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Reminiscing Was Better In The Old Days

So argues James Wolcott in an essay exploring the recent 90s nostalgia craze:

Nostalgia isn’t the worst narcotic, but it used to feed a different vein. It was both generational and individual, a distillation of personal experience as unrecoverable as blushing youth. When F. Scott Fitzgerald, the dewiest prose lyricist of the Jazz Age, peered back at the reckless abandon and champagne fizz of the 20s through the clouded curtains of the Depression-era 30s, he elegized himself, Zelda, and the rest of his strewn generation for who they were and what they did. Sixties nostalgia operated that way too, the pang of regret over who so many of them were (rebels, hippies, wanderers, crusaders) and what they became (reactionaries, office drones, commuters, cynics).

In our media-saturated age, when every couch potato is king, this mode of nostalgia no longer applies.

It isn’t about who we aspired to be as fledglings leaving the nest—full of hopes and dreams and boogying hormones—but about what we watched, played, listened to, downloaded, and identified with as junior consumers. Before the Web became our neural extension, when print and celluloid held reign, the passage of time and the discrimination of critics and enthusiasts winnowed away the flotsam and jetsam of the past, allowing its true achievements and revelatory visions (even those unheralded or derided at the time) to surface and radiate.

The Internet, however, is an inexhaustible suction pump that indiscriminately dredges up the dreck along with the sunken pearls. Search engines are scouring devices, algorithms have no taste buds, and monster Web-site aggregators such as BuzzFeed—which one writer called the Hellmouth of 90s nostalgifying, with its inane quizzes (“Which ‘Dawson’s Creek’ Character Are You?”) and dipstick listicles (“32 Reasons Christmas Was Better in the ’90s”)—are to curating what hoarders are to connoisseurship.

Mambo De Moscow

Over the past week, Russia has taken a number of steps to revive its partnership with the Castro regime in Cuba. Ahead of a visit to Havana last Friday, Putin announced that he was writing off $32 billion of the island’s debt to Moscow, and just Wednesday, Russian media broke the news that Putin would reopen a Soviet-era intelligence facility there:

Opened in 1967, the Lourdes facility was the Soviet Union’s largest foreign base, a mere 155 miles from the US coast. It employed up to 3,000 military and intelligence personnel to intercept a wide array of American telephone and radio communications, but Putin announced its closure in 2001 because it was too expensive – Russia had been paying $200m (£117m) a year in rent – and in response to US demands. … “Lourdes gave the Soviet Union eyes in the whole of the western hemisphere.

Jay Ulfelder expects this revival to delay, but not forestall, Cuba’s economic reckoning:

Putin’s government seems to be responding in kind to what it perceives as a deepening U.S. threat on its own borders, and this is important in its own right. As a specialist on the survival and transformation of authoritarian regimes, though, I am also interested in how this reinvigorated relationship affects prospects for political change in Cuba. …

None of these developments magically resolves the fundamental flaws in Cuba’s political economy, and so far the government shows no signs of rolling back the process of limited liberalization it has already begun. What’s more, Russia also has economic problems of its own, so it’s not clear how much help it can offer and how long it will be able to sustain that support. Even so, these developments probably do shrink the probability that the Cuban economy will tip soon into a deeper crisis, and with it the near-term prospects for a broader political transformation.

How Graphic Should War Coverage Be? Ctd

A reader writes:

Can you please put the graphic images of dead people and children after the link? I am begging you. I have been avoiding these images all day. Maybe you do not understand, but I am sick about Gaza and MH17 enough already. I don’t need graphic images to shake me out of some indifferent stupor – I am already there, right with you. Please help out your readership.

But another gets it right:

Thank you for posting the photo of the debris and the bodies under the post “A Game-Changer For Ukraine”. It is a horrible, terrible image, yes. And it’s the kind of photo that many will jump on as “disrespectful to the dead” and so forth. But let me counter with this:

I do NOT want anyone who takes in this news to see only “sanitized” images of this barbaric action and hear only clean and neat reports out of a conference room at a hotel in Amsterdam, Washington, or Kuala Lumpur. It’s much too big and awful and important to stuff down into a bureaucratic exercise at a podium and treat like some report out of a county board.

Your treatment – one photo, not large, not the only coverage – is totally honest and appropriate. Thank you for using good judgment and appropriate wisdom on this.

But another thinks we misfired on another image:

One of the reasons why I like the Dish is your willingness to share uncomfortable images which other media outlets censor – but I was seriously disappointed to see you pick a zoom-lense shot of a grieving relative as your “Face of the Day“. In my view, this seriously oversteps the line between news reporting and invasion of privacy.

Someone I know was killed on the flight – someone who had devoted their life to battling AIDS. Those who are grieving have the right to do so in private, without paparazzi chasing them around the airport looking for grief-porn shots. The fact that Getty saw fit to take and distribute the photo is a discredit to them, and that fact that you would publish it is a discredit to you, and a disappointment to those of us who thought the Dish stood for something better.

We have debated this issue extensively in the past. See the results of a reader survey here. The Dish stands by its policy of airing every image that illuminates the truth of war.

(Photo: Israeli soldiers take cover during clashes with Palestinian demonstrators at the entrance of Israeli-run Ofer prison in the West Bank village of Betunia, on July 18, 2014, following a protest against Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of bolstering his ground assault on Gaza in what commentators said was part of a strategy to pressure Hamas into a truce. By Abbas Momani/AFP/Getty Images)

Fighting Disease With Decriminalization

That’s the direction the World Health Organization is headed:

The Economist has flagged a report on prevention and treatment for HIV in groups most likely to contract the disease. In the report, the WHO quietly recommends decriminalizing drugs — specifically, injectable drugs that spread HIV. According to a recommendation made in the report, “Countries should work toward developing policies and laws that decriminalize injection and other use of drugs and, thereby, reduce incarceration.” Buried several pages into the 113-page report, it’s not the most explicit announcement, but it is a rebuttal to the UN’s official stance: prohibition, with criminal penalties for offenders.

Paul Best mentions how this strategy worked in Portugal:

Portugal decriminalized drugs in 2001 in response to the declining health of drug users in the country. George Murkin, the policy and communications officer for Transform Drugs, published a report last month detailing some of the benefits that have come from Portugal’s decriminalization. He reported that drug use among the group most likely to use drugs, 15- to 24-year-olds, declined; average rates of use in the general population have decreased; drug use is below the European average; and most importantly, the number of people injecting drugs decreased from 2000-2005, which is the time period with the most recent available data. The WHO’s solution to the spread of HIV appears to have worked in Portugal, because over the past decade the number of newly diagnosed HIV cases has dropped at an astounding rate for people who inject drugs, falling from 1,016 in 2001 to 56 in 2012.

Earlier this week, German Lopez made the case for decriminalizing all drugs:

The failure to significantly raise drug prices or reduce drug use are why drug policy experts in general agree the war on drugs — and criminal enforcement against drugs in particular — isn’t working.

As a result, experts argue the criminalization of drugs comes with substantial costs — mass incarceration, an illicit drug market that finances violent criminal organizations, and a disproportionate effect on minorities — with no substantial benefit. It might be better, then, to look at decriminalizing these substances and going after drug abuse outside the criminal justice system.

Even [Mark] Kleiman, the most cautious of the three experts interviewed for this story, supports decriminalization. Kleiman once opposed the idea, but he says he warmed up to it after looking at the evidence.

“What I’ve learned since then,” he says, “is nobody’s got any empirical evidence that shows criminalization reduces consumption noticeably.”

“The Brassiest Of The Old Broads”

That’s how Sean O’Neal eulogizes Elaine Stritch, the legendary Broadway star most recently known as Jack Donaghy’s mom:

Stritch’s persona – bawdy, blunt, and with a 3 a.m. voice that sounded like it was carelessly swinging around a vodka stinger – was established early on stage, where Stritch came up as an understudy for Ethel Merman who soon had Noel Coward reworking all of 1961’s Sail Away around her scene-stealing presence. Her Broadway roles included star-making turns in shows like Bus Stop, Goldilocks, and Sondheim’s Company, which yielded what would become one of her signature tunes, “The Ladies Who Lunch.” A scathing look at high society women punctuated by mock “I’ll drink to that” toasts, Stritch’s recording for the original cast album – as documented by D.A. Pennebaker in his behind-the-scenes film – was an exhausting, 14-hour struggle, a testament to just how hard Stritch worked to get it right. In the documentary’s climactic final scene, Stritch returns the next day to nail it in one triumphant take.

Charles Isherwood adds, “It’s common to describe a talent as singular, one of a kind or larger than life. And yet those words seem strictly accurate, albeit a bit flimsy, when applied to Elaine Stritch”:

Perhaps more than any other performer, she embodied the contradictions that churn in the hearts of so many actors and singers:

Her constitution seemed to be equal parts self-assurance and self-doubt, arrogance and vulnerability. A need to be admired did constant combat with a nagging fear of being rejected. But unlike most performers, Ms. Stritch never felt the necessity (or had the filter) to mask either the egotism or the fragility, in public or in private. She made the complications of her own personality part of her art, indeed the wellsprings of it. And in acknowledging the depth of her needs, she touched a universal chord.

Sophie Gilbert reflects on the above video:

More than her epitaph, her alcoholism, her TV roles, and even her outlandish, cantankerous personality, Stritch will most likely be remembered for the song that’s now as inextricably hers as “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” is Judy Garland’s: “Ladies Who Lunch,” from Stephen Sondheim’s Company. Stritch originated the role of Joanne, a bitter, booze-addled woman of a certain age who rants exquisitely about the vacuity of wealthy socialites and their daily proclivities while gesturing extravagantly with a martini. The irony of the number isn’t lost on Joanne, nor was it on the actress who played her, with Stritch telling a Times reporter in 1968, “I drink, and I love to drink, and it’s part of my life.” (She quit eventually, although started having a daily cocktail or two again in her 80s.)

Stritch’s voice – raspy, rough, and almost acidic in its ability to cut through a note – was utterly unlike the identikit vibratos that tend to proliferate around Broadway. In a recording of “Ladies Who Lunch” from the ’70s, filmed for PBS, she sits on a stool in a white shirt and stares aggressively at the camera, eking out syllables with all the confidence of one who knows the conductor follows her. “The ones who follow the rules/ And meet themselves at the schools/ Too busy to know that they’re fools/ Aren’t they a gem?” she half-screams, eventually letting out a roar of feral frustration at how infuriating it all is. “I’ll drink to them.”

You can see the full gamut of emotions Stritch accesses in that video, from self-awareness to theatricality to vulnerability to a wink and a smile. It’s that melding of fear and bravado that made musical theatergoers adore her so, as she drank to overcome crippling stage fright and wrestled with insecurity every time she opened her mouth to sing.

For more, go check out the documentary recently made about her:

Migrant Children Get Their Day In Court

The going conspiracy theory on the right regarding the border crisis, trumpeted by Allahpundit last week, is that Democrats arguing for child migrant due process are secretly hoping that the kids skip out on their court dates and disappear into the general population. Dara Lind debunks that theory, pointing to new data that shows that most of the Central American refugee kids are appearing in immigration court as instructed:

Previous data had shown that about 20 to 30 percent of children didn’t show up for their court hearings. The [Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse] data shows that that’s still holding true. Of all the kids with cases filed over the last decade whose cases have been closed, 31 percent were “in absentia.” That percentage is a little higher for cases filed over the last few years, possibly because there are more cases that are still pending from that time.

But the important question is: are Central American kids more likely to skip out on their immigration court hearings than other children? And the answer to that might be surprising.

This chart looks at children whose cases were filed in 2012, 2013, and 2014 — i.e. those who have arrived during the current surge — and whose cases have been completed as of June 30, 2014. (Many children whose cases have been filed since 2012 are still in the court process, so they theoretically have another chance to show up.) That means that it’s a good reflection of how many children who have come from Central America during the current surge end up skipping out on their hearings.

The data shows that Guatemalan children, at least, really do skip out on court hearings slightly more often than other children. But children from Honduras and particularly El Salvador are slightly more likely to show up for court hearings than children from other countries.

A Breakthrough In Kabul, Ctd

An inside look at John Kerry’s brokering of a deal to resolve Afghanistan’s election crisis illuminates how high the stakes really were:

It was a dangerous moment, and not just for the Afghanis. Without an agreement between second place finisher Abdullah Abdullah and the election’s declared winner, Ashraf Ghani, Afghanistan was at risk of an implosion like the one that enabled the Taliban to take power in 1996—creating a safe haven for Osama bin Laden to plot the 9/11 attacks. And Kerry’s visit defied the advice of other Obama officials who warned any diplomatic intervention on the U.S. part held “the risk of complete failure,” in the words of a senior official. …

By mid-July, Abdullah’s supporters had threatened to create a kind of protest government. Rumors swirled of an armed rebellion, with the potential to ignite dormant ethnic and tribal rivalries. “We will accept death but not defeat,” Ghani’s running mate, the notorious ex-warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, had recently vowed. “It was pretty frightening. People were preparing for civil war,” says one official.

“Still,” Steve Coll cautions, “the pressures over the next several weeks will be great”:

The loser of the vote audit is sure to doubt the result’s authenticity. That suspicion will create fresh pressure on the part of Kerry’s plan that is designed to empower the second-place finisher—and that part of the deal seems worryingly vague and incomplete.

Karzai is scheduled to leave office on August 3rd, but it is not likely that the vote audit will be finished by then. On Afghan social media and in the streets, feelings are running high between Pashtuns and non-Pashtuns, and along other historical fault lines. The country still looks uncomfortably close to the brink. The question facing what used to be known as the Shura Nizar, or the Northern Alliance, is whether, if Abdullah loses the final count, the alliance can achieve more by compromise than by coup-making. The objective answer is yes, but there will be those of senior rank who will argue otherwise.

Criminally Bad Parenting, Ctd

A backlash to the latest parenting panic is in full swing. German Lopez highlights the above map, which brings perspective to the question of kids dying when left alone in cars. But just today, another father in Georgia was arrested for leaving his two young children and infant in his car while shopping. This of course on the heels of the 22-month-old Georgia toddler who died recently after his father left him strapped in a hot car for hours.

Meanwhile, as Deborah L. Rhode observes, many pregnant women who take drugs don’t need to wait until giving birth to be charged with bad parenting. And laws against prenatal drug use risk unfair enforcement:

Government statistics indicate that about 5 percent of pregnant women use illicit drugs, 11 percent use alcohol, and 16 percent use tobacco. Although cocaine was once considered to be the most harmful form of substance abuse, many of its supposed symptoms have since been linked to poor nutrition, inadequate prenatal care, and other drugs. Considerable recent evidence indicates that cocaine’s effects are less severe than those of alcohol and are comparable to those of tobacco.

Yet cocaine use is far more likely than alcohol or tobacco use to be a basis for prosecution.

In [Lynn] Paltrow and [Jeanne] Flavin’s study, 84 percent of cases of prosecution or other intervention involved illicit drugs, mainly cocaine. Such selective prosecution reflects class and racial biases that are also evident in reporting practices. In one study, black women were ten times more likely than white women to be reported to governmental authorities for substance use, despite similar rates of addiction. In another survey of New York hospitals, those serving low-income women were much more likely than those serving wealthier patients to test new mothers for drugs, and to turn positive results over to child protection authorities.

Jessica Valenti sounds off:

Obviously, doing drugs while pregnant is a horrible idea. But criminalizing addicted pregnant women who need treatment is bad for babies and their mothers. It’s a short-term, punitive measure with no positive lasting impact to simply ensure that pregnant women who need drug treatment and pre-natal care won’t seek either of those options, for fear of having their children taken away from them.

The Heavy Cost Of Iranian Sanctions

Extends to the US:

A new study published this week by the National Iranian American Council argues that the various trade sanctions the United States has maintained on Iran for more than a decade actually hurts the American economy. The NIAC, a U.S.-based organization that pushes for a peaceful resolution of differences between Washington and Tehran, calculated that between 1995 and 2012, the United States has forfeited between $135 billion and $175 billion in export revenue as a consequence of not doing business with the Islamic Republic. …

In the United States alone, write researcher Jonathan Leslie, NIAC director of research Reza Marashi, and NIAC president Trita Parsi, “this lost export revenue translates into between 51,043 and 66,436 job opportunities lost per year on average. In 2008 alone, as many as 214,657 to 279,389 job opportunities were relinquished.”

Natasha Schmidt talks with Trita Parsi about the study. Schmidt asserts that lifting sanctions will leave the international community “with very little leverage when dealing with Iran on a range of issues, from the nuclear program to human rights.” Parsi disputes this:

On the contrary, the West has very little leverage precisely because there is so little interaction. If the U.S. had not eliminated its trade with Iran in 1995 and if in 2009 there actually was a significant American presence in Iran, do you think the Iranian government would have had a harder or easier time to cheat in the elections? Would the US have had more or less leverage? Part of the reason the US had so little leverage in 2009 is because it had nothing in Iran. No embassy, no diplomats, no companies—no Americans. That’s no guarantee that it would have used its leverage constructively, but it is very difficult to argue that America’s complete absence from Iran has given it more leverage.

Separate Rules For Sexual Assault

Kat Stoeffel explains why colleges have such a poor track record when it comes to handling rape cases:

Title IX requires administrators to exercise their power to remove sexual offenders from the environment – temporarily, permanently, until the accuser graduates — even if the accused wouldn’t be found guilty in a criminal court. That’s explicit: In a 2011 open letter, the Department of Education reminded colleges that these civil cases have a much lower burden of proof than criminal cases. Instead of proving “beyond a reasonable doubt” that they were raped, victims need only a “preponderance of evidence.” That’s taken to mean showing that it is more likely than not that sexual assault occurred.

Granted, suspension or expulsion is a far cry from being convicted of a felony, imprisoned, and branded a rapist for life. But some experts worry that sending accused rapists off on vague leaves of absence only enables them to land safely at other campuses and victimize more students.

Meanwhile, a reader writes:

I think this story fits in well with your “The Victims Of False Rape Accusations” thread. Here’s an excerpt:

I had a really brief relationship with this girl in college; her dorm room was next to mine, and after a few evenings staying up talking all night, we made out.

We spent a few nights in each others’ rooms, but we never had sex and neither of us pressured the other into doing anything we weren’t comfortable with. After a few nights, I broke things off in the cowardly way that 19-year-old guys do, and I just stopped returning her calls and texts. I can imagine she was hurt by this, I know that I would be hurt if someone broke up with me that way.

I haven’t spoken to this girl in nearly ten years. If she felt I did something wrong in our relationship, she never confronted me about it or brought the issue to the school.

But yesterday, as near as I can tell, she saw a newspaper article about me in the Baltimore Sun, and made a Facebook post attacking me and Cards Against Humanity:

Several people that I went to school with have posted a Baltimore Sun article from 2012 about the success of Cards Against Humanity, a popular indie party game created by a Goucher alum. That is my rapist. Having his face pop up on my news feed unexpectedly in any context has the capacity to ruin my day. Seeing him praised in the press is giving me a panic attack. He should not be held as a good example of the excellence that Goucher grads have, can and will continue to achieve.

Her more recent posts have called for a boycott of my work, and she (or her friends) started a Twitter account to tweet at celebrities and organizations that I work with calling me a rapist.

The Dish’s extensive coverage of sexual assault on college campuses is here.