Category: The Dish

The Man Who Would Not Be Maliki

by Dish Staff

Iraqi Minister of Communication Haider a

Adam Taylor provides some background on Iraqi prime minister-designate Haider al-Abadi:

Born in Baghdad in 1952, Abadi was educated at the University of Baghdad and later received a doctorate from the University of Manchester in Britain. He lived in Britain for many years after his family was targeted by Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime. He was trained as an electrical engineer, but he entered politics after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. He became minister of communications in the Iraqi Governing Council in September 2003, then was a key adviser to Maliki in Iraq’s first post-invasion elected government. Just weeks ago, he was elected deputy speaker of parliament, and he has been considered a contender for prime minister after the past two elections.

The bigger question, however, is whether Abadi will be able to overcome the challenges confronting Iraq more successfully than Maliki. Like Maliki, he’s a Shiite Muslim and is a member of the ruling State of Law coalition. One of the chief criticisms of Maliki was that he entrenched Iraq’s sectarian politics, filling the government with Shiite politicians and limiting Sunni and Kurdish power.

Eli Lake claims that Abadi’s nomination was the result of an American push for “regime change”:

The American push—which has not been previously reported—wasn’t the only factor that led to al-Abadi’s rise. Iraq’s deterioration in recent months led some of Maliki’s Shi’ite backers to pull their support of him. Last month, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the most senior cleric of the Shi’ite sect, wrote a letter to Maliki asking him not to seek a third term as prime minister. But al-Abadi has been the United States’ preferred candidate since late June to replace Maliki, a man who Obama himself blamed over the weekend for creating the conditions for the current catastrophe that is engulfing Iraq. U.S. and Iraqi officials tell The Daily Beast that U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Robert Beecroft and Brett McGurk, the deputy assistant secretary of state for Iraq and Iran, have pushed Iraqi politicians behinds the scenes to consider al-Abadi as a new Iraqi head of state.

Of course, the administration rejects that account. But Iran might also have had a hand in Abadi’s ascent, Saeed Kamali Dehghan suggests:

Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran‘s powerful Supreme National Security Council, was quoted by the official IRNA news agency congratulating the Iraqi people and their leaders for choosing Haider al-Abadi as their new prime minister. … Hossein Rassam, a London-based Iranian analyst, said Shamkhani’s statement reflect Tehran’s hand in al-Abadi’s appointment: “His appointment could not have materialised without Iran’s cooperation. This is the result of a series of negotiations and bargaining for the past number of days, it’s not something that has been decided overnight.”

According to Rassam, Iran’s top priority in Iraq has been to avoid a power vacuum in Baghdad and ensure the appointment of a prime minister sympathetic to Tehran. “With Abadi’s appointment, Iran has achieved both,” he said.

Suadad al-Salhy takes the temperature of Iraq’s political parties. While Abadi’s nomination has divided the Shiites in parliament, Sunni Arab politicians see him as a major improvement over Maliki:

Iraq’s Sunni blocs, who are strongly opposed to Maliki, expressed their satisfaction at Ibadi’s nomination. “We are backing this nomination. What happened today was a big change,” said Mohammed Iqbal, a senior Sunni lawmaker. “We are blessed to nominate Ibadi. He is well-educated, efficient and has good relations with everyone, and there is no negative points registered against him with regard to his political history,” Iqbal told Al Jazeera.

Kurdish leaders added, however, that Ibadi must fix persisting problems between the Kurdish region and the central government, particularly arrangements over oil and gas revenues and the annual budget. Meanwhile, Iraqi Kurds, who are fighting Islamic State group fighters who have advanced towards Erbil, capital of the Kurdish region, over the last two weeks, said that they were not opposed to Ibadi.

The threat of a coup by Maliki still hangs over the transition. Josh Voorhees outlines what a disaster that would be:

The situation is unfolding rather quickly, but as of right now it appears that Maliki may do whatever it takes to stay in power, and that could mean a coup. For starters, such a move could throw Iraq back into a bloody civil war at a time when the government is struggling mightily to push back the advances of ISIS in the north. There are a number of factions within the Iraqi military, and it remains to be seen how each would align itself in the event that Maliki does attempt to use the nation’s military to hold on to power. But it is clear that any soldier engaged on either side of such a standoff would be one that wouldn’t be fighting ISIS.

“Maliki’s coup is good news for the Kurds and Yazidis, though,” Allahpundit reckons:

Until now, the White House has clung to the idea that Iraq should remain unified and that all aid, especially military aid, should go through the central government in Baghdad. That’s one reason why the Kurds are undersupplied; Maliki’s going to siphon off whatever he gets from the U.S. for Shiite use. Now that he’s betrayed Iraqi democracy, though, the White House can cut him loose, refuse to recognize his legitimacy, and deal directly with the Kurds.That means arms (and maybe military advisors?), and that means a Kurdistan that’s secure from ISIS. If Maliki wants southern Iraq to be a Iranian protectorate there’s little we can do to stop him, but we can help build a counterweight in the north. Let’s get on with it.

But Douglas Ollivant doubts Maliki will go through with it in the end:

Ollivant, who formerly served as the top Iraq policy official on the National Security Council, said there was “very little” the United States could do to push Maliki out of power, but he said he didn’t think the Iraqi leader would resort to violence to stay in office. “I really think it’s all done but the shouting,” Ollivant said. “He’s going to talk tough and play out his last legal card, but he doesn’t want to be an international pariah. If we pull away, his only friends would be Iran and Syria, and even Maliki doesn’t want that.”

Maliki is losing the support of the Iranian-backed Shiite militias, and has apparently withdrawn his loyalist forces back inside the Green Zone, so a coup attempt is indeed looking less likely. Even so, Kirk Sowell warns of some major political challenges ahead:

More broadly, Sunni provinces will have to deal with the fact that Shiite Islamists have an outright majority in parliament, and the next government, whatever its precise contours, will reflect this. But Nineveh, the heart of the battleground with IS, will be especially difficult: It has been the scene of almost constant violent conflict since 2003, in part due to the fact that under Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime, the Arab population was both a major recruitment source for the army and taught to view Kurds as an ethnic enemy. The Iraq Oil Report and others have reported that a number of local residents who aren’t Islamic militants are willing to work with IS for reasons of racial and sectarian enmity.

(Photo: Haider al-Abadi by Jean-Philippe Kziazek/AFP/Getty Images)

Taking Rand Paul To Task On Education

by Dish Staff

Math teacher James Goodman eviscerates the author of The School Revolution:

According to Politico, Rand Paul is “planning a major push on education reform, including education choice, school choice, vouchers, charter schools, you name it.” As one specific example for improving education, Paul suggested that “if you have one person in the country who is, like, the best at explaining calculus, that person maybe should teach every calculus class in the country.” He allowed that “You’d still have local teachers to reinforce and try to explain and help the kids, but you’d have some of these extraordinary teachers teaching millions of people in the classroom.” …

Part of the problem with the perpetuity of education reform is that everyone is looking for the answer to the question, “How do we best teach?” as though there is some formula that is ultimately the best.

They see teaching as a science experiment – as though one set of conditions and stimuli will prove to be optimal. That’s not what it is. It is an art. Two great teachers may do things completely differently from each other. Furthermore, no two classes of students are the same. One great teacher may teach the same thing in very different ways to different groups of kids, depending on their strengths, personalities and the real-time feedback that the teacher reads from her class. Again, this is something that requires a talented, knowledgeable classroom teacher (the one directing the instruction and activity at each moment) who cultivates a relationship with each student – anathema to Paul’s description of his own vision of education.

It’s OK Not To Feel Anything When A Celebrity Dies

by Elizabeth Nolan Brown

Yesterday Robin Williams died, seemingly from suicide. Scrolling through Facebook a few hours after the news broke, I found myself in a sea of RIP and this is so sad! and other, lengthier expressions of mourning for the beloved actor. One update stood out, from a friend of a friend. After acknowledging that it may sound cold, she wrote:

I just want to put it out there that it is also ok not to have any feelings when something bad happens to a celebrity.

This was met with initial, emphatic approval from a few, quickly followed by admonitions. Didn’t she get the memo that we were all supposed to be using this as a PSA about mental health? They bet she wouldn’t be singing this tune if she or someone she knew had suffered from depression!Las Vegas Hosts International Consumer Electronics Show

Now there’s nothing wrong with using the surprising (apparent) suicide of a surface-happy comedian as a catalyst for discussing mental health issues. But how absurd to suggest it’s wrong not to. Maybe some people would prefer to remember the man’s life and work rather than his demons. Maybe some people who are intimately aware of the toll depression can take (or the pain a loved one’s suicide can cause) are loathe to latch their very personal pain to online discussions of a stranger with strangers. Maybe not everybody has to react in the same emotional tones.

But then why say something at all? That was another criticism hurled at this Facebook poster. Why couldn’t she have just kept her big non-mourning mouth shut?

Permit me a brief digression. As a college theater major, I once auditioned for a play that would be directed by a visiting Nigerian professor, Esiaba Irobi. For this play, Professor Irobi decided to eschew traditional callbacks and instead gather us all together and watch while we engaged in various games and activities. Near the end of the audition, we were all invited in a circular procession around the room, repeating after Irobi as he sung out some sort of call-and-response funeral dirge.

We were explicitly told not to act—this wasn’t an exercise to see how well we could feign grief. The professor said he wanted to see how we moved. There were drums. And there were quickly tears, all around me. Not just soft, subtle tears dotting my classmates’ cheeks but big, loud, hearty sobs. It confused the hell out of me. We weren’t actually at a funeral. We didn’t even have a fictional backstory for this procession, nor could we understood a word Irobi sang. Sure, his voice could carry emotion well, but I felt skeptical that the crying crew, which made up about half the room of auditioners, weren’t putting on a bit of a show.

Later, I brought this up with my then-boyfriend, who had also been at the auditions. He assured me his grief and that of those he’d talked to had been genuine. Then he told me it was sad that I was so closed off from my emotions that I couldn’t experience what they had. He felt sorry for me.

Because I was young, it genuinely stung and worried me. I am far from an emotionally repressed person, nor a non-demonstrative one. I’ve been known to cry at country songs and Law & Order episodes. So why couldn’t I feel sad over this imaginary scenario that had so tugged at my classmates’ heartstrings? What was wrong with my emotional response?

Nothing, is obviously the answer. There is no correct way to grieve. There is no correct way to mourn those you love, or to mourn acquaintances, or to mourn celebrities and strangers. And trying to conjure an inauthentic emotional response will only make you feel worse. But even knowing this, I admit—when popular public figures die, there’s always a moment in which I feel just like I did in that audition. Why does everyone seem so much more upset than I am? Why am I not reacting the same way? 

This is why I’m glad my Facebook friend didn’t keep her mouth shut. There is nothing wrong with feeling genuine sadness over the passing of an entertainer you enjoy and admire. There is nothing wrong with being stung by the way Williams seems to have went. There is nothing wrong with posting Mrs. Doubtfire stills to Instagram and heartfelt missives on your Twitter timeline in response, if the spirit moves you. And the “normalcy” of these responses is shown in the likes and retweets and expressions of solidarity with which they’re met. Collective catharsis exerts a powerful pull.

But in the age of all this public emoting—some no doubt genuine, some signaling—it can be very easy to forget that not everyone is “deeply saddened” by the news of Williams’ death. Some aren’t even moderately saddened. And that’s okay, too.

 

Update: Readers responded to this post here. You can also view all the Dish’s coverage of Robin William’s death here.

(Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

Til Employment Do Us Part

by Dish Staff

Alex Fradera surveys the somewhat counterintuitive findings of new research suggesting that “life satisfaction is higher for couples who share their unemployed predicament, than for couples where only one partner loses their job”:

Maike Luhmann and her colleagues analysed over ten years of longitudinal data from 3000 co-habiting couples in Germany, where one or both partners had gone through an unemployment. … The data supported the shared fate hypothesis [that empathy and support are easier to produce when both parties are in the same boat] – when one partner was unemployed and the second partner remained in work, both parties reported lower life satisfaction than when both partners ended up without a job. The researchers reasoned that when one partner remains in work, it is easier for the unemployed partner to be stigmatised and feel anxiety about abandonment for failing in their duties to the household. In addition, the unemployed person is shunted rapidly out of one life pattern, including a regular routine and social networks, and may find themselves now alone for much of the day, with the obligation to solve their problems and “get back on track”. Moreover, their limited contact with their working partner may be an invitation for friction: just what have you been doing all day?

Luhmann and her colleagues interpreted their results as showing that unemployment “hurts primarily because of its psychological consequences,” rather than being driven by its financial impact

Tax-Funded Tampons?

by Phoebe Maltz Bovy

Jessica Valenti thinks tampons should be provided by the government:

Women in the UK are fighting to axe the 5% tax on tampons (it used to be taxed at 17.5%!), which are considered “luxuries” while men’s razors, for some baffling reason, are not. And in the US, though breast pumps, vasectomies and artificial teeth are sales tax-exempt and tax-deductible medical care, tampons are not even exempted from sales tax in some states (including California and New York, two of the most populous states).

But this is less an issue of costliness than it is of principle: menstrual care is health care, and should be treated as such. But much in the same way insurance coverage or subsidies for birth control are mocked or met with outrage, the idea of women even getting small tax breaks for menstrual products provokes incredulousness because some people lack an incredible amount of empathy … and because it has something to do with vaginas. Affordable access to sanitary products is rarely talked about outside of NGOs – and when it is, it’s with shame or derision.

Free tampons? Sounds reasonable to me. Indeed, I’d suggested the same (argued would be an exaggeration) as a sleep-deprived college student in 2005. A friend campaigned for these at our high school, and since it’s a public school, these tampons, too, would have been state-subsidized. (Don’t think it ever happened.) The counterarguments, as I recall, were principally libertarian ones about how the quality of personal-hygiene items would drop if the market weren’t involved. As in, so much for the Tampax you know, any wadded-up absorbent material would do.

So it seems that when someone who’s a famous feminist makes this point, and in the social-media era, things go somewhat differently than when a feminist college kid with a tiny blog did so before hashtags and the like. Valenti offers up a sampling of the response she got to her suggestion. Items include:

https://twitter.com/adam_mcphee/status/497892354331000832

And:

https://twitter.com/skzdalimit/statuses/497828918851043330

Fun! While there’s a case to be made against government-issued feminine hygiene products, this isn’t it.

What Everyone Misunderstands About the ‘Libertarian Moment’

by Elizabeth Nolan Brown

Pew Millenials

David Frum – shock – doesn’t think the “libertarian moment” has arrived:

Despite the self-flattering claims of libertarians, the Republicans’ post-2009 libertarian turn is not a response to voter demand. The areas where the voting public has moved furthest and fastest in a libertarian direction—gay rights, for example—have been the areas where Republicans have moved slowest and most reluctantly. The areas where the voting public most resists libertarian ideas—such as social benefits—are precisely the areas where the GOP has swung furthest and fastest in a libertarian direction.

This, of course, entirely misses the point of Robert Draper’s recent New York Times Magazine piece on libertarians. For all the Ron and Rand Paul mania, there’s little evidence the GOP has taken much of a “post-2009 libertarian turn” at all. So Frum is right that Republicans haven’t been ushering in some sort of libertarian era, I’m just not sure who’s arguing they have.

Draper’s piece—and those quoted in it, including Reason.com editor-in-chief (and my boss) Nick Gillespie—mostly suggests that, with rare exceptions, Republicans are stubbornly resisting embracing more libertarian ideals, despite the fact that it’s pretty much killing the party. “The Republicans will definitely have to move to the left on social issues,” my colleague Emily Ekins, polling guru for the Reason Foundation, says in Draper’s article. “They just don’t have the numbers otherwise.”

More than ever before, young people are defining themselves as politically independent, according to Pew Research Center and just about everyone else who polls them. But millennials identify as Democrats in similar proportions to older generations; it’s the GOP that’s bleeding young voters into the independent ether.

When libertarians talk about this generation’s potential, it’s not that we’re counting all these independent millennials as libertarian (as some have suggested). Nor do we think that most would identify as libertarian if only they read more about it on Wikipedia. Sure, I think libertarianism might have a bit more appeal to a generation raised on the seemingly endless and indistinguishable Bush/Clinton empire, but I’m not expecting young people to start adopting the libertarian label in droves.

Yet there is possibility for new consensuses, many of which would be appealing from a libertarian standpoint. In an electorate that doesn’t necessarily subscribe to old party divides, there’s potential to rally young liberals and conservatives together on issues like same-sex marriage, privacy, drug policy, and criminal justice reform, to name just a few. These aren’t “libertarian issues”—we’re not trying to own them (as critics also suggest)—but they are areas we’ve been keen on addressing, and it’s great to have allies of whatever stripe.

Frum snidely suggests that “the ‘libertarian moment’ will last as long as, and no longer than, it takes conservatives to win a presidential election again.” And if we’re talking about mainstream modern Republicans dressing themselves up in the label, no doubt. But again, that seems to be something only Frum is talking about. The “libertarian moment”, in so far as any of us think it exists, is about looking beyond party lines. It’s about working and coming together in new ways.

“I have no idea who will be the next president of the United States,” wrote Gillespie Sunday, but it “will matter far less than the broad currents in American society”:

That’s one of the main trends that Reason picked up in its poll of Millennials—not some self-congratulatory discovery that the kids today are junior-varsity libertarians—and folks who don’t want to grapple with that and all its implications will have less and less relevant to say about politics, culture, and ideas.

Or, as Jack Hunter wrote at Rare: “There is a significant difference between trying to make every American a libertarian and making America more libertarian. The former is impossible. The latter is happening.”

Plusses And Minuses

by Dish Staff

Tyler McCall blames plus-size women for the lack of plus-size options:

[W]hat if the problem with the plus-size industry isn’t with faceless businessmen, but with the customers themselves? “It’s become such an angry section of fashion,” one plus-size blogger, who wishes to remain anonymous, explains. “Everyone has an opinion, and it’s such a negative, negative environment, and it sounds sad, but they want to tear each other apart. Models get it all the time, brands especially. They’ll say, ‘Oh we can’t use that model again because they say that she’s too skinny.'”

McCall – whose piece comes with a provocative “Hold all comments until the end, please” subtitle – points to a range of reasons customers may be limiting their own options:

There is of course a body politic that goes into shopping for women. Everyone I spoke with agreed that women who are told that their body shape should be considered temporary, always in need of a new diet or weight loss plan, aren’t exactly going to plunk down $300 for a dress that, ideally, won’t fit them in a month. “There are so many women who don’t self identify as plus-size, and maybe they just settle for drawstring or elastic waisted pants because they don’t necessarily want to know that they’re a size 16 or an 18,” Mason says.

“An Anonymous Face”

by Phoebe Maltz Bovy

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Anemona Hartocollis reports (NYT) that the strong arm of the law is coming for your adorable baby photos. (Pet photos are safe, for now.) But not the ones you share on Facebook, or that you might select to illustrate a magazine essay you might choose to pen about your child. The law – as far as I know – would be fine with you going around town bearing a placard with your child’s mid-tantrum face captioned with a quote of the darndest thing he or she ever uttered. No, the only ones under attack are the photos doctors traditionally used in their office decor:

For generations, obstetricians and midwives across America have proudly posted photographs of the babies they have delivered on their office walls. But this pre-digital form of social media is gradually going the way of cigars in the waiting room, because of the federal patient privacy law known as Hipaa. Under the law, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, baby photos are a type of protected health information, no less than a medical chart, birth date or Social Security number, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Even if a parent sends in the photo, it is considered private unless the parent also sends written authorization for its posting, which almost no one does.

Hartocollis notes that some doctors don’t see these photos as a violation:

“For me, the face of a baby, that is really an anonymous face,” said Dr. Pasquale Patrizio, director of the Yale Fertility Center in New Haven. “It was representative of so much happiness, so much comfort, so much reassurance. It is purely a clinical office now.”

At what age, then, does the face cease to be anonymous? Because this doesn’t seem to just be about baby photos:

Jacques Moritz, director of the division of gynecology at Mount Sinai Roosevelt in Manhattan, still displays baby pictures in an exam room. “There’s not a day that goes by that somebody doesn’t come in with a picture of the kid — up until 17, 18, 19 and 20,” he said.

It would be nice to think that, by high school, your photo would not be showcased at your mother’s gynecologist. At the very least.

Anyway, what struck me about this story was that it’s a rare case of children’s right to privacy being rounded up, not down.

The parental overshare wave has seemed unstoppable, and consists, to a large degree, of articles by parents, about their own children. A move towards demolishing taboos when it comes to sensitive medical diagnoses – brave and admirable when it comes to adults being open about their own health – has led to it seeming absolutely normal for a parent to publish an essay on his or her child’s mental or physical illnesses. The child is seen as an extension of the parent, not as a person who will grow up and have to contend with whichever information being readily available to future partners, employers, insurers. The child’s story, then, is seen as the parent’s to tell, the child’s medical records the parents’ property to share however widely, in a way that would never fly if a writer decided to hold forth about the medical complaints of an identifiable adult friend or relative. (Exception: the person being written about suffers from a condition that makes it impossible for them to read or be read to.) While there are clearly times when it’s not just acceptable but necessary for a parent to share a child’s medical information – with the child’s doctor, say, or with a support group, a school employee, etc. – we no longer seem to recognize that there might be limits. That, in other words, anything other than the limits of good taste should bar a parent from writing a confessional piece about the exact consistency of their child’s last… trip to the facilities.

The Hipaa concerns don’t challenge parental overshare head-on, of course, given that the loophole is that a photo’s OK to show if the parent explicitly says it is. And it’s arguably quite a bit worse for your mom to write a magazine cover story about your unusual digestive condition than for there to be some relatively small-scale photographic evidence that your mother went to an OBGYN. But it’s nevertheless good news that children’s medical histories are, in some small way, being recognized as their own.

(Photo by Daniel Lobo)

Robin Williams, RIP, Ctd

by Dish Staff

Some immediate reaction from Twitter, including many clips of Williams’ greatest moments, here. Several more clips after the jump. A reader writes a moving eulogy:

I’m sure that I’m just one of many Dishheads writing in about the horribly sad death of Robin Williams. I’m a child of the ’90s, and he was a constant fixture of my cultural world through childhood and into adulthood. Not only was he a genuine comedic genius – his bit on the invention of golf [seen above] was legendary long before today, as was his 2001 appearance on Inside the Actors Studio, to name a few drops in the bucket. But his joy, sincerity and warmth of personality left a mark that I am now surprised to find was so deep.

He was consistently open about his struggles with depression, addiction and alcoholism, and it sucks that some combination of those demons managed to overpower him, despite all the effort he put into fighting his battles and helping the rest of us fight our own. His approach to humor was so unusual among comics of this era: it was never based on cynicism or complaint, but rather, predominantly, on sharing the things that made him irrepressibly happy. He was such a transparently compassionate person that if he’d had any inkling of the outpouring of collective mourning that took place [last night], things might have gone another way.

I’ve never seen a larger or more visceral mass response to a celebrity death.

On Twitter alone, I follow close to 200 accounts, from a wide range of countries, cultures and sub-cultures, and I swear almost every single one came out of the woodwork, some of whom had been silent for years before tonight. And Twitter’s “trending” topics were completely dominated by subjects related to his life, career and death. It occurred to me that this might have to do with the fact that Robin Williams, whose filmography spans from Mork & Mindy (1978) to Night at the Museum (latest installment in post-production), is one of the few figures who looms just as large for my parents’ generation as he does for mine.

It’s really odd – I didn’t even consider myself a great fan of his, but he was a part of my life all the same, and this gutted emotional state I’m in is clear proof of that. I’ll miss him. Fuck depression.

Another points out:

If you weren’t already aware of it, I thought I would link to a WHO document [pdf] about responsible media coverage of suicide.  I learned about it through this podcast.  It’s being reported that Robin Williams killed himself, and celebrity suicides can cause a string of copycat suicides.  How the suicide is reported can influence how many copycat suicides occur and this is true for famous and not famous alike.  This is known as the Werther Effect. I’m not being critical of your coverage, but thought that you should be made aware of the WHO document.

Jennifer Michael Hecht, author of Stay: A History of Suicide and the Philosophies Against It, discussed the Werther Effect and much more in her “Ask Anything” videos for the Dish. Meanwhile, as another reader notes, Robin Williams’ performance in Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry Be Happy” music video has a dark irony this week:

A happier ending:

If you’ve never seen the standup bit of Robin Williams simulating cunnilingus, then you haven’t seen the full range of his comic genius.  It makes my cheeks hurt from laughter every time I seen it (and might have a good tie-in with your recent coverage of hirsute men):

Another reader ties in another recent thread:

Last week I was going to send Williams’ and McFerrin’s version of “Come Together”, since it is one of my fave covers, but it didn’t seem quite outre enough. Now it’s a no brainer. No video, but it does have nice pictures of Robin:

And another touches upon another Dish theme:

You covered Robin Williams’ tragic, untimely death, but I think you failed to include a video that has him mentioning a number of favorite Dish topics, including Catholicism and gay marriage: