The Dish

Yes, Peter Scoblic is my editor at the New Republic. But even if this were not the case, I would direct you to his important piece on the largest failing in Bush’s war against terrorism.

posted by Frank.

I once wrote an article where I intended to make an enemy of the state of Alaska. The piece argued that Alaska’s senators and congressman have amassed a dangerously large quantity of political power, which they have used to acquire laughably useless public works projects for, well, themselves. (What makes Alaska irksome is that its self-proclaimed libertarians have created a thoroughly socialistic welfare state.) Representative Don Young, who once brandished a walrus penis in a congressional hearing to berate a Clinton administration official, is the largest purveyor of this brand of vanity pork. Last week, according to this piece in the WaPost, he has just left us with a few more masterpieces-including $231 million to be spent on a bridge named Don Young’s Way. Other Alaskan roads created in this new legislation seem next to useless. Experts predict that they’ll be covered in black ice for much of the year. As far as I can remember, my piece failed miserably in my attempt to piss off Alaskans. I got not a single letter or e-mail in response, let alone an irate editorial. So, I resubmit it. Did my piece suck? Or did it just lack the marketing power of andrewsullivan.com?

posted by Frank.

Why has al-Qaeda hit the U.K. and not the U.S.? And for that matter, why do there seem to be so many more terrorist cells on the continent? Newspapers are finally getting around to pondering these obvious questions. Predictible answers abound: more effective (non-politically correct) policing, a more genuine pluralism, etc. A front page story in the Post this morning inadvertently posits another theory to explain the relative paucity of cells here. The piece is about the growth of exurban mosques in the farthest reaches of the D.C. area. Why is this significant? The articles doesn’t say. But if Karl Rove and David Brooks have described the exurbs correctly, these are places where social interaction is hard to come by. It needs to be sought out. That’s why mega-churches and their insta-communities have had such great success in these areas. For Muslims, there’s a benefit to this geographic dispersion. After all, in Britain, especially Leeds, part of the problem seems to be the classic urban tension that arises when disparate social and ethnic groups get crammed together. Thanks to familiarity, they begin to resent one another with a passion. (White Brits resent the success of Muslim Brit strivers; Muslims, in turn, resent that their hard work hasn’t won them acceptance. And so on.) In the true Fredrick Jackson Turner spirit, the American frontier, or what passes for it today, may help prevent the rise of this kind of social tension. People aren’t in each others’ faces. (While the Post cites a few instances of anti-Muslim bigotry in the D.C. exurbs, they hardly compare to the race riots and beatings in Yorkshire.) At least, the exurbs may help explain why second-generation American Muslims aren’t nearly as pissed as their European counterparts.

posted by Frank.

Like a Parisian civil servant, this website’s eponymous editor and author has vacated town for the month of August. Apparently, it took the mugginess of Dupont Circle summer to finally kick his blogging addiction. In this regard, dear reader, I can assure you that I am a better man, or at least a more hearty soul. It takes more than a little mugginess to dislodge me from my work. In fact, the Rothkoesque saddlebags of sweat on my sides only makes me stronger and more inclined to accept the challenge of temporarily filling Andrew’s chair. (To my credit, I had the guts to turn down his request to temporarily tend to the beagle, boyfriend, and dry cleaning.)

My friends will be slightly surprised at my presence here. Despite my admiration for specific sites, like this one, I’m not the biggest fan of the blogosphere-especially not it’s smugness, triumphalism, and general degradation of the life of the mind. Fortunately, Judge Posner has provided us with a jumping off point for a debate on this topic. As Josh Marshall might put it, more on this later.

posted by Frank.