Life is short, my RSS feed is long

In light of the upcoming shutdown of Google Reader (c'mon, Google, really?), I think it's a good time to make a few trims to my RSS feed. (This is especially on my mind now since just a few days of camping lead to a ballooning of unread items: I think I get somewhere between 150 and 200+ items a day.) Most of these cuts aren't very momentous--I'm not as plugged into gaming culture right now so Penny Arcade is often wasted on me--but there's one I want to comment on:

I'm cutting myself off from Andrew Sullivan. While his system of aggregation often highlights interesting items, that in no way makes up for having to slog through his biased opinions on material which he doesn't entirely understand. Others have so ably bullet-pointed his failings, so I don't really need to go through the list of the times he was wrong or his blinkers.

What really gets me about him is his inability to break the pattern: a topic comes up, Sullivan spouts off on it; many bloggers and dissenters point out where he is wrong, but Sullivan doubles down, often with the self-righteous patting-himself-on-the-back that goes along with his "I'm just telling it like it is" and his "your liberal orthodoxy can't hold me back, man"; eventually, a few weeks later, after someone like Ta-Nehisi Coates intervenes, Sullivan makes some sort of correction or apology, which often seems sincere if not self-congratulatory about being able to change his mind--wash, rinse, repeat. Whatever the topic is--race and IQ; terrorism; structural prejudice against women; the war in Iraq--Sullivan can be counted on to be wrong, but somehow find a way to cast himself as being on the right side throughout. 

In short: he's a prick. If he had a bar stool rather than a blog, no one would listen to his mixture of pious self-regard and toadying for certain powers that be.

Netflix, Kickstarter, and New Hollywood

I confess: I'm not a professional movie or television maker. And yet, that hasn't stopped a lot of people from commenting on Netflix's recent foray into television production with House of Cards or the use of Kickstarter to raise capital for Veronica Mars: The Movie. (Dollars to donuts, the movie is going to involve rape or attempted rape in some capacity.)

But I did study the history of Hollywood once, so, I'll be honest: we've seen these sorts of fundamental shake-ups before. In the 00s, it was adding narrative to film, in the 30s, it was the Hays Code and the introduction of sound; in the 50s, it was competition with television and the introduction over various -scopes to compete; in the 60-70s, it was the American New Wave, like Scorsese, Coppola, etc. and the special effects revolution and the creation of the blockbuster and the tie-in (Jaws, Star Wars, etc.); in the 90s, it was the indie movement. Things change, things stay the same, especially if your name is "Woody Allen."

I was thinking of this recently when listening to an episode of Scriptnotes, a podcast with John August and Craig Mazin where they discussed Kickstarter. Putting aside for a moment that Craig Mazin doesn't seem to understand Kickstarter (he doesn't understand the reward tiers and that investors get something back--that, in many cases, supporting a project on Kickstarter is a lot like pre-ordering an item, not donating money to a corporation), I don't think he's wrong when he says there's some potential for waste, fraud, and abuse in Kickstarting intellectual property that belongs to corporations. That is: there's potential. Why does the WB need help funding a Veronica Mars movie if they wanted to make one? Will Kickstarter just be a way to publicly fund ventures that are privately profitable? Will studios turn to the public, hat in one hand and gun to the head of a beloved show in another?

Eh, all things are possible in the future, but I don't see this potential for abuse becoming a major factor in creative ventures. We long ago entered a new phase of entertainment where something that dies can be revived, whether tv-to-movie (Firefly to Serenity), tv-to-tv-following-cult-popularity (Futurama, Family Guy--both revived after cancelation due to excellent DVD sales and rerun ratings), or tv-to-something-else (comic book continuations of Angel and Buffy, Netflix reviving Arrested Development). And all of these revivals had less to do with Kickstarter (fans ponying up cash up front) than with the corporate forecasting that said fans would line up for these later. If Kickstarter takes some of the worry out of this equation by letting fans pre-order tickets, that won't radically change the way things are done.

To further address one of Mazin's worries, that corporations will use Kickstarter as blackmail ("fund this season or we kill your favorite show"), I'm afraid that doesn't really make sense. Fans have always had ways of making their commitment known--before Kickstarter there were letter-writing campaigns. And any corporation that ignores viewers seems to be working against their own interest: if I'm already watching your show, you're making money off of me through advertising revenue. Trying to squeeze more out of your viewers will just make you enemies.

Now, will Kickstarter help accelerate second lives for cancelled intellectual property? That's the real shift here that may happen in the future, though as I noted, this sort of thing has been happening more even without Kickstarter. And as we saw with the attempt to Kickstart an Inspector Space Time show (a Doctor Who-esque show within the Community universe), sometimes corporations like to hold on to their IP even when they're not using it.

Monty Python destroyed England?

Do you remember when the 1989 Batman came out and we all were talking about how it was an allegory for the '88 presidential election, with George H. W. Bush as Bruce Wayne and Dukakis as Robert Wuhl's character?

Actually, no, I don't think that happened. But fast forward twenty years and suddenly we're discussing whether The Dark Knight supports torture as a means to get information out of the Joker; and whether Bane may be more like the Occupy movement on the left or the ultra-capitalist Romney on the right. Part of this, I think, has to do with a current in the conservative movement which goes something like this: "everyone thinks we're uncool because the commie leftists own Hollywood and we need to take back culture."

And I support that movement: it's about time that conservatives looked at art and said, "I want to express myself too," rather than follow the usual anti-National Endowment argument that says art isn't good for anything and we shouldn't spend any tax money on that.

But as with all nascent movements, there's going to be some missteps and growing pains; for example, the hilarious mess the National Review made all over itself when it tried to gather a list of 25 great conservative movies.

I was reminded recently of how far this current within conservatism has to go to become intelligent discourse (instead of "rar, my guy good, your guy bad") when conservative blogger Kathy Shaidle wrote about her mixed feelings about Monty Python. On one hand, their sketches are funny. But on the other hand, according to Shaidle, Monty Python "unwittingly (or not) destroyed England in a way the Luftwaffe could have only dreamed of." What the what?

See, in Shaidle's mind, Monty Python (along with the Beatles and the rest of the '60s/70s counterculture) used satire against authority in a bad way, which has led to a terrible hash of multicultural leftist junkie thuggery or something. (Amazingly, that was exactly what the Luftwaffe was trying to do.) And the Pythons, by and large, turned out to be leftist traitors of culture.

So why does Shaidle still enjoy them? To salve her political conscience, Shaidle looks at three sketches which she calls the best (but not necessarily the funniest) and kinda, sorta, maybe intimates how they support her conservative views, so she can go on liking them.

I realize that the purpose of a blog post like Shaidle's is less to convince outsiders than to rile up people either for or against you. (Say something provocative to get people talking about you! Have people say mean things about you so you can send a fund-raising letter to the base explaining your victimization!) But, to me, it honestly seems like Shaidle is trying to work through a mismatch between her politics and her sense of humor. I think this is a good project--maybe examining her own interest in anti-authoritarian humor will change her relation with authoritarians-on-the-right. Maybe she'll come to accept the humor and humanity of people who don't hold her politics? Or maybe she'll just come up with some reason why the things she likes all fit within a well-policed category called "conservatism" that accepts Bush's warrantless wiretapping but freaks out over Obama's interest in passing laws banning high-capacity magazines.

Andrew Sullivan's Gut Has Shit For Brains

Alternately titled: "Andrew Sullivan is not America."

Andrew Sullivan is a useful blogger to follow for a few things; quiet introspection is not one of them. If you follow Andrew (affectionately known as Sully), you saw his meltdown over the first presidential debate, with such carefully titled posts as "Does Obama Want Out?" and "Did Obama Just Throw The Entire Election Away?" Since then, he's run some dissenting emails and some supporting emails, but the general message has stayed the same; even in a short post on how Clinton said something, Sully throws in a jab at Obama: "Could the president switch off ESPN for a second and take notes?" (cite)

Over at the Awl, Ken Layne pierces Sully's narcissism and hyperventilating. Layne notes that "There are no small moments in Andrew Sullivan's online world": everything is always the end of the world--as long as it affects Sully directly. (Seriously, check it out: he grudgingly admitted that there was a GOP war on women though he found the term "shrill"--and then he turned around and declared that there was a war on gays. Because if it affects Sully, then it's a serious issue in his world.)

So when Obama had a disappointing performance, it's not just a political issue for Sully, it's a personal attack and affront. Which leads to the second problem with Sully: overestimating his own feelings and thoughts. This is a common problem for pundits, who often claim that "politician X would be doing a lot better if only he embraced the issue that I care about." With Sully, this is Bowles-Simpson, a ridiculous grand bargain that smart people on the left call "the cat food commission" because of its likely outcome: slashing care for the elderly and needy. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Obama can safely lose the gay Anglo-American Irish Catholic Oxford-educated PhD vote without significantly altering his electoral chances. Only Sully's pride will be hurt.

This is Monday Morning Quarterbacking at its best: histrionic and self-assured. And what really drives home the lesson today is Sully's "woe is me" comments on moving to New York City with a very lucrative contract, a ridiculous post titled "New York Shitty" that ends with the plaintive cry of the oppressed: "Please tell me it gets better." Oh, pobrecito! Let's all make sure Sully finds New York bearable with his $1m blogging gig.

No, let's be honest: New York can be hard to deal with; Obama had a disappointing performance at the debate. And yet, the world still somehow goes on. Sully will often excuse his kneejerk wrong reactions by noting that he's thinking in real time (unlike the rest of us who somehow get extra time from our hook-up with the Gallifreyans?) and responding with his gut, but maybe it's time for Sully to take a deep breath and admit that his gut has shit for brains.

How does a book shape a country?; Or, Why can't you read?

This is late news, but then again, this is a semi-moribund blog, so it fits.

Starting in late June, the Library of Congress put on a display of Books That Shaped America, which is the kind of title that demands to be shouted from the rooftops. It's a collection of 88 books by American authors that "have had a profound effect on American life." 

There are numerous problems with a list like this. For instance, presentism: we read the development of America from a particular point in time, so certain things will seem more or less important now than they once were. 

Case in point: Moby Dick, which has been around for roughly 150 years but pretty much only read for 100. So if you organizing this exhibit in 1900 and wanted to include Moby Dick, there's a chance you would've been locked up as incurably crazy. It's true that it's shaped reading lists in schools for the past century, but how has that really shaped America? Here's a counterfactual thought experiment: Imagine a US where Moby Dick was never written--what's different from our world?

Case in point (2): I would've included some Jonathan Edwards, an important theologian, author of "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," and intellectual forebear of the Great Awakening--even though he's not all that important to America today in a direct way.

Another problem--though it's probably a self-conscious strategy on the part of the LoC--is that the concept of "shaping" is inherently vague. So the exhibition can say that The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was a best-seller (in England), but that's a far cry from saying that it started a tradition of American supernatural folk-tales or somehow shaped America in some way besides making money.

So the list has problems, sure, but it also has a built-in argument that these are some of the books that shaped America. This isn't an exclusive list; and it isn't even presenting itself as a list of the books that most shaped America. This is simply an exhibition to start a conversation. If you don't like this list, make up your own to add the books that you think should be added to this category.

That said, there's a lot of predictable boo-hooing about how mean this list is to religious-Americans or otherwise fails--complaints that tend to cast more light on the writer's ignorance or perversity than on the list's failure. 

For instance, professor of religion Stephen Prothero complains that there's not enough religion on the list; we could call this the "Where's the Bible?" problem, as I've seen that question asked around the internet in comments. Except the list is clearly restricted to American authors and people would know that if they bothered to read the info. Prothero knows this, but oddly calls the restriction "a technicality," making it sound as if it's a quibbling little detail instead of the organizing principle of the whole exhibit. He probably means that it's "arbitrary," which is fair, but then most organizing principles are. It's especially telling that his list (in a book you can buy now!) includes several non-book items, like a memorial, which shows how non-conventional his thinking is--or how he refuses to obey the rules of the game.

On the more materialistic end of the spectrum, Reason magazine blogger Tim Cavanaugh complains that there aren't enough best-sellers (because, for a Libertarian, the market is always right). I agree in parts with Cavanaugh's argument about presentism, though it pains me to be on the same side as someone who can't bother to look up how to spell Edgar Allan Poe's name. But Cavanaugh's organizing principle ("Who made the most money?") is so blinkered and narrow that it comes out self-parodizing: "to shape America" is the same thing for this crowd as "to make money." Cavanaugh's entry ends on the perfect note, with a complaint that the LoC has too many librarians. Because who needs librarians when you have best-seller lists?

The Economist and mealy-mouthed press

I've said before that it seems to me like the current conservative/Republican party movement is an unstable conglomerate, full of people who wouldn't share any structure together other than a big tent: there are

1. the Romney-supporting moderate/realists (or closet nuts); 
2. the Santorum-supporting religious right; 
3. the Paul-supporting libertarian right (i.e., financially libertarians, socially conservative); and 
4. the Gingrich-supporting haters-of-liberals. (You can tell them because they're the ones who say that you should do something because it annoys a liberal. Heck, Sarah Palin said that almost exactly: vote for Gingrich to annoy a liberal.)

I hope for a conservative fracture in part because it bothers me that people who have such diverse views feel the need to vote together. (I hate libertarians and I think most are essentially conservative; but there is some liberal-libertarian overlap that could be reached if not for Paul's figurehead leadership.) Also, I wouldn't mind if these single-issue voters fractured since it would cede power to the Democrats.

But more importantly this conglomerate mess bothers me because you end up arguing with a moderate who disavows some extreme view--but then both the moderate and the extremist go into a booth and vote the same way.

(Some political bloggers I follow argue that moderate Republicans tend to vote the same as the more extreme Republicans--that their moderation is more an electoral strategy than a policy conviction. Judging by the last few years, it's hard to argue with that; though I think it's probable that more extreme politicians start more extreme policy and the moderates in the Republican Party just go along. For what it's worth, Democratic moderates seem more interested in fighting other Democrats, cf. Manchin in WV.)

So for a few years now, some hopeful political bloggers have argued that moderate Republicans would some day take back their party.

But moderate Republicans will never be in charge as long as they're coddled by a mealy-mouthed, "both sides do it"horse-race press.

And one big example of that is  The Economist, which is a realpolitick, conservative magazine with a nasty inability to tell the truth. That is, The Economist would be happiest with a globalized, laissez-faire, tax-the-poor world (more or less), but they're not global-warming-denying, dinosaurs-missed-the-ark crazies.

And yet whenever The Economist podcast discusses American politics, it always comes out with mealy-mouthed narratives about how partisan gridlock is paralyzing the nation--without ever noting how the Republican Party is blocking nominations and legislation at an unprecedented rate.

Wikipedia goes dark for 24 hours--great protest or best protest ever?

In a few hours (oh god, is it Eastern, Central, or Pacific?), Wikipedia will go dark for 24 hours to protest SOPA/PIPA, bills before Congress that everyone who likes communication dislikes. The only people who like those bills are IP-owning corporations (which, sure, they're people, right?).

Over the past few weeks, SOPA/PIPA have been altered a bit to make them less onerous on people, but they're still bad bills and potentially disruptive to the Enlightenment project that Wikipedia is engaged in (i.e., spreading information, preferably correct information, but let's remember that Diderot's Encyclopedie wasn't 100% accurate. The important thing is the corrigibility of the information: the project is the accumulation itself--this is science that we're engaged in, not theology).

I don't want to get deep into SOPA/PIPA, I just want to give some props to Wikipedia for coming up with a protest that's gotten attention and will continue to get attention. And what a great protest it is: it's a direct inquiry to users of Wikipedia, asking if this is the sort of world they want to live in. Do you want to live in a world without Wikipedia? Sure, we all joke about how annoying it is that some students use Wikipedia as a single-stop plagiarism store; or how they think it's the alpha and omega of research.

But all joking aside, Wikipedia is a huge resource that I use all the time. (Note to self: donate more to Wikipedia.) It won't be fun tomorrow, to go through 24 hours without Wikipedia, but I'd rather go without Wikipedia for a day to ensure that it survives the ever-oncoming copyright-holders onslaught.

Should we have invaded North Korea?

Christopher Hitchens, Vaclav Havel, and Kim Jong Il--which of these was a threat to the world?

It seems clear that, among those three recent deaths, it's Kim Jong Il who leaves the world a better place merely by leaving the world. (At the very least, no more Kim Jong Il-directed films like his 1985 monster movie, Pulgasari.) I don't know what this will mean for North Korea (and it's nuclear program), but it seems like his son Kim Jong Un will take over with some disruptions. (This blog post at the New Yorker argues that the regime will probably survive with Chinese assistance, in part because China doesn't want a collapsing state on its borders. No word on how South Korea would react to a nearby collapse.)

But since Christopher Hitchens recently died and all his bad support for the Iraq War is getting a necessary airing, I wonder what he would say about Kim Jong Il's death and its potential to change that country without American soldiers and money. Because I liked Hitch best when he was excoriating religion, it's hard for me to imagine him as a foreign policy commentator. (Luckily, with Greenwald on the beat, I don't have to imagine what an idiot Hitch could be about Iraq and endless war on terror.)

But I don't need to imagine how Hitch felt about North Korea:

These conclusions of his, in a finely argued and brilliantly written book, carry the worrisome implication that the propaganda of the regime may actually mean exactly what it says, which in turn would mean that peace and disarmament negotiations with it are a waste of time—and perhaps a dangerous waste at that.

I like the way Hitch leaves the sentence with "disarmament negotiations with it are a waste of time," which slightly buries the lead--that "peace... with it [is] a waste of time." What a thinker! Who else would have the courage to suggest that peace is a waste of time? This is from a review written in 2010 and it sure seems like Hitch is gearing up for a war to remove Kim Jong Il--a mission which has been accomplished by time.

So, the world is better without Kim Jong Il--and maybe without Christopher Hitchens.

Addendum:
I especially like the way Hitch ends this review, with the note that the North Koreans are basically like Wells's Morlocks:

Unlike previous racist dictatorships, the North Korean one has actually succeeded in producing a sort of new species. Starving and stunted dwarves, living in the dark, kept in perpetual ignorance and fear, brainwashed into the hatred of others, regimented and coerced and inculcated with a death cult: This horror show is in our future, and is so ghastly that our own darling leaders dare not face it and can only peep through their fingers at what is coming.

What does it mean that "This horror show is in our future"? It sure does sound like the end of The Time Machine, where the bourgeois Londoners ignore the dangers of devolution; but it also nicely situates those who recognize the danger (i.e., Hitch, other warmongers) as having a super-temporal view of what needs to be done.

How many pageviews is your good name worth?

This post is light on links because it's about linkwhores--and who wants to give them the satisfaction. In case you don't know, a linkwhore is someone who wants links; but I'm particularly interested in those who go ahead and write inflammatory material in order to get attention.

Recently, a writer at Forbes named Gene Marks wrote a ridiculously dumb piece about how, if he were a poor black child, he would overcome all his difficulties just by working hard and being better and using technology. And he rightfully got ripped all up and down the internet.

Now, there's a chance that Gene Marks is an authentically dumb person on the topic of race and opportunity. But there's also a chance that he wrote a dumb piece in order to get attention (i.e., links). After all, many contributing writers get paid according to the number of pageviews, so it's not impossible to think that our outrage is his financial gain.

Unfortunately for Gene Marks, things that happen on the internet tend to stick around, as teenagers on Facebook learn to their regret every day. So, how much do you think he'll ultimately pay for this?

Unfortunately, as Alex Pareene recently noted in his hacks of the year list, most hacks still have a job  being hacky--maybe because they're hacks, not despite that.

Conservate hate machine

When I started this blog, I told myself that I wouldn't let it become too much of an end zone-dance celebration of conservative failures. (Although, my second post was about how Rick Perry and Christine O'Donnell reacted dumbly to being questioned, so you can see how far I got with that plan.)

But I have to comment on Erick Erickson's "confession", in which he confesses that he breathes oxygen. No, wait, he confesses that Newt Gingrich makes him uncomfortable--which is like confessing that he breathes oxygen. Don't we all feel a little uncomfortable around Newt. Exhibit A:


We could discuss Erickson's fetishization of character--what makes Erickson uncomfortable with Newt is his history of marital fidelity, not Newt's questionable political history. But what I particularly liked in this confession was Erickson's paean to Rick Perry:

I hope for a Perry rebound. He’s on his first wife still and has the most consistent record of conservative policies. And we hate the same people and institutions. We have the same general world view. 

Emphasis mine, because--my god--how could I not emphasize that Erickson's political leanings seem to be motivated by affect. Maybe that's an attempt at humor (which doesn't mean it's not true); and maybe he doesn't feel the need to elaborate what he hates since this is on RedState.com (where everyone knows what he hates--Commerce, Education, and, uh, the third one).

But can you imagine a worse way to run a movement than (1) to fetishize character ("on his first wife still")--especially in a form that has so many factors. (I mean, where's the wife's agency and personhood in Erickson's formulation? Or is marriage just an expression of the husband's character?); (2) to ignore policy deficits while lauding conservative consistency (what about Perry and the children of undocumented immigrants?; what about vaccinations for children?)--which is just another way of emphasizing character over politics; and (3) to found your support on undefined hate.

Actually, maybe hate wouldn't be such a bad foundation for a movement; only I always get the feeling that conservative hate is poorly directed--fine, eliminate Commerce, but what about the Census?--and so often defined as "liberals like X, therefore I hate X."

Why mic checking is like Kanye West interrupting Taylor Swift

Occupy Wall Street got banged around a bit for its hand-signal method of deriving consensus, as if reporters couldn't tell the difference between alternative methods of communication and jazz hands. (It reminded me of this comedy sketch where this ancient Roman invents clapping while all the others--who still wave their togas to signal approval--are appalled.) Personally, I think OWS hand signals allow for a greater level of precision and participation than clapping; but I can understand that, from the outside, it might look ridiculous.

By contrast, I haven't seen as much criticism of the human microphone. (Exception: John Oliver did a Daily Show segment where he said the human microphone was annoying.) In Zuccotti Park, the human microphone seemed like a sensible way to get around restrictions on electronic amplification; and it's spread to other Occupy groups since it fits so well with the ideology: the human microphone is participatory, consensual (you have to agree to repeat what someone else says), potentially equalizing (everyone can potentially speak with the same volume), and group-oriented.

(Which makes me think of the "edge" scene from The Lady from Shanghai:

“A guy with an edge. What makes him [points to the jukebox] sing better than me? Something in here [points to his throat]. What makes it loud? A microphone. That’s his edge.”
“Edge?”
“A gun or a knife, a nightstick, or a razor, something the other guy ain’t got. Yeah, a little extra reach on a punch, a set of brass knuckles, a stripe on the sleeve, a badge that says cop on it, a rock in your hand, or a bankroll in your pocket. That’s an edge, brother. Without an edge, there ain’t no tough guy.”

The human microphone might seem like a blunt instrument, but you could say that's the point--it removes edges.)

So we all love the human microphone at Occupy rallies; but what about the recent use of "mic checks" to interrupt speakers or politicians giving speeches? It still has all that participatory goodness; and it levels the playing field between people with microphones and people without. But even if it's a group activity, it's still basically heckling and shutting down someone else's ability to be heard.

I mean, we can all agree that Kanye West looked like a jerk interrupting Taylor Swift to register his dissent over her VMA win; so would he have looked like less of a jerk if there were a group of people repeating what he said? I think he'd still look like a jerk, whether he was borrowing Swift's microphone or brought his own.

So I'm not thrilled with the increasing number of mic checks, though I love the human microphone at rallies.

What's the value of those "where I was on 9/11" posts?

This may sound awfully curmudgeonly, but why do so many people write posts/articles about where they were on 9/11? Why is there even a site dedicated to collecting these stories? I don't want to tell people how to run their blogs/columns/skywriting service, but I am curious as to what the impulse is behind this.

Is there something therapeutic about returning to memories of that day--are the writers trying to work through their trauma (or the traumatic lack of trauma for those who have very tenuous connections to the famous sites of that day)? Are they offering their stories as part of some collective attempt to capture that day in the hope that... what? Is there some trace of self-indulgence in thinking about the unalloyed trauma --before things got really bad--as pointed out by this Onion article, "Nation Would Rather Think About 9/11 Than Anything From Subsequent 10 Years."

When my parents tell me where they were when Kennedy was shot, it helps me understand my parents more; and it gives me a view of history that I might not otherwise have. Maybe some future generations will get that same educational value out of these stories of where regular people were on 9/11; but I don't care to read them because I can't see the value.

What's the difference between "ferrets out" and "sighs"? (On Andrew Sullivan)

Actually, this is a post on speaker attribution, but it's sexier to say it's about Andrew Sullivan (meaning: Andrew Sullivan's blog).

I greatly enjoy Sullivan, even though he's frequently wrong (he generally admits it, eventually) and has a worldview (Catholicism, conservatism) that means that, on some level, we disagree about the foundational facts about existence. And this goes (broadly speaking) for his under-bloggers and interns--I have some differences with them, but I generally think they bring up interesting things.

But Sullivan & co. occasionally drive me crazy with their speaker attribution verbs--"says," "ferrets out," "sighs," etc. 

For instance, recently, Zoë Pollock recently wrote that "Kristin Dombek ferrets out one reason for The Book of Mormon's success"; and then Pollock goes on to quote Dombek talking about the success of religion. That's an obvious mistake and a somewhat common one over at The Daily Dish: they often quote the part that seems most interesting (why is religion successful?) even when they point to the actual topic of the essay (why is The Book of Mormon successful?).

But that's not what bugs me. What bugs me is that Pollock refers to Dombek's speculation as "ferret[ing] out." Did Dombek hunt for this insight intensively? Did she bring this truth to light by following it down some rabbit hole? Or did she look at some stuff and say, "hey, here's an idea I have that isn't really supported by any particularly large body of evidence?"

Now, I enjoyed Dombek's piece, but I think Pollock throws a little too much weight behind Dombek's idea through her choice of words--and what's worse, does so without coming out and saying it.

To be fair, though, Pollock is just one person and you can see that this issue is pretty widespread at the Dish if you look for "sighs" as a speaker attribution; for a few examples: "Adam Serwer sighs" (and here), "Greg Scoblete sighs," "Amanda Marcotte sighs," "Felix Salmon sighs."

It makes me wonder if Sullivan sees other people as balloons with tiny pricks in them, slowly sighing out their disappointment.

What's so great about political gaffes?

Like it's older uncle, the Freudian slip, the political gaffe is supposed to show us the truth beneath the mask we wear, whether that truth is repressed (Freud's real interest) or merely secret (the usual way we think of Freudian slips).

And perhaps we're particularly interested in political gaffes because politicians are such slick products: like iPods, politicians are not supposed to have anything but a surface. So any reminder of how politicians have invisible interiors will get our attention.

(Perhaps this also helps explain why charges of hypocrisy are always so interesting to us: Larry Craig's sexual misadventures reveal something interior and hidden, whereas a Barney Frank man-scandal would be a little less juicy since his homosexuality is on the surface. Although there we have an infidelity angle, and anti-gay advocates would make hay of that charge of hypocrisy.)

Taking a slightly different tack, On the Media recently did a segment on the life of political gaffes, which boils down to confirmation bias: if you think someone is an idiot, you're more likely to recall moments when they said something idiotic. I think this does a pretty good job explaining (away) many gaffes and their lack of power to sway: many gaffes expose a truth we're already supposed to know.

Which makes it seem like gaffes are really not that important when it comes to well-known, national figures, since 1) everyone pretty much knows what they think about these figures; and 2) these figures have a long history of speaking and acting that should reveal to us their priorities.

So, for instance, Perry says he's opposed to Social Security; and maybe his language is interesting (why "unconstitutional"?); and maybe now he's trying to walk back that language (or chew his way out--and as usual, cover-ups make you look worse than the initial problem); but if he hadn't said that, would anyone doubt that he's an orthodox Republican/radical conservative? (Is there really a difference now between those two?)

There are some gaffes that are revealing--for instance, since no one is supposed to be racist, a gaffe revealing a politician's racism may expose something previously unknown; but by and large, the political gaffe today is an exercise in high-fiving your friends. When was the last time a gaffe really pulled the mask down and showed us an interior truth?

Are magicians made or born?

This idea has popped up a few times at all my favorite web hangouts, so I think it's time someone burst this particular bubble. Let me sharpen my needle.

On the science fiction (and occasional fantasy) blog io9, author David Liss makes the claim that our idea about magic has changed: it used to be that anyone could be a magician--all you needed was the right book or the right pact with the devil (or whomever); but sometime in the last century, our idea of magic has become more elitist--only those who are born with the right spark can become magicians. Without any claim to certainty, Liss pegs this change to around the time of Bewitched, which wins him points, because I used to love that show.

Pretty soon, Alyssa Rosenberg was making some interesting connections between this idea (magic is only for special people) and a sense of powerlessness that we might feel in the face of powerful forces--dynastic, corporate, or what-have-you. (I'd want to connect that to Carl Freedman's comments in 2004 on the transition in GOP politicians from Reagan--the everyman--to Schwarzenegger--the inhuman. But just because I like this idea of Rosenberg's doesn't mean it's true.) And then Andrew Sullivan thought this idea was worth linking to.

But it's not. And here's why:

(1) Liss doesn't really provide any evidence demonstrating that there was this shift from the everyman magician (everymage?) to the elite born magician.

He mentions Faust, which I'll give him: anyone can pact with the Devil and become a magician or witch. He also could have mentioned the magical scientists/mathematicians, like Pythagoras or Paracelsus--anyone can be an alchemist or magical-scientist, since all you need in those cases is to be smart enough to understand the formula/read Enochian/run the numbers. And let's add Shakespeare's Prospero as a significant figure of the "being a magician is a choice" school of thought. (After all, Prospero could quit being a wizard because being a wizard wasn't an intrinsic part of him.)

(Actually, "read Enochian" is an interesting example, since Enochian was the work of two people--the everyman John Dee and the special medium Edward Kelley. Gosh, it's hard to come up with examples to support Liss.)

Against those examples, we have Merlin, often a half-demon; Tolkien's inhuman wizards; Leiber's inhuman Ningauble of the Seven Eyes and Sheelba of the Eyeless Face; Ursula K. Le Guin's Ged (born of a smith, but born special); and pretty much every other case of a chosen hero having a special destiny--and most of those are clearly before Bewitched. 

(Sidenote hypothesis: It's no surprise that the everyman using magic often occurs in horror--c.f., any Lovecraftean story--whereas the innate magician often appears in more epic genres, like fantasy.)

So, before I could give Liss this point, I'd really like to see more examples proving the switch from everymage to elite mage.

(2) Further, Liss's argument slips between the idea of inherited power and innate power--both of which may be undemocratic and elitist, but which aren't the same sort of undemocratic elitism.

That is, if anyone can be a magician, you've got a wide degree of social mobility: for example, the village smith can become a wizard if only he finds the right book or makes the right pact or etc.--this is the scenario that Liss wants (everymage). This is the radically democratic model.

But if magical power is inherited, you have no social mobility at all: in that case, only wizards can become wizards (tautology intended)--and this is the scenario that Liss fears is dominant today (the elite mage). This is the radically undemocratic elitist model.

But if power is innate--but not inherited--then you've got a wide degree of generational social mobility: the smith can't become a wizard, but his son can become a wizard. (Cf. Ged in Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea.)

The perfect example of this is the most popular contemporary wizarding world, Harry Potter: one's parental magic ability is not an absolute predictor of your magical ability. Magical parents have unmagical children and vice versa; for example, Hermione Granger may face social stigma for her unmagical family, but she could still be the most powerful wizard in the world.

That model is undemocratic and elitist--but not radically so (which is kind of the scenario that Liss paints).

(3) Liss ends his post with this impassioned and rather touching comment:

From Aladdin to the Golden Ass to Faust, in the past we told stories about people who acquire the ability to do magic--and sometimes benefit and sometimes suffer. That could be us. Now we tell ourselves stories about magical people who struggle to deal with their special gifts. Those people are not us...

And yet, we used to tell stories about Greek gods and demi-gods and mythic heroes--figures who were innately what they were, who were categorically different from us. We could all aspire to be heroic, but we didn't need to identify ourselves completely with these figures to do so. It seems crazy to claim that we used to tell stories only about people we could identify with. This is a touching comment, and I think Liss might not be totally wrong (see my above comment on the transition from everyman Reagan to inhuman Schwarzenegger as political model).

But the brush he paints with is too broad. This is a bubble that practically pops itself.

So, Liss's essay is thought-provoking, but doesn't work since (1) it lacks evidence of the shift he posits; (2) slips between two forms of elite notions that aren't the same; and (3) misrepresents our narrative legacy of caring about--identifying with--characters who are different from us.

Is Colbert good for liberals?

Behind this question about Colbert and liberalism, there's a larger question here about the role of comedy in politics, but I'm going to ignore that larger question for now.

(And by "ignore," I mean I'm going to say just this: Daily Show-co-creator Lizz Winstead says (to Alyssa Rosenberg at ThinkProgress) that one of the difficulties of conservative humor is that it's harder to defend the status quo with humor. That doesn't seem right to me; I agree more with Martha Nussbaum when she pointed out that parody can be used for progressive ends (parodying gender norms) or for conservative ends (parodying the flaunting of gender norms). Not all subversive parodies are progressive.

(I might want to say that, even though it's easy to imagine conservative humor existing, there isn't a lot of it around now; but the truth is, it's probably just not very funny to me. Like pictures of Obama as an African witch doctor--that shit probably kills in certain circles.)

Now that I've ignored that bigger question, let's get to the particular question: is Colbert good for liberals?

Some friends and family recently told me that they feel bad for Colbert's liberal guests, since the guests can't keep up with him; and since Colbert is such a magnetic personality, the audience might end up liking him and his conservative/ironic worldview. In other words: the sincere liberals look like saps and the "conservative" ironist looks affable and calm. (Unless Jane Fonda is crawling into his lap. More of this, please!)

Satire and parody are notoriously difficult to read; and Colbert is a great example of that, since he was the object of that study that showed that liberals see him as satirical and conservatives see him as sincere. And part of that problem is that today's conservatives seem largely to exist in a realm of self-parody--it's not always easy to tell The Onion from The New York Times when the subject is conservatives.

But however much fun Colbert is to watch, I think his character remains distant from the audience for several reasons, not limited to his stupidity and venality. (His shilling for Prescott Pharmaceuticals is in the same register as his shilling for Republican policies.) Even more important, Colbert remains distant precisely because of his irony, which is not too hard to recognize most of the time.

(And if you don’t believe that, you could watch his regular show and his show from Iraq and notice the difference; Colbert breaks character sometimes to laugh at the jokes in his regular show, but he breaks character all the time in Iraq when he’s talking about something he sincerely cares about.)

So, yes, Colbert sometimes steam-rolls his guests, and if he’s talking to liberal guests, it can seem as if his steam-rolling is bad for liberalism. But I don’t think that’s the case, because in those situations, the joke is usually on Colbert; for instance, when Colbert asks a guest, “Bush: great president or the greatest president?,” we don’t laugh at the guest, who can’t answer, but at Colbert, who has such a limited view of the world and is clearly cheating to maintain that worldview.

So I don’t think he’s bad for American liberalism. We like watching Colbert, but no one wants to be him. Unless Jane Fonda is crawling into his lap.