Month: April 2011

Doctor Science compares The Game of Thrones to the British royals. While the old-time royal characters in The Game of Thrones appear to be "exceptional people," the contemporary royal family seems "completely ordinary":

When only a few people are clean and wear nice clothes, always get enough to eat and never have to go without sleep or warmth, they *will* look comparatively gorgeous, and they are likely to be — or seem to be — stronger, smarter, and taller than the ordinary run of folk.

But when most people are reasonably well-nourished and -housed, with good medical care and a chance at education, the apparent genetic component of Royal Blood just fades away. In fact, speaking as a geneticist, Prince William is marrying *up* by choosing a good-looking, healthy young woman with a reasonable brain in her head.

Trump is now swearing in his speeches:

Some Democrats are cheering Trump because his rise improves Obama’s 2012 chances. TNR’s editorial cautions that the “Trump ascendancy calls not for glee, but for serious concern about the state of our country”

America is currently engaged in three wars. The country faces major economic challenges. Global warming is continuing apace. There is no chance any of these issues can be solved by yelling at foreign countries, or stirring up anger at Iraqis or Libyans or minority applicants to elite colleges. Donald Trump has appointed himself spokesman for some of the nastiest impulses in American politics, and he seems to have a following. The sooner the Republican mainstream rejects him, the better. And we liberals should be cheering them along as they do.

Great timing as the Washington Post invites him as their guest to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

The Dish is looking for two interns to help with editorial content, assist with remedial tasks, and work on larger projects.

Interns will be full time (37.5 hours a week) and will be paid an hourly wage of $10.25. The position, unlike many internships, includes benefits (my bleeding heart insistence) and are a year-long commitment. Applicants must be in DC or willing to move to DC. We are hoping to hire interns within the next month or two. Start dates are semi-flexible.

We've wanted our own exclusive interns for years and now we are at the Beast, we can have them. We're looking for extremely hard workers, web-obsessives and Dishheads, who already understand what we do here. I should add that Zoe, Chris and Patrick all started as Atlantic interns with some of their duties for the Dish, and became full-time staffers because of the amazing work they produced. We're also looking for individuals who can challenge me and my assumptions and find stuff online that we might have missed.

To apply, please e-mail a (max 500-word) cover letter explaining why you want to work for the Dish and a resumé to Dish.Intern@newsweekdailybeast.com. The cut off for applications is Friday, May 13th, two weeks from now.

Mass demonstrations are popping up all over the country in defiance of Deraa and other military crackdowns:

Friday brought the largest anti-regime protest in the Syrian capital since protests against president Bashar al-Assad's decade-long rule began last month. Gunfire was reported in Damascus and in the coastal city of Latakia, with witnesses claiming that security forces have fired on protesters, according to the Associated Press news agency. … Al Jazeera correspondent Rula Amin, reporting from Damascus, said Friday's slogan is "solidarity for Deraa" – the southern city that has borne the brunt of a crackdown by Syrian security forces. The call for mass demonstrations was made in a statement on the Facebook page of Syrian Revolution 2011 which has called for protests for greater freedom inspired by uprisings elsewhere in the Arab world.

The above demonstrators are shouting, "The people want to overthrow the regime!" Amira Al Hussaini is collecting similar videos from around the country. EA has more footage from the latest Day of Rage.

What's interesting to me is not only how this extreme police state has shown itself vulnerable, but how its vulnerability has shifted the balance in the region, by, for example, giving Hamas an incentive to end the breach with Fatah. All of this, to my mind, is a good thing, even for Israel.

The emergence of a democratic Egypt acting as an independent state, rather than as a client puppet of the US, could be the critical step toward a two-state solution in Israel/Palestine. It abolishes the hideous dynamic of Arab dictators constantly using Israel as a cynical distraction from their own incompetence and brutality. Now that the people of Egypt are actually in the driver's seat they can begin to assess the relationship with Israel more rationally – and begin to act as legitimate arbiters for the Palestinians – a natural role, suppressed by the Mubarak era.

Netanyahu, of course, can see nothing but danger. He has every right to be wary, but would be stupid not to see possible openings toward resolving the Palestine issue (presuming that he even wants to). But the US should be thrilled at the new possibilities this has opened up, despite the fact that its functioning as an extended tool of the Likud party has so weakened American influence in the region as a whole.

The exposure of American weakness toward Israel is, in my view, almost certainly why Arab opinion of Obama has sunk. The Arab world always knew, as everyone else did, that Obama's long strategy to reposition the US into a stronger position with the Arab and Muslim world would be put to its acid test on the Israel question.

Obama, so far, has failed that test, because the Israeli government's grip on the US government is far stronger than the president's foreign policy powers. But if he can leverage the democratic change in the region toward saving Israel from the dire consequences of its own paranoia, there is still a chance that this presidency could be transformational. My only fear is that domestic American politics will make it hard for Obama to achieve this in his first term. After which, the whole question might be moot, given Israel's propensity for enabling its enemies by clueless diplomacy and unending paranoia.

Well, it's better than Trump.

"A princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact, and, as such, it rivets mankind. A royal family sweetens politics by the seasonable addition of nice and pretty events. It introduces irrelevant facts into the business of government, but they are facts which speak to men’s bosoms and employ their thoughts," – Walter Bagehot, 1863.

(Photo: Ciaran Price, Ava Smith and Jean Jenkinson of Stockport enjoy the royal street party held in the village of Marple Bridge on April 29, 2011 in Stockport, United Kingdom. By Alex Livesey/Getty Images.)

Now, here's a journalist who's been around the block a few times:

From the viewpoint of the beneficiaries, Medicare has been extremely popular. If it ain’t broke, etc, etc. The current Republican notion of the codgers happily using a voucher to buy their own coverage privately boggles the mind—unless, of course, your mind has been clouded by the delirium of winning an election. Even Newt Gingrich was never that giddy.

The Big Picture and In Focus document the destruction down South. Buzzfeed collects photos found in the tornadoes' wake.

Benjamin Wallace-Wells profiles Paul Krugman:

I brought up the work of the legal scholar Cass Sunstein, now with the Obama administration, who has studied the radicalizing effects of ideological isolation—the idea, born from studies of three-judge panels, that if you are not in regular conversation with people who differ from you, you can become far more extreme. It is a very Obama idea, and I asked Krugman if he ever worried that he might succumb to that tendency. “It could happen,” he says. “But I work a lot from data; that’s enough of an anchor. I have a good sense when a claim has gone too far.” This is the claim of a supreme self-confidence. To say “I am anchored in the data” is really to say “I understand exactly what the data mean.” But it is also the logical extension of a particular view of human nature, one equipped with such a clear view of the way society should be arranged that it can’t comprehend the greed, weakness, and compromise that forestall it. There is society, beautifully. And then there are people.

Yglesias hones in on the differing opinions of Larry Summers and Krugman:

I’ve come to think this reflects the difference between people who write about policy (people like me!) and people who do policy. Practical policymakers seem averse to the idea that first you try to decide what the right diagnosis is, and then you try to implement the solution implied by your diagnosis. The disposition to act that way cuts against the dispositions you need to be a successful coalition-builder, and a successful coalition-builder is what you need to be to ever become a high-level policymaker.

Andrew Leonard finds Obama recently acknowledging Krugman’s side of things, but insists:

Obama’s tragedy may be that he is by nature a conciliator and a compromiser in an era that brooks no accommodation. But true disillusionment would require confidence that a different leader could have achieved much more. I think the opposite is more likely true — a different leader could have dug us into an even deeper hole.

I agree. I also believe that the ability of Obama to resist the hysteria on the current right with calm empiricism and a refusal to take the red-blue bait may be the sine qua non of national reform and recovery. But these things take time. If he survives to defeat the GOP in 2012, a lot could happen.

(Photo: By Paul J Richards AFP/Getty.)

Did you think the Beast would not pull off the best coverage? Video highlights here. Your comprehensive wedding wiki here. Best hats here. And acute analysis by Robin Givhan of The Dress – which seems to be getting raves.