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The Last And First Temptation Of Israel

What is one to make of the fact that the deputy speaker of the Knesset has called for ethnic cleansing in Gaza?

He’s not an obscure blogger for the Times of Israel. He is a luminary of the Likud – a man who got 23 percent of the vote in a contest for the Likud Party leadership. He was appointed to his current high position by Benjamin Netanyahu. And this is his proposal for Gaza:

a) The IDF [Israeli army] shall designate certain open areas on the Sinai border, adjacent to the sea, in which the civilian population will be concentrated, far from the built-up areas that are used for launches and tunneling. In these areas, tent encampments will be established, until relevant emigration destinations are determined. The supply of electricity and water to the formerly populated areas will be disconnected.

b) The formerly populated areas will be shelled with maximum fire power. The entire civilian and military infrastructure of Hamas, its means of communication and of logistics, will be destroyed entirely, down to their foundations.

c) The IDF will divide the Gaza Strip laterally and crosswise, significantly expand the corridors, occupy commanding positions, and exterminate nests of resistance, in the event that any should remain.

You read that right. There will be temporary “camps” where the Gaza population will be “concentrated”; they will be expelled with subsidies; basic supplies of water and electricity will be cut off for those who remain. The war-time ethics he recommends are: “Woe to the evildoer, and woe to his neighbor.” He backs the “annihiliation” of Hamas and all their supporters. His strategic goal is to “turn Gaza into Jaffa, a flourishing Israeli city with a minimum number of hostile civilians.” (Modern Jaffa, of course, was built on the ethnic cleansing of most of its Palestinian inhabitants in 1948.)

The usual response to this kind of thing among the lockstep pro-Israel community is that it is a tiny fringe opinion. And I can only hope they’re right. But what concerns me is that this racist, genocidal bigot was appointed deputy speaker of the Knesset by the current prime minister. What concerns me are the statements of Ayelet Shaked, the telegenic young protege of Naftali Bennett, who is touted as a future prime minister. This is from a Facebook post she wrote the day before the gruesome lynching of an Arab teen who was forced to drink gasoline and then burned to death by Jewish extremists. Note that her call for war came before any Hamas rocket was fired:

Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.

Again, she and Feiglin dispense with the distinction between civilians and militants in Gaza. So too did the president of the New York Board of Rabbis, David-Seth Kirshner, at a recent 10,000 strong rally for Israel in New York. Kirshner’s precise words?

When you are part of an election process that asks for a terrorist organization which proclaims in word and in deed that their primary objective is to destroy their neighboring country and not to build schools or commerce or jobs, you are complicit and you are not a civilian casualty.

In Israel, this theme is intensifying:

The statements of Ovadia Yosef, whose recent passing was met with flattering memorials both in Israel and the US, are legendary. The former Chief Rabbi of Israel and spiritual leader of many Middle Eastern Jews, said, among other things, that Palestinians “should perish from the world” and that “it is forbidden to be merciful to them”; of non-Jews in general, he declared that “Goyim were born only to serve us.” Despite comments like these, his funeral last October was the largest in the country’s history, with 800,000 Israelis attending.

In the past month, Rabbi Noam Perel, head of Bnei Akiva, the largest Jewish religious youth group in the world, called for the mass-murder of Palestinians and for their foreskins to be scalped and brought back as trophies, alluding to an episode in the Book of Samuel; and a Jerusalem city councillor, in charge of security, encouraged a crowd to mimic the Biblical character of Phineas (Pinchas in Hebrew), who murdered a fellow Israelite and his Midianite lover for the “crime” of miscegenation…

One local chief rabbi ruled that bombing Palestinian civilians is permissible, while another, considered a “liberal” by Israeli standards, declared the assault on Gaza to be a holy war mandated by the Torah–one which must be merciless.

Today, the former head of Israel’s National Security Council, Giora Eiland, called for treating all Gazans, including women, as enemy combatants:

We are seeing now that despite the IDF’s impressive fighting, despite the absolute military supremacy, we are in a sort of “strategic tie.” What would have been the right thing to do? We should have declared war against the state of Gaza (rather than against the Hamas organization), and in a war as in a war. The moment it begins, the right thing to do is to shut down the crossings, prevent the entry of any goods, including food, and definitely prevent the supply of gas and electricity … why should Gaza’s residents suffer? Well, they are to blame for this situation just like Germany’s residents were to blame for electing Hitler as their leader and paid a heavy price for that, and rightfully so.

I suppose someone will claim that the deputy speaker of the Knesset, and the former head of the National Security Council or the former chief rabbi in Israel or the head of the largest Jewish youth group in the world are fringe figures. But I note that, so far as I have been able to find, there have been no consequences for their statements for any of them. And I have to ask a simple question: which leader of another American ally has appointed a man who favors genocide and ethnic cleansing as the deputy speaker of the legislature? Which other democracy has legitimate political parties in the governing coalition calling for permanent occupation of a neighboring state – and deliberate social engineering to create a new demographic ethnic reality in that conquered land? Putin’s Russia has not sunk that low.

And we are not merely talking about a hypothetical situation. The grotesque death toll from Gaza is a distillation of this mindset – revealing at best a chilling contempt for Arab life and at worst, with the shelling of schools and shelters, a policy of indiscriminate hatred and revenge. Yes, killing women and children in shelters is about as low as you can get in wartime. As the State Department, in a rare moment of public candor, noted, it is appalling and disgraceful.

To see in front of one’s nose is a constant struggle. But I see evil in front of noses here – and evil that is gaining strength because of willful American blindness.

(Photo: 9-year-old Dina wounded when shrapnel pieces hit her eyes in an Israeli strike in Gaza, is treated at the Shifa Hospital in Gaza city on August 5, 2014. Palestinian Dina has difficulty in opening her eyes due to the flames and poisoned gas she has exposed in the strike. Update: She’s apparently doing much better. By Mohammed Talatene/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images.)

The Odds Of A GOP Senate

Nate Silver updated his Senate forecast yesterday:

It’s still early, and we should not rule out the possibility that one party could win most or all of the competitive races.

It can be tempting, if you cover politics for a living, to check your calendar, see that it’s already August, and conclude that if there were a wave election coming we would have seen more signs of it by now. But political time is nonlinear and a lot of waves are late-breaking, especially in midterm years. Most forecasts issued at this point in the cycle would have considerably underestimated Republican gains in the House in 1994 or 2010, for instance, or Democratic gains in the Senate in 2006. (These late shifts don’t always work to the benefit of the minority party; in 2012, the Democrats’ standing in Senate races improved considerably after Labor Day.) A late swing toward Republicans this year could result in their winning as many as 10 or 11 Senate seats. Democrats, alternatively, could limit the damage to as few as one or two races. These remain plausible scenarios — not “Black Swan” cases.

Still, the most likely outcome involves the Republicans winning about the six seats they need to take over the Senate, give or take a couple.

Last week, Nate Cohn saw no electoral waves on the horizon:

The Republicans have a great opportunity to take back the Senate, even without an anti-Democratic wave. This year’s Senate contests are being fought on Republican-leaning turf. There are seven Democratic-held Senate seats in states won by Mitt Romney, more than the six needed to retake the chamber. There are also a handful of competitive races in presidential battlegrounds. These are contests the Republicans could win under neutral or even Democratic-leaning conditions.

But the Republican task will become much more difficult if there isn’t a G.O.P. wave. The distinguishing feature of this year’s Senate battleground is a broad and competitive playing field where, so far, the Republicans haven’t broken through. They haven’t yet locked down seats like Arkansas or Louisiana, where Democratic incumbents remain doggedly competitive in places where Mr. Romney won by around 20 points in 2012.

If there isn’t a Republican wave, this year’s Senate contest will devolve into the electoral version of trench warfare.

Sam Wang downplays Silver’s forecast:

At this point, Senate control comes down to as few as five* races: AK, CO, IA, KY, and LA. Think of these races as coin tosses. Then Democrats have to win 3 out of these 5 tosses to retain control. (I’m simplifying matters, but not by much.) These coins are not perfectly fair, and the overall situation is a little unfavorable to Democrats. That is basically the amount of uncertainty expressed in Silver’s probability.

Fundamentally, any probability in the 40-60% range is a numerical way of saying “I don’t know.” (Just to poke at the scar a bit, “I don’t know” is what Silver should have said when he intimated that Brazil would probably beat Germany in the World Cup. We all know how that turned out.)

Bernstein reacts to Silver’s forecast by emphasizing that “every seat counts in the Senate”:

[A] 51-49 Republican advantage is a very different situation than a 55-45 advantage (which is possible if everything breaks right for them). Similarly, a 50-50 Senate with Vice President Joe Biden breaking ties isn’t the same as he 53-47 advantage that strategists for the Democrats are still hoping for. Some of this is obvious: Getting one defection from the other party to win a vote is a lot easier than getting three. We know there are many things that Ted Cruz and Tim Scott enthusiastically support that would draw a dissent from fellow Republican Susan Collins. And there are plenty of things that Joe Manchin won’t join on no matter how much his fellow Democrats Barbara Mikulski or Tammy Baldwin want them.

The Walls That Support Hamas

Michael Robbins and Amaney Jamal discuss how Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip has completely failed at its intended goal of wearing down the Islamist group:

[N]ot only has the blockade failed to stem the tide of rockets falling into the hands of Hamas, but it has also failed to weaken Hamas as a movement. If anything, Hamas appears to be stronger and have a broader base of support in Gaza than before the blockade was put in place. Despite the widespread suffering of many Gazans – particularly opponents of the movement – this outcome should not be unexpected. Hamas leaders readily admit that their popularity derives from Palestinian anger at Israeli policies. In a 2008 interview with one of the authors, a senior Hamas official said that his movement’s electoral success boiled down to a single question the movement posed to Palestinians during the 2006 campaign: “Israel and the U.S. say no to Hamas – what do you say?”

Israel’s direct attempts to confront Hamas ultimately benefit the movement and, insofar as Israel seeks to weaken Hamas, the ongoing blockade is a self-defeating strategy. Given domestic political constraints, it will be difficult if not impossible for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to lift the blockade, which could be seen as appeasing Hamas. Its lifting would also be a major victory for Hamas, at least in the short term. Yet if history is any guide, its continuation will not serve to weaken or isolate Hamas, but to help maintain its strength as a movement.

Jimmy Carter and Mary Robinson want Hamas recognized rather than bombed, arguing that this is the only way to ever get them to disarm:

The international community’s initial goal should be the full restoration of the free movement of people and goods to and from Gaza through Israel, Egypt, and the sea. Concurrently, the United States and EU should recognize that Hamas is not just a military but also a political force. Hamas cannot be wished away, nor will it cooperate in its own demise. Only by recognizing its legitimacy as a political actor — one that represents a substantial portion of the Palestinian people — can the West begin to provide the right incentives for Hamas to lay down its weapons. Ever since the internationally monitored 2006 elections that brought Hamas to power in Palestine, the West’s approach has manifestly contributed to the opposite result.

Who Identifies As A Feminist?

Not many Americans, according to an Economist/YouGov survey:

Just one in four Americans – and one in three women – call themselves feminists today. But that’s before they read a dictionary definition of feminism. Even then, 40 percent of Americans in the latest Economist/YouGov Poll – including half of all men – say they do not think of themselves as a feminist, defined as “someone who believes in the social, political and economic equality of women.”

Women are more than twice as likely as men to say they are feminists at first, although only a third of women describe themselves that way. The gap remains about the same when people read the dictionary definition. Once that happens, identification increases dramatically: half of men and two-thirds of women say they are feminists.

Roxane Gay confronts her ambivalence about the term in an excerpt from her new book, Bad Feminist:

There are many ways in which I am doing feminism wrong, at least according to the way my perceptions of feminism have been warped by being a woman. I want to be independent, but I want to be taken care of and have someone to come home to. I have a job I’m pretty good at. I am in charge of things. I am on committees. People respect me and take my counsel. I want to be strong and professional, but I resent how hard I have to work to be taken seriously, to receive a fraction of the consideration I might otherwise receive. Sometimes I feel an overwhelming need to cry at work, so I close my office door and lose it. I want to be in charge, respected, in control, but I want to surrender, completely, in certain aspects of my life. Who wants to grow up? …

The more I write, the more I put myself out into the world as a bad feminist but, I hope, a good woman – I am being open about who I am and who I was and where I have faltered and who I would like to become. No matter what issues I have with feminism, I am a feminist. I cannot and will not deny the importance and absolute necessity of feminism. Like most people, I’m full of contradictions, but I also don’t want to be treated like shit for being a woman. I am a bad feminist. I would rather be a bad feminist than no feminist at all.

Concealer In A Shade Of Green

Cheryl Wischhover alerts consumers to the rampant greenwashing of the cosmetics industry:

[Former cosmetic formulator Perry] Romanowski recounts a story of some classic “greenwashing.” “It’s done all the time,” he says. “We launched a line called V05 Naturals. We just took our regular formula and squirted in some different extracts, changed the color and fragrance and called it ‘natural.’”

Which brings me to one of my biggest pet peeves in all of this:

The word “natural” is meaningless. There’s no regulation of that word, unlike the designation “organic” for food products. Any cosmetics company can use it at any time in any context – they can throw some aloe into something that has three different parabens and formaldehyde in it and call it “natural.” But at the same time, we need to remember that natural doesn’t always mean safe. The impending EU perfume ingredient ban, which has the fragrance industry in a tizzy, includes several natural ingredients, because they have a high potential for causing serious allergic reactions.

Jacob Brogan sees more misleading eco-marketing in the denim industry:

Recent months have found Levi’s CEO Chip Bergh trying to show that durable pants can make the planet last a little longer… According to Levi’s, the total carbon footprint of a pair of blue jeans is a little smaller than one created by a year’s worth of daily cellphone calls. They claim that fully 58 percent of the climate change impact of a given pair of jeans comes after the consumer purchases them.

But Brogan thinks not washing jeans has more to do with fashion than environmentalism:

It might be green to wash your jeans less often, but really caring about the environment means caring about tomorrow. Any environmentalism based on a trend is bound to focus solely on today.

Trophy Children, Ctd

The popular thread continues. A fan of participatory awards writes:

I love this reader: “I don’t know, maybe because the world IS unfair and we’re realists and not delusional purveyors of utopian fantasy?” Calm down, buddy. These are children. With children, we (collectively) are absolutely purveyors of utopian fantasy. See: Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, all dogs going to heaven, et al.

Another reader:

I don’t understand why so many people assume “all the kids get a trophy” means “the kids who excel get the same recognition as the kids who don’t.” All three of my nieces, who are excellent swimmers, have a stack of ribbons, medals, and awards in their bedroom for their specific accomplishments in the pool. One of them has won awards as swimmer of the year and has recognition for breaking multiple club records.

But I’m glad that the other kids, the ones who are struggling to learn strokes, the ones who are there for the exercise, also get a trophy. Because honestly, they deserve some recognition too, and a bit of a chance to brag to adoring aunts. They finished a season, and in a world of 7:00 a.m. pool practice, that’s not the easiest thing for a 10-year-old. Life is not a zero-sum game, folks.

Another:

The parallel I can think of in adult sports is running a marathon.

In most marathons, everybody who finishes gets a medal. My Boston Marathon medal is one of my proudest possessions. It is a memento of my training and accomplishment – yes, the accomplishment of losing a race to 10,000 people or so.

But another doesn’t see the need for such tokens for anyway:

Why not get rid of trophies altogether? Winners know they won. Talented singers know they crushed it. Nobody needs a trophy or a medal. I’d argue that not handing out trophies at every turn would teach a better lesson – life isn’t about the destination (a trophy), but the journey (working hard, staying committed, having fun). What’s so wrong with playing sports for the sake of playing sports? Or singing for the sake of filling the world with beautiful music? Or studying for the sake of expanding one’s mind?

Another looks at an underlying divide in this debate:

It seems that this debate is a ridiculous argument between two extreme world views: one being that we should only reward excellence and never mediocrity, and the other that we should never reward excellence lest someone’s feelings get hurt. I don’t know of anyone who actually makes the latter argument, but the former seems to be an article of faith for some who get offended whenever they see Everyone Winning a Prize.

I consider both viewpoints to be ridiculous. Growing up, I was the chubby, slow kid who got picked last in sports but who blew out the curve in academics, so I’ve seen this from both sides. There’s nothing inherently wrong in acknowledging participation. Most of the kids who participate in an activity – say, youth soccer – spend quite a bit of time doing it. If the coach buys ’em a $2 trophy for showing up to practices and games, what’s horrible about this? If everyone on the team got an award proclaiming each of them to be the MVP, now that would be silly as hell, but participation awards are for participating: no more, no less. The kids who play organized soccer get them, those who stay home and play with their XBox, don’t.

Now, if recognizing excellence were banned – especially in a competitive context, where excellence is actually demanded – that would be a problem. But the quasi-Randian assertion that participation should not be recognized, and that the spoils should only go to the victor, is to me a bit obnoxious – the sort of vainglorious self-aggrandizement that often comes from those who excel at something (or have children who do) and expect the world and dog to come and kiss their ass. Two of my kids are very good at soccer, but I find the attitude that the weaker kids on the team should be treated like garbage because they don’t score as many goals to be morally offensive. And I make sure my boys know that being assholes to their less-skilled teammates will not be tolerated.

Mourning The Middlebrow

A.O. Scott laments the passing of the Book-Of-The-Month-Club era:

[I]t is hard to look back at the middlebrow era without being dazzled by its scale, complexity and size, and without also, perhaps, feeling a stab of nostalgia. More does not always mean better, but the years after World War II were a grand era of more. … High culture became more accessible, popular culture became more ambitious, until the distinction between them collapsed altogether. Some of the mixing looks silly or vulgar in retrospect: stiff Hollywood adaptations or comic-book versions of great novels; earnest television broadcasts about social problems; magazines that sandwiched serious fiction in between photographs of naked women. But much of it was glorious.

Still, he suggests we live in the shadow of the middlebrow, “even as the signs of its obsolescence multiply”:

The middlebrow is robustly represented in “difficult” cable television shows, some of which, curiously enough, fetishize such classic postwar middlebrow pursuits as sex research and advertising. It also thrives in a self-conscious foodie culture in which a taste for folkloric authenticity commingles with a commitment to virtue and refinement. But in literature and film we hear a perpetual lament for the midlist and the midsize movie, as the businesses slip into a topsy-turvy high-low economy of blockbusters and niches. The art world spins in an orbit of pure money. Museums chase dollars with crude commercialism aimed at the masses and the slavish cultivation of wealthy patrons. Symphonies and operas chase donors and squeeze workers (that is, artists) as the public drifts away.

Tyler Cowen shakes his head:

My view is a lot of people never wanted middlebrow culture in the first place, at least not in every sphere of their cultural consumption. The Internet gave them more choice, they took it, and much of middlebrow culture lost its support base. Consider one area where the Internet still doesn’t play that much of a role and that is theatrical productions. You can watch plenty of theatre on YouTube, but it’s not such a close substitute to seeing the show live. And if you look at Broadway theatre, it seems more relentlessly and aggressively middlebrow than ever before. Ugh, that is why I stopped going.

Who Wants To Tell A Kid He’s Fat? Ctd

A reader writes:

I am an emergency room pediatrician, and your post about reluctance to tell a patient he or she is fat struck home. Overweight and obese children, aside from the well-publicized risks of diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease later in life, are at increased risk for things like injury (because when they fall their weight makes them more likely to be seriously hurt) and delayed diagnosis of appendicitis (because it is much harder to rely on an exam of an obese child, and radiology exams like ultrasound are much less reliable in overweight children.) The same mind-set that says “every kid deserves a trophy” is at work here. Doctors, and perhaps more so parents, are so afraid of harming a child’s self confidence that we refrain from telling the truth.

In addition, remember, most of us work in practices where we are judged on “patient satisfaction,” meaning we have to avoid saying or doing things that might upset parents. I have been cursed at by parents for even suggesting that weight loss might improve there child’s health.

Along the same lines, I’ve had parents walk out of the emergency room when I told them that the biggest risk to their asthmatic child’s health was the parent’s smoking. In some states, mentioning gun safety and risk (gunshot wound being the most likely cause of death after a car accident for most of the pediatric population) can land you in jail. Under Obamacare, hospitals and physicians can be docked pay if their patients aren’t satisfied enough.

Society has come to a place where hard truths are the last thing many want to hear. Most physicians, most of the time, would rather not buck that trend.

Another reader:

Your post struck such a chord for me. I’m the father of two young-adult daughters who are morbidly obese. They were above-average on the height/weight charts pretty much from birth, and compulsive overeating runs through both sides of our family. Our pediatrician was a wonderful person, yet it was clear that she had no training in or comfort level with addictive eating disorders as they relate to children. This is somewhat understandable since research on the psycho/bio-chemical triggers for overeating is still pretty new. But even when we quizzed our pediatrician about the issue and urged her to look into it more, she found that there just isn’t much info out there that will give doctors the comfort level they want before broaching such a volatile subject.

I feel like my wife and I failed our daughters. We couldn’t figure out how to balance being too restrictive with being supportive. We talked with both our daughters about it a lot and made them aware of the issues. But both daughters are morbidly overweight.

Yes; personal choices by the parents and the child matter in childhood obesity, but there are built-in societal causes (high-fructose corn syrup anyone?) and hereditary factors (addiction) that drive these negative outcomes for those with the predisposition. I only hope that pediatric practice will continue to improve its knowledge of this subject so that effective and compassionate interventions can someday become the norm.

Finding Grace In Outer Space

Mark Strauss surveys the various ways Christian theologians have considered the possibility of life on other planets, which ranges from panic to an affirmation that God extends his love even to aliens. Here’s one way to explain how the latter might work:

Assuming other beings are self-aware and capable of free will, the very idea of denying them salvation is at odds with the concept of a God who deeply loves his creations. Thomas O’Meara, a theologian at the University of Notre Dame, writes in his book, Vast Universe:

Could there not be other incarnations? Perhaps many of them, and at the same time? While the Word and Jesus are one, the life of a Jewish prophet on Earth hardly curtails the divine Word’s life. The Word loves the intelligent natures it has created, although to us they might seem strange and somewhat repellant. Incarnation is an intense way to reveal, to communicate with an intelligent animal. It is also a dramatic mode of showing love for and identification with that race. In each incarnation, the divine being communicates something from its divine life….Incarnation in a human being speaks to our race. While the possibility of extraterrestrials in the galaxies leads to possible incarnations and alternate salvation histories, incarnations would correspond to the forms of intelligent creatures with their own religious quests.

Meanwhile, Tina Nguyen notices that creationist Ken Ham, of debating-Bill Nye-fame, doesn’t think aliens exist, but that if they did they’re definitely going to hell. He explains his, uh, logic in a recent column:

Now the Bible doesn’t say whether there is or is not animal or plant life in outer space. I certainly suspect not. The Earth was created for human life. And the sun and moon were created for signs and our seasons—and to declare the glory of God.

And I do believe there can’t be other intelligent beings in outer space because of the meaning of the gospel. You see, the Bible makes it clear that Adam’s sin affected the whole universe. This means that any aliens would also be affected by Adam’s sin, but because they are not Adam’s descendants, they can’t have salvation. One day, the whole universe will be judged by fire, and there will be a new heavens and earth. God’s Son stepped into history to be Jesus Christ, the “Godman,” to be our relative, and to be the perfect sacrifice for sin—the Savior of mankind.

Jesus did not become the “GodKlingon” or the “GodMartian”! Only descendants of Adam can be saved. God’s Son remains the “Godman” as our Savior. In fact, the Bible makes it clear that we see the Father through the Son (and we see the Son through His Word). To suggest that aliens could respond to the gospel is just totally wrong.

(Photo of night sky at Yosemite by Waqas Mustafeez)

Raging Against The Small Screen

In a review of a recent show by Neutral Milk Hotel, Grayson Haver Currin griped that frontman Jeff Mangum’s no-photo policy for concertgoers plays like a cynical ploy:

Mangum is attempting to preserve the same legacy of an enigma that turned into a bankable career during his prolonged absence; in an age of instant information and updates, where what you had for breakfast becomes part of your digital identity, can you actually prove that you saw Neutral Milk Hotel without telling and showing your friends? … [T]he unexpected and unfortunate part … is that he’s dictating how those who actively fund him can interact with their own nostalgia, the exact thing he’s been preying on and profiting from for several touring years now. Mangum’s reluctance to be photographed seems less like a savior complex or a production concern than a brilliant financial ruse: If you can’t preserve this experience, then goddammit, you will have to pay for it again and again and again.

Judy Berman doesn’t follow:

I don’t think that logic holds up. If you’re the kind of person whose concert experience is made or broken by the ability to “preserve” it via Instagram, then what do you get out of repeatedly paying to see a band that will never, ever let you do that? If Mangum’s photo ban really were rooted in some master plan to exploit his fans’ memories, you’d hope he’d do a better job monetizing it. Where is the Neutral Milk Hotel Tour 2014 Official “Bootleg” Series? Where is the one band-affiliated photographer who will sell you his shots of each show, with a hefty percentage of the proceeds going right into Jeff Mangum’s pocket? Where are the dumb fan-exploitation schemes like this one?

She sees plenty of advantages in no-photo shows:

At most shows I’ve been to recently, especially the ones where the performers have a significant following, I’ve been practically surrounded by people who’ve had their phones out for the entirety of every set, constantly Instagramming and shooting videos and texting or Snapchatting all of it to their friends. I’m fully aware that you can’t criticize this shit in 2014 without seeming like an out-of-touch Luddite, but so be it. It’s a special kind of terrible to shell out money to see a band you love, only to realize you’ll be watching them through the iPad the guy in front you is holding over his head. I mean, is that dude’s right to spoil the show for me (and everyone else unlucky enough to stand behind him) more important than my right to a clear view of the performance I paid for?

(Video: Jeff Mangum performs an encore at MASS MoCA on February 16, 2013)