Tag: Premium

Joyner calls for transparency and checks and balances:

The notion that the government can compile a list of citizens for killing, not tell anyone who’s on it or how they got there, is simply un–American. Surely, a modern version of a WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE notice could be publicly circulated, with a listing of the particulars. Maybe the named individual would turn himself in rather than wait for the drones to find him. Or maybe he’d hire an attorney to present evidence he’s not actually an imminent threat to American citizens.

For centuries, civilized societies have understood that even wars must be fought according to rules, which have developed over time in response to changing realities. Rules are even more important in endless, murky wars such as the fight against Islamist terror groups. Currently, we’re letting whomever is in the Oval Office pick and choose from among the existing rules, applying and redefining them based on his own judgment and that of his advisers. We can do better.

A reader hits the nail on the head, in my opinion:

What struck me about the proposal of Marc Ambinder’s you linked to was how well it fit with the way the executive’s “prerogative power” has been conceived in the history of political thought, starting, at least, with Locke. This notion received particularly powerful articulation in Federalist 70:

“That unity is conducive to energy will not be disputed. Decision, activity, secrecy, and dispatch will generally characterise the proceedings of one man, in a much more eminent degree, than the proceedings of any greater number; and in proportion as the number is increased, these qualities will be diminished.”

Part of the reason the executive exists is to make decisions that require “dispatch,” especially in the realm of foreign affairs. Secrecy here does not mean a lack of transparency — its referring to the type of deliberations compatible with brisk, decisive national security choices. Congress, especially our pathetically dysfunctional one, couldn’t possible be counted on to meet, debate, and then decide with the urgency that emergencies or time-sensitive situations require. This was all the more true in 18th century, of course, when travel was so burdensome.

But if you go on to read the rest of Federalist 70, note the other feature of “unity” in the executive: it allows for accountability, especially post-hoc accountability. Because one person is president, there can be no passing of the blame as there might be in some manner of executive council (an option debated at the Constitutional convention). So a corollary to prerogative power the executive can deploy, the “dispatch” at his disposal, is that after the fact we know exactly who to praise or blame. It is a recognition that sometimes difficult, timely decisions need to be made, and there must be a mechanism to undertake those decisions — and that the executive is the only one in a position to make those. Structurally, it couldn’t really be otherwise.

The Framers, though, also seemed to invest that authority with the burden of post-hoc responsibility. The very unity that allows for “secrecy, energy, and dispatch” is the unity that allows us to render judgment on those activities in a very particular way. As Hamilton put it this very paper:

“[O]ne of the weightiest objections to a plurality in the executive…is that it tends to conceal faults, and destroy responsibility…It often becomes impossible, amidst mutual accusations, to determine on whom the blame or the punishment of a pernicious measure, or series of pernicious measures ought really to fall. It is shifted from one to another with so much dexterity, and under such plausible appearances, that the public opinion is left in suspense about the real author.”

The Framers wanted us to know the “real author” of these difficult decisions. The virtue of Ambinder’s proposal is it allows for that. I think keeping in mind these distinctive features of the executive is particularly helpful as we consider this vexing issue. Transparency and accountability — making sure “faults” are not “concealed” — is the heart of the matter. Give the President his power to make these wrenching decisions. But let us not shrink from exercising judgment, informed by all the relevant information, about those decisions.

Which means some kind of post-hoc judicial process of some sort. And I can see that, when it comes to those moments when the executive branch needs to act expeditiously (e.g. an enemy target has just been spotted and could easily be lost unless killed immediately), this is the best option we have. But I don’t see why a court cannot be involved in vetting the selection of targets beforehand, and weighing the government’s evidence against them.

My initial thoughts are here.

A reader quotes another:

“So this is dorky, but I got a weird rush of pride and community upon signing into the Dish on my devices and seeing that light blue ”Subscriber” block appear atop the screen.” This is one reason I will never join. It is sad that this person or any person thinks that reading the Dish makes her a part of a community. I could never be a member of anything where people were so sad. It might be different if you took comments, but how can someone passively and anonymously eating the meal you serve (made up mostly of other people’s work, by the way) make one a member of a community? But you do promote that idea, don’t you?

I have liked this site less and less since you went to memberships. I feel about as negative towards you as I did back in the early Bush years where you were promoting the idea of a new pro-war party of young patriots called the “Eagles.” Putting up all those positive reviews and the dollar totals like this is some kind of cheesy telethon. I can’t tell how cynical you are about your marketing tactics. I would respect you more if you were cynical, but I’m afraid you actually believe that you are providing some kind of community and are something more valuable than just a daily best of the web on a two-week delay with an overlay of Oprah-level spirituality.

We’ve been airing reader reactions, positive and negative, because we are a community. Why else would so many people send us links or write emails like yours or send in their window views or vote for awards and so on if they were not part of a community? Why would they care? And when a million or so people have visited a site every month for years, it is not unreasonable to assume that many are the same people. I call that a community. And you are welcome to be a part of it, harsh criticism and all. Yes, letting our readers know how this experiment is going may be seen as marketing. But it’s also called transparency, and we promised it.

Another reader spells out why we don’t have a comments section and why readers have repeatedly voted one down:

I subscribed last week in prep for this week’s launch. Very happy with all aspects of the site so far. I almost sent a support email for the embedded links (they were not opening in new tab in the first day), but guessed correctly thatothers would make that suggestion – love it.

I love this community, which is why I subscribed. I have NEVER subscribed to anything on the Internet (except anti-virus software). One of the biggest reasons that this is the first site I visit and why I subscribed is for the lack of a comments section. As Jay Rosen so eloquently put it (and I would not have seen this quote if not for the Dish): “Untended, online comment sections have become sewers, protectorates for the deranged, depraved and deluded.”

I am thrilled to make a small contribution to your staff, which does the hard work of finding the best comments (possibly the best part of Dish) and the best thinking across the net! I have done IT contracting and I am more than happy to pay for your team’s efforts each day. I wish more people understood that actual, hard work is how sites get built, software gets built and the net would collapse without it. We should all be willing to pay for that hard work!

Another sent the above image earlier this week and wrote:

This was taken on January 7 in my hospital room after a successful 5-hour surgery that day.  I’m doing great and this pictures show’s how lucky I am to have people who love me and access to the best medical care and generous health insurance to cover most of the 70K in bills from surgery/one night stay, pathology etc.  So I’m really happy to be able to support the Dish!  It’s my favorite “coffee break.”

Update from a reader:

I’m tempted to subscribe, but the lack of a comment section holds me back. The ability to comment in real time in a public forum was one of the things that drew me to online news and commentary and away from the printed newspaper years ago.

I’m perplexed by your readership’s hostility to a comment section. I haven’t run across a website yet that requires anyone to read comments, but every now and again I feel the need to add my two cents. If some of your readers don’t like comments, let them skip over them. Are comment sections a cesspool? Sure, sometimes. And sometimes they’re perceptive, and sometimes they’re more entertaining than the article they’re attached to. And sometimes the allow me, the reader, to point out a glaring error or omission in a public forum in real time.

Want my 20 bucks? Allow me to add my two cents from time to time.

Two cents for 20 bucks is a great exchange rate.

A reader disagrees with me:

Richard was a medieval Catholic Christian, not a modern Roman Catholic. Would he have agreed with Trent on transubstantiation or justification? Would he have agreed with the first Vatican council about papal infallibility or with the second Vatican council on religious freedom? Would Richard recognize an English-language service—held in a multi-purpose room with guitars strumming—as the Mass?

We will never know what Richard would think of  these changes. But attacking the Church of England for changes since the Middle Ages begs the question because it assumes that Roman Catholicism is a constant, consistent, and never-changing fortress of unerring orthodoxy. It’s a nice fable that warms the hearts of paleo-Catholics, but it just isn’t true.

He was an English king. Bury him in the Church of England.

He was an English king when Catholicism was thriving in England, when England was one of the most devout Catholic countries in Europe. The Church of England was instituted by the dynasty, the Tudors, that killed him off – the son of the man whose warriors killed him! Fuck that and fuck them. And I say that in the spirit of Shakespeare’s Richard.  Another writes:

Funny that the first email I would feel moved to send you would be about reburying someone who has been dead for 500 years, but here goes:

I understand the feeling that he should be buried in a Catholic church.  I also understand Leicester’s desire for him to be reburied in their cathedral (the pilgrims it will bring!).  But I find myself sad for him that he will not be reinterred where he wanted to be laid to rest, in York Minster.  That was and is the great church of his home, where the people always loved him.  When he died it was a Catholic cathedral and 500 years later… well, no one is talking about moving the Venerable Bede or St. Cuthbert just because Durham Cathedral has become Anglican.

I think in many ways for those who are dead, and who have, according to their beliefs, moved on to better or worse permanent places, the place where their earthly body rests should be, as much as can be ascertained, where their earthly selves wanted their body to rest.  After all, as a famous Catholic once said, “God will know his own.”

Another:

Stop slandering Richard III! How do you know he killed the princes in the tower?  How do you know they were not killed by the Duke of Buckingham to foment rebellion and bring in Henry Tudor to take the crown?  Shakespeare was a playwright, not a historian.  He based his play on a biography by Thomas More, a man who never knew Richard III and was influenced by Tudor propaganda. And since everyone was a Catholic in 1485, the denomination of the church where he gets reinterred is irrelevant.

So there.

Another:

You do realize – surely you must! – that Shakespeare’s “Richard III” is nothing but Tudor propaganda intended to destroy the reputation of the last Plantagenet king and Henry Tudor’s (Henry VII) #1 rival.  For all that your post (with Ian McKellan doing justice to Shakespeare, if not Richard himself) is well thought out, with a point we agree on (that Richard was indeed a Catholic, as the Henry VIII had not yet been born to instigate all that religious drivel that we won’t go into now), your words seem to focus on the literary character of “Richard III,” and ignores the HISTORICAL Richard (“Dickon”?), who was, in fact, quite a progressive fellow.  Read up! I did, when I was in high school, and I ended up having a semi-crush on him, so that the discovery and identification of his bones recently is sort of like a “reunion” … with the so-obvious curvature of his spine somehow much more poignant and real in death than any live actor of that Shakespearean character could ever portray …

And another:

I’m sure you’re quite familiar with the fascinating array of historical disputes involving Richard III (was he a disfigured weakling or a stout warrior? Did he usurp his nephew’s throne, or were Tudor allies behind the plot to invalidate his older brother’s marriage?) but some readers may be confused by your reference to Shakespeare’s play as “Tudor propaganda”.  Since Richard is in the news, you ought to take the opportunity to direct your readers to Josephine Tey’s absorbing 1951 account of the mysteries surrounding his reign, The Daughter of Time. Until reading it, I – like most Americans, I think – had no idea who the Princes in the Tower were, and only knew Richard as the guy who would trade his kingdom for a horse.

(Cartoon created by Dish reader James MacLeod, used with permission)

One important thing to remember about the Greater Israel lobby is that they never give in. Their passion prevents any doubt, any moderation, let alone any kind of defeat. But voting down a defense secretary nominee who’s a former Republican senator and war hero is a very tough mountain to climb. But they sure tried.

From anonymous ads and fliers to the hearings, which were more about Israel than the US, or Afghanistan, or our main defense concerns – such as the looming sequester. Hagel performed pathetically – having been coached to avoid any confrontation. But there was no John Tower-like character issues; the president clearly won the election; and Hagel is a former Republican senator with two Purple Hearts, for Pete’s sake.

But he is not one of today’s Republicans. And that makes him even more threatening to their unreconstructed neoconservative orthodoxy. They cannot tolerate discussion of their catastrophic wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, let alone a Republican exposing their incompetence and misjudgment.

So they first tried McCarthyism, implying that Hagel was an Iranian mole or an Al Jazeera Jihadist. Then they bruited a filibuster – pretty much unheard of, but of a piece with the modern GOP’s massive abuse of that procedure in recent years. Now they’re asking what is close to an impossibility:

Sen. Cruz has now decided to ask for the text of every speech Hagel has given over the last four years (text he appears not even to have in many cases) and records of the funding, membership and business dealings of every group or corporation he’s given a speech to. So basically Hagel has to be able to force various corporations and organizations to disclose confidential business and membership organization.

This is a request which could set a bewildering precedent. There’s also some noise about some alleged harassment not by Hagel but by someone in his former office. It’s probably grandstanding from Cruz, who wants to raise his national profile with the GOP base. But Carl Levin has apparently decided to let him have his way. So the delay continues.

I’m not privy to all the DC gossip on this right now, but I’ll know Hagel is confirmed only when the vote is held. Until then, the harassment, hazing and hatred of an apostate will continue. And yes, the implication is that Hagel is controlled by a foreign government and is hiding something. This coming from the Greater Israel lobby after an avalanche of ads whose funding remains completely opaque. Hey: it’s right out of the Rove playbook: accuse your opponent of exactly what you are doing yourself.

The conversation continues:

Hitch: It makes me laugh when people say “fundamental,” because what it means is you believe that these books are the word of God. That’s what fundamental means, fundamentalist means. If they’re not, then in what sense are you religious? If I ask you—

Andrew: You can say that they are inspired—

H: If someone says to me, “I’m a Catholic,” I say, fine: Does this mean that you believe in the following: in the transubstantiation of bread and wine, etc. … On the whole they’ll say, “well, you don’t have to believe all of them…” Now excuse me, that may be possible now, but there would be no such thing as the Catholic Church if people had not been forced to believe this, compelled to believe, or—though I doubt it myself, really do doubt it—may actually have believed it at the time. Without it, what’ve you got but some menu of spirituality options that you might as well have as a Hindu?

A: Well you can have it as a Hindu, in some respects. Although, the kind of way of life as being portrayed in the Gospels as a way to live is a little different than Hinduism for example, or Buddhism. I think there are overlaps.

H: But Andrew, I wouldn’t bother with this, I would let these beliefs exist in a parallel universe except for argumentative purposes and dialectal purposes. It’s nice, I enjoy discussing with Jesuits—nothing could be more agreeable—as I would with a Hegelian or a Randian or any of the above. But much more than Hegelians and Randians, these people want to influence my life. They say I want your children to be taught things that aren’t true.

A: No, no, my point is that the kind of religion I’m talking about—because it is much more aware of the provisionality of its own knowledge—is a much humbler approach to the divine. And certainly, someone like me would say, “This is what I believe but even I, at some level, cannot give you reasons for this; I cannot explain it entirely; I think this is how I’m trying to figure it out for myself”. The last thing on Earth such a religion would do is tell you how to live your life. Now I understand most religions are not that way, but I am trying to say that at some level, some way of being at peace with one’s own mortality and have some understanding of why we’re here, does not necessitate—even though it’s often accompanied by—the desire to control anybody else’s life. I don’t see Jesus trying to control anyone else’s life.

H: Why don’t you let me make the assumption, or make the claim, that I take the words and the positions of a true believers seriously and that I respect them. When I examine these beliefs I find that they cannot be private. It is not possible for someone to really believe this, and especially its redemptive character, and watch me go straight to hell. They would be failing in their duty, they must save me, even if it means killing and burning me would be best.

A: Not if what stops them is their understanding of their own doubt. Doubt and faith can co- exist.

H: How can this be allowed if you know God’s will?

A: You don’t know it, you think you know it.

H: When I was a Marxist I used to think, or sometimes was tempted into thinking, “look, people may not realize they need this, but they really do and the consequences of not adopting—“

A: Well, there you are, that was a religion you had.

H: Well, it was not a religion in the sense that I accept but I’ll take it as a dogma. The feeling one had was, “many don’t seem to want what we’re telling them, but the consequences of not adopting an international socialist program would be so bad that one might have to give people the occasional nudge. It’s for their own good. Marxism has its glories, but its principal failing must have to be accepted as that, the idea of false consciousness.

A: Ratzinger has this concept, too. He gave this astonishing talk in Dallas in 1991—I put it in my book—where he describes what he understands to be conscience. And the Second Council, though it took two millennia, did actually make a significant shift to say that we do recognize that the individual conscience alone is the ultimate arbiter of one’s own faith. Ratzinger, I think having pioneered that idea with Kung, subsequently pulled back from its implications.

H: Which are obviously heretical and incompatible with true belief.

A: Well his argument, in Dallas of all places…(laughs) “Ratzinger in Dallas.”

H: God is everywhere.

A: It’s like “Dusty in Memphis.”

H: All is decided by Heaven, all praise belongs to Allah.

A: His argument was: If your conscience tells you one thing, and the Holy Father through the authority of the Magisterium has determined something else, then it is not your conscience against the hierarchy; there is actually, beneath what you think is your conscience, your real conscience which must, because you’re made by God, understand already, that you’re wrong. It’s the false consciousness mode, again. You may not realize that you need their authority, but you do. But that is not the obliteration of conscience altogether…

H: I could, in a Platonic sense—in the proper sense of the word, deriving from Plato—I could concede, or even concur, that that might be true. What I could not accept is that Ratzinger could know and not me. That he had the right to interpret it. Who is this Herr Ratzinger? By what right does he arbitrate it? Do these people want power in this world or the next? It’s always this world. That’s how religion strikes me as absolutely material, nothing to do with the spiritual or after-existence. They want power now and they’re very wise to. When else would you want to have power?

A: Well of course, there’s no other place to have power.

H: It could be that astrology was true. It could be, for example—I can’t prove it isn’t—that the movement of the planets determine my future, and that that’s what they’re there for; they know that I’m Aries. Though why and how they manage to cover the shift between the Julian and Gregorian calendar would still be a mystery to me—it wouldn’t be the main mystery—but okay, let’s agree. The planets know my future and they determine it. I could agree to that, and I could agree that there could be a computer in a building that I had never seen that was running this permanent experiment: there’s my life, being lived by me, and there’s a computer predicting it, day by day, before I could see it.

Once I could see the computer, it wouldn’t be true. Once I’d read my horoscope, it wouldn’t be true, by definition. So all the other perfectly brilliant arguments against astrology—such as identical twins don’t have the same future, most of the planets weren’t discovered when the Zodiac was drawn, many other such objections—are nothing to me: No one can tell me that they know what the planets are doing.

So there couldn’t be astrological priesthood. So, ever since I had learned to think in the least, and among other things, see through astrology I saw through everything else in much the same way. It could be the case – I’m not, and no one else is, clever enough to tell me it isn’t – but no one is clever or moral enough to tell me that it is. So I return to my point, we begin by excluding those who claim to know. And I think that is Occam’s Razor in practice.

A: Well it does make religion much more private, meditative. I mean Gandhi, for example, was not going around seeking that much power, at least in his religious mode.

H: I wish that was true.

A: Jesus, specifically, does not seem to be interested in actually acquiring power in the Gospels, to any degree.

H: No, a very modest guy. Unassuming, as long as you accept him as in some way, the son of God. He never claimed to be exactly that, but spoke rather loquaciously about his father and suggested that he knew the way to paradise. As long as you accept these incredibly arrogant claims on his part, he’s a very modest guy, almost unassuming, self effacement…

A: (Laughs.)

H: He’s not like the Prophet Mohammad, really interested in material gain, warfare, spoil, conquest. No, he’s not like that.

A: At all.

H: Gandhi, I think, was a bit more ambitious than you allow.

A: But, these arrogant claims nevertheless were not, by him at least, turned into a doctrine or a church as he lived.

H: Well, his disciples couldn’t have been Christian, for one, because they had not read any of the Gospels. They couldn’t have been able to, among other things, they were written long after they were around. So, they can be excluded as non-Christian. And he too, because there is really no evidence—and this is conceded by most serious Christians, too—that he desired to found a church or have one founded in his name. It’s very plain that he expected his followers to see him again in their own lifetimes.

A: And it’s very clear that they expected to see him again in their own lifetimes.

H: And they were wrong, weren’t they?

A: Yeah.

H: So every time people say “Christ is risen” at Easter for the next 2,000 years they’re wasting their time, and other people’s. It’s just not gonna happen and to sow the false hope that it will—

A: Well, the Christ has risen thing is not about the Second Coming, it’s a reference to something that has already occurred.

H: Yes but it’s a promise. If you can do it once…

A: I think you could shear, if you will, Christianity of the Second Coming.

H: All you have to believe in then is resurrection, which in the Bible occurs routinely. It’s a commonplace. According to the Gospels, the graves are opened all around Jerusalem at around the time of the crucifixion and many strode out of their tombs and greeted people in the streets. At least two people are resurrected on request by the Nazarene, Jairus’ daughter and Lazarus, who nobody interviews about their extraordinary experience and nobody finds out about their subsequent life.

Did they die again? We don’t even know. Were they resurrected in the form of the body that had previously died on them? We’re not even told that. Resurrection, however, was not considered particularly remarkable at that time. But never mind, I concede all this: Jesus rose again from the dead. It doesn’t prove one thing about the truth of his doctrines.

A: No.

H: Resurrection’s an old myth. It doesn’t vindicate the claim of someone who makes it.

A: Well in my mind the big—and you know, I’m committing heresy throughout this entire conversation—

H: And you’re better for it.

A: For me, the Incarnation is a much more central doctrine than the Resurrection. The Resurrection, in some ways, is the necessary consequence of the Incarnation, because it’s hard to think of God dying a mortal death.

H: Not for me. Actually, I take that back, it’s hard for me to think of him living.

A: Right. Well, it’s hard for me to think of him dying. (Laughs.)

H: Alright, that’s one difference I’d split.

To be continued.

(Photo: Pope Benedict XVI attends the 2012 World Meeting of Families at Meazza Stadium on June 2, 2012 in Milan, Italy. By Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images.)

A reader writes:

Just a quick response to the reader who said that you had too much white space, needed borders, etc. I love the white space, love how it looks clean but still feels new (not like it’s just the tumblr minimalist theme again!)! It feels like I’m reading a book, only bloggier. Also, just an added fun fact from someone who is a grad student studying the history of the book: medieval manuscripts often had very large margins, partially for glossing, commentary, and marginalia, but also partially to elevate the text (not the the Dish needs elevation). Cheers and good luck – I’ve sent in my $50.

Another also likes the spartan look of the new Dish:

It’s so sleek and clean and stylish. I had never realised that the adverts annoyed me until I see the site without them. There’s a parallel you might want to look into – the city of Sao Paulo banned all outdoor advertising and people’s mental health hugely improved.

Another:

So this is dorky, but i got a weird rush of pride and community upon signing into the Dish on my devices and seeing that light blue “Subscriber” block appear atop the screen. So I need a t-shirt now with the new Dish baying beagle logo on the front, and on the back, across the shoulder blade, the light blue Subscriber button. Make it happen. Take my money. Or ship me a free one for the merch idea. I’ll pay for the mug.

Merchandise is definitely on our radar, but we want to wait a while until we get our bearings with the new pay-meter and everything else we are grappling with regarding the new Dish. Another reader says, “My favorite thing about the new site is the beagle in my RSS reader”:

Another:

As a programmer, I’ve just noticed something that totally blew my mind and gained me a new respect for the Dish’s technical skills (which are not usually that high, by Andrew’s own admission). When you scroll down, not only is it an infinite scroll (nothing new here, but still kudos), but the URL changes to reflect that you’ve just moved into the next page, allowing you to copy the URL and arrive to the same spot again if you want to. RESPECT.

Another:

Love the infinite scroll, but the archives … where to begin. I first went to the very beginning, the prequel to the Bush Presidency. I have so many questions. Do you go back and read them sometimes? What a record of thought this all is, and I hope it goes on for a very long time.

We are planning to excavate all kinds of excruciating content from the Dish archive, including a feature called “Sullyfreude”, which will highlight my most embarrassing or Dick Morris-esque analysis. But we figured you’d probably get there first. Another reader:

As a stay-at-home dad, I have to make careful and thoughtful choices about how I will spend our one income (from my wife’s work). As I watched discussion of your new pay model, I thought I would be one of those who would wait and see whether or not I would want to subscribe. I mean, I love the Dish, and it is an incredibly low entry price, but it still a choice of spending money of which I need to be prudent.

Well, I have now visited the site two or three days in a row since you have migrated. I see absolutely no distinction between what a paid subscriber would receive and what a non-paid reader like myself is receiving. What is the value proposition for being a subscriber?

That’s because after two days, we’ve been going easy on the meter. We’ll adjust as we go along. We want to keep the majority of the site free, but the deeper analyses, reader threads, my own writing, and other features will slowly become less accessible to the non-subscriber. It’s a balance, and we’re trying to figure our way forward with it. Since we’re among the first to do this with a blog, we’re agnostic about what might work and will adjust as we learn and you inform us – for which much thanks. Another reader offers some interesting insight:

I have been a reader of your blog for years and on occasion would hit the ‘read on’ button.  Now that I am a subscriber, I am ‘reading on’ more frequently.  Just trying to get my money’s worth?  Maybe. Whatever the case, I now see a more complete picture.  I don’t agree with you on everything and sometimes I don’t even understand what you say, but I enjoy the challenge.

Another makes a good suggestion about our business model:

I spent many years working in the nonprofit sector. While I am sure you have your business model pretty well figured out, if you operated as a nonprofit entity or even a LC3 – which is like a LLC married to a nonprofit – it would allow you to take grants like a nonprofit, creating a new revenue source. Propublica is a current example of a nonprofit news agency. In fact, your “pay as much as you like” subscription is much more akin to a nonprofit donation than it is a fee for service for-profit. As a nonprofit you would still be able to pay a competitive salary to you and your staff. However, instead of subscription fees going to pay shareholders needing to make a profit, and instead of business decisions being made to maximize shareholder profit, subscriptions (or donations) would go towards your contribution to the common good – that common good being an informed democracy.

As a donor to a nonprofit news agency, my value proposition is supporting an informed democracy and therefore there is no need to differentiate between the benefits received for a donor or non donor, vs. with a for-profit subscription service there is a need to differentiate benefits or access between a subscriber or non subscriber because subscribing suggests a received benefit for my purchase. Thanks for listening and thanks for the continued good work!

Another:

When you first announced that you were going to your new site, I was excited for you but didn’t want to pay yet because I was VERY CONCERNED (I sent you an email about it) about continuing to read the site on my preferred RSS feed, Google Reader. I’m thrilled to see that the blog still functions perfectly as an RSS; I noticed nothing different from Friday -> Monday.

Then an evil little part of my brain said to me, “Nothing’s changed – it was free for you before, it will continue to be free for you now; save your money.” But yesterday, I sent you the InFocus slideshow of the Vikings (I couldn’t have been the only one!). I actually squealed a little bit when you replied to my email with “oh joy”, and then you used one of the pictures as the Face of the Day with a comment about the beards. I felt like I really WAS a part of the community.

Needless to say, I just sent in my subscription (plus some extra $). I could keep reading your site for free, but I feel like being a part of the community means not just hanging out on the periphery and watching the show from afar; it means being a full participatory partner and bearing the various (minor) costs associated with that membership. Happy to be onboard.

And we’re happy to have you. Another:

Congratulations on the launch! The site looks great and I’m looking forward to getting used to the new format. Only one slight suggestion for you, and I know this flies in the face of your love for the new white space. The Dish header, with the beagle, could really use one off-setting color as a background. Maybe just a stripe not wide enough to cover the whole thing. That is all. No suggestions that would slow page load or anything.

All suggestions are welcome and appreciated, even if we don’t use them. Here is one from last week we did use:

One thing I love: clicking on an external link opens a new tab in my browser! I don’t know why more sites don’t do that.

We also just brought back the “Email” buttons at the bottom of every post, at the request of many readers. We are trying to implement as many feasible suggestions as we can.  After all, it’s your blog too – and now you help pay for it.

(Photos of Dish readers, used with their permission)

I mean, he was one, wasn’t he? The Reformation had not yet taken place. He’s already suffered various indignities – Shakespeare’s Tudor propaganda, stigmatized for scoliosis, then having his skull split open with an ax. He now has to be buried in a church he didn’t belong to? Maybe the parking lot wasn’t so bad, after all.

I have a bias here. I still think of many of the great cathedrals in Britain as essentially stolen from my church (and their own rich, English Catholic history) in an act of monarchical larceny.  And Dick 3.0 is simply one of my favorite Shakespearean monarchs, even through the slant. His wooing of Lady Anne is one of the most amazing scenes in world drama – the sight of pure evil seducing the weakness and naivete of good – in which you simply cannot help but admire the sheer charm of pure wickedness. And laugh and laugh. This is a tragedy, but also, at so many points, an uproarious comedy. You realize just how deeply Shakespeare had read his Machiavelli.

I learned that opening monologue above by heart – as well as Clarence’s astonishing speech later. Shakespeare shows us the tyrant’s mesmerizing charisma on the surface, and the pain and resentment within that fuel it. To intuit the psychic impact of the stigma that the disabled once always lived with is another of Shakespeare’s human, almost super-human, achievements. But Shakespeare wasn’t trying to get the audience to empathize – killing two innocent children in cold blood will tend to put a stop to that. He was trying to show how glittering and alluring sociopaths can be. And he had a huge amount of fun with it. As Philip Hensher once observed,

Shakespeare’s delight in creating a Richard III is unmistakable. Richard is ingenious in his evil, plotting several steps ahead. He is, oddly, rather sexy – the scenes with Anne have a touch of Benedick’s banter with Beatrice. He is, above all, extremely funny.

In short, Richard has charisma. The great villains of literature draw us in with their charm, their intelligence, their wit, and their sheer sexual magnetism. Who has not thought that Jane Austen’s Emma is really much less fun – less sexy, more strait-laced, more boring all round – than dear old Mrs Elton, slagging off all her neighbours? Which would be more fun – dinner with Saruman in his tower, served by orcs in white tie, or horrid warm beer and folk songs with those Bagginses in their burrow?

Blake, observing the magnetism, eloquence and charm of Milton’s Satan, said that Milton was a “true poet, and of the devil’s party without knowing it”. The very best villains all share this quality of charm – even, alluringly, of comedy. I’ve seen a production of The Jew of Malta brought to a standstill by Barabas’s comment, after mass-poisoning a convent, “How sweet the bells ring, now the nuns are dead.”

I love the fact that McKellen, eschewing the usual ham-acting of the opening  scene, actually pisses into a urinal while his interior monologue continues and the truth emerges, like urine from his bladder. But no performance in my life matched that of Anthony Sher, who somehow managed to turn Richard’s disability into a riveting ability – using his crutches as a spider uses its legs, sprinting fast across the stage, and lethally. He was half-man, half insect. It was one of those performances that never ever leave you, one that reminds you that live theater is simply indispensable sometimes in conveying the rawest truth of our twisted, crooked but also hilarious human nature.

Readers push back against my view of customer service:

Andrew, you’re one of the lucky ones who is actually encouraged to say what you think whenever you think it. It’s part of your brand. And kudos to you for building a career that fits you. But imagine that you worked in a retail or service position where revealing what you really thought of your customers could get you fired. Wouldn’t that take its toll on you? If the threat of bankruptcy forced you to pretend to be nice to people you hated, wouldn’t that drive you crazy? And since when do you prefer faked sycophancy to honesty?

And if I responded to every critical email with a Cheneyism, you’d feel the same way. Or if I never published dissents that routinely take me and my arguments apart? We try very hard to be civil and accommodating to our readers here, even though there sure are days when I want to tell them to take a running jump. A wounding of my dignity? Please. Another asks, “What if I showed up in your blog cave and looked over your shoulder all day making sure you were SMILING SMILING SMILING?” That’s called Christmas – and its totalitarian mood-enforcement is, I agree, a blight upon humanity.

But the right to work and be paid in a store and insult customers or never hide your actual mood for professional reasons? I’m not sure that’s a human right. Another has been in that kind of situation:

I used to work for a hospital call center and my boss was constantly complaining that her employees did not love working there like she did. We made a fraction of what she made. Our bathroom breaks were timed and if they went over 5 minutes we were written up. We were all temp workers with no benefits. They fired people every Tuesday. If you had failed to treat a caller like royalty, and they complained, you were cut.

Sometimes a job is just a paycheck, and that should be ok. For slightly above minimum wage and no benefits you don’t get to own someone’s soul. Have you given any thought to what kind of impact that has on those workers?

I don’t think being cheerful to customers is a violation of someone’s soul. Another:

It amazes me, considering the overall quality of your blog, how often you use words like “smug” or “condescension” as an excuse not to engage those of us to your left. That may sound harsh, but when you go so far as to actually quote the word you’ve missed, I figure I can call it an honest mistake on your part. No, Timothy Noah isn’t talking about the overall pleasantness of customer’s experiences, nor “better” service, nor “how well” employees interact with customers, nor “fascism.” You’ve missed the point. It’s right there in your quote: “fawning.” Please try again.

Appealing to an increasingly stratified customer base is driving compulsory servile behavior, even if they are accessorizing it with Marxist jargon. That’s my idea of hell. I won’t patronize a business that requires employees to check their self-respect at the door. I have to wonder why you like them. I rely on a business’ employees for accessible competence, not to blow smoke up my ass.

You’ve never had one of these jobs, have you, Andrew? I’ve had more than one. And I’ve been to Pret A Manger. And I’ve been to France a couple times and always received great service, in Paris and out in the countryside. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s phony people. If there’s one thing that will keep me from patronizing a business, it’s the kind of forced or fake cheeriness you describe. You may associate this kind of work ethic or atmosphere with the US, but it’s not one of our better angels. We should encourage people who work for a living to demand dignity.

You have every right to patronize only those establishments that do not require their employees to be polite or accommodating or fawning. And the more people who do that, the quicker things will change. But obviously, you’re in a minority. Most people enjoy fawning treatment when being asked to spend money. What always struck me about America was the ubiquity of that ethic and how much more agreeable the consumer process was here. It was an actual virtue inculcated by capitalism.