Month: March 2011

A reader references the very NSFW joke-telling above:

Jack Shafer gets Gilbert Gottfried completely wrong. A little history: On a Comedy Central Roast two weeks after 9/11, Gottfried was making jokes about planes flying into the Twin Towers.  When the audience revolted, he went on to do one of the classic moments of modern stand-up comedy history by performing an elaborate telling the “The Artistocrats” joke, documented in the movie of the same name.  This was aired on national television. What is far more stunning is that AFLAC ever hired him: a usually boring company (insurance) partnered with one of the most fearless comedians of his generations.  Not saying Gilbert is in taste, but Shafer is stretching to say that Gottfried has been hiding at dinner parties.

Another:

Your response to the analysis on Gottfried’s tweeting: “We’re all public figures now, whether we like it or not.” Bullshit.

He posted it on Twitter, which is extremely public! Posting on Twitter is akin to shouting from a rooftop. The whole POINT is that it’s public. Nobody was spying on him. He purposely posted jokes in bad taste on a public forum.

Another:

We’re talking about Gilbert Gottfried here.  He’s a well-known star, recognizable comic, and the spokes(duck) for an international ad campaign.  That’s a public figure.  And the only approbation he’s gotten that matters is from the major insurance company that does loads of business in Japan.  Nevermind the fact that he posted his comments ON THE INTERNET.

Your comments only matter if you matter.  If you don’t matter, then no one will care when you post offensive things to your Facebook or Twitter.

A reader asked why the Arab League can't impose its own fricking no-fly zone. Les Gelb says they can:

Doubt not that those pushing for a U.N./U.S. no-fly zone can enforce that goal themselves. Libya has less than 200 usable jet fighters of old vintage, flown by pilots who get less than 90 hours practice time yearly. Egypt has first-class F-16s that could pulverize any Libyan opposition. Saudi air power is even more formidable. That is to say nothing of the hundreds of top-grade fighters that London and Paris could deploy to bases in Egypt, Tunisia, or Italy. There would be no contest. Those arguing for a no-fly zone don't need a U.S. aircraft carrier. If the stakes are anywhere near as great as activists claim, they don't need a U.N. Security Council resolution either. Many is the nation that resorted to force without such international blessing. The hypocrisy here is monumental, even by traditional foreign-policy standards of baloney.

Gelb thinks the Arab League governments "have no real desire or intent to secure the skies over Libya and are using the U.N. as an excuse." Shadi Hamid differs somewhat:

Arab nations are weak, unimaginative, and crippled by rivalry. The region continues to be led by autocrats who speak for themselves, rather than their populations. They are largely dependent on U.S. and Western support (and arms), while their foreign policies are narrowly defined around regime survival. 

Noah Millman has a wonderful review of Irving Kristol's writings. A small sample:

So what are young conservatives—or liberals or political agnostics—who read this book going to get out of it? What they will learn, and it is a terrible thing, is that the questions that we ask in our youth—in our twenties—may be the only ones we ever really ask. Kristol, from the very beginning, is asking himself only a handful of questions. Stalinism having been rejected as abhorrent, is there a coherent left? How can a democratic society be made virtuous? (He seems from the beginning to be more interested in this question than in how it may be made prosperous, or free, or equal.) And what did being Jewish mean to a man in the modern age—given that it clearly did mean something to him, from the first, and given that fidelity either to Jewish tradition or to Jewish nationalism was not what it meant?

That is terrible enough: that we will spend the rest of our lives asking the same few questions from our twenties over and over. But if the bulk of the book is any indication, the greater risk is that we will think we have answered them.

It includes a useful section on what neoconservatism used to mean, and what it means today.

Comstock takes exception to the framing of this post:

So no, the Brett and Melanie: Boi Meets Girl Meets the MPAA is not an anti-MPAA prank. More over, as a conservative, I would think that Andrew Sullivan favor voluntary, opt-in, self-regulation over government mandated, backed up by force of law censorship. Or maybe he does, but he’s just confused about which is which in this case. That’s not surprising. Producers like Parker and Stone, Kirby Dick, and others get a lot of publicity out of stoking anger and ignorance about how movies are rated in the US, and this works against the establishment of a legitimate Adult-Only film-space where grown-up ideas about relationships and sexuality can be explored with frankness and candor. Separating fact from fiction on movie ratings is part of why we’re doing this project.

Will Wilkinson cites research that finds "some disasters can boost GDP by forcing upgrades in technology and infrastructure, and offering the opportunity for critical reappraisal of ingrained modes of economic activity, leading to a higher level of productivity and, eventually, to net gains in growth." Alas, the research doesn't apply to earthquakes:

There is every reason to believe Japan will eventually fully recover economically. Eventually. I highlight the last sentence in the passage above to emphasize that the return to trend economic growth does not compensate for the direct human and economic loss created by the disaster. In the case of Japan, the final toll will be immense. The unofficial death toll is up to 10,000, and more than 15,000 people remain unaccounted for. Economists at Barclays have estimated the loss at 15 trillion yen, or about $186 billion—about 3% of Japanese GDP. And the costs of the ongoing knock-on disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant remain unclear. This is horrific pure loss at a sickening scale. There is no silver lining in this.   

Cambee, Tobago, 6 pm

Felix Salmon scratches his head:

By my back-of-the-envelope math, the paywall won’t even cover its own development costs for a good two years, and beyond that will never generate enough money to really make a difference to NYTCo revenues.

Maybe that might change if the NYT breaks its promise to offer full website access for free to all print subscribers. But that decision would be fraught in all manner of other ways. For the time being, though, I just can’t see how this move makes any kind of financial sense for the NYT. The upside is limited; the downside is that it ceases to be the paper of record for the world. Who would take that bet?

My more parochial take here. One of Salmon's readers:

I am a very heavy NYT online user, and NOT a print subscriber. I will not pay $15 a month. just one data point.

I'm sure you will want to chip in your two cents as well. The in-tray awaits.

Dismissing the "culture" cliches, Chris Beam contends that a "better explanation may be structural factors: a robust system of laws that reinforce honesty, a strong police presence, and, ironically, active crime organizations." The whole piece – short but really informative – is worth a read.

A funny take from Robert Shrimsley as he imagines an aide and the president discussing current options:

Obama: Shouldn’t we be helping democrats against a brutal dictatorship?

Aide: Are we sure they are democrats, Mr President?

Second aide: Didn’t we do this meeting last month?

Aide: That was Egypt. . . or Tunisia.

Obama: Well, that seemed to work out; what did we do then?

Aide: We positioned ourself carefully behind the curve and immediately backed whatever had happened the day before. It was cost-effective and it worked, sir. Your strategy of protracted hesitation has paid dividends in a number of theatres.

Obama: David Plouffe prefers to call it the evaluate-and-decide strategy.

Aide: I apologise Mr President, I thought that was our Afghan strategy. I understood we’d moved on to an “evaluate and then evaluate some more” strategy here.

Of course, the alternative to “evaluate and decide” is to “trust your gut and invade.” Politics is never pretty.