Year: 2013

Fiction writer David Cameron attempted to expose the unfairness of literary journals by submitting to them an already published New Yorker story under guise of a fake, unpublished writer. The journals all rejected the story. David Haglund yawns:

Many other writers have indulged in this silly exercise before. There was the guy who sent Jane Austen novels to several U.K. publishers five years ago, as if it made sense to write 19th-century-style fiction in 2007. (Even assuming that some of the publishers did not recognize, e.g., Pride and Prejudice—which I doubt—it would still read like pastiche, and not very interesting pastiche.) There was the other guy who sent part of a lesser Jerzy Kosinski novel around. That same guy (and they are all, for some reason, guys) submitted the script of Casablanca to a bunch of movie agents—as if the movie business had not changed a whit since 1942, and those agents who were foolish enough not to recognize the classic dialogue were proving some point about how the people at the top have no idea what they’re doing.

Fallows highlights this video, which is sympathetic to the Steubenville rapists, as an extreme example of false equivalence:

A petition asking CNN to apologize, as of this writing, has over 245,000 signatures. Elias Isquith analyzes:

Basically what I think happened is that the people who run these shows are overworked. They get sloppy. And lazy. If we consider that the victim’s anonymity made it exceedingly difficult to run he-said/she-said coverage, it’s kind of a no-brainer that we’d end up with reports that have much more in common with one of those unbearably maudlin SportsCenter “stories” about athletes triumphing in the face of adversity than they do with actual news.

The weeping rapists were right there. TV gold. And the girl? She didn’t even give us a single little tear! No Casey Anthony, her.

The Onion’s take on the subject here.

It comes (via David Corn) from Richard Perle on NPR:

Montagne: Ten years later, nearly 5000 American troops dead, thousands more with wounds, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead or wounded. When you think about this, was it worth it?

Perle: I’ve got to say I think that is not a reasonable question. What we did at the time was done with the belief that it was necessary to protect this nation. You can’t a decade later go back and say we shouldn’t have done that.

Neoconservatism: never look back; never question; never take responsibility; always avoid accountability. Just seek power. Then wage war.

“Is it really too much to ask that those who supported the invasion and occupation of Iraq so enthusiastically at the time, and whose second thoughts have been far less fierce and full-throated than their initial enthusiasm, not deploy virtually the exact same crusading rhetoric about the necessity of the use of U.S. power in the name of overthrowing tyrants, and of America serving as an armed midwife to the birth of democracy in the Middle East, with regard to Syria as they did a decade ago with regard to Iraq?” – David Rieff, TNR, in what appears to me to be a direct rebuke of Leon Wieseltier’s continued ambivalence.

Bruce Schneier believes so:

Resilience — building systems able to survive unexpected and devastating attacks — is the best answer we have right now. We need to recognize that large-scale attacks will happen, that society can survive more than we give it credit for, and that we can design systems to survive these sorts of attacks. Calling terrorism an existential threat is ridiculous in a country where more people die each month in car crashes than died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

If the U.S. can survive the destruction of an entire city — witness New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina — we need to start acting like it, and planning for it. Still, it’s hard to see how resilience buys us anything but additional time. Technology will continue to advance, and right now we don’t know how to adapt any defenses — including resilience — fast enough.

Mark Kleiman’s consulting firm has been hired to “advise the Washington State Liquor Control Board on implementing Washington’s I-502 marijuana legalization law.” Kleiman explains why, in the above video, he won’t say whether or not he smokes pot:

The question about my own use or non-use of pot always comes up, and I always answer the same way, with a polite (I hope) “None of your business.” I don’t think there’s any ill will involved in asking the question: journalists simply want to “place” their sources culturally on the hippie-to-jock spectrum. But I want to resist the whole idea that drug policy should be a clash of cultural identities rather than a serious discussion of harms and benefits.

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Many more readers sound off:

I’m to be married a month from now, and this has been a hot topic among friends. My fiancé will be taking my last name. But I’m a firm believer that we humans should take advantage of the one time that we have a little choice in what we are called. I say the new rules should go like this: best last name wins. I don’t want to name names, but our contest wasn’t even close. Her last name is British slang for penis, whereas mine is synonymous with brute Swedish strength. As the rest of my circle falls into marriage, I will be a big advocate for this new approach. Family legacy be damned.

Another:

When I started dating my wife, I let it be known that I would have no problem if she hyphenated or kept her own name. But since her maiden name was Virgin (yes, not Virginia, not Burgenie, Virgin) she was ready to ditch it as fast as she could. Virgin-Wright (or even Wright-Virgin) just wasn’t happening. So she remained a Virgin until marriage and not a moment more.

Another:

My mother’s advice: if the married name is easier to spell, go with it. It was, so I did! I’ve saved probably six and a half days of spelling my name out for people.

And another:

My daughter’s father and I are not married.  At the time when I was pregnant and after I gave birth, her father and I were planning on getting married.  That didn’t happen, and it is also probably the best thing for my daughter and me that it did not happen.  My daughter is now 20 years old.  I raised her on my own with the help of my supportive family.

My daughter also still has her father’s last name, and she’s the only one in our family that has that last name.  Why didn’t I change it when she was young and it was apparent that her father was not going to be a part of her life?  I didn’t change for a couple reasons.  The first reason is superficial – it’s a pretty last name, and it sounds beautiful with her first name.  The other reason is maybe more important – it’s the only thing her father gave her, and I want her to keep it and have something beautiful from her father.

Though I should also add that my daughter’s middle name is my last name. Even though I do love her father’s last name, I still wanted my name in there somewhere.

Another:

Within mine and my husband’s families I think we have almost every variation on this theme.  I kept mine.  Why?  My then fiancee said, “I fell in love with Susan Green, I want to be married to Susan Green.”  Twenty-odd years later he still is married to Susan Green.

Wrapping up the Vulture’s “Sitcom Smackdown,” Matt Zoller Seitz calls Cheers “a flawless pearl glinting on a beach. But The Simpsons is the beach”:

At some point in its run, the show transcended aesthetic concerns and became an institution, a juggernaut, a public utility, a monument, and (yes, really) a living document that’s probably quoted as widely and frequently as the Bible, and with a lot more enthusiasm. I wouldn’t be surprised if The Simpsons ran for another twenty years, or until one of its principals croaked of old age. (What if it’s Dan Castellaneta and it happens during taping? One last Homeric wail of anguish! They’d probably weave it into the final episode, the way John Travolta did with Nancy Allen’s dying scream at the end of Blow Out.) Plus, at a certain point, indestructibility trumps every other value — especially if the artists in question have earned a spot in the pop culture pantheon, as The Simpsons surely has.

Related coverage of South Park and Arrested Development here.