor was not "single-handedly" doing anything; she came out of a specific culture with a specific look.  Most of the fellow beauties of her era were curvy and voluptuous: Marilyn Monroe, Jane Russell, Sophia Loren.  However, Ms. Moore and Ms. Bening came of age at a time when scrawniness is the perceived ideal for women, therefore that's the way all the movie actresses have to look these days.

If biology were calling the shots, as Ms. Paglia believes, then whatever supported greater fertility would win the day.  But since attraction, even gender itself, is socially constructed, other factors come into play – variety, rare vs. common, control models, power dynamics, etc – and those factors have evolved dramatically throughout human history (one example: in Peter Paul Rubens' day, to have a fat wife reflected well on her husband; it meant that he was wealthy enough to overfeed her).

I want to make a small dissent here. Gender is at bottom biological, based on different hormones at different stages of development. There's no social constructionism in the womb. After that, social norms obviously have their say – but within the boundaries of biology. I wrote an essay on this subject – "Why Men Are Different" – here. Another:

Your quote from Camille Paglia was classic Paglia. She wants to be interesting, so she ignores facts inconsistent with her thesis even when they are right in front of her nose. Scarlet Johansson, to name just one obvious example, is not in the anorexic or scrawny category. And in popular music, the ubiquitous Katy Perry may have almost the same measurements as Elizabeth Taylor when she was in her prime.

Another:

Pace Paglia: Christina Hendricks!

Greg Scoblete thinks Iraq war supporters gung-ho about Libya haven't forgotten about Iraq but "simply have a fundamentally different view of what happened":

To the war's critics, and to a majority of Americans, the decision to invade and occupy Iraq was a mistake. But most neoconservatives seem to sincerely believe that Iraq was a glorious victory for the United States (I don't think Chait believes that, but Bill Kristol sure does). 

I'm not sure that someone with Kristol's intelligence really believes Iraq was a "glorious victory". But it remains an imperative to say so. Remember: neoconservatism is not about honest assessment; it's about gaining and retaining power, and deploying big lies in that endeavor is, to coin a phrase, noble.

Ventura, California, 8 am

During a debate over neoconservatism, Damon Linker insists that the ideology isn't fascistic: 

I agree that the strong second-generation neocon emphasis on nationalism and warmaking as a means to overcoming domestic nihilism does lean in the direction of fascist political ideas. But I would still counsel against using the term because the similarities are mainly formal. Political analysis must go beyond noting formal likeness to examine the content of ideas. A political program that advocates war as a means of spreading democracy and overthrowing dictators (like the homicidal maniac who’s run Libya for the past 40-something years) is very different from a political program that advocates war as a means of territorial aggrandizement and/or racial and ethnic oppression, domination, and genocide. That means that however much William Kristol’s foreign policy views resemble fascism on one level, they diverge from fascism pretty fundamentally on another. That complication, combined with the polemical overuse of the term in our political discourse, makes its invocation exceedingly ill-advised, in my view.

Agreed (but one needs to recall Leo Strauss's early love affair with Mussolini and his contempt for what he saw as decadent liberal democracy). But the neocons might be better defined as aggressive democracy-promoters who actually don't like real democracy and constitutional checks at home. They believe – and have long believed – that Western systems cannot truly compete with dictatorships. One response to this has been the unleashing of the executive, what Harvey Mansfield calls the "untamed prince" to take action – alone – in the interests of the state in alliance with a vast apparatus of military-industrial power. Besides, if the neocons truly wanted democracy over power, they would have no qualms with other powers, like France or Britain, taking the lead. But what they are really about is the increase of American global power under the guise of democracy. (For a fuller account of Strauss and the neoconservative ideal, check out C Bradley Thompson's new book, "Neoconservatism: Obituary For An Idea".)

That's one reason neocons were utterly unconcerned with a presidency that gave itself unlimited powers in an unlimited war: the power to seize citizens and non-citizens at will without due process under emergency laws, the power to torture victims to procure rationales for future warfare and retroactive casus belli, and the power to ransack anyone's private property (John Yoo found the Fourth Amendment as "quaint" as the Geneva Conventions). Every time you hear Bill Kristol blithely say that someone does not need to be granted due process in order to be jailed or executed, the veil slips a little.

The contempt for the masses, the esoteric agenda of small elites, the loathing of the judicial branch, the use of an executive to trash constitutional norms in the name of security, and the necessity for constant warfare as a way to instill traditional virtues in the citizenry: these are not specifically fascist. But they have fascistic undertones. This used to be speculation. When you remember their instincts under Bush-Cheney, it's more like an observation.

(Photo: Leo Strauss.)

Fallows on the latest creepy over-reach by the Republicans in Wisconsin.

The latest:

In the southern city of Daraa, which has been in revolt for a week, gunfire and tear gas scattered a crowd of thousands after people lit a fire under a statue of late president Hafez al-Assad. Al Jazeera aired comments by a man who said security forces had killed 20 people on Friday in the nearby town of Sanamein.

More from Al Jazeera:

However Reem Haddad from the Syrian information ministry, told Al Jazeera that security forces had been given the order not to shoot at protesters "no matter what happens". "But things took on a different hue because inside these peaceful demonstrations there was another group of people who were armed … and were shooting at the security forces and were shooting at other citizens in Daraa. "At the end of the day this became a matter of national security."

But an eyewitness told Al Jazeera that "there were no people carrying arms among demonstrators". "What happened in the square … was live ammunition, I was present myself and I saw the youth and other young demonstrators leading a peaceful demonstration. "They were chanting slogans calling for freedom and transparency and end of corruption."

The unrest is spreading:

Demonstrations were also reported in the capital, Damascus, where there were some arrests, and in the towns of Hama and Tall.

Enduring America has much more footage from today.