I can’t say I’m not a little bit happy about this. I know that’s unprofessional.
But listen, Roger Clemens deserves to be investigated; his lying seemed obvious and brazen. Andy Pettitte, in contrast, handled it like a man. I’m just glad someone has the teeth to take this bully on.
When I covered the Yankees, I found Clemens to be surprisingly disrespectful. In particular, he seemed to despise women journalists. On more than one occasion, he purposely turned away from me and other women reporters when we asked him questions, even if they were of the innocuous kind. You know, “How was your fastball working in the bullpen?” or "Who do you have to be careful with in this lineup?"
He seemed to enjoy humiliating me, in particular. He made loud comments about me standing too close to the dressing room ... or the showers ... or the lounge. This pretty much covered the whole clubhouse! I never knew why he did this since I wasn’t around him all that much. At the time, however, I was not battle-hardened to that kind of behavior. It hurt and confused me.
I know I’m being a bit childish here. And telling tales out of school. And kicking him when he’s down.
I never said I was a saint.
This brings me to a dilemma I faced in my second career as a teacher. After working as a sports journalist for several years, I got married and taught middle school students in the Bronx. After that, I taught 4th grade boys in Manhattan. Inevitably, some co-worker or parent would discover my maiden name and my prior career, despite my attempts to hide it. They were incredulous that I wouldn't flaunt my former connections. But I had a couple of legitimate worries. First, I was terrified the school would ask me to round up Derek Jeter for the school’s annual fund dinner. I couldn’t.
Secondly, I was worried my sweet, impressionable students would ask me, “What was so-and-so really like?” And I’d either have to lie or tell them the truth. Now, in some cases, I could easily tell the truth. With Jeter or Joe Girardi, for example, I could, without hesitation, extol them as good, upstanding men worthy of their status as role models. But many other so-called “role models” were anything but.
In my opinion and experience, Clemens was in that category.
My students were at just the right age to have their dreams shattered. These kids idolized the Yankees and people who knew them. I hated having to lie to ten year-olds, so I avoided all talk of my prior “secret” life.
I'm a people person. I care about others. So as the hapless, amateur-hour Obama administration lurches from one self-inflicted mess to another, what I really want to know is this: how's the press doing? You know, in the mental health department? How are all of those fawning, lickspittle toadies handling the collapse of their Chosen One?
Good news! They're following the textbook. For the past year, it's been a symphony of denial. But this summer, they slipped into anger.
Why is Obama such an unpopular president? It's your fault. You're too extreme. You have extreme views. Also: you're crazy. You think Obama is a Muslim. Oh, and you'rearacist.
...the modern presidency—Barack Obama’s presidency—has become a job of such gargantuan size, speed, and complexity as to be all but unrecognizable to most of the previous chief executives. The sheer growth of the federal government, the paralysis of Congress, the systemic corruption brought on by lobbying, the trivialization of the “news” by the media, the willful disregard for facts and truth—these forces have made today’s Washington a depressing and dysfunctional place. They have shaped and at times hobbled the presidency itself.
Let me list a few of the stupider points. How, exactly, is Congress "paralyzed," again? With bulletproof majorities in both houses? Isn't the problem that Democrats and Obama face that they weren't paralyzed? Is Todd Purdum so cocooned that he doesn't realize this? Obama's popularity isn't that he's done too little, it's that he's done way, way, way too much. And if the "sheer growth of the federal government" is a problem, well, um, maybe Obama should stop growing it.
It's not even worth commenting on the "trivialization of the news" point, which manages to be both pompous and ignorant at the same time. You want trivial journalism with a "willful disregard for facts and truth?" Try being President Abraham Lincoln.
Deep down, though, they all know this president is a loser. That they anointed a turkey. But they won't fully realize it until the last phase, Acceptance. Meanwhile, though, I'm really looking forward to Bargaining and Depression.
I’ve always wanted the perfect best friend. I’ve come close a few times; I currently have two close friends. Yes. Just two. I’m fine with that, except that one lives in NYC and the other lives in Charlotte, NC. I have two brothers, a mother, a like-minded husband, and three sweet kiddies, so I’m not really lacking for people who love me. On occasion, though, I do feel the need for an adult, like-minded girlfriend who lives near me. You know, to exercise with; to talk about how great making lists and crossing things off are; to provide a familiar place to drop a kid or two off for an hour so I could take another kid to the doctor; to save me from the crazies in the mom/PTA clan.
So, here goes. I’m putting a personal ad on Ricochet.
MWF, an Independent voter, sks F, BF, or BFF between ages of 35-45. Must be available and willing to go running with me at either 6 a.m. or 7 p.m. weekdays for approximately 1 hour, rain or shine.
Must have a sense of humor, a basic appreciation for God and religion, and must be pro-life. (I’m tired of being asked whether I knew my daughter would be born with a disability, which is another way of saying “Let me get this straight, ‘You could have had an abortion, but didn’t?’” Then again, I don’t want to be felt sorry for or hero-worshipped for having a child with a Down syndrome. It just “is” – if you don’t get that, please don’t respond to this ad.)
Regarding religion: If I’m having a crummy day and I just want to whine about it, if you respond with, “Let’s hold hands and pray together,” I'll get the creepy-crawlies. Yet, please also understand why my children can best accept the recent deaths of their two grandparents by thinking they are in heaven with God having as much cake and ice cream as they want. It works. We talk about that. A lot. But not much with outsiders. If you think I’m not being “honest” enough with my kids (ages 6 and under) by not telling them just yet that their grandparents are buried in the ground, disintegrating, then buzz off.
Mustn't make me feel like I need to join any political group (Republicans, Democrats) or subgroup (Tea Party, Mama Grizzlies) to feel complete or get my “voice” out there.
Must be comfortable around people with Down syndrome. My daughter has some frustrating behavior issues, is not yet potty trained, and needs a lot of help. Please don’t be afraid of her or feel sad for her limited little life, projecting a pity party with your frowning face. It’s infuriating. A sense of humor/joie de vivre is key. She’s the funniest and most loving person in the family. Help provide an atmosphere where she can show it by being yourself.
Must not dismiss depression, addiction, mental illness, eating disorders, or postpartum depression as figments of people’s imaginations that would just go away if people toughened up a little bit. Personal experience with one of these – though not currently active, please – might give us some common ground.
Mustn't be Mother of the Year. I couldn’t deal with the self-hatred that would consume me – and our relationship. Likewise, please don’t have four kids, eat anything you want, and look like Gisele Bundchen.
Musn’t call me on the phone every night (I prefer e-mail) and please don’t ask me to go shopping. Not only do I hate shopping, but I get mall-sickness -- something about the overwhelming smell of clothing dye. I like meeting up outside to do stuff.
Mustn’t be insecure or saddened by aging/wrinkles.
Mustn’t get in petty fights with your husband and rip him to shreds in our conversations expecting me to chime in with similar crimes committed by my husband. I can't do it.
Mustn’t care about fashion labels, makeup, or your child’s reading or testing level.
Must understand what it’s like to have no money to do anything and be willing to do free (kinda boring) stuff with me without pouting.
Just as adolescence has its particular psychological profile, Arnett says, so does emerging adulthood: identity exploration, instability, self-focus, feeling in-between and a rather poetic characteristic he calls “a sense of possibilities.” A few of these, especially identity exploration, are part of adolescence too, but they take on new depth and urgency in the 20s. The stakes are higher when people are approaching the age when options tend to close off and lifelong commitments must be made. Arnett calls it “the age 30 deadline.”
Anyone who has followed my writing for the past five years knows that this basket of experiential contingencies and their attendant pathologies -- right down to the primacy of possibility and the transformation of all things into mere senses of themselves -- was my analytical point of departure from the very beginning. What a glum validation this is. I had just finished reading Elizabeth Wurtzel's pretty persuasive requiem for teenhood. Now I am told that teenhood is not only still alive but that it was merely a prelude to the next big sociological stage: "emerging adulthood."
The issue of whether emerging adulthood is a new stage is being debated most forcefully among scholars, in particular psychologists and sociologists. But its resolution has broader implications. Just look at what happened for teenagers. It took some effort, a century ago, for psychologists to make the case that adolescence was a new developmental stage. Once that happened, social institutions were forced to adapt: education, health care, social services and the law all changed to address the particular needs of 12- to 18-year-olds. An understanding of the developmental profile of adolescence led, for instance, to the creation of junior high schools in the early 1900s, separating seventh and eighth graders from the younger children in what used to be called primary school. And it led to the recognition that teenagers between 14 and 18, even though they were legally minors, were mature enough to make their own choice of legal guardian in the event of their parents’ deaths. If emerging adulthood is an analogous stage, analogous changes are in the wings.
I've got news for you -- they're already here. I alluded to them earlier in suggesting that the desire to expand marriage to fit any voluntarily formalized love-oriented arrangement is sure to erect a vast new legal and administrative apparatus dedicated to managing the social, economic, and psychological fallout from the (at least partially) voluntary undoing of those arrangements. We can extend that insight, with alarming ease, to the broader situation captured in the too-poetic and too-scientific term "emerging adulthood" -- because we are already seeing the outlines of a stark choice come into view.
That choice? On the one hand, a costly, cumbersome, ubiquitous, and intimate legal and administrative system obliged to manage the achievements, setbacks, and failures of a vast class of Americans defined above all by their immaturity; on the other, a partnership between small government and self-government, where a vast class of Americans defined above all by their maturity emancipates policymakers from the technical and therapeutic burdens of the Human Resources state, leaving politics an affordable, modest, focused, and thoroughly grown-up affair.
Down the first road is the death of maturity itself as an intelligible category. Americans will either be relatively younger or relatively older, with separate and shifting emotional, intellectual, social, physiological, and physical ages. Generations will become muddled and increasingly meaningless, with the window of reproductive (to say nothing of non-reproductive) sexual activity expanding to embrace five decades, and the collapse of the authoritative relationship between parents and children replaced by the legal relationship between individuals of all ages and the state entities assigned to manage their pathologically unstable and pathologically chronic personal situations.
We're not there yet. But, as Ross and Reihan hinted in the most pregnant and evocative portions of Grand New Party, we're sliding purposefully in that direction, across multiple fronts and in multiple classes of American life. Maturity still means something, and there are still enough Americans who want to fight to preserve the kind of public life and political liberty characteristic of a mature citizenry. Yet there are also plenty of Americans who more or less think that maturity is a quasi-aristocratic luxury or an imposition at odds with a vision of justice in which the state helps ensure that even the worst off are ensured a fair shot at success in their everyday lives. It might be a touch too rhetorical to cast this contrast as our real Two Americas. But on the other hand, it might be the jolt we need to fully understand the cultural changes we face, and what's at stake in the choices we have to make.
Articles like these crop up every now and then, bemoaning kids in their twenties for not facing the responsibilities of adulthood, for putting off the process of becoming grown ups by living with their parents after college, depending on them financially, delaying their careers by traveling abroad or doing Teach for America, and waiting until their mid-thirties to start families.
The 20s are a black box, and there is a lot of churning in there. One-third of people in their 20s move to a new residence every year. Forty percent move back home with their parents at least once. They go through an average of seven jobs in their 20s, more job changes than in any other stretch. Two-thirds spend at least some time living with a romantic partner without being married. And marriage occurs later than ever. The median age at first marriage in the early 1970s, when the baby boomers were young, was 21 for women and 23 for men; by 2009 it had climbed to 26 for women and 28 for men, five years in a little more than a generation.
We’re in the thick of what one sociologist calls “the changing timetable for adulthood.” Sociologists traditionally define the “transition to adulthood” as marked by five milestones: completing school, leaving home, becoming financially independent, marrying and having a child. In 1960, 77 percent of women and 65 percent of men had, by the time they reached 30, passed all five milestones. Among 30-year-olds in 2000, according to data from the United States Census Bureau, fewer than half of the women and one-third of the men had done so. A Canadian study reported that a typical 30-year-old in 2001 had completed the same number of milestones as a 25-year-old in the early ’70s.
All of this implies that the youth today take longer to mature than they did in the past. One reason often cited is how coddled we are by authorities--our parents, our teachers, and so on.
But another reason, I think, is our fear to make meaningful and committed choices (and maybe this is caused by being coddled--I'm not sure). The reason we delay entry into adulthood is because we were led to believe that adulthood, when it arrives, should be perfect--the perfect job, the perfect husband, and the perfect house. When we don't see it immediately beyond the horizon our senior years of college, we think we need more time to think about where to go, what step to take next--so we apply for Teach For America, or an equivalent one or two-year program that we think, perhaps mistakenly, will give us a chance to really figure out what we want to do.
And of course, delaying our careers means that we delay marriage since, as part of that picture-perfect life we envision for ourselves, marriage happens once we reach a sufficient level of financial stability and success in whatever field we ultimately choose to pursue. Let's not even get into the array of choices and complications and commitments we have to face when we are in the process--which was once known as "dating"--of finding a suitable spouse.
I think we delay adulthood because of fear--the fear of taking a risk and diving into something (a career, a relationship, an apartment) that may not work out. As someone who is conservative by habit, I'm not advocating that people my age begin to make more risky decisions--but I think that if we replace fear with prudence in our hearts and minds, then that lurch into adulthood may not be as scary as it initially seems.
I’m not one who puts much stock in conspiracy theories, especially Washington conspiracy theories. For starters, it’s nearly impossible to have more than one person conspire in that town without one of the conspirators leaking the story. For another thing, one always risks sounding a bit like a nutcake when writing about such maters. Having said that—I’ve always wanted to write “having said that” because it’s a phrase used by all the really top political analysts, along with “at the end of the day”—I have come to believe in a major conspiracy unfolding in the capital.
One of the great mysteries of recent history is how Barack Obama demonstrated such political skill as a candidate only to become so seemingly tone deaf as the President. Why does he continue to wade into waters that are nearly predestined to lower his and his party’s standings among voters? Why does he seem so unconcerned by the roiling seas around him? Why is he apparently so detached from the doom approaching in November when his policies will almost certainly be repudiated and a new generation of hated Republicans will march back into Congress? Does he not even care that he could very well become a one-term President?
No he doesn’t, because that’s the plan; that’s the conspiracy!
Let’s go back to the campaign and the heady days between his election and his assumption of office. The nation and the world were positively giddy over what was to come. He had literally talked of his nomination as a time when the rise of the oceans would slow and the planet would begin to heal. Not the party, mind you, nor the nation, but the planet. This was a man who clearly saw himself as the salvation of the world. But what he soon discovered was how small the Presidency can make a man appear. The day-to-day requirements of the office were anything but glamorous. Oh, there were photo-ops with athletes and movie stars and appearances on The View, but the rest of it was so...well, so beneath him: answering questions from snippy reporters, dealing with cabinet members who thought they were important, even treating Harry Reid, for God’s sake, with deference.
His poll numbers began falling, people began questioning his wisdom, and there was even talk he might have to compromise his grand vision for the world. This was a man who thought he had arrived only to find himself asking, “Is that all there is?” Had he worked all this time to become the Great One only to be reduced to this? So what’s a President to do?
Well, what if he began looking at his election not as the realization of a goal but as the next step in a process? What if he understood his greatest popularity remained not in this country, but in the rest of the world? What if he figured out the way to achieve real greatness was to rise beyond being the leader of just one (flawed) nation to being the leader of one (healed) world? In other words, what if he began to see the Presidency of the United States merely as a stepping stone?
Can you begin to see this conspiracy now? His party suffers tremendous losses in November. The country’s problems continue because those terrible Republicans have taken over and are fighting him at every turn. He throws up his hands in a year and says, “I will not run again! The challenges facing the world are too great for me to spend my time in office in one country when the whole world needs me!” The excitement returns! The adulation and anticipation are back! He is no longer the leader of a nation; he’s the leader of a World Movement!
It all makes perfect sense. Please, listen to me! I’m not crazy, I’m not! Really...get that jacket off me...don’t take me away....aaarrrrggggghhhhh!
To judge from e-mails, comments on Facebook and so forth, some of you are worried that the discussion about the GMZ is becoming too whacked-out, too obsessive, and dangerously incendiary.
No, it's quite healthy, I figure. These questions about Islam--what it is, who's a moderate, whether there are moderates--have been subterranean for too long. That's unhealthy.
The mosque is forcing a lot of people to subject their firm but privately-held views, whether well-founded or bigoted, to public scrutiny. That's not necessarily healthy, mind you--I too am balefully watching the nutcases come out of their hidey-holes--but it's generally a good thing. It was definitely going to happen sooner or later.
There's been a stifling veil of political correctness drawn over this subject for fear of exciting extremists--on both sides, mind you. But ordinary people sense that for what it is: flimflam and an insult to their intelligence. If the emotion generated by the mosque prompts this kind of debate, and if it happens, no coincidence, before an election, that's what democracy is about.
So, to Conor Friedersdorf's latest at the Dish.I agree with you, Conor, that Imam Feisal should not be judged a radical simply because he has attended conferences where radicals were present. Were you to judge me by the opinions of people with whom I'm loosely associated--my list of Facebook friends, for example--you'd conclude that I was (serially), a crypto-Islamist, a profound bigot, a conspiracy theorist, a Turkish nationalist, and a partisan of the Animal Liberation Front. I talk to a lot of people with whom I profoundly disagree. I figure that even if I don't change their minds today, some of it might sink in drop by drop. Political opinions tend to mature over a matter of years, not minutes. I've even been known to change my mind after exposure to an opposing point of view, albeit quite a bit later, after a face-saving interval.
The flap over Ann Coulter's appearance at Homocon suggests the same question. I agree with her that giving a speech at Homocon does not amount to furnishing your apartment with lucite chairs and adding a splash of Mediterranean Walnut to the transitional spaces in your walls. So you're right about that, Conor. We can agree about that.
So, Conor, would you agree with me about this? It's time to hear from Imam Feisal himself. I'm not impressed that he's left the entire nation to read the tea-leaves and the entrails. I'm sick of hearing from Park 51's adolescent flack on Twitter. If Feisal wants to build bridges, he'd best come back from Malaysia and do some building.
I've just received quite a remarkable e-mail from my publicist at Basic. She's failed to arrange a single media appearance for me--or book-signing--for my American tour for the paperback launch of There is No Alternative. She blithely explains that "without a direct tie-in with the news, it’s a harder sell."
Behold: This is why the publishing industry is dying.
You know any local radio talk show hosts? I bet some of them might grasp the direct tie-in to the news. Would you please put them in touch with me? Send them to my website. Tell them my vocal cords are all warmed up and ready to go.
I can't imagine how difficult it must be to have a normal worship life if you are President. I in no way support the type of preaching that the Obama family heard at Trinity UCC, but I do believe that public officials should be allowed to worship in peace. The few times that President Obama has tried to worship at a local congregation, it has been a complete media circus. So I understand his decision to worship in the more private setting of Camp David. The chaplain there is Carey Cash, a grand-nephew of the Man in Black.
In any case, that lack of public worship may be causing President Obama some problems. In a new poll, it is revealed that 18 percent of Americans believe he is Muslim (I remember during the campaign being surprised to learn that 14% of Republicans -- and 10% of Democrats! believed this). Some 43 percent said they have no idea what his religion is, up from 34 percent last year.
This poll, which was conducted at the beginning of this month, is just surprising across the board. It shows that only 43% of blacks and 46% of Democrats believe Obama is Christian.
Of those that believe Obama is Muslim, most say that they learned it from "the media." But 11 percent said "they learned it from Mr. Obama's behavior and words."
I'm utterly confused by these results. The CBS report includes this other tidbit:
Despite the confusion about Mr. Obama's religion, there is noteworthy support for how he uses it to make decisions. Nearly half, or 48 percent, said he relies on his religion the right amount when making policy choices, 21 percent said he uses it too little and 11 percent too much.
Mr. President this is not about religious freedom. It is about the importance of the World Trade Center site to the psyche of the American People. It is about a blatant attack on our sovereignty by people whose ideology ultimately demands the elimination of our way of life. While Imam Faisal Rauf may not share their violent tendencies he does seem to share a belief that Islamic structures are a political statement and even Ground Zero should be looked upon through the lens of political Islam and not a solely American one.
I am hoping for more Zuhdi Jasser and less Ibrahim Hooper on my television screen. How about you?
At Reason, Radley Balko reminds us of the big picture. Relative to other parts of the world (ahem, Europe), we've got it pretty good in America -- in no small part precisely because of what America is:
In contrast to many of the minority Muslim populations in Europe, American Muslims embrace modernity, are better educated, and earn more money than their non-Muslim fellow citizens. A 2007 Pew poll suggests American Muslims are also doing just fine when it comes to assimilating and viewing themselves as part of America. According to the poll, just 5 percent of American Muslims express any level of support for Al Qaeda, and strong majorities condemn suicide attacks for any reason (80+ percent), and have a generally positive image of America and its promise for Muslims.
According to the poll, the only subset of American Muslims where support for Al Qaeda and suicide attacks gets unccomfortably high is among native-born African-American converts, many of whom converted in prison.
Via Conor, Reihan Salam shares his revealing personal story at National Review:
the observant Muslims I know best are my parents. Both of my parents have lived in New York city for over thirty years. Both of them worked in the World Trade Center in the 1980s, when I was a kid. Some of my fondest memories of growing up involve visiting them at work, and watching the 4th of July fireworks display from my dad’s office window. They were born in a country (Bangladesh) where Islamist terrorists have killed a large number of people in bomb attacks and acid attacks, and they lived through a savage and mostly forgotten war in which over 1 million Bengali Muslims were tortured and killed in part because they were accused of being “polytheists,” etc. That is, armed cadres of proto-Islamists were killing Muslims who had a different way of seeing the world and practicing their religion.
So that’s part of where I’m coming from: the idea that Islam is one thing or that all Muslims are the same strikes me as highly unlikely.
The one congressman from Alaska, the Republican Don Young, denounced the stimulus as appalling, done under the cover of night and without full disclosure. He also promised Alaskans that “if there are earmarks, we will have our fingerprints on them.”
(Curiously, that pattern also plays out in Louisiana, Wyoming and the Dakotas, states relatively low in unemployment but high in per capita stimulus, federal aid and growling antigovernment animus.)
Curiously? Why, yes, curiously. Because now that the liberals have established the rules of the game, conservatives ought to play by them, taking what the government gives them, then tugging their forelocks with thanks in the direction of the President and Speaker Pelosi, then falling silent. What? Conservatives object to the rules? Then surely they ought to do so, the Times believes, in a way that would render them instantly irrelevant, promising their constituents to bring home no federal funding whatsover.
"Curiously." That word says it all. In its arch, smug, pompous, self-satisified way, the Times wants us all to understand, without its ever having to be quite so crude as actually to say so, that conservatives are little better than hypocrites. Nonsense. Accepting political reality while at the same time attempting to change it? That represents a perfectly coherent political and intellectual approach. Milton Friedman decried Social Security—but insisted on cashing his Social Security check.
The Times hasn’t even discovered any gap between the way conservative legislators talk to their constituents and the way they vote in Washington. Consider Representative Don Young once again. He calls the stimulus “appalling.” B now that stimulus money is flowing, he insists that he’s going to do his best to bring a lot of it home to Alaska. These are statements he has made in public. To the Times’s own reporter. Unlike Harry Reid, who talks like a conservative in Nevada but votes like a liberal in Washington, Don Young demonstrates consistency.
What have here, in other words, isn’t a news story. It can’t be. It contains no news. What we have here is the staff of the Times giving us its political views in the guise of news.
A Ricochet reader (but not participant -- we're working on getting him to join), asked me to post this question on the effect of the California gay marriage decision and its effects on religions:
We allow gay marriage, and then what?
If the courts create a constitutional right to gay marriage, discrimination of the protected class becomes illegal. Many churches, the Catholic Church for one, will refuse to perform gay weddings, not out of hatred or bigotry, but because of doctrine. For over two thousand the Catholic Church has celebrated marriage as one of its seven sacraments. The Church will not knowingly administer a sacrament when it goes against a fundamental doctrine. A huge crisis is inevitable because there is no middle ground. How will courts choose between the first amendment right to the free exercise of religion for some and the 14th amendment equal protection rights of the other?
My view is that the First Amendment's guarantee of free exercise of religion prohibits the state from forcing religious group to conduct ceremonies that they do not wish to. Should Judge Vaughn Walker's decision ultimately receive the approval of the Supreme Court, gay couples can get a marriage recognized under civil law. But I don't think that requires religious groups to provide or recognize the marriage, if that is part of their religious beliefs. To take divorce as an example, a couple can get a divorce, legally, very easily these days, but that doesn't force the Catholic Church will recognize the divorce or grant the couple an annulment.
But that raises a larger question. I am curious about other Ricochet-er views. Should gay marriage ultimately prevail, what are the possible effects on religion? One could say that it could lead to a decline in religious or moral values -- that seems to be the view of many conservatives. But it might also lead to a rebirth of religious sentiment. Is it possible that Roe v. Wade had that same effect?
In the 1970s, Universal Studios consisted of two main divisions. The TV side cranked out endless formulaic detective shows for the networks. Colombo, McMillan, McCloud, Rockford, Kojak, they all defended the Universal backlot from evil-doers. The film division seemed to specialize in endless formulaic disaster movies: the Airport franchise, Irwin Allen’s Earthquake, Steven Spielberg’s Jaws – all terrorized filmgoers, along with serving up plenty of epic cheese along the way.
So it’s not surprising that in 1975, the studio turned to the Hindenburg disaster of 1937 as a film plot: it’s Airport set in the 1930s! Robert Wise could direct — he knows his way around big movie projects! We could have a detective looking for saboteurs! We can produce the big explosion the end in Sensurround!
The result was a typical 1970s Universal potboiler — but check out the special effects to bring the dead zeppelin back to life:
There’s a terrific book from 2002 titled The Invisible Art (I bought my copy at the local Borders a couple of years ago for the cover price after noticing it’s currently going for insane money on Amazon). It’s a coffee table style look at the history of matte paintings, that’s chockablock filled with large color reproductions of the classic matte paintings created throughout the history of cinema. Some shots are simply reproductions of the completed image, but many also include the original matte painting (typically painted onto a large sheet of glass), showing the area left blank for the insertion of actors, typically via rear projection.
The original idea behind matte paintings of course was that it made set production much cheaper — only a small set need be built for the actors to appear in, and the rest of the image painted around them afterward. During World War II, when government mandates forced movie studios into building sets with a minimum of raw materials, films rarely thought of as “special effects movies” such as 1944’s Since You Went Away made extensive use of matte paintings to replace large, free-standing physical sets. Flipping through The Invisible Art, it’s obvious that the aesthetics of old Hollywood also helped to sell matte paintings. From Gone with the Wind in 1939, to the great MGM musicals of the 1950s, films made during Hollywood’s golden era typically had a softer, more painterly look in general. Contrast this more aesthetically pleasing look to the harsh gritty films that became the vogue in the 1970s after Old Hollywood collapsed.
By the 1970s, thanks to his long apprenticeship to Alfred Hitchcock, matte painter Albert Whitlock was one of the unsung heroes at Universal, crafting large vistas of destroyed urban areas for films such as Irwin Allen’s Earthquake and Hitchcock’s The Birds (arguably the predecessor to the 1970s disaster movies) to be produced. Fans of a certain popular mid-1960s science fiction TV series may recognize this classic matte painting created by Whitlock for the show’s second pilot episode.
For Robert Wise’s production of The Hindenburg, most of the long shots of the airship consist of Whitlock’s matte paintings. While a large model of the Hindenburg was built for the movie, many of its appearances are a photograph of the model (which now hangs in the Smithsonian), with extra details painted in by Whitlock, and then glued to a piece of glass, which was then placed atop another Whitlock painting of the landscape below. Via stop motion animation (where the image of the zeppelin was moved a frame at a time) the Hindenburg was made to “fly” over a beautifully painted landscape of 1930s-era New York. (The end of the movie switches to black and white to allow stock footage of the infamous crash to used intercut with Scott and crew on sets; Ted Turner’s crayon-like film colorization techniques mercifully not yet invented.)
The result was one of the last big special effects movies before George Lucas’s Star Wars revitalized the moribund film industry, and revolutionized special effects. Lucas would of course create Industrial Light & Magic, his own in-house effects department, which would bring a host of new techniques to the industry during the following decade.
While the technicians at ILM adored Whitlock and other traditional matte artists, at some point in the early 1990s, traditional matte paintings began to go out of vogue, and were replaced by digital effects techniques in general. By the following decade, it was obvious that some sort of flip-over had occurred in the industry: Hollywood’s special effects technicians can seemingly create anything. It’s the writers who are now so hamstrung these days by political correctness. Stanley Kubrick once said, “If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed.” But these days, it can’t be written or thought in Hollywood, as Brian Anderson of City Journal wrote back in 2005:
There’s a simple explanation of why Tinseltown churns out so many commercial duds. Elite filmmakers want to make moola, of course—and they still do, lots of it, though not nearly as much as they could be making. But giving the public what it wants isn’t their prime motivation. More important is their wish for recognition as artists from peers, critics, and the liberal elites, says Emmy- and Oscar-nominated writer and director Lionel Chetwynd, one of Hollywood’s most vocal conservatives. “And it has been true from the late sixties on that if you wanted to be seen as an artist, you have to be a liberal—you have to rail against the government, be edgy,” he adds. Having the right artistic vision can mean other social advantages, too. “Making something commercially successful and appealing to a broad public, like The Incredibles, is less likely to get a Rebecca Romijn look-alike to sleep with you than making dark, hard-hitting, critically acclaimed material like Million Dollar Baby,” says longtime Hollywood watcher Medved.
Further reinforcing Hollywood’s leftish leanings are liberal interest groups that monitor script content for “offensive”—read: politically incorrect—content. This pressure can utterly transform a film project, as Tom Clancy will tell you. In his novel The Sum of All Fears, Muslim terrorists explode a nuke at the Super Bowl. When Clancy optioned the book and the film went into development, the Council on American Islamic Relations got to work. The 2002 film villains: white neo-Nazis, not Muslim fanatics. Some Hollywood production companies actually have outreach offices that contact advocacy groups ahead of production to vet potential film scripts. “Keep in mind [that] one of the reasons why the FBI or the government or business are the villains is because everyone else has a constituency,” former Motion Picture Association head Jack Valenti points out.
The PC concerns, internalized in scriptwriters’ heads even before any advocate complains, can produce bizarre incoherence. Novelist and screenwriter Andrew Klavan’s True Crime is about an innocent white man on death row, railroaded because officials needed to prove that the death penalty isn’t racially biased. “The only one who figures this out is this politically incorrect journalist who can see through the B.S.,” Klavan relates. The gripping 1999 movie version, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood as journalist Steve Everett, transforms the innocent death-row inmate into a black man (played by Isaiah Washington). The movie works, even if it takes the anti-PC edge off Klavan’s novel.
Maybe the intersection occurred during a very different Universal-produced disaster movie: 1995’s Apollo 13, which combined some of the first completely digital special effects, with a pro-American plot. Or maybe 1998’s Air Force One, which starred Harrison Ford, portraying the president as a tough on terrorism Vietnam-era vet who knew his way around the controls of a jet aircraft. No wonder Hollywood was so appreciative when their wish was fulfilled in real life just two years later…
We take for granted the special effects employed by a series such as Mad Men — every time you see Don riding the commuter train in from Ossining, he’s sitting inside of a set in Los Angeles with the New York State exteriors green-screened in behind him in post-production. Even innocuous shots such as the one above are loaded with period, not to mention location-specific detail digitally added. (That’s a bank in Pasadena that was photographed on a blazing hot summer day in 2007. All that snow, and the period buildings behind it were digitally drawn and matted in.) But we don’t notice them because the show is character-driven and as exotic as 1960s New York now seems, it’s not outer space.
Moviegoers today often complain about CGI effects and long for the days when films were made via the methods employed by Albert Whitlock and crew. But are the people who complain about today’s CGI instead really longing for the days when movies featured believable adults and competent writing, and the special effects served to advance the story, and not serve as the focal point of the film?
Annie Lowrey of the Washington Independent writes about the increased suicide rate caused by the desperation faced by many among the ranks of the jobless. Lowrey cites an estimated suicide rate for the unemployed of two to three times the national average. But in contrast to these grim statistics, Lowrey also reports on the bittersweet story of a 45-year old, unemployed man named Scott.
Scott, posting in an online forum for the unemployed, wrote about his desperation and confessed to having overwhelming suicidal thoughts. In several posts, he announced that he’d probably kill himself by the end of the day. Forum users quickly responded by exhorting Scott to seek counseling, to call a suicide hotline, and to check himself into a hospital. Other users called upon the authorities to search for Scott in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he had disclosed he was living. When Scott was finally found, a fellow forum user (and complete stranger) drove over 100 miles to pick Scott up and bring him to her home, where her family set up a makeshift room for him. Today Scott is far from being freed of his despair – he’s still unemployed and says he feels like an imposition – but he’s alive because of the concern and generosity of fellow Americans.
There are [at least] two reactions to Scott’s story. The first, as Harold Pollack exhibits in the Huffington Post, is to whine about how the government isn’t doing enough to help people in distress:
What is humiliating is the way our nation has failed to mount an effective response to widespread human pain during the worst economic crisis we've faced in decades. We [by “we,” Harold means the government] have failed to act effectively and decisively while millions of our fellow citizens have lost homes, have lost jobs, have seen their unemployment benefits expire.
But Harold urges readers not to lose hope in The One just yet:
If you are a progressive...you may be especially discouraged because much of the inaction has occurred under a Democratic administration and under Democratic majorities in the House and Senate. This is indeed discouraging. Don't allow disappointment to make you cynical and passive as we approach midterm elections. Republican victories make things much worse.
The second reaction to Scott’s story is to view it not as a disappointment in government, but as a triumph of the American people’s ability to care for one another without the involvement of government agencies or the coercion of bureaucrats.
The band of strangers that came together to provide a support net for Scott were practicing what Tocqueville termed “the art of association” in his masterpiece, Democracy in America. Peter Berkowitz, in an essay entitled “The Art of Association,” writes:
Tocqueville maintained that Americans have a special aptitude for [“the art of association”]. The associations Tocqueville had in mind were not created by the state or the law, but by the initiative of energetic and self-reliant individuals. Their benefits, he believed, extended well beyond the achievement of the immediate economic, moral or political ends for which individuals establish them. Associational life shifts the gaze of individuals away from themselves toward others; it generates in each an awareness of the needs and the limitations of others; it enlarges self- interest narrowly conceived by making vivid the private advantage that flows from cooperation for the public good; and it teaches the habits of cooperation and self-restraint by giving individuals regular opportunities to practice them.
But I guess so-called progressives like Harold Pollack must ignore the successes that occur without the involvement of the government, lest anyone start making the case that we could make due with less government.
President Obama came to Los Angeles this week and completely fouled-up our already fouled-up traffic. But what's more interesting is who came -- or, rather, who didn't bother to come -- to the fundraising bash hosted by writer/producer John Wells. From today's LATimes.com:
many Hollywood liberal luminaries like Jeffrey Katzenberg and Barbra Streisand bought the tickets and then completely skipped Barack Obama's speech, the one that raised $1 million for Democratic House campaigns along with the ire of thousands of L.A. commuters who paid nothing and got no canapes for the privilege of sitting a couple of hours in stubborn security traffic jams around the entire neighborhood of mansions. (Boos.)
And then there's the speech, which is red meat for a blue state:
This week's fundraising speeches across the nation have a shorter brag list and a more stridently partisan tone, aimed at congressional Republicans who, if summer polls are any indicator, only need to keep breathing in order to regain control at least of the House on Nov. 2.
The Democrat is trying to portray Republicans in Congress as obstructionists, as if American voters gave the GOP lopsided majorities in both houses in the 2008 elections, instead of the other way around.
If Republicans were such obstinate obstacles, why didn't Democrats approve healthcare last year when they had 60 Senate votes and the GOP was helpless to halt it? Obama doesn't discuss the dissension among Democrats.
Two questions: 1. If Obama loses Hollywood, how much does it hurt him? If people look at him around here and smell "loser," they might just lose the joy of writing those big fat checks. Say this for Bill Clinton: he seemed like a fun guy. He seemed like the kind of guy you'd pay a lot of money to hang out with, or to sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom after a late-night pizza. And 2. How much would I pay not to have to listen to Obama? How about the maximum allowable individual contribution to the Mitch Daniels '12 campaign. You?
Claire linked to this below, withholding comment. I'm less judicious. The Speaker on San Francisco radio station KCBS, with a few interpolations of my own:
There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this [the Ground Zero Mosque] a political issue by some.
[Quite right. May we suppose that you've taken this up with the President, the chief offender?]
And I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded," she said.
[Madam Speaker, it used to be that the rest of the country would scratch its head in puzzlement whenever a Republican in the House accused you of bullying or strong-arm tactics. Now you've permitted the rest of us to see what those Republicans mean. Was that necessary?]
How is this being ginned up that here we are talking about Treasure Island, something we've been working on for decades, something of great interest to our community as we go forward to an election about the future of our country
[Treasure Island? Of interest to the future of the country? I'm afraid, Madam Speaker, that there really is only one way to construct that remark: you believe that providing them with booty--Treasure Island, a former naval base, has now been signed over from the Navy to the city of San Francisco--should determine the way Americans vote. 'Hm,' you seem to imagine their wondering. 'The future of America? Oh, I know. Let's place it in the hands of liberal Democrats. They'll give us lots of fun stuff.']
and two of the first three questions are about a zoning issue in New York City.
[Oh, those impertinent voters,asking, in effect, whether liberal Democrats have the fortitude to defend our civilization. How dare they?]
And there we have it. In just a hundred or so words, Nancy Pelosi reveals herself. She's a bully. And her fundamental view of American politics--give voters enough booty and they ought to shut up--is utterly debased.
Good news. Madeleine Brooks has issued a correction. Imam Feisal was not at a conference sponsored by Hizb ut-Tahrir, just a conference where some members of Hizb ut-Tahrir were present. I still wouldn't have gone, if I were him, just knowing they would be there. But that's not quite the same as accepting an invitation to their conference.
From the Florida panhandle on Monday, to Oklahoma City (sing along everyone, …”Ooooooooklahoma where the wind comes sweeping down the yada yada yada”), to Columbus, Ohio on Friday, I like to think I’m making the mark of Zorro, backwards, across the map. This trip has been made a bit more enjoyable thanks to the patient smarts of my son Ben, who figured out how to tether my smart phone to a lap top. The benefits are many. I can now write on a regular keyboard, which is much less tedious than Droid’s virtual keyboard (I’m all thumbs on that thing). Also, posting to Ricochet just got easier as well (don’t say you weren’t warned).
A quick perusal of the morning’s news brought these nuggets: An Olympian Council on The Mountain top ... um … I mean an appeals court in California ... has hurled another thunderbolt at us lesser mortals, ruling that the law making it a crime to falsely claim that one has received US military medals is unconstitutional. Specifically, Xavier Alvarez, of Pamona, CA, who falsely claimed to be a Medal of Honor recipient, was within his First Amendment right to lie. Stolen valor is now an accepted and perfectly legal form of speech. To those who earned our nation's medals through real valor, who carry the physical and mental scars to this day, or to whom the medals were awarded posthumously, the court extends the back of its royal hand.
In other news, the Justice Department is threatening to sue Sheriff Joe Arpaio, down in Maricopa County, AZ. The Sheriff has displayed brazen disregard for authority by actually enforcing laws, including those against trespassing illegally in America. His actions cannot be allowed to stand, of course, as yet another court recently hurled its own thunderbolt, finding that the enforcement of federal immigration law is also unconstitutional. (As an aside, has anyone bothered to ask why, if illegals can trespass across citizens’ property in Arizona, we aren’t allowed to trespass across the barricades onto the White House lawn?)
And of course, we have the recent thunderbolt on marriage, which found that the institution as understood by the Founders, as understood for thousands of years, is also unconstitutional. Thus do these little gaggles of ostensibly wise men and women, untethered to reality and unrestrained by the Constitution they swore to uphold, continue to show contempt for the citizens, the laws, and the foundations of this country. Some of them can be held accountable in elections. Many of them cannot, and they know it. Meanwhile, Lady Justice is still on extended holiday. Perhaps I will see her at a truck stop down the road somewhere, since the folks in those establishments tend to have a better sense of justice than all our best legal minds combined. Bill Buckley had it exactly right about the names in the phone book.
The San Francisco East Bay's enterprising tea partiers have put together a video that's worth watching on a couple different levels. In addition to the heartwarming political story -- band of riled-up citizens replace their torn-down freeway sign ("Throw the Bums Out!") with a bigger, better one -- what strikes me is the range of talents on display in the clip itself. The manual competence that goes into the construction of the new sign -- good luck destroying this one -- is fully impressive, and the song that soundtracks the whole video is far and away the most sonically adventurous tea party tune yet committed to mp3.
Citizen-driven politics is about more than chants and ballots. It's about people using their ability to make all kinds of different things to bridge the too-often yawning gap between everyday life and political participation. Even if the chants and ballots favor the other team, I can't help but appreciate the hand-crafted floats and effigies wheeled out by our friends to the left when they take to the streets. It's very cool to see a polished DIY ethic make a splash on the right.
High unemployment levels have driven down wages for some low-skilled outsourcing services in some parts of the US, particularly among the Hispanic population.
At the same time, wages in India’s outsourcing sector have risen by 10 per cent this year and senior outsourcing managers based in the country command salaries above global averages.
Pramod Bhasin, the chief executive of Genpact, said his company expected to treble its workforce in the US over the next two years, from about 1,500 employees now.
“We need to be very aware [of what’s available] as people [in the US] are open to working at home and working at lower salaries than they were used to,” said Mr Bhasin. “We can hire some seasoned executives with experience in the US for less money.”
So if a rising tide lifts all boats, what does a sinking tide do?
Reading the headline that Rod Blagojeivch was convicted on one count of making false statements to FBI investigators, when the other 23 counts were left dangling by a hung jury, made me proud not to be an expert in criminal law. Juries have to convict by unanimous vote. Lone holdouts are usually pummeled into submission, but evidently not this time. The odds of getting two hung juries is low. The odds of getting an acquittal the next time round are lower still, if there is such a time. Clearly something had to be wrong with the prosecution given that Blago did not try to raise any real defense of his own. And it is most uneasy to see that the only conviction was on a strictly derivative offense, of not responding to an investigation truthfully, which can be said of many people (think Martha Stewart) who get panicky when approached.
My own take is that if the one sentence is for five or so years, then let the rest of the case die, and learn that in some cases prosecutorial overkill hurts no one but the prosecutor.
Perhaps from this moment forward I shall take a vow of silence on this case. There are some real issues about the future of the country from which this whole episode is a somewhat seedy diversion.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali (whom I greatly admire) has a column today in the Wall Street Journal revisiting Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations thesis. She notes that Huntington seems to have been more right in his predictions than Francis Fukuyama.
It isn't hard to have been more right than Fukuyama; you'd think they would have taken his pundit license away by now, but strangely, no one seems to hold having been completely wrong about everything against him. I guess the lesson is that you can predict pretty much anything and so long as a few years pass before you're comprehensively disproven, no one will much remember.
Some of Hirsi Ali's points are very, very right:
We need to recognize the extent to which the advance of radical Islam is the result of an active propaganda campaign. According to a CIA report written in 2003, the Saudis invested at least $2 billion a year over a 30-year period to spread their brand of fundamentalist Islam. The Western response in promoting our own civilization was negligible.
But when she talks about Turkey, she's making the same mistake I see most people making--assuming that support for Erdoğan and the AKP is much broader than it actually is.
Here are a few points everyone thinking about Turkey needs to keep firmly in mind:
1) There will be a general election in 2011.
2) The polls by no means show the AKP holding on to power. One recent survey suggests that if the election were held today, the AKP would take 31.1 percent of the vote and the CHP 33.5 percent. The MHP--secular nationalists, not necessarily the nicest people in the world, but definitely not Islamists--would take 15.5 percent. This election, in other words, is completely up for grabs.
If you look at the polling data, you'll also see that support for the CHP has soared since last January. That's because fossilized CHP party leader Deniz Baykal met with a misfortune (sex scandal!) and has been, thank God, replaced by someone for whom people can conceive of pulling the lever. People here have been dying for a credible secular alternative to the AKP; now they have one.
It's more or less within the margin of error, but note also that support for the SP is going down. They're the "we're not even trying to hide it" Islamists. If the country were radicalizing as completely as often suggested, their numbers would be going up. Have a look:
What party would you support in the next parliamentary election?
Jul. 2010
May 2010
Jan. 2010
Republican People’s Party (CHP)
33.5%
32.5%
27.1%
Justice and Development Party (AKP)
31.1%
31.1%
29.5%
National Action Party (MHP)
15.5%
18.6%
20.4%
Peace and Democracy Party (BDP)
5.1%
4.3%
6.3%
Felicity Party (SP)
3.3%
3.7%
5.5%
Democratic Left Party (DSP)
3.1%
3.5%
4.1%
Turkish Democratic Party (DP)
3.0%
2.4%
3.0%
Source: Sonar Arastirma Methodology: Interviews with 3,000 Turk adults, conducted from Jul. 3 to Jul. 10, 2010. Margin of error is 2.0 per cent.
I'm going to make a Turkish election prediction here, confident in the knowledge that if I'm wrong, everyone will have forgotten it by 2011. The AKP will either be forced into a coalition with its enemies or forced out entirely. My sense is that basically, people are sick of them.
The demise of the AKP won't make everything better, though. They're only one aspect of the problem in Turkey. The biggest problem is the fragility and weakness of Turkey's institutions--a systemic problem, in other words--and a coalition will be a nightmare of its own special kind. But I do think it may be a step in the right direction.
Perhaps the world is headed for a clash of civilizations, but Turkey is not quite the example of this it might seem at first blush.
Taken from my Silicon Graffiti video blog series at PJM, a Letterman-style Top Ten look at the nuanced verbal stylings of the current Senate Majority Leader:
As for the items on the list, here are links to the references:
And after that racial epithet, Harry doubles down! Which brings us to The Number one quote from the Harry Reid super gaffe-o-matic 76 machine: Harry stands up for diversity and freedom of choice:
“I don’t know how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican. Do I need to say more?”
No Harry, you’ve said enough. Which is why it might be time to take a nice long vacation come November.
What say you, Nevada?
Exit question: Politicians obviously have a need to constantly have their jaws moving, even if the brain isn't always engaged with the mechanism. But have their gaffes gotten worse in recent years, or are we simply more aware them do to the Blogosphere, YouTube (as referenced by the above video), and the 24-hour news cycle?
Well, one of the smartest--that's for darned sure. I refer to Ricochet's own, the Governor of Mississippi, Haley Barbour.
On Friday morning, I'll be interviewing Gov. Barbour for an episode of Uncommon Knowledge. Now in the second year of his second and final term of office as governor (Mississippi limits its chief executives to two terms), Gov. Barbour now serves as chairman of the Republican Governors' Association. In re which, Karl Rove:
Under the remarkable leadership of the Republican Governors Association chairman, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour...the RGA has turned into a political juggernaut.
At the end of June, the RGA had $40 million in cash, even after spending nearly $11 million earlier this year to aid GOP challengers. In Ohio, for example, the RGA spent $2.8 million to blunt a $3 million Democratic effort to trash former Ohio Congressman John Kasich. Mr. Kasich now leads Democrat incumbent Ted Strickland by eight points.
And in Wisconsin, the RGA has helped put Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker ahead of Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett by eight points in the latest Rasmussen poll by outspending the Democrats 3 to 1 on television ads.
Political change comes more powerfully from the bottom up, not from the top down. The election of reform-oriented conservative Republican governors can shake America's political firmament.
If you've got a question for Gov. Barbour--no, wait. If y'all've got a question, I'll do my best to fit it in.
Years ago, the New York Times featured an essay by a professional abortion advocate who said she killed two of her three unborn children because she didn't want to "have to start shopping only at Costco and buying big jars of mayonnaise." It was a pretty horrifying read, needless to say. I thought of it when reading this very well-written Elle feature about a woman "selectively reducing" one of her twins -- after using fertility treatments. Neither she nor her husband, who already had a toddler, come off terribly well:
My husband was convinced that twins would radically change our lives for the worse. We’d have to leave our beloved neighborhood for a place with cheaper rents and better public schools—there was no way we could afford private education for three kids. We’d kiss goodbye any hope of career advancement, at least for the foreseeable future. To his list, I added the loss of my income, necessary to meet our expenses. I couldn’t see how I’d be able to resume working after the birth since we could never afford full-time help, and—no matter how well they napped—two infants wouldn’t leave much time for anything else.
Now if you support the unlimited right of women to end the life of her unborn child, I don't suppose it should depend on the reason. But you can't help but wonder who isn't upset by stories such as these.
It also brings to mind this wonderful essay by Mary Eberstadt about the silly trend of obsessing over parental happiness studies. She points out how parental happiness should not be gauged, for instance, while a nursing mother hasn't slept properly in months. (Today taught me that neither should it be measured during potty training!). But, she adds, ask someone battling Stage IV cancer if their children make them miserable:
So the real answer to that question about parental misery would seem to depend partly upon how the definition of happiness itself is rigged, and partly on where, exactly, the parents are located in the greater scheme of life.
And yet to leave the happiness wars with just those observations, true though they are, would be a mistake. For today’s fashionable misery over childrearing also has deeper roots in the long-running Western rebellion against the command to be fruitful and multiply.
Living under the terms of that rebellion, as most modern people have since the invention of the Pill fifty years ago, is incurring costs that are now only beginning to be understood. Parents today are older – and older parents, while richer, are also less energetic than younger ones, less patient, and more likely to get sick themselves. They are more likely than the parents before them to live away from extended family – nature’s original and still best answer to the eternal babysitting problem. They are also far more likely to have small families rather than large ones – thus also missing out on nature’s original and still best answer to the household drudgery problem, too.
I'm an older parent, who is less energetic, less patient, more prone to sickness, and who lives far away from my extended family. But, on the other hand, I am completely mystified when I read studies about parental happiness. I have enjoyed my entire life, but becoming a parent made everything better, more beautiful, more deeply enjoyed.
I am not a fan of articles like this, which tell us what the incoming freshmen have never known. Not because it makes me feel old; I never feel old. But it’s intended to SHOCK us with the changes that have swept the world since we were in short pants, such as “today’s incoming freshmen have no idea what the phrase ‘since we were in short pants’” means. This list is particularly thin.
They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.
Really? We have a phone with a curly cord, and it’s not because I’m some traditionalist who thinks them wireless phones give you roomytism or upsets the chickens. I just like having a corded phone in case the power goes out. My daughter, who’s ten, will grow up having twisted the wire. Whether with purpose or aimlessly remains to be seen.
They’ve never recognized that pointing to their wrists was a request for the time of day.
Perhaps; people don’t wear watches as much as they used to. Cellphones have taken the place of watches, which is a step backwards - you have to take it out like a pocket watch, without any of the old-timey satisfaction of looking like a fellow who hears the train whistle, checks his timepiece, and thinks right on schedule.
E-mail is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail.
This is probably true; in the future, email will be the exclusive domain of grandparents sending around funny stories and urban myths.
“Caramel macchiato” and “venti half-cafvanilla latte” have always been street corner lingo.
Street corner lingo? Que pasa, man? Sup? What’s crackalackin’ in this gangsta hood? Oh, you know, ain’t nothing going on but the rent and the venti half-cafvanilla latte. I hear that.
John McEnroe has never played professional tennis.
They have no idea who he is, nor do they care, nor do most people.
Had it remained operational, the villainous computer HAL could be their college classmate this fall, but they have a better chance of running into Miley Cyrus’s folks on Parents’ Weekend.
The movie said he was switched on in 1992, which would make him 18, but even if he was still activated - and hadn’t been destroyed in 2010, as per the movie, after Dr. Chandra assured him he would (sniff) indeed dream - it is unlikely he would have been someone’s college classmate, being a computer in space.
They first met Michelangelo when he was just a computer virus.
And so on. Previous lists have been a bit more jarring; this one seems to suggest the paucity of change over the last few years. What really annoys, in a small sense, is the idea that the kids have no idea of what came before them. Ten year olds, perhaps, but by the time you’re 18 you should have an inkling that there was actually a vast and vibrant culture that preceded the anointing of the globe with your generation. Perhaps I was an odd kid, but I was fascinated with the past when I was young - the 20 and the 40s, mostly. If you watched cartoons, you watched Bugs Bunny, which was saturated with contemporary references to 40s culture. If you wanted 50s nostalgia, there was “Happy Days,” which at least acknowledged the existence of civilization in the misty distant past.
So: kids today may have no experience with these things, which is what the list suggests, but that’s different from being unaware of them. Not to say it’s all good: the notion of discrete eras has been eroded by the remix culture, which regards everything as ingredients to be reassembled into something that will be a meme for 11 days. Kids today seem as likely to know what something is a reference to as much as what it means in the first place. In the future I’ll bet the former grows at the expense of the latter.
Take a look at the list, and add your own ideas about what you didn't know when you were coming up. For late-late boomers like me, it can be summed up thus: we didn't know that life used to be really, really hard.
They're Tweeting as @uriminzok. It's entirely in Korean, which is the only reason I'm not following them. That, and because I already know that rice production has been stellar this year, Kim Jong Il won the British Open, and workers around the world despise the reactionary American hegemon.
This means that the Norks are on Twitter, and YouTube, and Facebook. Plus, they've got a super-looking web site.
Poor Kim. He's clearly been reading back issues of American newspapers. He thinks that cool new media applications have worldwide influence. Remember when we all thought Twitter could take down the Iranian theocracy? Didn't really work out that way. Twitter is about telling the world you're about to eat a taco. It's not about denying you sunk a South Korean warship. Some things just need more than 140 characters.
My advice to Kim is, stick with what you know: you're the Hermit Kingdom. You can't be the last insane despot on earth and be Tweeting. But if you insist, please follow me -- I'm @rcbl -- so I can DM you!
In the meantime:
@uriminzok OMG! lv the new haircut, but thnk about some new snglsses. Old ones 2 jackieO. Also: stp snkng SoKo boats #thingsidtweettokimjongil #tcot
