Acephalous

Brief translation of today’s Sotomayor hearing for those of you without access to C-SPAN 71.

2009-07-14T20:14:25-07:00

JON KYL (R): I want to go back through the—I’ve read your speeches, and I’ve read all of them several times.

[I am committed to maintaining the appearance that I possess the minimum degree of competence and responsibility required by my office.]

JON KYL (R): You’ve always been able to find a legal basis for every decision that you’ve rendered as a judge?

[By which I mean: I'll read a few speeches a few times, but I can't be bothered to do the work necessary to actually acquire the minimum degree of competence and responsibility required by my office.]

JON KYL (R): Issues which are similar is different, though, from an issue which is the same.

[Just in case I didn't make myself absolutely clear: I don't possess the minimum degree of competence and responsibility required by my office.]

LINDSEY GRAHAM (R): What does [legal realism] mean for someone who may be watching the hearing?

[Have you done your homework?]

LINDSEY GRAHAM (R): When Judge Rehnquist says he was a strict constructionist, did you know what he was talking about?

[Because I don't think you've done your homework.]

LINDSEY GRAHAM (R): What is an originalist?

[Do you know what happens to naughty students who don't do their homework?]

LINDSEY GRAHAM (R): Do you believe the Constitution is a living, breathing, evolving document?

[They get asked loaded questions designed to appeal to the teacher's constituents, that's what.]

LINDSEY GRAHAM (R): Do you think Roe v. Wade changed American society?

[Just in case you thought I was kidding about those loaded questions.]

LINDSEY GRAHAM (R): Is there anything in the Constitution that says a state legislator or the Congress cannot regulate abortion or the definition of life in the first trimester?

[Because I wasn't.]

LINDSEY GRAHAM (R): I like you, by the way, for whatever that matters. Since I may vote for you that ought to matter to you. One thing that stood out about your record is that when you look at the almanac of the federal judiciary, lawyers anonymously rate judges in terms of temperament. And here’s what they said about you. She’s a terror on the bench. She’s temperamental, excitable, she seems angry. She’s overall aggressive, not very judicial. She does not have a very good temperament. She abuses lawyers. She really lacks judicial temperament.

[Everyone knows you're a bitch, but I'll refrain from agreeing with them for a few more questions to keep up the appearance of impartiality.]

LINDSEY GRAHAM (R): Are you the only one that asks tough questions in oral arguments?

[Exactly how long have you been such a bitch?]

LINDSEY GRAHAM (R): Let’s talk about the wise Latino comment, yet again.

[Now is you is, or is you ain't, my constituency?]

LINDSEY GRAHAM (R): I can’t find the quote, but I’ll find it here in a moment—the wise Latino quote. I’ve got it: “I would hope that a wise Latino [sic] woman, with the richness of her experience, would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male.”

[Latino women clearly ain't my constituency.]

DICK DURBIN (D): While white victims account for about one-half of all murder victims, 80 percent of death penalty cases involve victims who are white. This raises from obvious questions we have to face on this side of the table. I’m asking you if it raises questions of justice and fairness on your side of the table.

[I am a white person. You are not. Will you protect white people like me from people like you?]

JEFFERSON BEAUREGARD SESSIONS, III (R): Aren’t you saying there that you expect your background and—and heritage to influence your decision-making?

[White people have history; minorities have ethnicity. Will you people treat us white folk with the respect our history demands?]

JEFFERSON BEAUREGARD SESSIONS, III (R): When I present evidence, I expect the judge to hear and see all the evidence that gets presented. How is it appropriate for a judge ever to say that they will choose to see some facts and not others?

[Do you hold my truths to be self-evident?]

JEFFERSON BEAUREGARD SESSIONS, III (R): Judge, on the—so philosophy can impact your judging. I think it’s much more likely to reach full flower if you sit on the Supreme Court, and then you will—than it will on a lower court where you’re subject to review by your colleagues in the higher court.

[If I put this cookie on the table and leave the room, will it still be there when I get back? Because this is my cookie—my white cookie—and how am I to know you won't eat my white cookie when I leave the room and replace it with a brown cookie?]

JEFFERSON BEAUREGARD SESSIONS, III (R): Was the fact that the New Haven firefighters had been subject to discrimination one of the facts you chose not to see in this case?

[Because I see what you did with their fine white cookies.]

JEFFERSON BEAUREGARD SESSIONS, III (R): Had you voted with Judge Cabranes, himself of—of—of Puerto Rican ancestry—had you voted with him, you—you—you could have changed that case.

[You people are always doing that to our cookies.]

JEFFERSON BEAUREGARD SESSIONS, III (R): But do you think that Frank Ricci and the other firefighters whose claims you dismissed felt that their arguments and concerns were appropriately understood and acknowledged by such a short opinion from the court?

[Do you even feel bad when despoil the purity of our fine white cookies?]

CHUCK SCHUMER (D): Now, I’m just going to go to a group of cases here rather than one individual case. We could go—we could do this all day long where sympathy, empathy would be on one side, but you found rule of law on the other side and you sided with rule of law.

[Will you idiots stop worrying about your damn cookies and act like fucking adults already?]

(x-posted.)

I'm sure this has nothing at all to do with me calling out a prominent conservative on her stupidity . . .

2009-07-13T18:57:27-07:00

. . . but check out the comments that have been posted in the last hour:

In case you're counting, that would be two typical entries and a billion-zillion of this odd new breed. I'm closing comments on older posts and CAPTCHA will be in effect until these useless waves stop crashing. I apologize for the inconvenience.

A stubbornness in the face of fact that is unbecoming of an academic.

2009-07-12T14:51:31-07:00

(Before I get started, I want to acknowledge that I know Ann Althouse is an attention fiend, and as such revels in any that comes her way. Furthermore, I know that giving her the attention she craves will only embolden her to spout even more outrageous nonsense in the future. However, the white-hotness of her intellectual dishonesty here compels me to consider it a vacuity of historical import. Future scholars will read this post and realize that this was the moment crypto-conservatives discovered the fact that no matter how shallow their waters were, Zeno and his paradox prevented them from ever being emptied altogether.)

It may not be breaking new that the President copped a glance at a young Mayara Rodrigues Tavare last week:

But I want to call your attention to Ann Althouse’s “close-reading” of the photograph:

Obama’s arms hang free, emphasizing the tilt, and either gravity or will causes the left arm to hang inches away from the torso. See how much lower the right hand is than the left? His neck is craned out and around so that the line of sight is directly at the ass. His mouth is open as if to say: That’s what I want.

When presented with video evidence to the contrary, she curtly replied:

I have seen the video, and I stand by my analysis of the still photograph.

She watched video evidence that refutes her analysis and stands by it anyway. But I believe she can be forgiven for insisting, essentially, that photograph is what it is, because she knows nothing about photography. A competent photographer would know, for example, what forced perspective is, and that the effect sometimes occurs accidentally, such that a child innocently swatting an insect might appear to be brutalizing a baby (Exhibit 1). This occurs because both subjects are within the depth of field:

The Batman who is too close the camera is as blurry as the one too far away. Only the Batman within the depth of field is in focus. Accidental forced perspective happens because auto-focusing cameras increase the depth of field and flatten the picture. Objects both near and far remain in focus, such that when you innocently shoot this:

You end up with this. Modern cameras flatten images by making it appear as if everything within the depth of field is the same distance from the photographer. The effect can be exaggerated by having one object both further away and occupying higher ground (Exhibit 2, Exhibit 3, Exhibit 4, Exhibit 5), but the general principle remains: so long as both objects are in focus, they will appear to be the same distance from the photographer.

The video of Obama clearly shows that not only is he moving toward the camera as Ms. Tavare walks away from it, he is also moving from a higher position to a lower one relative to the photographer. In short, anyone with any knowledge of photography would know that Obama looks to a right that is three feet in front of Ms. Tavare, but that because of a perfect storm of aperture and architecture, the flattened image gives the impression that he is scoping out the underage Brazilian.

Only it doesn’t even do that.

A competent judge of images would notice that Obama is not entirely in focus, meaning that he is only entering the depth of field; whereas Ms. Tavare is crisply focused, meaning that she is currently within the depth of field. That bears repeating: she is within the depth of field that Obama is just entering, and must therefore be closer to the photographer than he is.

Given that Obama cannot be both closer to and further away from the photographer than Ms. Tavare, anyone with any photographic expertise would recognize that Obama can’t possibly be, as Althouse in her ignorance observes, “caught [in a] moment of as-yet-unconstrained pursuit,” because he can’t see her behind when he’s in front of her.

If Althouse knew anything about photography, she would know this. But because she doesn’t, we can forgive her for—what’s that you say? She considers herself something an expert on the subject? Quit pulling my leg. No one who regularly shoots anything could not notice that Obama’s only just coming into focus—she posts photographs to her blog daily? Really? You mean to tell me that someone who knows about photography and has seen the video insists that Obama shot Ms. Vasare a lascivious glance?

Maybe we still ought to forgive her anyway, because it’s difficult to tell from low-resolution versions of that photograph like the one she posted that the high-resolution version on which it’s based has been digitally manipulated to make Obama look sharper. What do I mean? Sharpening tools increase the contrast between adjacent pixels. Say I take a picture of a President with a blurry hand:

I can sharpen that hand so it looks less blurry:

But because that hand was so blurry, I couldn't sharpen it without creating digital artifacts. The area I sharpened is a clearly-defined box in which the altered pixels are more distinct from their neighbors than those elsewhere in the picture are from theirs. Even the seemingly uniform blue background bears evidence of my sharpening.

Increasing the contrast between adjacent pixels also makes it appear as if there are more pixels in one area of the photograph than another. So when you encounter an image in which there appear to be more pixels in one clearly-demarcated area than another, you know that you are looking at an image that has been digitally sharpened. For example, compare the black hem and pantyhose adjacent to the hand in this random photograph:

See the box? Now compare the neckline of this black shirt to the shirt itself in the same photograph:

Now try and find the the contours of the sharpening box in this:

That was a trick question, as there are a couple of them in there. Here’s one:

Now, do I think these were deliberately nefarious edits—that is, do I believe Reuter’s Jason Reed circulated a photograph of Obama that was touched-up so that it appeared as if the President were sinning in his heart?

No.

Digital photographs are sharpened all the time because of the limitations of digital cameras. Reed likely saw that photograph, assumed he caught Obama peeking and sharpened the President’s hand and face because that’s what you do with hands and faces.

In this case, however, his minor alterations amount to editorial decisions, because the digital artifacts that are so obvious in the high-resolution photograph disappear in the conversion to web-friendlier lower resolutions. Reed’s de rigueur sharpening demonstrably changed the meaning of the moment he photographed, in effect creating an incident that never happened.

So perhaps we should be forgiving of Althouse despite her faux-expert and incompetent analysis, because in the photograph she “analyzed” it is more difficult—though by no means impossible—to see evidence of that digital manipulation. And I would be, were it not for the fact that once she viewed the video, she knew that Obama was not in a “stance.” According to any dictionary you care to consult—I’ll go with the OED—a “stance” is a “a standing-place, station, position,” from the Italian “stanza,” meaning “stopping place.”

Had she one whit of intellectual honesty, she would have viewed that video and changed her post to indicate that Obama was not in a “stance,” because just as one cannot be simultaneously in front of and behind something, one cannot be walking and stopped at the same time. If I am walking, I am not standing; if I am standing, I am not walking. Her analysis of his “stance” is a not an interpretative error: it is a material one. Her insistence that her analysis is sound despite this error and evidence to the contrary constitutes a stubbornness in the face of fact that is unbecoming of an academic.

If you take a picture of the moon and claim that the resulting photograph is proof that the moon’s a stationary object and then someone shows you a video of it moving across the night sky, you cannot claim that your interpretation of the event depicted in the photograph is still valid. What you are effectively claiming is that the photograph is a photograph, i.e. that it is a still image captured from a moving tableau. This is not a matter of interpretation, but a description of the medium; to claim otherwise is to deny the very reality to which the photograph pertains . . .

. . .which is precisely what Althouse is doing. Her analysis of a manipulated photograph trumps reality, and she can’t be bothered to articulate why exactly that is. But that won’t stop her (or the hoard of equally incompetent illiterates who base their opinion on her photographic “expertise”) from claiming that her “interpretation” is still valid. They’ll be doing that until the moon stops dead in the sky and falls to the stage they’ve mistaken for the world. I only hope the rest of us abandoned that theater long ago (but remain primed for the inevitable disappointment).

Update. Ahistoricality asks two sharp questions: first, why a professional photographer would enhance his photograph with the rectangular marquee tool (thereby creating boxes) instead of something like the magic wand. The answer is that he didn't have to---he could have used the more sophisticated tool---but that the evidence shows that he did. I suspect this has something to do with how fast he wanted the photograph distributed, as well as the fact that he knew it would be reproduced at lower resolutions, thereby mitigating the visibility of his manipulation. His second question is whether the apparent boxes are a normal effect of compression. They could be; however, normal compression results in a more evenly distributed pixelation effect, but as you can tell from that link, the box of more highly contrasted pixels is still visible beneath his cuff.

(x-posted.)

Those are likely to be some really awkward introductions.

2009-07-12T11:05:42-07:00

In May, the Mets' color team of Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling had some fun at the expense of the Braves' struggling right fielder Jeff Francoeur. Keith began by saying things like:

a patient hitter is quiet at the plate
a patient hitter waits for the ball to come to him
a patient hitter only swings at balls he can hit
a patient hitter is loose in the box
a patient hitter enters a zen-like state when the pitcher starts his motion
Jeff Francoeur is not a patient hitter

Only he didn't say "Jeff Francoeur is not a patient hitter." He said, "Jeff Francoeur looks demonic." The other color announcer, Ron Darling, pretended to call Hernandez out, so Keith buzzed the boys in the van for a still shot of Francoeur swinging. They sent up this:

"I told you," Keith said.

"I thought they banned greenies," Ron replied.

"Just look at him," Keith continued. "Bulging his eyes, flaring his nostrils, everything wrong with his approach at the plate is right there in his face."

"Patient hitters aren't about to bite through their bottom lip," Ron added. They continued in this vein for a minute or so, then asked for a shot of what Daniel Murphy—whose approach at the plate Hernandez absolutely adores—and they returned with something similar to this:

"See how Murph looks the ball into the catcher's glove?" Keith said. "See how he's not about to jump out of his shoes to swing at a pitch he can't hit."

"It doesn't look like the ball just insulted Daniel's mother," Ron said.

"Insulted?" Keith replied. "Bring that picture of Francoeur back up."

"That ball didn't 'insult' his mother," Keith said. "That ball did unspeakable things to—things we can't talk about on television to his mother. He hates that ball."

"Like Steve Martin in The Jerk," Ron added. "Except the guy really does hate those cans. Stay away from the cans!"

To which Keith replied: "Stay away from Francoeur!"

Care to guess who the Mets traded for this Friday?

Spencer Ackerman is (a) what the world needs now, (b) a new Frank Sinatra, (c) the bane of my existence, or (d) all of the above.

2009-07-10T19:04:12-07:00

It goes without saying—or should—that Spencer Ackerman is a national treasure. I never comment over there because of one of the folks who does, but Spencer damn near tops my increasingly shorter list of essential morning reads. That said, on those days I don’t have time to read in the mornings, I don’t—because I can’t—read him at all. My brain translates this:

Into this:

And I just can’t sleep once I’ve see that.

(This is less of a post and more of a frank admission of admiration. If all his peers had half his tenacity, DeLong could excise one loathsome category from his site.)

(x-posted.)

You know what's hilarious? When an industrial worker on a temporarry contract dies a horrible death.

2009-07-09T15:55:18-07:00

The reactions to this story disgust me. Consider BoingBoing:

A 29-year old worker died today when he fell into a giant vat of hot chocolate at a New Jersey factory. Hope someone at the scene had the presence of mind to question the oompah-loompahs.

Vincent Smith II, a working class grunt and former coma patient, falls into a vat of boiling liquid and is killed by a blow from an industrial agitator before the third-degree burns could do him in. I'm trying to think of something funnier than being concussed to death while drowning in a highly-viscous super-heated liquid, but I keep coming up empty. Maybe the time that that person with the Mexican-sounding name was cooked alive in an industrial dryer? (Which is funny-ironic on two fronts: because Mexicans are dirty and many of them are cooks.) Suggestions?

Bing? Bing. Bing bing? Bing bing bong. "Bong"? Bong.

2009-07-09T13:55:43-07:00

Kevin Drum convinced me to do what only John Quiggin ever does and you know what? I have a new appreciation for whatever sort of behind-the-scenes filtering Google does. What did I learn when I "binged" my name?

The Good: The pieces Kotsko and I wrote for Inside Higher Ed are linked everywhere: Bookforum, conference presentations, librarian sites, departmental pages, course pages.

The Bad: You can't search for links through bing, so the best I can do is tell to you search for my name and go through the thirty pages that show up.

The Good: People link to and reprint a lot of what I write at Edge of the American West.

The Bad: Many of those "people" are spam-type content aggregators that neither link nor credit me as the author.

The Good: Acephalous appears on more course and faculty pages than I can shake a hundred sticks at.

The Bad: They invariably refer to me as a "graduate student blogger."

The Good: Many people linked to things I've written in an attempt to engage me in a dialogue.

The Bad: Google never told me they did this, so these people likely think I snubbed them. (I didn't! Had I but known I would've responded!)

The Good: It seems like bing catches content no matter who it's attributed to, such that searching for my name results in links to what I've written even when my name or a link to one of my blogs isn't included.

The Bad: One such site must have had my prose in its metadata, because the only thing visible on the page were pictures of a naked white woman surrounded by fifty naked black men.

The Good: The image search doesn't turn up any pictures of me.

The Horror: It returns seventeen images of a bearded guy who sorta kinda looks like me smoking a series of gigantic bongs and is identified as "Scott Eric Kaufman from California." Future potential employers take note: that's not me.

You know what Rob Liefeld isn't?

2009-07-08T17:26:22-07:00

Before you ask: I can only suppose that it has something to do with the new Batwoman being a lesbian (which fact inspired the post that brings the creepiest Googlers here), but I don't read DC and so don't know. I guess this counts as a win?

Update: "That guy" need not worry, it's all on me.

The telos of the back cover

2009-07-08T11:44:09-07:00

I can imagine no more frustrating a reading experience than the one I just had with Iain M. Banks' Excession. Is it a great novel?

I don't know.

Is it a good novel?

I don't know.

Why don't I know?

Because I didn't—because I couldn't—read the novel on its own terms. I spent the entire time awaiting the arrival of a plot that never materialized. Why did I do that?

Because of the back cover:

[Diplomat Byr Genar-Hofoen has been selected by the Culture to undertake a delicate and dangerous mission. The Department of Special Circumstances—the Culture's espionage and dirty tricks section—has sent him off to investigate a 2,500-year-old mystery: the sudden disappearance of a star fifty times older than the universe itself. But in seeking the secret of the lost sun, Byr risks losing himself. There is only one way to break the silence of millennia: steal the soul of the long-dead starship captain who first encountered the star, and convince her to be reborn. And in accepting this mission, Byr will be swept into a vast conspiracy that could lead the universe into an age of peace . . . or to the brink of annihilation. ]

It should go without saying by now that none of that actually happens in the novel. There is a conspiracy and the name is correct—although it refers to only one of the novel's many characters—but the plot points on the back cover all refer to a single dream that character had on pp. 389-391. In retrospect, I find it difficult not to filter the events of the novel back through that short passage, and it almost works: the consciousness of a character (Zreyn Tramow) who witnessed the disappearance of that sun 2,500 years ago is slipped into Byr Genar-Hofoen's dream by a Mind (Grey Area) that plans to make contact with an "Outside Context Problem" (the titular "excession") similar to the disappearance of that sun, and at the end of the novel Tramow herself is awakened from storage shortly after the Grey Area enters the excession, but these are minor plot points unworthy of even being labeled as spoilers.*

Because of the teleology imposed upon the novel by the back cover, however, every other element of the novel is subsumed by this bit of narrative driftwood. That is not to say this subplot is unimportant, merely that it is the equivalent of this:

Not that there might not be value to doing that—countless classic novels could be made greater by misdirection of this sort—but this mode of false advertising utterly alters the experience of reading the novel. Were you to read the version of Gravity's Rainbow above, you would spend the whole second half of the novel awaiting the return of the beach-terrorizing octopuses. The back-cover plot summary is as critical a heuristic as the title: we all remember that Introduction to Literature exercise in which the instructor asks you to imagine that the title of the book is Ahab or The Demure Daisy.

The back cover functions similarly, only more powerfully, because (if the book is unfamiliar) it is the reader's first encounter with the narrative skeins, and (even if the book is familiar) is something the reader will process almost every other time he or she handles the book. You may not read the words on the back cover every time you pick the book up, but you see and hazily remember them. The fact that they are pre-critical—that they guide the way we read the novel without us noticing them the way we notice titles—compels me to think that they are more responsible for our evaluative responses to literature than we would like to admit. Is this yet another factor we need to take into account when assigning books? Does anyone prefer the Dover to the Norton Critical edition of whatever because its plot summary leads to more wide-ranging class discussions?

(x-posted.)

*I'm aware that that summary makes no sense to someone unfamiliar with Banks' Culture novels.

Best to only ever fight wars you already won.

2009-07-07T17:19:37-07:00

It only took six months, but the mainstream media finally accomplished what no conservative media outlet ever could have: it sent a reporter into the Columbia library. In October 2008, Andrew McCarthy complained that it was impossible to learn anything about Obama’s heady days of Ayers-inspired radicalism at Columbia:

As [Ayers] so delicately told the Times, America makes him “want to puke” . . . Such statements should make Obama unelectable.

Time and again, conservatives have proven that Obama is Ayers is Alinsky is Annenberg is Hitler—all they were lacking was the actual proof. No more. Thanks to the Times, they now have the evidence they were always pretty sure existed. How did the Times get their hands on these hot documents? What did it do that McCarthy—a former federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York—could not?

It asked politely.

Question: May I use Columbia’s libraries if I am not a student, professor, or staff member at another academic institution?

Answer: If your public library does not have the specific title or material you need for your research, obtain a referral card from your public library. This card will give you a one-day pass to Columbia University Libraries.

All McCarthy had to do to stop a man he considered a monster from winning the White House was return to his old stomping grounds and ask a librarian for a day-pass to Columbia. All any conservative who wanted to stop a man they believed would destroy America had to do was to obtain a referral card from a public library. Instead, these intrepid citizen-journalists prattled on endlessly about the research other people declined to do; and now that someone did it, they are incorporating their lazy reliance on the mainstream media into another iteration of their tired jeremiad against it: “If only you had told me what I couldn’t have been bothered to discover myself last year,” they cry, “Obama might not be in Russia today sowing the seeds of our inevitable destruction.”

If you believed that a trip into the city and an afternoon in an archive would spare America four years of tyranny, would you do it? Would you fly into the city, rent a room, borrow a library card, request a day-pass under false pretenses, and spend an afternoon in an archive if you believed that doing so might save the world from nuclear destruction? Or would you whine because no one will silver-platter you a smoking gun?

We know what route the conservative punditry took, but who are we to begrudge them their moment of vindication? The Times finally got around to finding their smoking gun for them. They now have incontrovertible proof that Obama held, holds, and will forever harbor deeply radical thoughts; that he held, holds, and will forever adhere to an ideology hostile to American ideals and interests; that he held, holds, and will forever—but we should allow him the courtesy of hanging by his own rope:

The more sensitive among us struggle to extrapolate experiences of war from our everyday experience, discussing the latest mortality statistics from Guatemala, sensitizing ourselves to our parents’ wartime memories, or incorporating into our framework a reality as depicted by a Mailer or a Coppola. But the taste of war—the sounds and chill, the dead bodies—are remote and far removed. We know that wars have occurred, will occur, are occurring, but bringing such experience down into our hearts, and taking continual, tangible steps to prevent war, becomes a difficult task.

I know one conservative who won’t be happy to see how rhetorically savvy Obama was as a senior. The pacing of the nested clauses, the balance of the alliteration, the oratorical flourishes of the parallelism—all the features of his later prose are in evidence long before Obama met Ayers. Other than that, we learn nothing new about Obama from this passage. He opposes the extrajudicial killing of noncombatants in Guatemala and believes that high culture can counter the effect of popular culture, such that The Naked and the Dead and Apocalypse Now work against First Blood by showing us the horror! the horror! of war. Neither position qualifies as a shocking revelation.

In fact, the only aspects of this well-timed find with which conservatives take issue are his “non-proliferation fetish” and the anti-militaristic rhetoric in which he couches it. They bemoan the senior’s support for “the dangerously delusional nuclear-freeze movement,” and they mock him for insisting that focusing on arms control to the exclusion of larger economic and political issues might be, in his words, “another instance of focusing on the symptoms of a problem instead of the disease itself.” These ideas, they suggest, are so far afield of the American mainstream that Obama is forced to quote a reggae singer to substantiate them—and as Jennifer Rubin points out, what the reggae singer doesn’t know could very well kill us:

[W]hat is naïve, of course, is to think that Iran and North Korea will be impressed by our disarmament efforts. No consideration is given, just as none was given by the nuclear freeze crowd a generation ago, to the possibility that disarmament will only embolden our adversaries and confuse our allies.

Their argument is that, then as now, Obama cannot recognize that being able to exterminate all life on Earth seven-hundred times over possesses a strategic advantage over only being able to do so seventy. Even absent a partner in our escalatory waltz, conservatives insist that pushing the decimal point one slot to the left of absurdity will embolden Iran and North Korea into—into—into what exactly? Defying international law? Refusing to crumble under international pressure? The young Obama understands what his opponents now do not:

Just because the status quo is more macho than its alternatives doesn’t mean it’s worth defending. In the same anti-masculinist vein, it's not naïve to inform the Russians that there are still a couple of kinks in our missile defense system, because even if it ever successfully shot down anything, it was not designed to deter the Russians from attacking us:

More to the point, the so-called revelations from the article in the Columbia Sundial are only revelations to people who never read The Audacity of Hope, in which Obama addressed all of these issues, sometimes in a single paragraph:

The advent of nuclear weapons and “mutual assured destruction” rendered the risk of war between the United States and the Soviet Union fairly remote even before the Berlin Wall fell. Today, the world’s most powerful nations (including, to an ever-increasing extent, China)—and, just as important, the vast majority of the people who live within these nations—are largely committed to a common set of international rules governing trade, economic policy, and the legal and diplomatic resolution of disputes, even if broader notions of liberty and democracy aren’t widely observed within their own borders. The growing threat, then, comes primarily from those parts of the world on the margins of the global economy where the international “rules of the road” have not taken hold—the realm of weak or failing states, arbitrary rule, corruption, and chronic violence; lands in which an overwhelming majority of the population is poor, uneducated, and cut off from the global information grid; places where the rulers fear globalization will loosen their hold on power, undermine traditional cultures, or displace indigenous institutions.

In short, conservatives are using the “discovery” of this article to show Americans that, in opposing Reagan, Obama proves himself to be just another acolyte of the pacifistic hippie radicalism that almost lost us the Cold War. What I find remarkable is not that the political formula developed by Reagan worked at the time, but just how durable the narrative that he helped promote has proven to be. Despite a forty-year remove, the tumult of the sixties and the subsequent backlash continues to drive our political discourse. Partly it underscores how deeply felt the conflicts of the sixties must have been for the men and women who came of age at that time, and the degree to which the arguments of the era were understood not simply as political disputes but as individual choices that defined personal identity and moral standing.

Wait—who wrote those last three sentences?

Well, whoever it was, he was some sorta prescient.

(x-posted.)

Rob Liefeld hates it when you gay up his straight characters...

2009-07-05T15:41:38-07:00

. . . but he doesn't help his cause when he makes arguments like this:

He's a warrior, a Spartan, and not a gay one.

The evidence that the actual Spartans were homosexual [thanks James] is scant and somewhat contradictory. In the most frequently cited classical source, "The Polity of the Lacedaemons," Xenephon insists that the Spartans were not homosexual in the manner of the Boetians and Eleians:

I ought, as it seems to me, not to omit some remark on the subject of boy attachments, it being a topic in close connection with that of boyhood and the training of boys.

We know that the rest of the Hellenes deal with this relationship in different ways, either after the manner of the Boeotians, where man and boy are intimately united by a bond like that of wedlock, or after the manner of the Eleians, where the fruition of beauty is an act of grace; whilst there are others who would absolutely debar the lover from all conversation and discourse with the beloved.

Lycurgus adopted a system opposed to all of these alike. Given that some one, himself being all that a man ought to be, should in admiration of a boy's soul endeavour to discover in him a true friend without reproach, and to consort with him—this was a relationship which Lycurgus commended, and indeed regarded as the noblest type of bringing up. But if, as was evident, it was not an attachment to the soul, but a yearning merely towards the body, he stamped this thing as foul and horrible; and with this result, to the credit of Lycurgus be it said, that in Lacedaemon the relationship of lover and beloved is like that of parent and child or brother and brother where carnal appetite is in abeyance. (301, emphasis mine)

Note that while there are no carnal relations allowed in Sparta, the male-male couple is still referred to as "lover and beloved," which leads me to believe this could be a rough Spartan equivalent of the Sacred Band of Thebes. The other most frequently cited ancient source cited on homosexuality in Sparta is Plutarch's "Life of Lycurgus," in which he describes the wedding night and connubial bliss of the married Spartan couple thus:

Then the woman that had the direction of the wedding, cut the bride's hair close to the skin, dressed her in man's clothes, laid her upon a mattress, and left her in the dark. The bridegroom, neither oppressed with wine, nor enervated with luxury, but perfectly sober, as having always supped at the common table, went in privately, untied her girdle, and carried her to another bed.

Having stayed there a short time, he modestly retired to his usual apartment, to sleep with the other young men; and he observed the same conduct afterwards, spending the day with his companions, and reposing himself with them in the night, nor even visiting his bride, but with great caution and apprehensions of being discovered by the rest of the family; the bride, at the same time, exerted all her art to contrive convenient opportunities for their private meetings. (112, emphasis mine)

The Spartans are still not homosexual in the manner of the Boetians, Eleians, or a host of my closest friends; however, on their wedding nights they gave the bride a man's haircut, dressed her up men's clothes, did their thing, then "retired to [the] usual apartment, to sleep with the other young men." Lycurgus seems to have mandated that all young men need and must be double-super-secret beards, which means that because no one is gay, everyone is; or that because everyone is gay, no one is—or maybe they were Heisenbergian beards, in that no Spartan could be measurably gay while being observed and vice versa because we have inadequate tools.

So even the most charitably homophobic reading of the classical literature puts to lie the notion that someone can be a Spartan warrior and unquestionably straight at the same time. From our perspective, being a Spartan warrior entails engaging in behaviors that range from "overtly homosexual" to "extremely homosocial," so Liefeld's claim that his character is "a Spartan, but not a gay one" smooths the wrinkles of historical truth in the name of hospital corners.

Unfortunately for Liefeld, in the years since history there's been this, which this (inarguably NSFW) image pretty much sums up.

(h/t Bill Reed.)

Should one of us "libruls" tell him it wasn't really a competition?

2009-07-04T16:29:47-07:00

Some of you already have, but I don't think it's sinking in.

Also. In what must be a first, I've been rendered speechless. Bask in my silence while it lasts.

A rambling, incoherent Sarah Palin celebrates Independence Day by disrespecting the troops.

2009-07-04T13:47:36-07:00

Sarah Palin closed her confused resignation speech by quoting a famous American general:

In the words of General MacArthur said, “We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”*

Of course, given the depth of Palin’s erudition—like Reagan, she’s “dumb as a fox” to those who watch her press conferences on mute—it should surprise no one that she grabbed the first patriotic-sounding quotation about “advancing” that Google returned and tacked it onto her speech.

This is what passes for knowledge among some conservatives: the ability to quote-mine the internet for something that sounds patriotic. (Google may not be making us stupid, but the same cannot be said for many of them.) Because their paragon of intellectual achievement is a woman who cannot remember what newspapers she reads every day, it is only fitting that Palin’s last words on the national stage—intended to demonstrate that the “easy path” in life paradoxically involves “plod[ding] along” by “sit[ting] down and shut[ting] up,” because everyone knows that “a quitter’s way” is one of perseverance in the face of adversity—should be a misattributed misquotation ripped from its context in a way that conservatives would, under normal circumstances, consider insulting.

In attributing the quotation to General MacArthur, she is disrespecting the life and service of the man who actually spoke something similar to those words; and in analogizing her plight to that of the men who served under the General she disrespected, she is belittling the memory of their sacrifice.

In the winter of 1950, General Oliver Prince Smith and his 1st Marine Division were ordered to march north to the Yalu River, on the border between China and Korea. The order was given by Major General Edward “Ned” Almond, an obsequious lackey with an ego to rival Patton’s who functioned as “MacArthur’s MacArthur [by taking] MacArthur’s vision of what was supposed to happen and [bringing] it directly to Korea, where he employed it, whether it fitted the Korean reality or not” (The Coldest Winter 163). Smith, called “Professor” for his deliberate manner and attention to detail, surveyed the land and determined that the Korean reality didn’t fit MacArthur and Almond’s vision at all, and though he obeyed the command to press north, he did so in a manner that befitted his nickname:

General Almond had already begun to notice that the spearhead was hardly moving at all. We were in fact just poking along—deliberately so. We pulled every trick in the book to slow down our advance, hoping the enemy would show his hand before we got more widely dispersed than we already were. At the same time we were building up our levels of supply at selected dumps along the way. (432)

When the Chinese attacked the 1st Marine Division (19,000 soldiers) with six divisions (60,000 soliders) of its own in the Chosin River Basin, Smith and his soldiers were prepared: by day, they would avoid the roads by moving south through the mountainous terrain, shelling the advancing Chinese from the high ground; by night, they would temper the bitter chill of winter by hunkering down near the dumps Smith had had the foresight to supply.

Smith had calculated the odds of a successful push north, found them wanting, and prepared for the inevitable. So when the vastly outmanned 1st Marine had to move back through the Chosin Reservoir, they were able to inflict massive casualties on the superior Chinese force, which lost 40,000 troops to the 1st Marine’s 561. When a journalist asked how Smith and his men had done so much damage while retreating, Smith replied:

Retreat, hell . . . we’re simply attacking in another direction. (470)

Palin’s hastily convened press-conference and incoherent statement are, to her mind, analogous to Smith’s carefully planned counter-offensive—or would be, if she knew Smith said it. Which means that for her, MacArthur is not a hero to be venerated, but a prop to wheeled out when it’s politically expedient to do so. She cares nothing for the man himself or those under his command. If she did, she would show her respect by doing more than a Google search and pulling the first “good” quotation she found. After all, nothing demonstrates a deep and abiding respect for the military more forcefully than the sort of stunt my freshmen pull.

So Sarah Palin flubbed the quotation and the attribution. So she appropriated the phrase of a man who fought the inane orders of blinkered bureaucrats and took what she so arrogantly dismisses as “the worthless, easy path.” He took what she calls “a quitter’s way out,” laying the groundwork for his success in the face of adversity by “keep[ing his] head down” and “plod[ding] along.” So what: Smith is the quitter. He didn’t even advance in a different direction, he merely attacked.

To go back to an analogy with which Palin is comfortable—basketball—Smith looked at the game plan, surveyed the opposing team, and ran the point in a way that would guarantee a shot at victory. He urged his men to challenge the bigger, stronger team in the lane; to take the charges, shoot the foul shots, and keep the game the close until the buzzer. Palin, however, panicked when the situation on the floor didn’t correspond to her game plan, grabbed the ball and ran crying off the court.

(x-posted.)

*That’s what ~~she said~~ her official state government page said she was going to say, but it seems she did better, at least grammatically. Her logic’s still a horrid mess.

And the Award for Missing the Point goes to…

2009-07-03T16:35:20-07:00

. . . Brent Bozell, of the ironically named “Media Research Center,” who refuted Oliver Stone’s comment that “Nixon always said Reagan was a dumb son of a bitch” by quoting a number of prominent figures in Reagan’s administration who thought Reagan was really smart:

I turned to Frank Donatelli, the White House Political Director under President Reagan from 1987 through 1989 . . . Richard Allen, Reagan’s National Security Advisor . . . [and] Gary Bauer[, the] Domestic Policy Advisor under the Gipper for two years[.]

All of them agreed that real “dumb son of a bitch” was Stone, who—according Bozell in a letter addressed to Stone—is an historian because he once claimed to be:

Some producer [of Comedy Central's Politically Incorrect] really thought in extremes when they pitted Oliver Stone and Brent Bozell for one episode. I have to say that you were gracious, charming, engaging, and we enjoyed ourselves—except for that moment when I chastised you for claiming you’re an historian. You bristled and denied ever claming that moniker. I cited the source, an interview in some West Coast paper (I can’t recall which one now).

Even though Bozell can’t remember the name of the paper, he somehow managed to re-read the article later and

[i]t turns out that you were right (in the article) and I was wrong.

So Bozell was wrong, Stone never claimed to be an historian, but that doesn’t mean Bozell wasn’t also right:

You are an historian whether you believe it or not. You make films about history and historical figures. You record history, and that makes you an historian.

Now that Bozell, through the cunning use of italics, has transformed Stone into an historian, he can finally slam him good and proper:

Being an historian is not the problem. It’s that you’re a lousy historian.

In short, Stone isn’t what he never claimed to be, but is what Bozell says he is, and a lousy one at that. The evidence:

“Nixon always said Reagan was a dumb son of a bitch,” you said, and the audience laughed, and you smiled and decided to take that statement further by agreeing with it. So you said, “You know, I think that he was,” and the audience now cheered and hooted and applauded.

See what I mean when I say you’re a lousy historian?

There are two claims being made here: one, that Nixon thought Reagan was a dumb son of a bitch; two, that Oliver Stone thinks Reagan was a dumb son of a bitch. Unfortunately for Bozell, Nixon illegally taped every conversation he ever had, and when we consult his conversations with Henry Kissenger on the morning of November 17, 1971 [620a.mp3], we learn that while Nixon didn’t use those exact words—about Reagan, at least, since we know he used that particular phrase about everyone from the Canadian Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau, to the Director of the Secret Service, James Rowley, to one of his own White House aides, Tom Charles Huston—he didn’t think too highly of the Gipper’s wits:

(beginning at 1:33:02)

President Nixon: What’s your evaluation or Reagan after meeting him several times now.

Kissinger: Well, I think he’s a—actually I think he’s a pretty decent guy.

President Nixon: Oh, decent, no question, but his brains?

Kissinger: Well, his brains are negligible. I—

President Nixon: He’s really pretty shallow, Henry.

Kissinger: He’s shallow. He’s got no . . . he’s an actor. He—When he gets a line he does it very well. He said, “Hell, people are remembered not for what they do, but for what they say. Can’t you find a few good lines?” That’s really an actor’s approach to foreign policy . . .

Admittedly, Kissinger lands the harder blows, but Nixon obviously agrees with him, so we can say with certainty that Nixon thinks Reagan’s “brains are neglible” and that he’s “really pretty shallow.” That’s not quite “dumb son of a bitch,” but it’s close. If only that tape continued . . .

(beginning at 1:46:19)

President Nixon: Back to Reagan though. It shows you how a man of limited mental capacity simply doesn’t know what the Christ is going on in the foreign area. He’s got to know that on defense—doesn’t he know these battles we fight and fight and fight? Goddamn it, Henry, we’ve been at—

Does calling Reagan “a man of limited mental capacity” amount to saying he’s a “dumb son of bitch”? Oliver Stone seems to think so, and I’m inclined to agree. So, as to the first claim, Bozell is clearly the lousy historian here.

As to the second claim—that Oliver Stone thinks Reagan was a dumb son of a bitch—given that Bozell spends the majority of a letter addressed to Stone trying to prove that Reagan was the second coming of Thomas Aquinas, he’s not well-positioned to argue that Stone doesn’t think Reagan was a dumb son of a bitch.

In other words, the person who misremembered what Stone said in an article somewhere, but doesn’t remember where, who then re-read the article from he-doesn’t-remember-where and promptly forgot where it was again—this person thinks Stone is a lousy historian because he correctly cited Nixon’s sentiments about Reagan and correctly stated that he agreed with Nixon’s assessment. If I were Bozell—and could remember that I was Bozell long enough to cite myself—I wouldn’t be knocking people who don’t claim to be historians for being lousy historians when those same tables could so easily be turned on, say, a “lecturer, syndicated columnist, television commentator, debater, marketer, businessman, author, publisher and activist” who fancies himself qualified to judge who is and isn’t “a real [historian].”

(x-posted.)

Dear Readers of the Washington Post,

2009-07-02T15:55:43-07:00

Not only am I someone "who says he has a PhD in English from the University of California at Irvine" (emphasis mine), I actually do!

On an unrelated note, I'm not sure whether the Google Image results for this blog are representative or insulting, but they certainly are something.

Infinite Summer: Morbid? Culturally Imperial? Morbidly Culturally Imperial?

2009-06-30T18:37:27-07:00

Am I alone in finding the whole idea of Infinite Summer a little morbid? The renewed interest in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest is an obvious Good Thing—a first step toward popular as well as academic canonization—but having lived through the recent Michael Jackson Media Event, I can’t help but wonder whether the desire to read Wallace’s novel is akin downloading Thriller because Some Important Someone died. Do I sound like I’m thwacking some straw man with shovel? Because I’m not:

I have a confession to make. I don’t even like David Foster Wallace. And I don’t mean that I found Infinite Jest too lengthy on the first run-through. I mean his accessible stuff. His tales from cruise ships and lobster festivals and tennis matches and radio studios . . . So why am I here?

The short answer is that David Foster Wallace died.

That’s Ezra Klein, writing at A Supposedly Fun Blog. I’m not complaining because famous bloggers (Matthew Yglesias and Julian Sanchez among them) are horning in on my territory—although I will note that the first thing I ever published online was a mediocre seminar paper titled “Demand and the Appearance of Freedom: The Role of Corporate Media in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest,” but only just to note it—nor, despite the above, am I really even complaining that Klein’s interest was piqued by Foster Wallace’s suicide, as a more charitable excerpt shows his interest to be far less morbid:

The slightly longer answer is that David Foster Wallace died and I cared. That was, to me, a surprise. Lots of people die. Just the other day, Ed McMahon died. It hardly registered. But Wallace was different. I read everything I could about his final days. I posted a memoriam on my site. I watched readings on YouTube. It affected me. I don’t know if it’s because he was a young writer who was felled by the violent bubble and froth of his own mind and that a small part of me relates to that. I don’t know if it’s because he was, in some way, unique to my generation, and as such, one of my own.

In the end, what’s interesting about the 25-year-old Klein’s post about the 46-year-old Foster Wallace’s novel is the notion that someone who was 18 years old when the Clash first performed in America and someone who was 18 years old the year Joe Strummer died can be said to belong to the same generation. How does that work? I’m tempted to blame it on the Internet:

Once you could identify someone’s taste by the cut of their concert tee—London Calling vs. Combat Rock, The Clash vs. Operation Ivy, Operation Ivy vs. Rancid, &c.—now that all these these bands (mostly) belong to the past tense, they’re part of that enormous cultural pool from which more recent generations sample freely. For example, someone Klein’s age will never experience the pain of the endless, fruitless search for something like the first Clash album (which, contrary to that link, has not been in print continuously since 1979), as CDNOW was in decline during his formative years. To people for whom almost everything has always been immediately available, the idea of what constitutes a culturally-determined generation is bound to be a little fuzzy.

Note that I’m not criticizing Klein for being born in a time of cultural plenty—I would rather not have spent the better part of a decade searching for this in vain—I’m merely pointing out that his inclusion of Foster Wallace among his contemporaries dumbfounds me . . . unless I chalk it up to the novel instead of the man. Wallace might not be Klein’s contemporary, but Infinite Jest could be. Now that I’m reading it again, I’m struck by how contemporary it feels. Everything that annoyed me about it in 1996 still annoys me now—the footnotes, subsidized time, the too-frequent self-indulgent sentence—but everything that felt new in 1996 still feels new now.

Given how we imagine ourselves into an intimacy with our favorite authors, it makes sense for people twenty-five years younger than Foster Wallace to feel a generational affinity for him on the basis of his novel; but that doesn’t really work, now does it? I mean in the academic sense, the means by which we identify Author X as belonging to Period Y and analyze his or her work in light of the aesthetic of Period Y. We don’t, in other words, seriously consider historical feelings of contemporaneity the way we experience our own, inasmuch as I’m fourteen years younger than Foster Wallace but, like Klein, count him as “one of my own.”

(x-posted.)

“Polygraph-level scholarship may suffice for harmless speculation about the authorship of Midsummer’s Night Dream, but not for Dreams From My Father. Too much is at stake.”

2009-06-28T15:18:00-07:00

(by request.)

As all actual, practicing literary critics know, few sentences in critical works scream tendentiousness louder than:

What should be transparent to any literary critic is that . . .

Literary matters are only "transparent" when they're not properly literary. If something is transparent, you don't need a literary critic to ponder the depths it doesn't have—any old idiot will suffice. And that's exactly why Jack Cashill, author of the above and an idiot of long-standing, is just the man to prove that Bill Ayers wrote Obama's autobiography, Dreams From My Father. For Cashill and his mysterious contributors ("[t]he media punishment that Joe the Plumber received" requires they remain anonymous), the case against Obama is a compelling one:

What Mr. Midwest noticed recently is that both Ayers in [A Kind and Just Parent] and Obama in [Dreams From My Father] make reference to the poet Carl Sandburg. In itself, this is not a grand revelation. Let us call it a C-level match. Obama and Ayers seem to have shared the same library in any case . . . Ayers and Obama, however, go beyond citing Sandburg. Each quotes the opening line of his poem "Chicago" . . . This I would call a B-level match. What raises it up a notch to an A-level match is the fact that both misquote "Chicago," and they do so in exactly the same way.

So both Ayers and Obama misquote the opening line of Carl Sandburg's "Chicago," substituting "hog butcher to the world" for "hog butcher for the world." This mutual error would be significant (an "A-level match") if Ayers and Obama were the only two people who ever made it, but according to Google Book Search—a secret search engine to which only I have access—the same mistake has been made by Nelson Algren, Alan Lomax, Andrei Codrescu, H.L. Mencken, Paul Krugman, Perry Miller, Donald Hall, Ed McBain, Saul Bellow, S.J. Perelman, Nathanaël West, Ezra Pound, Wright Morris, Allen Ginsberg, Langston Hughes, and the 1967 Illinois Commission on Automation and Technological Progress. (To name but a few.) According to Cashill, I have now proven that Dreams From My Father was written by many a dead man of American letters, a living mystery writer, a New York Times columnist and the 1967 Illinois Commission on Automation and Technological Progress. That bears repeating:

I have an "A-level match" that proves that Obama's autobiography was written by a "study of the economic and social effects of automation and other technological changes on industry, commerce, agriculture, education, manpower, and society in Illinois" when Obama was only six years old. If that somehow fails to convey to the dubious merits of Cashill's argument, perhaps this will:

Returning to the exotic, in his Indonesian backyard Obama discovered two "birds of paradise" running wild as well as chickens, ducks, and a "yellow dog with a baleful howl." In [Ayers'] Fugitive Days, there is even more "howling" than there is in Dreams . . . In [A Kind and Just Parent], he talks specifically about a "yellow dog." And he uses the word "baleful" to describe an "eye" in Fugitive Days. For the record, "baleful" means "threatening harm." I had to look it up.

You did read that right. Cashill did cite as "A-level" evidence the fact that Ayers and Obama used a word he didn't know, despite his being the Executive Editor of Kansas City’s premier business publication, Ingram’s Magazine; despite his having written for Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The Weekly Standard; despite his having authored five books of non-fiction; and despite the word "baleful" having appeared in print 342 times in the past six months alone. Granted, all those appearances were in high-minded literary publications like Newsday ("[w]ith his baleful countenance, wild hair, sonorous baritone and sage pronouncements") or leftist rags like The Washington Times ("warn them in baleful tones if they've forgotten, say, the Constitution"), so it would be unreasonable to expect Cashill to have been familiar with the word . . . or would be, were it not for the fact that it also appears 19 times in the pages of the American Thinker, the publication for which Cashill penned this tripe. (Seems he can begin his careful literary analysis of the other 848,000 potential ghost writers closer to home.)

Fortunately for Cashill, his argument is not entirely based on demonstrations of ignorance and popular misquotations (which, when you think about it, is more along the lines of literary detection than literary criticism anyway), as when he claims that Ayers and Obama are unique among memoirists in their fascination with eyes: "Ayers is fixated with faces, especially eyes [and] Obama is also fixated with faces, especially eyes." Having performed an extensive study of autobiographical writing, Cashill knows how unique this fixation with eyes is. Consider this passage from Dreams From My Father:

Peter said Peter said eyes are always and eyes are always. Peter said Peter said, eyes are always and Peter said eyes are always. Peter said eyes are always. Peter said eyes are always.

Sorry—that was Gertrude Stein. Here's the passage from Dreams From My Father:

Whenever I looked in her direction she had her eyes on me. The face she had! The eyes! She lay streched out on the floorboards with her hands under her head and her eyes closed. Sun blazing down, bit of a breeze, water nice and lively. I noticed a scratch on her thigh and asked her how she came by it. Picking gooseberries, she said. I said again I thought it was hopeless and no good going on, and she agreed, without opening her eyes. I asked her to look at me and after a few moments—after a few moments she did, but the eyes just slits, because of the glare. I bent over her to get them in the shadow and they opened. Let me in. We drifted in among the flags and stuck. The way they went down, sighing, before the stem! The eyes she had!

Sorry—that was Samuel Beckett. If I didn't know better, I'd be inclinced to argue that works that are overtly concerned with the act of remembering and the limitations of memory tend to obsess over the eye and its punned hononym ("I"). Actually, I do know better, so I will: be they modernist experimentations about subjectivity or humble autobiographies, works that concern themselves with the act of remembering and the limitations of memory tend to obsess over the eye and its punned homonym ("I").

Perhaps it's unfair of a professional literary critic to expect Cashill to have intimate knowledge of literary modernism. I should cut him some slack and let him perform the kind of close stylistic analysis that I teach my students. Maybe he can handle something simple, like diction:

To this point, I have just skimmed the 759 items in the bill of particulars in my case against Obama's literary genius. Not familiar with the term "bill of particulars?" Uncertain myself, I looked that one up too. It means a list of written statements made by a party to a court proceeding. Ayers and Obama each refer knowingly to a "bill of particulars." Doesn't everyone?

The answer, of course, is no.

Cashill is on to something here. The phrase "bill of particulars" is an uncommon construction, and its repeated use indicates that the speaker has a specialized vocabulary in which this construction regularly appears. According to LexisNexis, this is exactly the case: in the past six months, that exact phrase has been written 509 times and every single one of them looks like this:

United States v. Clark, NO. 05-6507, UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT, 09a0422n.06;, 2009 U.S. App. LEXIS 12940; 2009 FED App. 0422N (6th Cir.), June 15, 2009, Filed, NOT RECOMMENDED FOR FULL-TEXT PUBLICATION. SIXTH CIRCUIT RULE 28(g) LIMITS CITATION TO SPECIFIC SITUATIONS. PLEASE SEE RULE 28(g) BEFORE CITING IN A PROCEEDING IN A COURT IN THE SIXTH CIRCUIT. IF CITED, A COPY MUST BE SERVED ON OTHER PARTIES AND THE COURT. THIS NOTICE IS TO BE PROMINENTLY DISPLAYED IF THIS DECISION IS REPRODUCED.

The only people who regularly use the phrase "bill of particulars," then, are lawyers, and since Bill Ayers isn't a lawyer, I think we can all agree that Cashill is right: Obama is the author of Bill Ayers' Fugitive D—wait a minute!

UPDATE. I added links to pictures of the LexisNexis searches after a few people complained they couldn't access the results themselves.

UPDATE II. Welcome readers of Balloon Juice, Lawyers, Guns, and Money, Making Light, and Salon. Kick up your feet, flip through the archives, or head right to the good/best stuff.

(x-posted.)

I do believe it all makes sense now (and if you don't agree with that you're a pretentious Martian from Venus).

2009-06-27T20:50:54-07:00

Via The Guardian, a testament to my taste making sense:

The escape valve of the exotic Negro*

2009-06-26T17:54:15-07:00

A friend forwards this old solicitation from writers to readers about what they want to see more of in comics:

Pure ridiculousness. Everybody knows that "City Problems" are "Black People" . . .

*Via Lorraine Hansberry in The New Negro.

Iranian dissidents are still in the process of . . .

2009-06-25T17:53:29-07:00

. . . BURNING SHIT DOWN, which must be why neither the Los Angeles Times nor Twitter will load. I admit that watching the social media site come into its own in response to an international crisis makes me wonder whether I ought to be a little less cynical of the political power of new media and the political engagement of the online generati—what?

You have got to be kidding me.

Somewhere in Tehran, an Iranian protester's desperatetly punching his jerry-rigged mobile device trying to figure out what the fuck happened to Twitter.

(x-posted.)

Do [conservatives] dare to eat a peach?

2009-06-24T14:32:43-07:00

Two groups of people are annoyed that the administration collaborated with the Huffington Post’s Nico Pitney on a question about Iran: seasoned pool reporters invested in the pecking order who believe Pitney jumped the line, and partisan hacks whose concern for Iran disappears the moment an opportunity to denounce the media arrives.

As to the former, they are, to paraphrase Tim Crouse, journalistic Prufrocks who measure their lives in handouts, and Pitney had the audacity to receive more sooner than this collection of easy tools thought prudent. More significant, or at least more revelatory, is the response of those who have spent the past week full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse on the subject of Obama’s refusal to condemn Iran. They pressed Obama to use the word “condemn” itself, because any condemnation that doesn’t sets off their Neville detectors. No mere objection, they argue, no matter how strong, can rise to the level of a condemnation.

Now, in their mad rush to demonstrate the pervasiveness of liberal bias, they ignore the rather obvious symbolism the Obama administration employed here. At a moment in which the Iranian regime is doing its damnedest to prevent information about the situation on the ground from leaking, Obama grants an Iranian dissident the primacy of place in a news conference that will be broadcast the world over. Moreover, he calls attention to the fact that he’s breaking protocol in order to give voice to the very people the Iranian regime wants silenced.

With the whole world watching, Obama took a moment to humiliate Ahmadinejad and Khamenei. But because conservatives are compelled to follow their tedious argument of insidious intent to its tendentious conclusion, what should be a story about the regime being humiliated on the world stage becomes yet another media pseudo-scandal.

(x-posted.)

And then the signifier collapsed into the signified of which it was a referent.

2009-06-23T11:36:39-07:00

SEK: Did you realize they customized horns now?

COLLEAGUE: What do you mean?

SEK: Car horns. They customize car horns now.

COLLEAGUE: Like the General Lee?

SEK: Sort of. I was waiting to cross the street, the light turned green, but the lead car didn't move, so the one behind it went "HONK! HONK HONK HONK!"

COLLEAGUE: That's customized how?

SEK: You don't get it. It went "HONK! HONK HONK HONK!"

COLLEAGUE: That's what my car does.

SEK: You're still not getting it. It went "HONK! HONK HONK HONK!" Like h-o-n-k "HONK!"

COLLEAGUE: You mean like it honked the word "HONK!"

SEK: Exactly.

COLLEAGUE: So the car said the word "HONK!"

SEK: I wouldn't go that far.

COLLEAGUE: It was a talking car.

SEK: No.

COLLEAGUE: But it spoke.

SEK: No.

COLLEAGUE: You just said it said the word "HONK!"

SEK: I didn't say it said it. You know, Wordsworth on Martian beaches and what-not.

COLLEAGUE: Jesus fuck, I understood that. I need to get away from you English people.

How to use Twitter to make anyone look like a morally odious lout.*

2009-06-21T19:11:09-07:00

Cruel_Cruel_death:

SEK:

Cruel_Cruel_death:

SEK:

Cruel_Cruel_death:

SEK:

Cruel_Cruel_death:

SEK:

Cruel_Cruel_death:

SEK:

Cruel_Cruel_death:

SEK:

Cruel_Cruel_death:

SEK:

Cruel_Cruel_death:

SEK:

*Because when I call something a cheap rhetorical trick, I don't just mean when other people do it.

Two hypothetical questions:

2009-06-20T09:13:10-07:00

How many hilariously public blog break-ups are required before the line "it's not me, it's you" rings hollow even to yourself?
Who runs a blog fundraiser in one post while threatening to quit blogging altogether in another?

Conservatives would respect Obama more if he took a principled stand against a corrupt Iranian regime by doing its bidding.

2009-06-18T17:40:13-07:00

The same conservatives who mere months ago applauded their candidate’s rendition of “Barbara Ann” are now criticizing Obama for refusing to meddle in internal Iranian affairs: “[He] has only a smidgen of a chance left to get on the right side of history—either he starts acting like the leader of the free world, or he’s a quisling of thugocracies everywhere.” To say that Obama risks putting himself on the wrong side of history suggests that you know enough about that history to distinguish between its sides, even though you don’t even know there are always more than two of them. Consider how incoherently conservatives have responded to official Iranian propaganda:

Iran accused the United States on Wednesday of “intolerable” meddling in its internal affairs, alleging for the first time that Washington has fueled a bitter post-election dispute . . . The Iranian government summoned the Swiss ambassador, who represents U.S. interests in Iran, to complain about American interference, state-run Press TV reported. The English-language channel quoted the government as calling Western interference “intolerable.”

That government forces accuse America of meddling in the face of Obama’s tepid public statements is not, as conservatives would have it, evidence that because the accusation will be made, we might as well meddle. It indicates that the Iranian government recognizes how politically efficacious the accusation of American intervention in Iranian electoral politics is, which means Victor David Hanson and like-minded conservatives are urging Obama to take a principled stand by playing directly into the hands of the Iranian regime. Ahmadinejad and his supporters would love nothing more than for Obama to read the lines they scripted for him.

But why are conservatives encouraging Obama to do exactly that? Because, unlike him, they are deeply and proudly ignorant of the weight of history. This ignorance is what leads Karl to complain that German Chancellor Merkel and French President Sarkozy beat Obama to the moral high ground, even though he quotes the reason the French and Germans can condemn the apparent electoral fraud and America cannot:

“Either way we are going to be dealing with an Iranian regime that has historically been hostile to the United States,” [Obama] added.

Because Germany and France do not have a history of meddling in Iranian electoral politics, they can criticize the election results without creating the appearance that they have a vested interest in their outcome. The Wall Street Journal is similarly clueless:

Yesterday he invoked the CIA’s role in the 1953 coup against Iranian leader Mohammad Mossadeq to explain his reticence. “Now, it’s not productive, given the history of the U.S.-Iranian relations, to be seen as meddling—the U.S. President meddling in Iranian elections,” Mr. Obama said. As far as we can tell, the CIA or other government agencies aren’t directing the protests or bankrolling Mr. Mousavi.

The issue isn’t whether America’s actually bankrolling the opposition party, but whether it appears to be; if it does, it undermines the legitimacy of the same movement the conservatives ostensibly support. The editorial staff at the WSJ doesn’t understand the depth of Iranian mistrust of American policy especially on the issue of Iranian elections. But the most eloquent proponent of elevating ignorance to the status of fact is the de facto voice of American conservativism:

And he said yesterday, “[i]t’s not productive, given the history of US-Iranian relations, to be seen as meddling.” We have to know what this means, “given the history of US-Iranian relations.” What history? Is he talking about the coup when we put the Shah in there in ‘53 that he apologized for? Is that what he means? Is he so handcuffed to defend liberty and those who seek it because of what happened 65 years ago? What’s holding Obama back from standing up for freedom? Standing up for freedom is “meddling”? It has to be understood. What was he talking about? What is this history? What is it?

That Limbaugh’s argument moves by dint of unanswered rhetorical questions is damning enough—neither he nor his audience knows the answers to those questions—but the fact that, even if he knew what had happened, he would still consider it irrelevant because it happened 65 years ago. This claim that history can expire is indicative of a strain of stupid to which those who regularly complain about the “re-FDRing of America [via] the New New Deal” should be immune. Limbaugh fears nothing more than the revival of policies more than 65 years old, yet is incapable of understanding why the Iranian people may harbor a grudge against a nation that took liberties with its internal governance until 1979?

Limbaugh’s questions amount to little more than magical thinking thrust into face of empirical evidence. We know that Ahmadinejad and his allies believe the appearance of American meddling is a powerful political cudgel; to this fact, conservatives respond that 1953 was a long time ago. We know that Ahmadinejad and his allies are actively working to manufacture evidence of American meddling; to this fact, conservatives reply that Obama should do their work for them.

(x-posted.)

According to an actual Iranian in Iran, the administration’s silence helps the cause.

2009-06-15T12:43:11-07:00

A former student of mine from Iran heard from his brother for the first time in a couple of days. When my student bemoaned the cautiousness of Obama administration’s statements, his brother confirmed one aspect of Spencer Ackerman’s account of the administration’s behavior, saying that government forces are already accusing protesters of collaborating with the U.S., and that protesters are actually worried that Obama will make an explicit show of support, as that would restore some credibility to what the government has said about the election and, more importantly, could undermine a reform coalition in which some factions are none-too-fond of America.

Everyone prematurely condemning the administration’s apparent silence on this matter may want to rethink the offensive idea that he’s merely "voting ‘present.’" I’m not saying we should take my student’s brother’s word on this as definitive, but it does make one point absolutely clear: most of the people complaining about the administration’s response are more concerned with playing American politics than the situation on the ground in Iran.

(x-posted.)

Mother Jones and the National Review on the dubious quality of Sotomayor’s prose: “This apple’s the worst orange I’ve ever tasted.”

2009-06-14T18:54:44-07:00

This past week, the attacks on Sotomayor have turned from what she’s said to how she’s said it. Conservatives began by hammering away at the “weird, unidiomatic constructions and errors of punctuation and grammar [in] her infamous 2001 ‘Wise Latina’ speech.” Now, I advocate writing conference papers that “contain few expensive words and no Faulknerian feats of subordination” on the grounds that no human being—not even the academic ones—can parse grammatically complex arrangements of jargon on the fly, so I’m more attuned than most to the fact that what passes for grammatical in English as she is spoke doesn’t pass muster in English as she is wrote. You can imagine, then, why I chafed at Heather McDonald’s criticism of Sotomayor’s unscripted speeches for containing errors endemic to spoken language. Just because an unscripted speech is transcribed after the fact doesn’t make it written; or, as per my talk, just because it can be put to paper doesn’t mean it was meant to be read there.

Judging the quality of her prose from her speeches, as McDonald and fellow Bench Memos writer Ed Whelan did, is an intellectually dishonest exercise for the simple reason that nobody (outside of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.) speaks in paragraphs. Not that this stops the other member of the Bench Memos team, Matthew J. Franck, from claiming Sotomayor “writes” sentences that were clearly spoken aloud; or that those sentences “begin with a thought and trail off without saying much of anything after all, or double back and contradict themselves,” i.e. that the transcription of her unscripted speech transcribed sentences that were clearly spoken aloud.

When I taught literary journalism, I always included Mark Singer’s profile of Errol Morris on the syllabus because it works both as an introduction to New Yorker-style profiles and a meta-methodological essay on how to approach transcriptions critically and responsibly. Here’s Singer transcribing Florence Rasmussen’s speech in Morris’s Gates of Heaven (1978):

If I could only get out. Drive my car. I’d get another car. Ya . . . and my son, if he was only better to me. After I bought him that car. He’s got a nice car. I bought it myself just a short time ago. I don’t know. These kids—the more you do for them . . . He’ s my grandson, but I raised him from two years old . . . I don’t see him very often. And he just got the car. I didn’t pay for all of it. I gave him four hundred dollars.

Singer responds to her outpouring by noting that

[w]ith an arresting instinct for symmetry, Florence Rasmussen manages to contradict most of what she has to say. It seems that she knows certain things, but then, in the next moment, she trots out contrary information[:] I’d like to drive my car; but I might not even have a car any longer, might have to buy a new one. I bought my son—O.K., he’s not my son, he’s my grandson—a new car; well, I didn’t pay for the whole thing, I gave him four hundred dollars, but anyway I want my money back.

As viewers of The Fog of War (2003) know, this technique works as powerfully on former Secretaries of Defense as elderly Floridians, not because either is particularly muddleheaded, but because Morris takes advantage of the infelicitous glitches that accompany the spontaneous production of spoken language. McDonald, Whelan, and Franck seem not to understand how language works. They scoured “virtually all [Sotomayor's unscripted] speeches on the Senate website” and discovered damning evidence that they were, in fact, unscripted speeches; then, they lambasted those transcripts of her unscripted speeches for failing to meet the standards demanded of the written word, which proved to them that Sotomayor is “a mediocrity as a writer.” Whelan even suggests she’s a hypocrite for “present[ing] herself as a stickler for good grammar” when her speeches contain constructions that would be ungainly, if not outright ungrammatical, on the page. How about we hoist Whelan by his own petard?

Well, it’s an unguarded moment where she says what folks on the left think which, their job is to use judicial robes to make sound policy and the law is largely a vessel for them to fill with their own preferences.

Sure, very much along the same lines, talking about what he calls the criterion but which selecting judges.

Well, how is that honoring people who put their lives at risk in public service and, look, at 9/11 we understood for a while what firefighters do.

Whelan clearly offends Franck’s standards: he “writes sentences that begin with a thought and trail off without saying much of anything after all.” The first sentence subordinates a clause about as clunkily as you can imagine; then you read the second sentence, observe that it doesn’t even include the subordinate clause it introduces, and marvel at the paucity of your imagination. I suppose that second sentence meets Franck’s standard on a technicality—the sentence defies the laws of grammar and stops before it has a chance to trail off without saying much of anything—but that third sentence turns on a dime “and, look,” informs us that we know “what firefighters do.” Does that count as “much of anything”?

They do eventually get around to criticizing Sotomayor’s prose on the basis of what she’s actually written: they find that while it’s not “ungrammatical,” it is “tedious and ‘impenetrable.’” That link leads to Stephanie Mencimer’s article in Mother Jones, in which she pings Sotomayor’s prose for “rarely hit[ting a] sort of breezy cadence [because she] devotes the bulk of her legal analysis to quotes from statutes, regulations, and other opinions ad nauseam[.]” How she’ll legislate from the bench when she’s busy citing dull precedent is as mysterious to me as, for example, how a prose-scold could write “quote” instead of “quotation” in the middle of a complaint or believe Diane Wood’s summary of Merchant of Venice signifies much of anything in the Age of Wikipedia.

In the end, the case against Sotomayor basically amounts to this: on the one hand, her speeches betray all the ungrammatical tics common to spoken language, and if you treat those speeches as prose, you must conclude that she’s a poor writer; on the other, the prose of her legal opinions isn’t ungrammatical, but because it betrays the tedious tics common to lawyerly prose, you must conclude she’s a poor writer. You see where this is headed. If word leaked out that “Ed Whelan” was actually Sotomayor’s pseudonym, the Bench Memos team would argue that, because Whelanmayor did all that I documented above, you must conclude that s/he’s a poor writer. Were it then revealed that Whelanmayor did Diane Wood one better and actually wrote Merchant of Venice, the Bench Memos team would claim that, in light of the difficulty of Shakespelanmayor’s prose, the Western Canon requires immediate revision and you must conclude s/he’s a poor writer . . .

(x-posted.)

The Book (obscenely condensed version)

2009-06-12T15:31:21-07:00

Because who am I to ignore interested lurkers? What follows is the section on comics and rhetoric I wrote for The Student Guide to Writing at UCI. The book I'm co-authoring this summer is a vastly expanded version of the same (only with panels from actual comics instead of examples drawn from my none-too-fertile imagination).

The basic unit of analysis when dealing with a comic is the panel. The visual elements of a panel can be described using the same vocabulary used to describe a frame from a film: background and foreground, diegesis, high or low key lighting, etc. Pointing to the similarities between film and comics highlights what makes comics unique as a medium: the interaction of these visual components with the written word. The word-picture relation can word specific, in which the words convey the meaning and the images merely illustrate it, as in a children's book; duo specific, in which the words and images both convey the same meaning, as when a picture of an irate man yelling is accompanied by a caption box that tells you the irate man is yelling; and interdependent, in which the words and images combine to convey a meaning neither is capable of conveying alone. Most of the comics you will read in this course will rely heavily on interdependent word-picture combinations.

Comics are also unique in the manner in which they relate to time. No matter how the words in the panel interact with the visuals, there is a tension between the static image and the words in the caption box. Picture a panel that depicts a medium close-up of a young man in a bright orange shirt. A caption box extrudes from his open mouth and occupies the space above his left shoulder. The text inside it reads: "The bride? You wanna know about . . . the thing it is that happened to her? Because sure, I can tell you, but . . ." All these words didn't spill from his mouth in the open-mouthed moment depicted in the panel. The words propel the narrative forward in time in such a way that we cannot be sure which word the panel depicts the man enunciating. (It may not even be a word: the panel could be depicting the pause indicated by the ellipses.) This tension between static image and narrative progress exists not only in panels but between them.

The empty area between panels is the gutter, and it is where the reader is called upon to become an active participant in the creation of the text. Unlike a film, in which the twenty-three imperceptible gaps between the twenty-four frames flashed per second create the illusion of movement, the gutter produces breaks in the narrative that require interpretation to repair. If the panel following the one of the man in the bright orange shirt is a medium-long shot of a different, shabbily-dressed man in a prison garden holding an open stenographer's notebook and saying, "Yes, I want to hear about the bride." What inferences must the reader draw for those two panels to make sense? To begin with, the bright orange shirt in the first panel likely belongs to a prison-issue jumpsuit and the man across from him (as the reader infers from the comic equivalent of a shot/reverse shot) is a journalist interested in what this prisoner did to the woman they both refer to as "the bride." The act of making that inference -- of bridging the gap between the first and second panel -- is called closure. In this case, the closure is achieved via a subject-to-subject transition.

However, were the second panel to depict not a journalist, but a long shot of the man in the orange shirt unfolding a lawn chair next to a grill, the "prisoner" would be transformed into a man at a barbeque discussing an unfortunate incident at a wedding. If the third panel showed that same man placing a steak on the grill while continuing to discuss the wedding, closure between the second and third panels will have been achieved via an action-to-action transition, i.e. one in which consecutive panels depict the same subject undertaking a series of actions. If the next three panels track the path of the steak from the man's tongs to the grill's surface, the reader will be compelled by this moment-to-moment transition to create closure by associating the steak's slow-motion descent with whatever it was that happened at that wedding, such that it would not be surprising if in the fourth panel the steak was replaced by a bouquet of flowers of the sort brides toss at weddings. Because the reader knows that steaks don't often turn into flowers, it is safe to infer that the narrative has shifted to another place and time via a scene-to-scene transition. But the assumption that this airborn bouquet is on its way into the arms of a single woman attending the wedding is not necessarily a safe one -- an author could be exploiting this conventional image to confounds the reader's expectations. In a subsequent panel, the "empty" space behind the falling flowers could be revealed to be the white satin of the wedding dress worn by a woman whose pained expression informs the reader why she dropped the bouquet.

If that panel were followed by another in which a younger, tuxedo-clad version of the orange-shirted man from the barbecue perches on the edge of a bed with his head in hands, then another panel depicting leaves falling outside a bustling travel agency, then another still of two empty chairs beneath an oversized umbrella on some Hawaiian beach, the reader is presented with a number of interpretive decisions. The transition from the jilted bride to her cold-footed fiance could be interpreted as a scene-to-scene transition, as could the transition from the fiance to the travel agency. However, because these panels depict the same moment in a series of different locations, closure can be argued to have been achieved via an aspect-to-aspect transition.

The interpretive burden required to understand the intent of the author/rhetor of a comic is, as the previous paragraphs indicate, quite heavy -- even though the experience of reading comics is so intuitive that many otherwise intelligent readers consider the medium juvenile. That so many comics chronicle the adventures of impossibly-muscled specimens of post-humanity in tights that reveal more than they conceal helps sustain this misperception. But as the story of the prisoner and/or the man who left his wife at the alter demonstrates, the content of a comic is not determined by the medium itself.

Researching the competition; or, why other books about visual rhetoric & composition demonstrate the necessity of one like mine.

2009-06-11T16:46:49-07:00

When demonstrating the importance of historical context, it's considered bad form to get it wrong. For example:

Hal Jordan? Not the first Green Lantern.
Sinestro? Doesn't appear in Emerald Dawn.
Doctor Doom? Not the ruler of Latvia.
Wolverine? Not HIV positive. (How would that even work?)
"Raz Alcor"? Liam Neeson has two names in Batman Begins and neither one of them is that.

Since I'm not sure where to begin with this—I could just as easily complain about shoddy research and methodology as go full nerd—I'll come to a full stop and change the subject. A student essay addressed an offhand remark I made in class, about Dr. Manhattan being busted by Dateline NBC for sexing up underage woman, and inspired me to produce this:

If this is what it’s like to be, get it over with already and me now.

2009-06-09T22:59:31-07:00

Last, I noted that I increasingly left the most important out of sentences. What began as a seems to be getting worse and. Looking over what I today, I can't help but at how deliberate it seems, as if I'm trying to make it impossible to edit what I. Granted, with every passing I'm a little older, but honestly, this can't be what it's like to be? Crafting sentences that only lack the most element required to understand them? On my list of fates worse than, this probably takes the.

Now that I about it, if I'm to run out of words, maybe I should in the sciences, where words don't seem to be required:

(x-posted.)

People who aren’t already the President of their things should keep their traps shut.

2009-06-07T20:07:29-07:00

You know who should be allowed to blog?

Presidents of things.

Presidents of things who graduated from Harvard and Harvard Law.

Presidents of things who graduated from Harvard and Harvard Law and then clerked for a Supreme Court Justice.

Presidents of things who graduated from Harvard and Harvard Law and then clerked for a Supreme Court Justices before working in the White House.

You know who shouldn’t be allowed to blog?

Employees of things.

Employees of things who graduated from community colleges.

Employees of things who graduated from community colleges and then found a decent enough job.

Employees of things who graduated from community colleges and then found a decent enough job but are vulnerable to managerial whimsy.

Such is Ed Whelan’s “argument.” If you work for a company that manufactures cat food, you shouldn’t be able to pseudonymously blog about your liberal politics if your boss is a conservative, because “revealing [your] identity breaches no ethical norm,” so everyone you argue with has the “right to tell [on you], for whatever reason it suit[s them] to tell it—including no particular reason at all other than that [they find] it useful at the moment [they do] it.” If your boss fires you because he disapproves of what he now knows to be your views, it’s your fault for having them while not being the President of your thing. (Because when you’re the President of your thing, only you can fire you for your views.)

But if you’re not the President of your thing? That makes you an employee; which, following Whelan’s logic, means that you don’t have anything important to say, because you can’t have anything important to say, because people who haven’t already risen to being the President of their thing are worthless people. They shouldn’t be allowed to blog because, when they chatter about their unimportant views, the compel Presidents of things, like Ed Whelan, to listen and respond to them—even though whatever it is they say is, by definition, worthless.

Because anything written by anyone with a threatenable job is, by definition, worthless.

Unless, that is, they have “extraordinary circumstances in which the reason to use a pseudonym would be compelling.” Having “extraordinary circumstances” indicates that someone’s extraordinary enough to acquire high-caliber circumstances, which means that—despite not being the President of their thing—they are somehow important. What kinds of circumstances does Whelan consider extraordinary? Hard to tell what they are, but we know what they can’t be: they can’t be “private, family, [or] professional,” because when those were offered as reasons not to out someone, Whelan went ahead and, without ever inquiring as to what those reasons might be, outed publius anyway.

That can only mean that “extraordinary circumstances” never fall into the categories of private, family, or professional matters, otherwise the President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center would’ve violated his own ethical standards by outing someone who potentially had circumstances of the sort; and, being that he’s the President of an ethical thing, the laws of logic preclude from being the case. As for how he became the President of an ethical thing, I think we have a blueprint for how that happened:

It begins by acquiring a small amount of power, then using it to silence your critics by creating structural incentives for them to keep their mouths shut. Then, you acquire a bit more power and use it silence your new critics by creating structural incentives for them to keep their mouths shut. Then:

Rinse.

Lather.

Repeat.

Because that’s what Whelan’s done. He has yet to indicate what his preferred outcome to this was—that is, whether he wanted to see publius lose his job; lose his job and be forced into accepting a position that afforded him less time to write on the internet; lose his job and be forced into accepting a position that afforded him less time to write on the internet and provided no health insurance, so that he might have to choose between feeding his family or bringing one sick member of it to the doctor—but we do know that one reason he outed publius was because he had tired of people thinking less of his character, his integrity, and his intelligence on the basis of his exchanges with publius.

Given the reaction to this episode, you almost feel sorry for him. Because bing the President of a thing is much like being the Captain of a thing, and what Whelan did here was very brave indeed. In order to prevent the enemies of the U.S.S. Reputation from destroying it, Captain Whelan did the noble thing and hit self-destruct.

(x-posted.)

Photo reference at the National Review

2009-06-07T11:13:49-07:00

Liberals think the cover of the new National Review is racist, but as Rich Lowry explains, they’re simply oversensitive and humorless:

You gotta move fast when you’re competing with your fellow hair-trigger PC cops on the left! I take it the theory is that we don’t think Latinas can be wise so we had to make her look somewhat Asian. Or something like that. What these people don’t understand is the entire concept of caricature (or of a joke). Caricature always involves exaggerating someone’s distinctive features, which is all that our artist Roman Genn did with Sotomayor.

He even includes what is, presumably, one of the reference photos Genn used. When someone else points out that it’s odd that they depicted her as Asian, Lowry shot back:

An outraged Huffington Post says we “perplexingly” depict Sotomayor in an Asian manner—apparently not entirely getting the Buddha reference, or Buddha’s association with wisdom. Can they really be this clueless?

The painting in the Google link is, I think we can say with certainty, the one Genn referenced for his cover. (Compare everything from the neck down.) In visual terms, then, Lowry’s argument is thus:

Keeping in mind that “[c]aricature always involves exaggerating someone’s distinctive features, which is all that our artist Roman Genn did with Sotomayor,” I think it’s obvious that the National Review didn’t insult Sotomayor. They merely exaggerated her distinctively slanted eyes—wait, can we compare the photo references for the cover again, only this time zoomed in on the eyes?

As I suspected, the “someone” whose features are being “exaggerated” on the cover is neither Sotomayor nor Buddha, but the man so grand they named a peril after him:

Wait—can I get another one of those closeups?

That’s not an exaggeration of the racist depiction of Asians like Yellow Claw, that’s a racist depiction of Asians. The logic—such that it is—of the National Review editorial board seems to be that since everyone knows Asians are better than Latinos, no one can call them racist if they compare Sotomayor to an Asian. That argument—such that it is—could’ve made more forcefully if they made it without validating the charge against them. (“They think we hate the wetbacks! How can we prove otherwise?” “Compare them to the chinks!” “Brilliant!”)

(x-posted.)

Are announcers with degrees in broadcast journalism better in the booth than former players?

2009-06-05T20:49:27-07:00

In the early days of radio and television, baseball announcers fell into their jobs. Mel Allen, "the Voice of the Yankees," was a lawyer by trade; his partner, Red Barber, caught his break while working as a janitor at a college radio station. (A professor scheduled to read "Certain Aspects of Bovine Obstretics" never showed, so Barber picked up the microphone and read it himself.) Jimmy Dudley majored in chemistry, got drafted and, like Harry Kalas, began his broadcasting career calling intramural games in the South Pacific during WWII. Although all four of them belong to the Baseball Hall of Fame, they were amateurs.

The first great professional announcer, Vin Scully, studied broadcast journalism at Fordham. Following Scully's success on both coasts, team owners and network executives decided that games were best called by people whose sober, understated delivery betrayed an intimate knowledge of the technical limitations of their equipment. No matter where in America you turned on your radio or television in the 1960s, you were listening to a college graduate whose vocal coach had taught him to speak the smooth, unaccented English of an imaginary Middle America.

With the exception of a few token athletes, like Joe Garagiola and Bob Uecker, by the early 1970s the voices that spoke for the game weren't the voices of the game. Because the game on the field is so different from the one observed from the booth, I think it best that there be someone up there who, for example, understands in his bones that the depth of field required to keep both the pitcher and the batter (60 feet 6 inches away) in focus makes a 67 m.p.h. curveball look slow even though, were it a car, it would have exceeded the interstate speed limit in ninety-percent of the country.

I would hope that a wise former baseball player, with the richness of his playing experiences, would more often than not reach a better conclusion about a game situation than someone who hasn't lived the life. But I'm not so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the game. Many are so capable. Gary Cohen could only play in Soviet Russia—when he picks up a bat, it swing hims—yet he is a tremendous announcer.

However, for someone who didn't play the game to understand its nuances takes time and effort, something that not all people are willing to give. Personal experiences influence the facts that announcers chooses to discuss. But this is not to say that only former players can understand the game. Sometimes they emphasize their own experience to the exclusion of others, as is the case with Tim McCarver, for whom baseball has not changed one iota since the day he retired in 1979, and Joe Morgan, whose greatness on the diamond is inversely proportional to his awfulness in the booth. For a former player to become a good announcer, he must extrapolate from his experiences into areas which with he is unfamiliar. Because what comes naturally to white, colleged-educated, broadcast journalism majors might not come easy to a poor kid from Oakland nicknamed "Mex."

This is why the best ~~Supreme Court~~ broadcast team working today consists of Gary, Keith, and Ron.

AROOGA! AROOGA! AROOGA! AROOGA!

2009-06-04T10:39:31-07:00

As those of you on Facebook already know, a couple days ago I noted that "after months of recommending I befriend strangers, Facebook now thinks I know people I actually know." New algorithms and what-not. But here's the kicker: not only does this new algorithm identify people I actually know, it definitively pins down the identity of my stalkers:

This time with arrows:

John Casper has been outed by an algorithm. I now know who he is, where he lives, where he works, and I'm in a mood. Talk me down from the ledge, dear readers, before I go and retaliate something stupid.

Don't kill me until I'm dead, alright?

2009-06-04T06:12:38-07:00

The Associated Press reports that

David Eddings, the acclaimed fantasy novelist and author of such series as The Belgariad and The Malloreon, has died at the age of 77. Eddings was predeceased by his wife and writing partner Leigh two years ago.

When I worked at a used bookstore, I shelved all fourteen thousand, two hundred, and forty-three of his novels more times than I care to remember. But I never read any of them. Even so, I want to go on the record and declare that he deserved better than to be killed by his wife two years before he died.

(Need I remind you that grammar matters?)

“The Young Cons believe the Bible is relatively silent on issues relating to supply-side economics.”

2009-06-03T14:25:37-07:00

Laughing at the “Young Con Anthem” because neither “Serious C” nor “Stiltz” have skillz is all well and good, but there’s more to their awfulness than the sort of schadenfreude you get watching the first two weeks of American Idol. For the uninitiated:

This breed of rap is all about establishing and maintaining identity, which you do by asserting your authenticity and questioning that of other rappers—either by attacking it whole cloth (coastal feuds) or its legitimacy (street credibility). The Young Cons talk up their own game like some white Wu-Tang. Ideally, these assertions of identity should be such that when they “manufacture poems to microphones, bones fracture.” (Let that play while you work and your dull life will turn into a Jim Jarmusch film.) What makes the Young Cons so tellingly awful is that they sat down to forge a statement of identity, produced something entirely incoherent, then looked upon their words and declared themselves ready for battle. Their awkward juxtapositions and clumsier delivery foreground conservative schizophrenia:

Bail out a business, but can’t protect an infant.

My conservative view is, drill baby drill,
You can say you hate me, but I’m praying for you still.

The Bible says, we’re a people under God,
AIG was hooked up by Chris Dodd.
A classy gift ain’t an Ipod.

Then there’s the lyric people have held up to the most mockery:

Three things taught me conservative love:
Jesus, Ronald Reagan, plus Atlas Shrugged.
Saving our nation from inflation devastation,
On my hands and my knees praying for salvation.

They’re not talking about coalitional politics here—the necessity of compromising with constiuency X despite their outlandish positions on Y in order to get disappointed by someone new—they’re claiming as their authentic identity the ideological incoherence of political coalitions. They haven’t put the cart before the horse so much as glued the horse to its side and demanded it be pulled down the mountain; then later, as they sift through the gore and gristle that had been their horse and cart, they turn to us and say, “We meant to do that.”

One last thing: is Scott Johnson “almost certain that this is the first time the word ‘inherently’ has made its appearance in hip-hop” because he can’t understand a word black people say or because he’s never even tried to?

(x-posted.)

After G.I. Joe decided to take him down, his decline was swift. By Tuesday, he was on the phone telling a stranger to "Choke on [his] . . . !"

2009-06-02T22:10:17-07:00

It was a quiet Sunday afternoon when I became an enemy of the state. I was doing laundry, as you do, and was carrying a load of towels up three flights of stairs when suddenly the landing turned all "GO JOE!" As I crushed Snake Eyes Eyes with my left foot and tumbled head first into a hamper of clean towels, I thought to myself, "If you're going to fall head first into something, you could do a lot worse than towels fresh from the dryer." My head was safe, but with his dying breath, that wee plastic Snake Eyes rolled over and took my ankle with him. I scream into clean laundry as my ankle pivots in ways God never intended.

Knowing that I have to teach on Tuesday, on Monday I contact the people with the little carts and ask for a lift to class. "No problem," a helpful person tells me. "That's what we're here for," she says. She takes down some information and assures me we're all set. Someone will be at my place shortly before 7:00 a.m. to pick me up and take me class. Fast forward to Tuesday morning.

SEK: (looking at his watch) I'm ten minutes early. Nothing can possibly go wrong. (ten minutes pass) Probably just running a little late. (five more minutes pass) Maybe I should call to check up.

PERSON WHO ANSWERS THE PHONE: What?

SEK: I'm calling about a ride to campus. Someone was supposed to pick me up so I could teach. (shuffling sounds can be heard)

DIFFERENT PERSON: Can I help you with something?

SEK: I'm calling about a ride to campus. Someone was supposed to pick me up so I could teach.

DIFFERENT PERSON: Right. We can't do that.

SEK: You can't do that?

DIFFERENT PERSON: Right. We need a doctor's note and you didn't provide one.

SEK: I'm seeing the doctor tomorrow. I can bring a note in afterwards.

DIFFERENT PERSON: Right. That's not how it works here.

SEK: So how am I supposed to get to class?

DIFFERENT PERSON: You live on campus. Why not just walk?

SEK: (rage) If I could walk, I wouldn't have requested your services.

DIFFERENT PERSON: Right. We can't do that for you. (the shuffling sounds associated with hanging up a phone can be heard)

SEK: (Rage) Better don't hang up on me. (more shuffling) How am I supposed to teach today if I can't get to class?

DIFFERENT PERSON: Like I already said, you live on campus. Just walk.

SEK: (RAGE) And like I already said, if I could fucking walk, I wouldn't have requested your fucking services.

DIFFERENT PERSON: There's really no need to say "fuck," sir.

SEK: CHOKE ON MY FUCK, ASSHOLE!

The upside is that I solved one of life's little mysteries: every quarter I teach the Warren Ellis piece linked there, and every quarter I'm rebaffled by that expression.

I'm baffled no more.

But you know what the best part is? Guess what I see as I slowly limp my way to class? A group of guys in a fraternity using one of those carts to haul around one of their gigantic Greek letters.

I take requests: "Remember that post you wrote about playing in the outfield and writing a dissertation? I'd love to read it again, now that I'm a week away from filing my dissertation."

2009-05-29T22:43:18-07:00

(Considering the alternatives, I love the fact that this post is the one I might be remembered for. As I noted at the time, I'd had this half-written for ages but never could quite finish it. This post is as close to naked as I get—so much so I deleted it two seconds after I'd posted it before reversing course. I've received emails thanking me for this post from struggling grad students in chemistry, physics, political science, geography, geology, English, Spanish, French, Russian, education, mathematics, astrophysics, statistics, philosophy, biology, molecular chemistry, history of consciousness, and dance departments. It is, as the person who requested I repost it tonight said, an academic version of "You Are Not Alone," which would be much more awesome if it didn't analogize me into Michael Jackson. That said, I'm more than happy to oblige this request, and apologize for the overlong introduction. But before I get to the post itself, I should say that [1] the reason my interlocutor couldn't find this post is because my category for all things baseball is the Spanish "béisbol," and [2] if you read my post without reading Wally's comment, you've done yourself a disservice.)

In "On Sad and Joyful Passions of Academia," Anthony writes:

I get that people are unhappy with their advisors, with the lack of support from the university, and from the seeming glacial pace of publishing ... But the complaints, especially from those fully funded at institutions I would imagine are very exciting, foster a different sad passion within me. They even foster a kind of resentment that they have been given this opportunity while I have to scratch out a future ... yet they seem to enjoy nothing about academic work.

The best way to talk about academic work is baseball. This goes without saying.

I played third base and shortstop. I played them well. I had sure hands and quick feet. When the ball screamed off the bat, there was no time to think. There was only time to react.

Move the quick feet. Catch with sure hands. Throw the ball.

In between pitches, I would look to the man to my left to make sure we knew our assignments. Then the ball would leave the pitcher's hand. Then the batter would swing.

Move the quick feet. Catch with sure hands. Throw the ball.

In the infield I felt like part of a team. I could look to my left and catch the second baseman's eye. I could look across the diamond and catch the first baseman's eye. I was a player among players. We all knew how to react and how to react together.

Then one year my coach wanted me to play center field. Being a team player, I consented. I'd shagged flies during practice, and was better than most at going back on a ball. So why not?

I left the dugout and jogged past my teammates. Then I kept jogging until my teammates looked like toy soldiers.

I stood there. I was still playing baseball. Only alone. Three hundred and ninety feet from home plate. Two hundred feet from anybody else.

Short screaming or semaphore, I couldn't catch anyone's attention. I was alone.

See home plate in the shot above? No? Click on the picture to enlarge it. See it now? Focus your attention on the tiny white dot near dead center. There's another to its right. Either will work. Zoom in on them. Those tiny dots are twice the size of a man's head.

Now imagine something an eighth that size come shooting from the crowd.

You track the ball. You run intuitive quadratic models. You run where you think it will land. You compensate for drag. The wind blows it to the left.

You run intuitive quadratic models. You compensate for drag.

Or the right.

You run intuitive quadratic models. You compensate for drag.

Or further behind you.

You run intuitive quadratic models. You compensate for drag.

You adjust course. You adjust speed. All the while you track the ball. All the while you calculate. The ball hangs in the air for seconds. You spend every last one of them calculating.

This is not about reaction.

This is not about moving the quick feet. This is not about catching with sure hands. This is different.

And you are alone.

And everyone is watching you.

All eyes follow your eyes following the ball. You feel them. The weight of them. They're relying on you to know how wide and fast to stride. They trust the calculations you've made. They trust in the ones you will. Sometimes that trust is well-placed.

Sometimes not.

Writing a dissertation is like playing center field:

Your eyes light on something small launched at an incredible distance. Time slows. You calculate where it will land. You compensate for drag. You track it as it flies. While sprinting. You adjust your course.

You are alone. Everyone is watching you.

Fear overtakes you. You will lose the ball in the lights. You will lose the ball in the high glare of a slate sky. You will trip. You will stumble. You will fail.

You compose yourself. While tracking. While sprinting. Your chest hurts. Your legs ache. Then:

The satisfying recoil.

You close your glove around the ball. You gather your wits. You throw the ball back to the infield.

Writing a dissertation is like playing center field with one difference:

No satisfying recoil.

The fear is there. As are the calculations. And the gasping. And the aching. Sometimes you exhilarate in your own breathless grace. Certainly. And sometimes you admire the ball descending its clean arc. Of course. But:

There is no satisfying recoil. There is no salutary smack of ball on leather. Not yet.

You are the outfielder problem (Chapman, 1968; Dienes & McLeod, 1993; McBeath, 1990; McLeod & Dienes, 1993, 1996; Montagne, Laurent, & Durey, 1998; Oudejans, Michaels, Bakker, & Davids, 1999; Todd, 1981).

You await your solution. But:

You're still playing baseball. You're still having fun. But:

You are unsolved and you are surly.

I know I am.

BONUS (5 POINTS): How do SEK's career anxieties manifest in dream?

"Good passage in French on what dogs dream when awake."

2009-05-29T17:46:55-07:00

That being what I wanted to name my contribution to the book event on Jenny Davidson's Breeding: A Partial History of the Eighteenth Century, not because it's relevant, but because it's my favorite entry in the Darwin notebook I cited in the post. You're welcome to comment on the post here or at The Valve, but I don't want to reproduce it over here and risk confusing the search engines as to the location of the event.

Week 9 of Spring Quarter.

2009-05-28T13:50:42-07:00

I sit down with a salad in the crowded food court. I leave the strap of my shoulder-bag around my neck. A fidgety kid sits down next to me, looks around, and fidgets. Ten seconds later, he decides he's had enough of that seat. He stands up, grabs my bag and starts to walk away.

"Excuse me," I say.

"WHAT?"

The room goes dead silent. I point to strap around my neck and say, "I think that's my bag you have there."

"FINE."

Then he drops my bag and walks away. He was loud, but it was an empty roar. No malice to it. Nor do I think he was trying to steal my bag. If pressed, I'd say the kid probably had no clue where or even who he was. He was toast.

All of which is only to say, people who have never worked in the quarter system have absolutely no idea what those last few weeks of Spring Quarter are like, because there's nothing comparable to them in the semester system . . . and I think that's probably a good thing.