Month: March 2012

Noah Millman reframes the debate over fertility rates:

Wild demographic swings – in either direction – put big stresses on society, but I don’t see why an aging population is more to be feared than a too-rapidly growing one. Afghanistan and Yemen, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, all still have really high total fertility rates (and disastrous economies as well – which means labor force growth will badly lag population growth). I am far more worried about the consequences of that fact than I am about the consequences of low fertility rates across the developed (and much of the developing) world.

Israeli soldiers stand over Naomi Laet, 22, an Israeli pro-Palestinian activist, after she was struck in the head with a rubber bullet during a protest in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, near Ramallah, on March 16, 2012. She and others were protesting against land confiscation to build the nearby Jewish settlement Hallamish. By Abbas Momani/AFP/Getty Images.

"This American Life" is retracting its extraordinarily popular segment on iPhone manufacturing in China. A contrite Ira Glass explains his thinking:

We've learned that Mike Daisey's story about Apple in China – which we broadcast in January – contained significant fabrications. We're retracting the story because we can’t vouch for its truth. This is not a story we commissioned. It was an excerpt of Mike Daisey's acclaimed one-man show "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs," in which he talks about visiting a factory in China that makes iPhones and other Apple products. The China correspondent for the public radio show Marketplace tracked down the interpreter that Daisey hired when he visited Shenzhen China. The interpreter disputed much of what Daisey has been saying on stage and on our show. On this week's episode of This American Life, we will devote the entire hour to detailing the errors in "Mr. Daisey Goes to the Apple Factory."

Daisey is defending himself by saying "what I do is not journalism." Noreen Malone steps back:

[This American Life], which made its name with charming, small slice-of-life tales has gotten increasingly ambitious in recent years, and has begun running a number of successful investigative pieces alongside its bread-and-butter stuff from people like David Sedaris, who has a famously slippery notion of truth himself. It's hard to imagine this misstep, however public and embarrassing, halting that trajectory — but it's also hard to imagine there's not going to be a heightened awareness of the degree of difficulty in creating a product that might play with the idea of truth in one segment and seek to expose it in the next.

Previous Dish on Daisey and Apple here.

Jay Cost explains how the slow delegate allocation has dragged out the primary:

This is not to argue that Mitt Romney is a strong frontrunner in any objective sense. Comparing him to Dole and McCain is not terribly favorable! The point is that the calendar adds to his weakness.

Chait claims that Romney is driven to deceit:

[T]here’s no reason to believe that Romney is especially dishonest in his core – that he has any special propensity to lie to his friends or neighbors or clients. He wanted a political career, and once he made that decision, he had only two choices: massive dishonesty or certain defeat.

Waldman dismisses Chait's argument:

[I]s there a real meaningful difference between a politician who's a liar, and a politician who tells many lies?

No—or, at least, none that will matter to us as citizens. Experience tells us that a guy who lies as a candidate will not only tend to lie just as much as a president, but will probably lie about the same kinds of things. If he's lying on the campaign trail about whether he has cheated on his wife, it's a good bet he'll end up telling us more lies about future cheating. If he's lying on the campaign trail about what his tax plan contains, it's a good be he'll end up lying to us about his tax plan when he tries to pass it, as George W. Bush did.

Galupo thinks Romney should have switched parties:

If he had adopted the Third Way when he chose not to run for re-election in Massachusetts, Romney could've switched parties. He could've justified this decision by saying the Republican Party had become too extreme, too outside the mainstream. He could've said he was honoring the legacy of his father. The national media would've showered him with praise and positive coverage.

It might look something like this:

The creator Elisa Kreisinger captions, "I wanted to tell a story where Don subverts rather than sells traditional maleness to finally give our hero some relief."

(Hat tip: Dodai Stewart)

The British Tories have not gone insane like the GOP. And it's an open secret that Cameron would be extremely confortable with an Obama re-election. But I was struck by the prime minister's remarks the other night and since they're now being attacked from the far right, it's worth reprinting them:

There are three things about Barack that really stand out for me: strength, moral authority, and wisdom.

Strength, because Barack has been strong when required to defend his national interests. Under President Obama's leadership, America got bin Laden. And together with British and coalition forces, America has fundamentally weakened al Qaeda. The President says what he will do and he sticks to it … And let us all agree that the world is better off without bin Laden, but the world is better off without Qaddafi, too.

Moral authority, because Barack understands that the means matter every bit as much as the ends. Yes, America must do the right thing, but to provide moral leadership, America must do it in the right way, too. The first President I studied at school was Theodore Roosevelt. He talked of speaking softly and carrying a big stick. That is Barack's approach. And in following it, he has pressed the reset button on the moral authority of the entire free world.

Wisdom, because Barack has not rushed into picking fights, but is a steward of America's resources of hard and soft power. He's taken time to make considered decisions, drawing down troops from Iraq and surging in Afghanistan.

Toby Harnden took particular umbrage at the notion that Obama "pressed the reset button on the moral authority of the entire free world." He doesn't get it. But Cameron was obviously referring to the end of torture and abuse of terror suspects ordered from the previous president and his criminal vice-president Dick Cheney.

Just because Americans need amnesia to forget what this country did to its own moral authority under Bush and Cheney does not mean that America's allies have. They saw the damage it did to all of us defending civilization against barbarism, only to discover that some of that barbarism was emanating from the White House itself.

A joyous supercut hyping the return of one of TV's most beloved shows:

A reader writes:

Archbishop Rowan's small book, "Writing in the Dust: After September 11," is a must-read. Your perception that he is the un-Christianist is underscored by its prayerful anguish over how to respond to the horrific events he witnessed that day in New York. (He was a few blocks away recording a program for Trinity Church, Wall Street.) An example from the opening paragraphs, titled "Last Words":

The religious words are, in the cold light of day, the words that murderers are saying to themselves to make a martyr's drama out of a crime. The nonreligious words are testimony to what religious language is supposed to be about — the triumph of pointless, gratuitous love, the affirming of faithfulness even when there is nothing to be done or salvaged. It should give us pause, especially if we think we are religious. You don't have to be Richard Dawkins to notice that there is a problem.

If you haven't read it, please do. For all his shortcomings, this book is a wonder and shows where his heart lives.

It's out there and it's real and it's not unfair to point it out.