Month: April 2013

by Chris Bodenner

A reader responds to yesterday’s video:

Andrew, the video in which you expressed near-speechless amazement at the recent acceleration of the US toward embracing LGBT rights truly struck a chord with me. We’re roughly the same age (I was born in 1960), but I grew up in southwest Virginia, the heart of the Bible belt, a part of the world where being gay was considered the worst fate one could imagine, the most shameful, wretched possibility – worse than being a criminal, worse than anything. My family wasn’t particularly religious, but the messages they gave me from the time I was a child (and they certainly sensed my gayness early on) clearly steered me toward a life of respectability and “normalcy.” I entered a state of deeply ingrained denial, believing and hoping so strongly that there was simply no way possible that I could be a homosexual, that it simply wasn’t an option.

I eventually married a woman, and truly loved her, though in a limited way that ultimately led to frustration and bewilderment for both of us. We remained married for 12 years, until my wife suggested that I go back into therapy. After much difficult, emotional work with a supportive therapist, I was finally able to admit the truth of being gay, first to myself and then to my wife. Our marriage was over as soon as I disclosed my sexuality (and my lies and infidelities). Sadly, we remain distant and have little contact with each other.

So I came out at the age of 43, fearing that it was too late to ever find love with another man, and unsure that a sustained, loving relationship between two men was even possible.

However, I not only met a wonderful man, with whom I’ve shared my life for 8 years now (not married yet, but we’re talking about it), I also finally became politically active, attending protests of “ex-gay” conferences, and lobbying the state legislatures for trans rights. I was astounded and tremendously impressed by the young activists I met, wowed by their absolute conviction (yet so casually expressed) in their right to be fully recognized and their deserving complete civil equality. (I was living in New York during the ’80s, at the height of the Plague and during the rise of ACT UP, but I was severely closeted and scared to death of gay sex.)

While I’m amazed at the changes we see how happening all around us – the court cases that are going all the way to the Supreme Court, one state after another ratifying civil marriage rights for gay couples – I also cant help but worry that a backlash will come. I share your sense of hope, and I’m incredibly encouraged by the confidence and strength of will that I see displayed by the next generation of young LGBT people. But I still remember being slammed into lockers and being called a faggot in junior high (even though I was trying desperately not to appear effeminate … somehow people just knew). I know there are very large, heavily financed organizations composed of people that feel severely threatened by the advances we’ve seen: the FRC, NOM, Focus on the Family, etc. I celebrate right along with you, Andrew, and share your gratitude for how much has changed. But I’m still nervous, and still fearful, I suppose, of the bullies and the smoothly delivered condemnations after all these years. It’s hard to believe that the victories we’ve seen will really “stick” and become fully embedded into our culture, for good.

But most of the time, I do know hope. Because I was reborn when I came out, late though it was, and I learned that even a balding, middle-aged man, who once lied to himself so thoroughly that he had a hard time distinguishing truth from reality, was finally able to accept the truth about himself, and was able to find love. I share your awe in the dazzling, surreal world in which we now find ourselves, a world that was once only imagined but that appears to be coming into being. A world in which who we love really makes very little difference to the world at large, but a tremendous difference to each individual who has the courage to be themselves.

Thanks always, Andrew, for your honesty, and for making the case for marriage from early, early on.

by Doug Allen

After Nick Beaudrot gave up Twitter for Lent, he found that he didn’t feel like using it again “until [he found] a way to separate the wheat from the chaff.” Ezra Klein agreed, Yglesias differed, and Kevin Drum positioned it as a problem for “the verbal, well-educated, politically conscious social group that most bloggers belong to.” Jonathan Bernstein zooms out:

[T]he truth is that Klein and Yglesias and Drum and, for a few years now, myself, aren’t part of that group. We’re in a different category: people who have to follow the news for professional reasons. … [T]he less-interesting upshot of all this is that it’s not clear why most people should be particularly interested in how Klein and Yglesias and Drum use twitter, because their — our — needs are really different. But the more important lesson that really can’t be repeated often enough is that reporters, columnists, bloggers: we’re not normal. Even worse: of the not normal — the people who pay a lot of attention to politics — we’re not even normal in that group. …

Twitter, with its self-selected feeds, is particularly good at making you forget about [this]. It’s very easy to think that “everybody” is talking about something, when really it’s a handful of reporters and political operatives. Or that something is old news, when in fact only some 10% or fewer of those out in the electorate have even heard about it.

by Patrick Appel

Jay Newton-Small notes that several new films depict the destruction of DC:

Destroying the White House or other trappings of the presidency – most notably Air Force One – is not a new subject matter. But [Olympus Has Fallen, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, and White House Down] are notable in that they are the first blockbusters since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks to violently attack Washington landmarks. In the intervening years after the attacks, Washington was destroyed on the silver screen, but by natural causes: an ice age in The Day After Tomorrow (which tactfully avoided showing the actual destruction of any landmarks) and tectonic shifting in the movie 2012.

She thinks the “the release of movies that would’ve been unimaginable a decade ago marks a healing milestone on the collective American psyche post 9/11.”

by Zoe Pollock

Spencer Woodman appreciates how the word “can introduce gratifying little flashes of surrealism into everyday conversation.” Exhibit A:

[I]n The Metamorphosis—in which Gregor Samsa, who carries out the vermin-like existence of a traveling salesman serving the debts of his parents, turns into an cockroach—Kafka purposely misuses the word. After Gregor’s well-meaning sister removes the furniture from along the walls of his bedroom to allow Gregor to more freely crawl along the walls and ceiling; “the sight of the bare walls literally made her heart bleed,” Kafka writes. (In lieu of any knowledge of German, I’m taking Joachim Neugroschel’s translation of the story at face value.) The sort of literalized metaphor that dictates the impossible story is shrunk down to a simple turn of phrase. …

Even for those not attempting a great modernist novel, the effect is possible in everyday conversation. “She literally exploded with anger” is a commonly mocked example of the word’s misuse. Although it’s admittedly cliché, it still generates a gratifying cartoonish flash for me: the person in question actually blows to pieces, which is funny and also descriptive.

His advice:

The rule of thumb could be simple: that if the word’s misuse doesn’t create an interesting picture, it’s probably best to use another adverb or adjective.

Previous Dish on the subject here and here.

by Brendan James

Jessica Love considers whether the human brain was designed to produce language, or whether its development was more accidental:

The ’90s was the era of the language instinct. Indeed, Steven Pinker’s book The Language Instinct overtook bestseller lists and inspired a whole generation of psycholinguists, including me. “Language is no more a cultural invention than is upright posture,” Pinker wrote. Bats use Doppler sonar to hunt insects, birds read constellations to navigate, and humans have a “biological adaptation to communicate information.” We must have helpful biases encoded in our genes: What else could explain the fact that the most complicated skill most humans will ever master is acquired by age four?

But during the last decade, the pendulum of scientific thought has begun its inevitable swing in the other direction. These days, general cognitive mechanisms, not language-specific ones, are all the rage. We humans are really smart. We’re fantastic at recognizing patterns in our environments—patterns that may have nothing to do with language. Who says that the same abilities that allow us to play the violin aren’t also sufficient for learning subject-verb agreement? Perhaps speech isn’t genetically privileged so much as babies are just really motivated to learn to communicate.

By Zoe Pollock

The title belongs to the New South China Mall in Guangdong province:

With more than 7 million square feet of leasable space, the mall was supposed to have over 2,300 stores and was meant to be the largest in the world. The developers estimated that the mega mall would attract at least an average of 70,000 visitors a day. As a comparison, the Mall of America in Minnesota, the largest in the US, is only about one-third of that size. Even the massive West Edmonton Mall in Alberta, the largest in North America, pales in comparison. In their initial promotional material, the developers boasted that the mall would become a “one stop consumption center” and “a global business model.”

However, since its opening, the mall has no more than a few dozen, mostly small tenants at any single time. Over 99% of the retail space has been vacant and will probably remain so. As a result of its disappointing performance, the planned luxurious Shangri-La hotel was never built; nor were some of the supporting facilities. Yet, given the magnitude of the project, the mall is not allowed to fail, and has even been designated as a tourist destination by the government.

(Photo from Wikimedia Commons)

by Zoe Pollock

Andy Greenwald praises the consistent pacing of Game Of Thrones:

Binge-watchers care little for how their meal is coursed out; all they want is to dig in. And Game of Thrones is particularly delicious when devoured in bulk. There’s little tonal variance between the hourly installments; everything is equally good. In fact, it’s the rare show that’s probably better served by such gluttony: Less time away makes it harder to mistake your Sansas from your Sandors, your Lothars from your Lorases. Game of Thrones is proof that more and more people are coming around to David Simon’s way of thinking: The drug war is a racist and failed institution Individual episodes aren’t works unto themselves but rather chapters in a carefully crafted novel. More than sex pirates and smoke babies, imp slaps or jokes about Littlefingers, this may be Game of Thrones‘s most enduring legacy. What we thought was an exercise in transforming a book into television may actually have helped turn television into a book.

Previous Dish on the series here and here.