Month: January 2013

Today on the Dish, Andrew counted up the dividends of reality brought on by Obama’s re-election, and crossed his fingers for a fresh wave of rationality from American right. He scrutinized Obama’s pitiless border policy in his first term, read some unimpressive excerpts from the legal defense of DOMA, and spoke up in defense of public nudity (in San Francisco, mainly.) Elswhere, Andrew sat down to answer reader queries on Dish health care and its relation to the ACA, and thanked subscribers to the new Dish for the $500k received so far (which you can add to here.)

On the political beat, we collected feedback on the economy’s poor showing last quarter, readers reported on the crumbling of the Boy Scouts’ ban on gay membership, and we paid a visit to the pitiful courtroom antics at Guantanamo Bay. We heard some uplifting news about the safety of Mali’s cultural artifacts, while Gordon Adams decried the US military’s new interest in horning in on Africa. Plumer faced the fact that China and India won’t make future climate policy easy, Ramesh called off the conservative offensive on the president, and Goldblog got real about the far right in Israel—very real. Meanwhile, a heretical Free Republic poster earned an Yglesias Award nomination, joining former RNC chair Jim Gilmore.

In assorted coverage, Evelyn Lamb searched for a better way for journos to communicate science and stats, while Priscilla Long provided some on not-so-identical twins and Joseph Stromberg offered some on the relation between depression and homosexuality. Jesse Lichetenstein penned a sprawling portrait of the Post Office, Mike Dash visited the family time forgot, and Alyssa Rosenberg attended Ai Weiwei’s latest show. Jonathan Evans reported on Denmark’s splitting hairs on gender equality, Burton Pike waved goodbye to the days of artful translation and we explored the feelings of helplessness under the flash of cameras.

Readers fileted David Mamet’s latest blathering on gun control, continued to search for an truly internationalist fast food spot, and set off an avalanche of emails on John H. Richardson’s ode to promiscuity. Others pushed back on suspicions about the NFL’s regard for players’ health, while Rhys Southan responded to Dishheads critical of his essay on veganism. We saw a stark white Park Rapids, Minnesota for the VFYW and awed at the movements of starlings in the MHB. A Chicago radio station’s cool ad asked its listeners to go forth and multiply, and we caught a close look at a bubbly clown in the Face of the Day.

– B.J.

(Photo: Aline Marie prays outside St. Rose of Lima church in Newtown, Conn., on the day of the school shooting. By Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images.)

Ai Weiwei has been prevented from seeing his own show:

Alyssa reviewed the Hirshhorn exhibition several weeks ago:

It’s a tremendous show, and a sharp rebuke not just to the Chinese government and to anyone who dismisses Ai as a simple political activist, but to the idea that art and politics somehow occupy separate spheres. Art doesn’t lose any of its dignity when it’s applied to protest. And politics is not somehow exempt from the powerful examination that comes from the outside perspectives of artists.

Jesse Lichtenstein profiles the USPS, which is losing $25 million a day and approaching default. He supplies portraits of the workers invisible to the millions of Americans they serve:

Holli Apodaca works at the Remote Encoding Center in Salt Lake City. There, in a warehouse-sized room that operates twenty-four hours a day, she sits in a beige cubicle, staring at a flat-screen monitor upon which the addresses appear, a constant stream of broken communications that she must fix. Eight thousand addresses per shift, ten thousand keystrokes an hour, doing her part to wade through the four to five million addresses that flash across the center’s screens each day. The third grader whose 3’s look like E’s, the ninety-year-old pensioner whose right hand shakes violently.

Apodaca zooms, rotates, squints, deciphers, then fires the information back to the machine in Medford, where the once rudderless letters, now matched to an address, are pulled back into the main stream and rejoin their easy-to-read brethren for their ultimate baptism: a 2.75-inch bar code sprayed along the envelope’s bottom edge. The city, state, street, house number, and ZIP-plus-four — the local post office, carrier route, and sequence within that route.

Previous Dish on the USPS here, here and here.

Mike Dash profiles the Lykov family, which, for 40 years, survived in the wilderness completely disconnected from the rest of humanity:

The Lykov children knew there were places called cities where humans lived crammed together in tall buildings. They had heard there were countries other than Russia. But such concepts were no more than abstractions to them. Their only reading matter was prayer books and an ancient family Bible. Akulina had used the gospels to teach her children to read and write, using sharpened birch sticks dipped into honeysuckle juice as pen and ink.

Another highlight:

Burton Pike bemoans the state of literary translation, claiming its decline has rendered language “simply instrumental, a medium of communication” and that “a creeping homogenization is developing in prose fiction”:

Certain canonical texts about translation now seem out of date. Walter Benjamin’s tragic view of history included a tragic view of translation. His famous 1923 essay “The Task of the Translator” rests on the notion of the sacredness of the word, and insists on a translation that will recreate the sacred spirit of the original in another language. But what if writers and readers no longer think that the surface of a literary text conceals layered depths that the translator must labor to transmit?  What if translation is no longer thought of as an art but as piece-work?

A new study from researchers at the University of Montreal looked at cortisol levels (a hormone associated with chronic stress, anxiety, and depression) in lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals. Though the study was originally intended to check for differences between this group and a group of heterosexuals, Joseph Stromberg is more interested in their secondary finding:

Their main findings were something of a surprise—among their sample of 87 participants, gay and bisexual men actually had a slightly lesser chance of depression and anxiety, along with lower stress levels (as indicated by cortisol and 20 other biomarkers) than heterosexual men. Perhaps most significant, though, was the secondary finding that they hadn’t even been searching for: In their study, lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals all tended to have lower stress levels and a smaller chance of depressive symptoms if they’d come out to friends and family than those who’d kept their sexual orientation a secret. “Coming out,” the authors write, “may no longer be a matter of popular debate, but of public health.”

His qualifier: “the study’s limited sample size means that these results can’t be interpreted as definitive, and further study is needed to confirm that they hold true on a widespread level.”

John H. Richardson doesn’t have many fans in the in-tray:

Looks like a shoo-in for a Poseur Alert. “Enacting a hero’s journey”? Puh-lease.

Another reader:

If there is one cause that doesn’t need a rebel, it is sex. Having sex, enjoying sex, is enough of its own reward that I don’t think we also need to burden it with the strings of “brave rebellion” or Christlike exaltation, thank-you-very-much.

Another:

Here’s a tip, for anyone who thinks adultery is nothing more than a “physical enactment” of a “glorious and terrifying truth” – start with saying the actual truth, you fucking coward. You want to live a polyamorous relationship? Fine. Tell them that. That’s honesty.

Another:

Do we live in a prudish society? Yes. It’s a hell of a lot better than living in Saudi Arabia, but America is still puritanical in its own way. But let’s talk about the main crux of the article: adultery. Basically Richardson says that monogamous relationships are bad for us and that men who only sleep with one woman get a backlog of semen, while monogamous women become cold and frigid. Men are horndogs, women are frigid. Bill and Hillary. It’s a tired cliche.

I’ve been in a few relationships in my day. I’ve never cheated. Did I want to cheat? Sure. I’d see a cute girl and the thought would definitely go through my mind. But here’s the thing: I chose not to cheat. I am not some animal in heat who can’t help himself. I can make choices. And those choices are not going to irreparably harm my fragile male ego.

Or as another puts it, “Sex is great, betrayal is not.” Another:

I’m all for tearing down the religiously derived cultural taboos associated with our sexuality.  And my reservations with the religious connotation notwithstanding, I’m even fine with thinking sex as a “moment of grace” – something that elevates the human experience in a profound and deeply felt way.

But holding up adultery as an act of heroism?  I mean, not just excusing, but actually praising them?  Come on.

I think you’ll have many people making this point, but what Richardson seems not to acknowledge is that it’s not the sex act that makes those two instances of adultery wrong.  It’s the breach of trust and integrity in the context of a solemn commitment.  If Richardson wants to continue the conversation about the place of marriage in our society and its value, that’s fine.  If he wants to argue against a cultural pressure to construct that “invisible prison” for ourselves, great. But the point is that we construct that prison for ourselves, and in doing so we forge an agreement of mutual trust with another human being.  It’s the violation of that trust, willingly accepted, that’s wrong.

Was Larry Craig committing an “honest” act when he stopped suppressing his true, deeply felt desires?  I guess in a vacuum you could argue that.  But he was committing a superseding cowardly act by pledging fidelity to a wife whose trust exposed herself and their family to a great deal of emotional turmoil.  True courage would have meant accepting his identity before those whose trust and emotional dependence he willingly took upon himself.  In so doing, his sexual escapades in a bathroom stall would have wrought no damage upon innocents, and would qualify, in my view, for the treatment Richardson affords them.

That’s the simple and obvious test: is there a victim?  There is something to be said about a certain “prudeness” that pervades much of American culture.  But you can make that point without openly lauding adulterers.  I don’t have any problem at all with blowjobs or gay sex in bathroom stalls if that’s your thing.  It’s the damage your visit upon others that’s wrong.  I don’t really see how one can argue otherwise.

One more:

I won’t go into the smarmy, trendy, postmodernist tone this piece strikes, though Richardson certainly makes that a big enough target. What I will say is that I think the only thing he gets right is his inching towards an understanding of sexuality as something natural. I think that premise in talking about sex helps us reach toward a fuller understanding of both homo- and heterosexuality, and how sexuality pervades so much of our psychological lives and social interactions.

As for the idea that “adultery is a brave rebellion against the invisible prison we build for ourselves,” biologically speaking, that may well be. But what exactly does Richardson mean by “brave” here? What exactly is “brave” about something that comes completely natural to us without even thinking about it? What’s “brave” about fucking the intern and not telling your husband or wife? Richardson doesn’t come close to approaching the social complexities that come with our decisions surrounding sexuality and how it affects those around us (indeed, something he would likely count as a quaint remnant of a more “traditional” worldview). The bottom line (and I unfortunately speak from experience here) is that you can really emotionally wound people with your lustful caprice. Like, really fucking hurt people.

Not to mention the completely moot point that in espousing such a liberated view on sexual moors, Richardson falls into a trap he likely wishes to escape: prescribing behavior to others about their sexual behaviors.