Month: December 2013

A reader responds to the Duck Dynasty uproar:

So I had seen the headlines, a bit on the story in various places, and then your post – I completely agree with you. (I also assure you that as I bear, I was not unduly swayed by his massive beardage.) But as the day progressed, I heard Chris Mathews, Jon Stewart, Colbert and various other people right/left in the cableverse and realized we’ve been duped. This is a PR move to get more hard-right viewers. Phil Robertson is not fired, as some have said. He’s suspended, “after the season has wrapped,” yet before the season premieres. I will bet you anything that he will be unsuspended before the next season. They are simply drumming up ratings. They will have the biggest season premiere ever. In the end, it’s TV – that’s what matters.

Another reader:

Want to know what fundamentalist Christians think about us gay folks? Read the comments on the Duck Dynasty Facebook page. This event has unleashed the absolute hate they feel towards us. Apparently criticizing someone for anti-gay remarks is now hate speech.

I have a couple of things to add. The first is that the racial aspects of Phil Robertson’s remarks are being underplayed. To celebrate segregation as a means to African-American happiness seems to me a truly dark and asinine piece of self-centered racism. It really casts into serious doubt the essential charm of a fundamentalist Christian. The second is that I’m a little stunned by the vehemence of the right’s reaction. I agree with them on the substance. I think it’s preposterous to fire a reality show star for being real. But does the GOP really want to rally behind someone who truly talks of gays the way medieval anti-Semites spoke of Jews? Do they really want to embrace someone who believes the civil rights movement has hurt African-Americans? Over the last day or so, with such unqualified and righteous defenses of Robertson, it seems to me the GOP is jumping a very large shark. It’s as if the year of relentless, decisive advances in gay civil rights has prompted an emotional venting which is as informed by victimology as anything on the p.c. left.

Another reader also scrutinizes Robertson’s right-wing supporters:

I realize that conservatives are playing hard on Phil Robertson’s religious liberty and freedom of speech, but this is a huge straw man. What is at stake here is not Mr. Robertson’s ability to speak freely or hold a particular religious interpretation. What is at stake is A&E’s potential profits in airing a show featuring a person with these beliefs. Conservatives are always about free markets. No one is telling Mr. Robertson to change his beliefs, but he is not entitled to make large amounts of money simply because of them. His show has to win in the market place, same as any other show. Conservatives can lament that “values” have “fallen” to a point where a show featuring Mr. Robertson is not profitable, but the fact that it might not be is a free-market truth, not an infringement on his ability to go home and live out his days freely speaking and judging “the Shintos”.

Update from a reader:

As a 44-year-old gay man living in a town of 35,000 in northwest Georgia, let me offer my take on the recent controversy. Phil Robertson’s comments, along with the Chic-Fil-A brouhaha last year, only remind me, painfully, that many people, whom I care about as friends and coworkers, consider me as beneath them, as worthy of condemnation, as unworthy of God’s love or blessing. They don’t hesitate to share those feelings in break rooms and Facebook posts and general conversations and, particularly, behind my back. And they see no problem with that. After all, it’s in the Bible, right? But of course they don’t want to hurt me! Somehow they have convinced themselves that they can loudly proclaim their beliefs about these matters but not make it personal to the people at whom they are directed.

I live here by choice. This is my hometown, as much my home as theirs. And I don’t censor myself around them either. But controversies like this, which might seem quaint to those in larger cities and with more supportive environments, are extremely painful and frustrating to me. They remind me that I am, and will likely remain, the Other, not a part of the community where I have lived, in many cases, longer than they.

So while everyone else discusses the First Amendment and whether he has a right to say this or that, I will once again remind myself that I am not part of this community, that they would rather voice their support for a man they’ve never met rather than acknowledge the humanity of someone they know and proclaim to care about. Yeah, I’m a little down and depressed about it. My guess is you would be too.

The latest Obamacare news:

The Obama Administration will not require the millions of Americans who received health-insurance-plan cancellation notices to purchase a new policy next year.

Ezra Klein reacts:

This puts the first crack in the individual mandate. The question is whether it’s the last. If Democratic members of Congress see this as solving their political problem with people whose plans have been canceled, it could help them stand against Republican efforts to delay the individual mandate. But if congressional Democrats use this ruling as an excuse to delay or otherwise de-fang the individual mandate for anyone who doesn’t want to pay for insurance under Obamacare, then it’ll be a very big problem for the law.

Suderman chimes in:

[I]t’s hard to justify offering this exemption to the previously insured but not to those who were previously uninsured. A person’s plan is canceled, and as a result that person is not subject to the mandate. But if that person was not insured this year, a person who is otherwise exactly the same is subject to the fine? Good luck selling that one.

Aaron Carroll’s bottom line:

If you change the ACA for political purposes, there is a cost, both financially and argumentatively. If the principles that hold it together were true before, then weakening them in this way should not be something the administration does lightly.

First Read asks:

Serious question: will there be a single uninsured American in 2014 who will end up paying the mandate penalty?

Nancy S. Kim argues that wrap contracts – online contracts “that can be entered into by clicking on a link or on an ‘accept’ icon” – limit a company’s liability, “diminish your privacy rights, take away your intellectual property and even deprive you of your free speech rights”:

In [a] disheartening example of abuse by wrap contract, a company threatened to fine a consumer named Jen Palmer $3500 for posting a negative review about it on a consumer review website. The company, KlearGear, didn’t claim that the review was false; rather, it claimed that her review ran afoul of a non-disparagement clause in the company’s online terms of sale. Palmer claims that the company reported her to a credit reporting agency which negatively affected her ability to obtain loans for a new car and home repairs. What’s particularly troubling about this example is that it’s unclear which version of the contract applied or that Palmer was even subject to KlearGear’s contract since the company did not complete the sale to her (which was the basis of her negative review). Yet, very few consumers would be willing to sue to test the validity of a wrap contract in court.

The wrap contract, by its “legal” nature, can be used to intimidate consumers and deter them from acting in ways that are perfectly lawful. They allow companies to change the rules that would ordinarily apply between a company and a consumer, giving companies all the power to enforce provisions to their advantage.

The solution to wrap contracts requires raising consumer awareness of its potential dangers. Cognitive biases work against the consumer. Consumer optimism and myopia make it easy to ignore latent harms in favor of immediate gratification — why fret about hidden terms when you want to get online now? The herd effect lulls users into a false sense of security since everybody else is clicking “agree” too.

But the consumer is hardly to blame here. There is simply too much information that it would be unrealistic to expect consumers to read every wrap contract they encounter, but consumers can and should make some noise when they encounter unfair terms. They should complain to companies, the state legislature, their friends. (Faircontracts.org has other suggestions here.) What they should not be is indifferent about the status quo.

Evangelical Christians are declining: 

The most recent Pew Research Center survey of the nation’s religious attitudes, taken in 2012, found that just 19 percent of Americans identified themselves as white evangelical Protestants—five years earlier, 21 percent of Americans did so. Slightly more (19.6 percent) self-identified as unaffiliated with any religion at all, the first time that group has surpassed evangelicals.

Secularization alone is not to blame for this change in American religiosity.

Even half of those Americans who claim no religious affiliation profess belief in God or claim some sort of spiritual orientation. Other faiths, like Islam, perhaps the country’s fastest-growing religion, have had no problem attracting and maintaining worshippers. No, evangelicalism’s dilemma stems more from a change in American Christianity itself, a sense of creeping exhaustion with the popularizing, simplifying impulse evangelical luminaries such as [televangelist Robert] Schuller once rode to success.

Prominent figures in the evangelical establishment have already begun sounding alarms. In particular, the Barna Group, an evangelical market research organization, has been issuing a steady stream of books and white papers documenting the erosion of support for evangelicalism, especially among young people. Contributions from worshippers 55 and older now account for almost two-thirds of evangelical churches’ income in the United States. A mere three percent of non-Christian Americans under 30 have a positive impression of evangelical Christianity, according to David Kinnaman, the Barna Group’s president. That’s down from 25 percent of baby boomers at a similar age. At present rates of attrition, two-thirds of evangelicals in their 20s will abandon church before they turn 30. “It’s the melting of the icebergs,” Kinnaman told me.

Institutions around the world are doing “amazingly well” when it comes to attracting visitors, according to Fiammetta Rocco:

Some of the new enthusiasm for museums is explained by changes in demand. In the rich world, and in some developing countries too, the share of people who are going on to higher education has risen spectacularly in recent decades. Surveys show that better-educated folk are a lot more likely to be museum-goers. They want to see for themselves where they fit in the wider world and look to museums for guidance, which is why so many of these places have been transformed from “restrained containers” to “exuberant companions,” as Victoria Newhouse writes in her book, Towards a New Museum. …

In the more affluent parts of the developing world, too, museum-building has flourished, driven mainly by governments that want their countries to be regarded as culturally sophisticated (though wealthy private individuals are also playing a part). They see museums as symbols of confidence, sources of public education and places in which a young country can present a national narrative.

China in particular is pouring money into museums:

In 1949, when the Communist Party took control, China had just 25 museums. Many were burned down during the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76 and their collections dispersed. But the rapid growth and urbanization that accompanied Deng Xiaoping’s “reform and opening up” policies after 1978 also launched a museum-building boom that did far more than simply replace what had been lost. Every provincial capital now seems to be constructing a new museum, or upgrading one it has already. This is seen as a good way to kickstart a cultural program, even if the building has nothing to display for a while. Rich Chinese collectors are also putting up private museums to show off their treasures.

According to the current five-year plan, China was to have 3,500 museums by 2015, a target it achieved three years early. Last year a record 451 new museums opened, pushing the total by the end of 2012 to 3,866, says An Laishun, vice president of the China Museums Association. By contrast, in America only 20 to 40 museums a year were built in the decade before the 2008 financial crash.

Recent Dish on the museum experience here.

(Photo by Flickr user InSapphoWeTrust)

Armed with a new Rand study (pdf), Mark Thompson argues that the ”one-size-fits-all-services” F-35 fighter was a $400 billion mistake:

The real danger of relying on a single aircraft is that it could endanger its pilots. “During the Korean War, the U.S. Air Force was able to rapidly upgrade one of its four jet fighters, the F-86 Sabre, to meet the surprise introduction of the Russian Mikoyan-Gurevich (MiG)-15, a Soviet-designed fighter that was more capable than any other U.S. fighter in the Air Force or Navy inventory,” Rand says. “Had the Air Force and Navy relied exclusively on a single joint fighter other than the F-86, it might not have been able to respond quickly to the unanticipated new threat posed by the MiG-15.”

The fundamental challenge of building a multi-service fighter is that one size doesn’t fit all in the war-fighting business. “They are separate airplanes,” Thomas Christie, the Pentagon’s chief weapons tester from 2001 to 2005, told Time earlier this year of the F-35’s three variants. “We would have been better off if we’d let the services go off and do their own thing.” A bonus would have been multiple plane builders—instead of a single contractor—to keep the companies on their toes, he added.

Dave Majumdar explains the risks of using the F-35 in situations better suited to the faster F-22 Raptor:

Both China and Russia are developing these so-called fifth-generation fighters, which feature high speed, maneuverability and radar-evading stealth. The Chinese have their Chengdu J-20 and Shenyang J-31 prototypes. Russia is working on the Sukhoi T-50. Both the Russian and Chinese aircraft might have the potential to match certain aspects of the Raptor’s performance. By contrast, there are troubling questions as to how well the F-35 would fare against the new foreign fighters. While the F-35 has air-to-air sensors and can carry air-to-air missiles, it does not have the kinematic performance of the F-22. It’s simply sluggish in comparison. The Raptor was designed from the outset as an air-to-air killer par excellence—the F-35 was not. The Raptor combines a very stealthy airframe with a high altitude ceiling and supersonic cruise. Further, the F-22 possesses excellent maneuverability for close-in visual-range dogfights.