The Dish

Brent Sasley argues that, despite the current right-wing coalition in government, Israeli politicking may favor some movement on peace negotiations:

In theory, then, Netanyahu, a rightwinger anyway, is constrained by his rightist coalition and so at best will pursue talks as a deception to maintain the occupation. But this glimpse doesn’t tell the whole story of peacemaking politics. … [I]t’s misleading to say that his own Likud party can stop him from engaging in serious talks. It can make things difficult for him, of course; but the rejectionists don’t control the masses of the party. The party has been beset by internal fighting over the distribution of power and personal ambitions that have nothing to do with the peace process. No other leader has the popular familiarity or stature to challenge Netanyahu in the party and carry it to victory in the next election. Even the rejectionists know this, pledging their loyalty to Netanyahu and affirming they will work with him. This would likely be confirmed even more obviously if Netanyahu made negotiations a party referendum on his leadership. …

Also in the government is Yair Lapid, leader of Yesh Atid. His ambition is to become prime minister, and as soon as possible. He’s been quoted as saying that if the party hadn’t joined the government, “in a year-and-a-half, I’ll replace [Netanyahu] as prime minister.” There’s no indication he has given up on his frantic schedule, and being in government gives him the chance to build a policy reputation and new support base. To do this he’ll need a lot more votes than he received in the last election (19 Knesset seats). He’ll certainly play to the right to this end, taking a more hawkish stance on peace process issues. But his party is comprised of several doves and centrists, who — combined with the need to take some votes from the left — will pull him toward a more moderate position.

In short, engaging in a genuine negotiating process is his best chance to build support.

Yossi Beilan, less sanguine, predicts the leaders will need a Plan B – “an interim agreement establishing a Palestinian state on provisional borders”:

A reader writes:

I’m sure you’re getting a GIANT deluge of secret wrestling fan e-mails sparked by this post, because there are literally millions of us. It’s a brilliant art form when done right, and Daniel Bryan of the Beard is, in my mind, the best artist it has ever produced. What’s interesting about him is that he is also completely subversive – short, bearded, disheveled, a vegan, and a television star who doesn’t actually own a TV. That he’s as popular as he is right now (poised to dethrone the biggest star in the business) is a reflection of society in a way that pro wrestling has always been. Here’s a nice article that recognizes that.

Welcome to the world of pro wrestling, Andrew. I think you may enjoy yourself.

Muscle, beards, half-naked men and high camp? I think I might. Bonus Bryan beard, at Comic Con, after the jump:

Update from a reader:

I love that you’re covering the WWE. I’ve been reading the Dish for years, and my boyfriend got me into professional wrestling last year. My favorite was immediately Daniel Bryan. So much so, I went to meet him at a Comic Con in Philly last month. He is just as awesome in person. Keep up the wrestling coverage!

Another grants her wish:

Well, at first I was going to write regarding the Daniel Bryan “face of the day” but lost my motivation, but I have found it again with the latest wrestling post. I wanted to make a correction of the original Face of the Day post. “Respect the Beard” is the slogan on Bryan’s (his actual name is Bryan Danielson) newest t-shirt. His catch phrase, however, as you can see in the video you posted, is a simple “Yes!”

While Bryan is currently a face (good guy), this phrase originated while he was working as a heel (bad guy). After winning the World Heavyweight Championship (the #2 title in the promotion behind the WWE Championship), over the weeks that followed his victory (over an already incapacitated opponent, The Big Show) Bryan transitioned from face to egotistical heel. This is when he started pointing and shouting “Yes!” as he made his way to the ring. This caught on to a certain degree, and there were consistent smatterings of “Yes!” chants in the crowd.

Then, at Wrestlemania XXVIII in Florida, he was scheduled to wrestle Sheamus, a big Irishman that WWE was in the middle of pushing as a dominant face character. Smarks (this is essentially the term for wrestling fans who follow it online and discuss the “backstage” news) were looking forward to this match: the two had been scheduled to wrestle over the United States Championship (one of two “mid-card” titles) at Wrestlemania XXVII, but the match was cut from the card to save time.

Bryan versus Sheamus was the first match on the card for Wrestlemania XXVIII. WWE usually tries to have a “hot opener” – a match that is relatively short (10, maybe 15 minutes), but is face-paced and gets the crowd into the show. This is what the crowd was expecting, but not what the crowd got. In an effort to make Sheamus look dominant, WWE had Sheamus defeat Bryan in 18 seconds (this is known as a Squash). The crowd booed this lustily, having been denied a match between two excellent wrestlers. The next night on Raw the crowd, feeling that Bryan had been treated badly by the WWE, went nuts for the guy. Chanting “Yes!” loudly and repeatedly not only for Bryan, but during much of the entire show. This even spilled over into a Miami Heat basketball game the next night.

Being a heel, Bryan folded this into his character, and he eventually decided crowds were “mocking him” with the Yes! chants, which basically led to his character going off his rocker (leading to the non-stop beard growing) and Bryan repeatedly shouting No! as the crowds still chanted Yes! He was then paired up with a wrestler named Kane in an “odd couple” pairing, leading to some incredibly bad and campy, yet simultaneously hilarious, skits involving “Dr. Shelby” and such hilarious lines as “I am the Tag Team Champions! This eventually led to Bryan turning face again, because the team simply got so popular. After the team split up, Bryan’s “Yes!” chants from the crowd kept getting louder, and louder, and louder, and he now consistently gets the biggest cheers from the live crowds – they simply go nuts for the guy. And now he’s getting his chance to wrestle at the very top of the card, facing John Cena for the WWE title at Summerslam (listen to those cheers at the end).

And there is a very brief history of Yes!

Fear and loathing of homosexuals is on the rise in Eastern Europe, according to a biannual survey (pdf) of European social attitudes. In Ukraine, which held its first gay pride march in May, just 34 percent of people believe that “Gay men and lesbians should be free to live their own lives as they wish,” down from 37 percent in 2005. Hungary, Slovakia, and Slovenia are also less tolerant today than they were eight years ago. Sociologist Richard Mole thinks Eastern Europe’s political history is part of the problem:

The one factor that applies to the region as a whole is the legacy of communism. In the communist era, citizens were expected to adhere to the psychology of the collective. This meant that “alternative” sexualities were considered a dangerous sign of individualism. Homosexuality was further seen as contrary to the public good, in that it failed to produce children.

When communism collapsed, the ideological vacuum this created was quickly filled by religion and nationalism, both of which have fueled intolerance towards homosexuals due to their supposed threat to traditional values and the continued existence of the nation. Tapping into this pre-existing antipathy towards homosexuality, politicians have been able to use LGBT rights as a lightning rod to divert attention from corruption and economic downturns.

It was ever thus, from the early Middle Ages onward. The survey did not measure attitudes in Russia, where four Dutch nationals were recently arrested for violating the country’s law against “gay propaganda.”

(Photo: A Russian gay rights activist stands in front of Russian State Duma building on January 22, 2013 after being punched during a protest in Moscow. By Andrey Smirnov/AFP/Getty Images)

A reader makes a key distinction:

I have found that the type of marijuana I smoke has a direct correlation to whether or not I get the munchies, or “couch lock.” If I smoke high grade sativa strains such as Jack Herer or Sour Diesel, it suppresses my appetite, I get no paranoia, and in fact I get a nice boost of energy.  There is nothing like a couple of puffs followed by a walk on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon with nothing else to do or worry about.  So consider: this “evil” drug means I eat less and do more exercise.

If I smoke indica strains, however, I’m generally useless and want to eat everything in site.  I find I get the giggles a bit more on indica strains, but I’ll pass that up to avoid couch lock and the munchies.

Updates from two readers:

The differences between Indica and Sativa strains of weed is everything. Being able to tell the difference between the two and then refining your selection even further based on THC content, can really allow you to tailor your smoking experience to any particular situation or desired type of high. Your reader is right on about the benefits of both types and I really think dissemination of this knowledge would really help a lot of users in areas where weed is legal. And that is the key – marijuana must usually be legal for all of this to matter because legality brings transparency and more choice. (Unfortunately I live in North Carolina, so my selection is determined by whatever current crop my grower just harvested.)

The other:

I absolutely agree that strain matters.  I’m a pretty avid runner, putting in anywhere between seven to 15 miles a day. I always smoke before I run. Always, but only sativa. Sativa makes me want to exercise (my personal favorites are G.C. and Blue Dream) while Indica has the opposite effect. The best part of my run is when I start feeling a “runner’s high” around mile three. My thing is: why should I wait until mile three to experience that?

Previous posts here and here.

Suderman points to it, a formula that “lays out, on a page-by-page basis, exactly what should happen when in a screenplay”:

[I]t came from a screenplay guidebook, Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need. In the book, author Blake Snyder, a successful spec screenwriter who became an influential screenplay guru, preaches a variant on the basic three-act structure that has dominated blockbuster filmmaking since the late 1970s.

When Snyder published his book in 2005, it was as if an explosion ripped through Hollywood. The book offered something previous screenplay guru tomes didn’t. Instead of a broad overview of how a screen story fits together, his book broke down the three-act structure into a detailed “beat sheet”: 15 key story “beats”—pivotal events that have to happen—and then gave each of those beats a name and a screenplay page number. Given that each page of a screenplay is expected to equal a minute of film, this makes Snyder’s guide essentially a minute-to-minute movie formula.

McArdle hates that so many contemporary, formulaic movies are targeted at male adolescents:

I watch movies from decades past, like “Chariots of Fire” or the “Killing Fields” or “Sophie’s Choice,” and I’m struck that few of them could ever be made now; they’re both too slow, and too subtle. (Note: none of these movies is particularly subtle.) For that matter, as the Official Blog Spouse points out, “Jurassic Park” might not get made now; there’s almost no action in the first hour, and it definitely doesn’t conform to Blake Snyder’s formula. Steven Spielberg recently told a film school class that “Lincoln” was “this close” to premiering on HBO. If Steven Spielberg can’t get a movie made because he’s insufficiently formulaic, Hollywood has an enormous problem.

Alyssa also thinks the studios need to diversify:

I wonder if part of the problem, and one of the reasons we see fewer of the lower-priced movies aimed at adult audiences instead of attempts to pull in teenagers and young men, is that studios have gotten into the habit of wanting the same outcome from every film, rather than understanding that their slate of films can function like a stock portfolio, the profits from some bigger profits fueling smaller movies that could have a longer critical and commercial shelf life.

Douthat defines “libertarian populism” as a political orientation that “sees the cause of limited government as a means not only to safeguarding liberty, but to unwinding webs of privilege and rent-seeking and enabling true equality of opportunity as well.” Wilkinson doubts it will catch on:

I see two problems. First, right-wing populism in America has always amounted to white identity politics, which is why the only notable libertarian-leaning politicians to generate real excitement among conservative voters have risen to prominence through alliances with racist and nativist movements. Ron Paul’s racist newsletters were not incidental to his later success, and it comes as little surprise that a man styling himself a “Southern Avenger” numbers among Rand Paul’s top aides. This is what actually-existing right-wing libertarian populism looks like, and that’s what it needs to look like if it is to remain popular, or right-wing. Second, political parties are coalitions of interests, and the Republican Party is the party of the rich, as well as the ideological champion of big business. A principled anti-corporatist, pro-working-class agenda stands as much chance in the GOP as a principled anti-public-sector-union stance in the Democratic Party. It simply makes no sense.

Douthat defends the movement:

[T]he idea of “an effort to make the GOP no longer the party of the rich, in both reality and perception,” as [Tim] Carney puts it, doesn’t seem impossibly far fetched right now. Not because it wouldn’t be wrenching in various ways (it would), not because it wouldn’t cut against the party’s historical identity (it would), but because parties want to win elections, and it isn’t obvious what other course a G.O.P. that hopes to win again should take.

Obama’s second term crash with non-college whites could create an opening, I suppose. And Larison adds that libertarian populism is “virtually the only alternative on offer arguing that there is something fundamentally wrong with the party’s current economic agenda”:

Parties are coalitions of interests, and Republicans rely on the votes of a lot of people whose interests are currently neglected by the party’s policy agenda. One reason that the GOP can be “the party of the rich” while relying on the votes of working- and middle-class voters is that it portrays its reliable support for corporate interests as a defense of free markets, entrepreneurship, and small businesses. One virtue of a libertarian populist agenda is that it exposes this fraud and presents an alternative that is still potentially palatable to a conservative electorate.