Month: April 2013

Responding to Melissa Harris-Perry’s TV spot for MSNBC (seen above), Friedersdorf pushes back against the idea of collective or communal responsibility for children:

Parents raising their own children as they see fit can disagree vehemently, even on deeply held values, and coexist with nothing more dramatic than incredulous bitching to their spouses about other nearby parents. Conceive of the community as ultimately responsible for raising kids and see how suddenly, intractably contentious and upsetting a formerly thriving place becomes. A secular progressive parent put in a small town of devout Mormons would be the first to tell you that he gets to decide how to raise his kids, not the community. He would be exactly right. Parents get to decide how to raise their kids. Their neighbors ought to help them succeed, but have no claim to the kids.

Harris-Perry responds to critics here. Update from a reader:

I saw the criticisms of this video making the rounds on my conservative in-laws’ facebook pages, and their angry rants about how no else can make decisions about their children, a more vitriolic version of Friedersdorf’s comments. Their interpretation of Harris-Perry’s video is entirely misguided. She is not saying that anyone has a LEGAL interest in your kids.

Look, none of us want your kids, okay? None of us want to take them away from you, or force you to make certain decisions. She is saying that we all need to think of children as a collective asset of our society. I don’t want your kids, but I do want your kids to grow up educated, productive, and thoughtful members of society. That’s good for me, for my kids, and everyone else. That’s why we need to vote to fund schools, to keep funding for school lunches and other programs that benefit less well-off kids, not mention public preschools and all-day kindergartens, programs that are proven effective.

My in-laws would probably vote to cut funding for public education because their kids don’t go to public schools, and anyway they think the curriculum is extremely suspect because it doesn’t involve enough Christian(ist!) values. They think that raising their kids is a private endeavor, and increasingly try to do it away from society. This intensely private mindset is what Harris-Perry is railing against. Society has an interest in the welfare of our kids, and we should continue to try to support them as best we can. It’s called a civilization. Everybody should try it.

Another:

Conor thinks communal parenting is a nonstarter. I believe this is because he has not raised kids yet. We were fortunate to move to a great neighborhood when our kids were young and we are still there. All of our kids are grown and we are so glad we had all the help we did raising them. Our educational, career and religious backgrounds were all over the place. We were Catholic, Jewish, black, Hispanic, blue and white collar. We helped raise each other’s kids in the sense that we made the neighborhood safe, we participated in Scouts, baseball and the PTA. When we saw our kids out in public acting like fools we admonished them and then called their parents. We put them in our cars with wet swim suits and bloody noses. They slept on our floors and cried on our shoulders.

We didn’t interfere with the parenting of other houses nor them ours. The values each parent imparted were theirs alone. No one criticized or belittled anyone. That is your prerogative as a parent and we were not intent on sabotaging that.

As a result our kids are all grown. When they came home from college or the Army they reveled in being in the neighborhood where everyone knew and loved them. When a set of parents died we unofficially adopted the three kids (all in their 20s) so they would have Christmas, birthdays etc. Last weekend we went to a wedding of one of the neighborhood kids. It was a lot of fun as we don’t see each other as often. What touched me the most was all of our kids said to us and each other that they hope when they get married and have kids they will end up in a neighborhood like ours. They want help raising their kids just like we had.

Another:

Don’t feed the trolls. Friedersdorf is placing himself as one among many of the continually offended wing-nuts. This is just a retread of the “you didn’t build that” bullshit taken completely out of context and spun to put the perpetually panicked pundits into overdrive. “OUTRAGE!™”

The reader you quote is 100% correct in their assessment. Even when I was in my early 30s and wasn’t sure if I’d marry much less ever have kids, I recognized the importance of a well-funded school system even while many around me had determined that since they had no kids (or they had already completed their public education), they shouldn’t have to pay taxes for schools. I recognized how a knowledgable, educated, well-rounded citizenry benefits everyone in the society. Lacking any real semblance of empathy or even the ability to see beyond their noses is the hallmark of today’s Republicans and libertarians. Their childish and simplistic policy proposals stem from their childish and simplistic views of life.

Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s recent trip to Cuba has put Florida Republicans in a tizzy. But the US Treasury has confirmed that the couple had the appropriate educational travel license for the trip. France François questions why the nonsensical tourism ban is still in place:

[A]fter spending the appropriate amount of time admiring Beyoncé’s outfit and Jay-Z’s ability to look cooly detached as he undoubtedly crafts a witty punchline in his head about private flights, Brooklyn mornings and Havana nights, all I wondered was why I too couldn’t stroll the streets of Havana as effortlessly as they are.  Rather, why is the United States holding on to the embargo against Cuba, a policy that Secretary of State John Kerry said “has manifestly failed” for more than half a century? …

[T]he lessons we’ve learned about conflict resolution between the end of the Cold War and North Korea posturing about nuclear war with Rick Ross-like conviction have yet to be applied to Cuba. These lessons are that: 1. Democracy cannot be imposed from the outside. By its very nature, democracy has to be a grassroots movement; and 2. Isolating a country from the rest of the world–even when you abhor its policies–won’t necessarily force it to change.

(Photo: American singer Beyonce is seen in a balcony of the Saratoga Hotel in Havana next to her husband Jay Z, on April 5, 2013. By STR/AFP/Getty Images)

In the context of David Kuo’s death last weekend:

Earlier thoughts on David’s life and death here. Ask Anything archive here.

After Obama’s widely-debated comment about California AG Kamala Harris’ attractiveness last week, Kevin Drum reveals why comments like this matter:

[T]he Name It, Change It campaign released a survey conducted earlier this year on exactly this subject. In the survey, Jane Smith and Dan Jones are pitted against each other in a race for Congress. Both have similar backgrounds, and after reading their bios the survey respondents prefer Jane slightly, 49-48.

Then they read a second story. In one version of the story, there’s no physical description of either candidate, and Jane’s lead stays pretty much the same. In a second version, there’s a neutral description of Jane’s appearance. Suddenly she’s 5 points behind Dan. In a third version, there’s a positive description of her appearance. Now she’s 13 points behind Dan. A fourth version that contains a negative description has about the same effect.

In other words, any description hurts Jane. And any non-neutral description, even a positive one, just kills her.

Annie-Rose Strasser finds a silver lining:

[T]he real point of the survey — and the most salient fact that came from it — is that pushing back on the commodification of a female candidate’s beauty can be just as impactful as the criticism itself. Some respondents heard a defense from Jane Smith, saying, “My appearance is not news and does not deserve to be covered. Rarely do they cover men in this fashion and by doing so they depict women as less serious and having less to offer voters.” Others heard a similar defense from Name It, Change It. In both cases, when they heard that, their votes flipped back.

Ben Smith is already seeing the effects of Sandberg’s book:

It’s been less than a month since Sheryl Sandberg published Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead,” and I’ve already had two women bring up her name in salary negotiations. I’m not alone: Other editors whom I asked this week told me that women who worked for them had brought up the book — its broadly empowering message, and its specific advice on pushing for a raise. It’s a concrete, if anecdotal, suggestion that Sandberg’s high-profile effort to start a movement is having real consequences on a dynamic that’s well known to managers and backed by volumes of research: Women often ask for less money than they could get, and negotiate less aggressively than men.

The new phenomenon of women invoking Sandberg in salary talks “has happened here,” New York Times editor Jill Abramson said in an email. “I do think the book and all the attendant publicity have emboldened some women to speak up more directly about compensation, which is, of course, a welcome development.”

Previous Dish on the debate sparked by Sandberg’s book here, here, here and here.

China and other developing nations are experiencing the wrong kind of growth:

Increased foreign direct investment, the arrival of fast food restaurants, and increasingly sedentary lifestyles … have caused obesity and diabetes cases to rapidly increase in Brazil, India, and China (though to a lesser extent in Russia and South Africa, where malnourishment seems to be more prevalent). In Brazil, by the mid-2000s, the number of obese individuals has increased from 11.4 percent of the population in 2006 to 15.8 percent in 2011. And by 1998, 4.9 million adults had diabetes, with a projected increase to 11.6 million by 2025 . For a nation experiencing ongoing poverty and malnourishment, the rise of these silent but deadly diseases is alarming.

And it could sabotage their economies:

For example, if China were to provide insulin and oral medications – such as metformin and glibenclamide – to its diabetic population at one-third of the total U.S. per patient annual costs, and if only 25 percent of China’s total 92.4 million diabetes cases were treated, total annual costs would be approximately $46 billion per year – roughly half of China’s 2011 military defense budget.

(Photo: Overweight students attend military training during a weight-loss summer camp on July 30, 2009 in Shenyang of Liaoning Province, China. By Yang Xinyue/ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images)

Newspaper ad revenue continues to free-fall:

The blue line in the chart above shows the total annual print newspaper advertising revenue (for the three categories national, retail, and classified) based on annual data from 1950 to 2012. The annual advertising revenues have been adjusted for inflation using the CPI, and appear in the chart as billions of constant 2012 dollars. Newspaper print advertising revenues of $18.9 billion in 2012 fell to the lowest annual level of print advertising since the NAA started tracking industry data in 1950. In 2012 dollars, advertising revenues last year were below the $19.75 billion spent in 1950, 62 years ago.

The decline in print newspaper advertising to a 62-year low is amazing by itself, but the sharp decline in recent years is pretty stunning. Print ad revenues fell by almost 50% in just the last four years, from $37 billion in 2008 to less than $19 billion last year; and by 66% over the last decade, from $56.3 billion in 2002.