Author: Andrew Sullivan

Yaacov Lozowick wants Bibi to make a speech about the purpose of the Gaza blockade:

There are some fights Israel can win, others that are hopeless – and there may be a very small group that seem hopeless but are so crucial we'll have to fight for them no matter what. The malignant idea that dividing Jerusalem will bring peace may be one of those.

The blockade of Gaza, however, isn't. To the best of my knowledge no Israeli government since the onset of the blockade in early 2006 has clearly stated what it's for, what it's intended to achieve, and what benchmarks are in use to determine its extent, duration, and eventual lifting. It started, I think, as a response to the electoral victory of Hamas; it was strengthened, if memory serves, after the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit; it has been tightened or loosened in some form of correspondence to the rocket fire from Gaza. At one point Ehud Olmert, then prime minister, said clearly that the blockade would be lifted when Shalit came home; if that's the policy still then it isn't about smuggling weapons – but perhaps the policy has changed. I honestly don't think it has ever been publicly discussed.

And what does that tell you about Israel's long-term strategy? Or total lack of one?

Israel walks back its first claims about the civilians on the flotilla.

Copyranter tears out two newspaper ads – one from the NYT (above) and another from the WSJ:

We will make this right? Sorry Beyond Petroleum, but that shrimp boat has already left the dock. Note the added "We will get it done" for the NYT ad. And the initial caps in the WSJ headline. It's obvious confusion is reigning in London about how to ad-spin the "spill." Not surprising! Knowing how the copy approval process works with large corporations, I can guess at the excruciating hemming and hawing that went on before these pathetic ads were sent to the pubs. They need more hemming and/or hawing. Cutesy logos, though, they got down PAT.

Video version of BP's campaign here. They're gonna have a tough time keeping up with Greenpeace UK's rebranding efforts. And, of course, the Internet's:

Taegan Goddard notes:

What's most interesting about Nate's deal with the New York Times (to me, at least) is that he was not really "hired." Instead, it's a license deal where he continues to own and control the content and everything reverts back to him if he doesn't renew. It's the same deal you cut with Atlantic Media and I cut with CQ-Roll Call.

From a business sense, this is very different than the Washington Post hiring Ezra Klein and Dave Weigel. It could be a new model for bloggers that mimics television production.

Mark Schrope looks at innovative tweaks being made to the New England fishing industry meant to stem overfishing, save lives and protect endangered fish. And yes, I'm in Ptown now.

Virginia Postrel sizes up Obama's "glamour":

Yes, President Obama is a very glamorous figure. Glamour is a particular form of illusion. It’s an illusion that tells a truth about the audience’s desires, and it requires mystery and distance. During the campaign people projected onto Barack Obama whatever they wanted in a president or even in a country. Lying is usually a bad thing, but they would project onto him that he was lying about his positions because he secretly agreed with them: “Anyone that smart has got to be a free trader at heart. He’s just saying this to pander to those idiots. He can’t really mean it.”

You’ve seen, as he’s taken office and tried to govern, this back and forth where he is consciously or unconsciously trying to maintain his glamour—which requires a kind of distance from the political process so that people can continue to see him as representing them, regardless of their contradictory views—while actually trying to be president, which means you have to decide what to do about Guantanamo. You have to decide what health care bill you’re going to back. You have to decide all these things, and you’re going to make somebody disillusioned. This morning I saw that the former editor of Harper’s is about to write a book, The Mendacity of Hope, attacking Obama from the left. That’s the power and the downside of glamour.

Douthat tries to square the conventional wisdom that millennials are especially idealistic with a new study showing that today’s college kids are less empathetic than their counterparts of the ’80s and ’90s:

[M]aybe they actually go hand in hand. There’s a kind of humanitarianism that’s more interested in an abstract “humanity” than in actual people, and a kind of idealism that’s hard to distinguish from moral vanity. Perhaps this is the spirit that’s at work among the empathy-deficient world-changers of Generation Y — visible, for instance, in the way that community service has become a self-interested resume-padding exercise for ambitious young climbers, or in the way that Barack Obama’s rhetoric (“we are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” etc.) managed to appeal to younger voters’ idealism and flatter their egos all at once.

On the other hand, this could also be grounds for a defense of narcissism, at least up to a point. Maybe too much empathy is crippling, and a little solipsism is a necessary spur to action. If a little “look out world, here I come” self-centeredness is what it takes to get young people involved in charity work or political campaigning, the theory might go, then so much the better for self-centeredness!

A former president of the United States openly champions the use of torture. So much for my sad attempt to get him to atone. To place the full weight of the presidency behind war crimes is sign of where this country is – as is the Congress's refusal to shut the detention and torture camp at Gitmo. This remains a live issue. A future Republican president will almost certainly now embrace torture as integral to American values and law.

Instant BFFs – in an amazing, must-watch clip from NatGeo: