Author: Andrew Sullivan

In a meditation on the low esteem afforded caregivers in the US, Anne Marie Slaughter calls for a new emphasis on care:

I imagine a new America in which citizens recognize that providers of physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual care are as indispensable to our society and our economy as providers of income. If we truly valued breadwinning and caregiving equally—as equal components of the American promise of equal opportunity—then we would value male caregivers as much as we value female breadwinners and every permutation and combination in between. But we would also recognize that single parents—who must be sole breadwinners and caregivers in families that often include elder relatives, as well as children—need special help and support. We would embrace marriage for everyone and support policies that would strengthen long-term commitments among family members, however these families might be constructed.

As we strive for equality, we must also redefine and reprioritize the pursuit of happiness, the most personal of America’s founding values. Happiness can certainly be achieved through individual achievement, through winning the competition. But it is equally reached through a web of strong and fulfilling relationships—the warp and woof of connectedness and care.

Marc F. Bellemare argues that “[w]hen development agencies and nongovernmental organizations try to do too many different things, not only do they suffer from the policy equivalent of attention deficit disorder; they also spread their already scarce resources ever more thinly”:

Instead of being a mile wide and an inch deep, the practice of development should be narrower and deeper by focusing on those things that matter most to the poor. The political scientist Kim Yi Dionne has found that in Malawi, people who are HIV-positive or who have lost a loved one to HIV/AIDS ranked improved HIV/AIDS services very low among their priorities. They were much more concerned about access to clean water, followed by agricultural development. Yet most public donors don’t seem to care. And private donors, often heralded by free-market proponents as knowing better than public donors, are not much better: in August, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced plans to deliver Internet access to the five billion people who are not yet online — a priority that Bill Gates called “a joke” when compared to eradicating malaria.

In the spirit of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, ensuring that basic needs are met by focusing on boosting incomes would be a good place to start. Many of the things promoted nowadays by development — breastfeeding, the use of cookstoves, gender equality, environmental sustainability, an independent media, Internet access, and so on — fall into place naturally once people have met their basic needs, such as clean water, plentiful and nutritious food, and found a steady source of income. In other words, many conditions targeted by idealistic development goals arose in wealthier countries as byproducts of higher incomes, and trying to provide them at the same time as more fundamental things puts the cart before the horse.

Several readers found one post today to be, well, aggravating:

I looked for one of your awards to nominate “The Foundations of Morality” for, as it contained discussions worthy of some award. Since none of the awards fit, I’ll just nominate the whole thing as bullshit. Is that an award?

Not quite. But it was annoy-an-atheist day at the Dish. Damon Linker’s thoughts on God were dismissed thus:

It’s substance-free ass gas like this that makes me throw up a little whenever I hear the phrase “sophisticated theology.”

Make your own mind up. We came across some exquisite expressions of grief; and the crucifixion of the ego; the blogger who offers aesthetic critiques of dick selfies explained herself (not that she needs to); more readers spoke of divorcing members of their families (a thread of intermittent sadness and uplift); and someone turned T.S. Eliot into a comic strip.  I have to say I don’t care that this photograph was photo-shopped; and loved the fact that Walt Whitman had a ninth century alter ego.

As for “epiphanies“, a reader writes:

I hope you don’t think this is flippant, after your thoughtful post, but it’s a joke I shared with my boyfriend who died 20 years ago, and he’s been on my mind lately.

Driving back from the beach, on a two-lane bridge, we came up on two pickup trucks who were stopped, one going each way, and the drivers were talking. (It’s a pretty sleepy little Florida panhandle town, so this was probably par for the course.) I said, “I wonder what they’re doing?” and my boyfriend said, “Maybe they’re having an epiphany,” which gave us the giggles. “That one guy is definitely starting to epiph around the edges there,” he added, sending us into fits of laughter. I still find myself saying that, “you’re starting to epiph around the edges there,” and no one ever knows what I mean.

It sucks when you have an in-joke with someone who dies and then you don’t have anyone to be in on the joke with anymore. I’m sure you know what I mean.

As a matter of fact, I do.

The most popular post of the day was Tumblr of the Day (dick pics, natch); second up was on male insecurities about our wing-wangs. None of that content was sponsored, I swear.

See you in the morning.

(Photo: A participant of the No Pants Subway Ride types on an Apple iPhone while riding a train on January 12, 2014 in Berlin, Germany. The annual event, in which participants board a subway car in January while not wearing any pants while behaving as though they do not know each other, began as a joke by the public prank group Improv Everywhere in New York City and has since spread around the world, with enthusiasts in around 60 cities and 29 countries across the globe, according to the organization’s site. By Adam Berry/Getty Images.)

“When I asked Ms. Abramson what stamp she wants to put on The Times during her editorship, she answered succinctly and with no hesitation: ‘Journalism of depth, creativity and purpose that is found only in The New York Times.’ There’s little question that she is succeeding on that score, and many others,” – Margaret Sullivan, the NYT’s Public Editor, taking on the boss.

“In a world divided between haves and have-nots, between postmodern and pre-modern, and between those for whom God is dead and those for whom God remains omnipresent, expecting coercion to produce reconciliation, acceptance or submission represents the height of folly,” – Andrew Bacevich.

Today is the four-year anniversary of the devastating earthquake. Vijaya Ramachandran and Sneha Raghavan wonder what happened to the global community’s $9 billion in aid:

I can think of at least two reasons why we should still care about what happened in Haiti. The first reason is that despite the fact that a sum of money almost equivalent to the GDP of Haiti was disbursed to non-governmental organizations, for-profit contractors and other agencies, most Haitians live without a reliable supply of electricity, clean water, or paved roads. Several thousand Haitians still live in (now tattered) tents provided as part of the relief effort.

The second reason is that understanding what happened in Haiti is critical if we want to do a better job with relief and reconstruction efforts in the aftermath of future natural disasters. Despite commitments made by rich country governments and non-governmental organizations towards greater aid transparency, and the availability of easy-to-use tools such as the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) and UN OCHA’s Financial Tracking Service, it is impossible to trace how the money was spent, how many Haitians were served, and what kinds of projects succeeded or failed.

Previous Dish on the relief effort here. Our coverage of the UN’s “deadly incompetence” in Haiti here and here.

(Photo: A young woman prepares food at Camp Acra in Pétion-Ville, Haiti, where victims of the January 2010 earthquake are living in makeshift tents. As of November 2013, when this photo was taken, more than 170,000 Haitian earthquake victims were still living in makeshift shelters in extremely precarious conditions. By Louis-Joseph Olivier/AFP/Getty Images)

(Hat tip: Mike Dang)