Nicholas Kristof's Circular Logic

Nicholas Kristof recently wrote a column attacking Obama for his previous policy of not getting heavily involved in Syria's civil war. I think it encompasses a lot of the poor thinking that got us into the whole Iraq mess in the first point, and is filled with his naive tendency to divide the world into what Adam Curtis has called "goodies and baddies", but this one passage jumped out at me:

His [Obama's] “red line” about chemical weapons turned out to be more like a penciled suggestion. His rejection of the proposal by Hillary Rodham Clinton and David Petraeus to arm moderate Syrian factions tragically empowered both the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, and President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.

Nick is rolling out the classic circular thinking of American military adventures: if war works then that shows that war is awesome and should be done more often. If war doesn't work (as it didn't in Iraq) then that means that what we need is more war. In short war can never fail to improve things, it can only be failed by presidents that don't do it enough or do it well enough.

Hence the idea that giving more weapons to various Syrian factions would have automatically made things better that Nick cites. There's no evidence of this at all in the real world, for example nobody has ever even suggested giving the Syrian rebels the weapons they would actually need to turn the tide of battle, that is sophisticated anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles. And rightly so! In Ukraine rebels used such weapons to shoot down a Malaysian jet liner recently. In fact the whole reason ISIS is so powerful right now is they were able to capture a huge amount of weapons this summer that we supplied the Iraqi Army with!

But in Nick's military adventure world this contention proves itself. Since things are bad and we didn't give weapons to Islamic extremists not named ISIS (which is basically what a lot of the "moderates" are) Obama made a mistake, because weapons would automatically have made things better. And indeed in an alternative universe where we did give them weapons and things didn't get better Nick could say, "Obama didn't give enough weapons soon enough!" Or whatever. Likewise nobody thinks the bombing proposed by Obama last year would have ended the war, but again it was a failure because we didn't bomb and bad things happened.

In short, this is a bizarre way to think about the world. Unfortunately it's a pretty popular in our foreign policy establishment.

On Being Done With Writing On "Culture"

The other day WaPo's Alyssa Rosenberg wrote a nice essay about " how we talk about politics is influencing how we talk about culture." It was about some of her own observations about how she thinks the world of culture writing has changed since she started.

I guess I would agree in someways with her take culture and politics but using her example Game of Thrones as an example, I diverge in an important way. As a fan I am totally open to people criticizing aspects of the show and in no way treat it as some holy writ that's beyond anyone's critique. Indeed, where's Strong Belwas or Donal Noye? Those are great characters and it's too bad they got cut out. But what I do find annoying is criticism, that like the bloviating of various political pundits, goes off course and degenerates into what you might call "cultural partisanship."

So for some it's not enough to say "I didn't like this scene", or "I wish they did X." Instead we get people like The Atlantic's Chris Orr calling the show "stupid and offensive" or other critics labeling it "dangerous" as if it's going to warp our children's' minds like so many Judas Priest albums in the 80's. It's at that point where I feel I have to draw the line and dismiss such criticism the same way i think that saying healthcare.gov is going to doom Obama's presidency, indeed liberalism itself, (serious political commentators made these very claims!) is ridiculous hyperbole and should be ignored.

And in my view this is a major problem because "cultural punditry" is becoming how a lot of people, especially younger writers, are approaching writing about culture.

A classic example occurred a few weeks ago when the New Republic published an article detailing how Lana Del Rey's new album is a "sad indictment of post-feminism" that also "can be dangerous" and can "send out a sinister message."

Here I was thinking that Ultraviolence was Lana Del Rey's second studio album, instead it appears it was a political argument that failed somehow and will surly cause people to run out and commit school shootings the same way Marilyn Manson's music did.

It's hard for me to respond to this kind of (poorly reasoned) argument because it's not really about art at all. Or at least about how I understand art. Instead it's about art as a political argument. And sometimes art can be that, but sometimes it really isn't. What's the social and political argument of Othello? Don't let your daughter marry a black guy? Kill your wife if you suspect her of infidelity? Don't trust your best friend? Men can't be trusted?

You can write an argument that Shakespeare is making these arguments, but it really doesn't hold up that well at all. After all the tragedy is driven by the fact that Othello is overly suspicious of Desdemona and too trusting of Iago. Othello is an outsider because of his birth and color, but still is one of Venice's best soldiers and gets to marry the daughter or a prominent Senator. Iago's motivations are famously unknown. Thus in Othello trust can be necessary and destructive, men can be dangerous (Iago) but women can be naive (Desdemona) etc. etc.

So no art doesn't have to be a political argument. It can be a lot more than that.

Indeed I'd argue that what great art does isn't tell you want to think, it makes you simply think about stuff. So trust can be an important part of a relationship, but blind trust can be foolish. So the world has it's share of dangerous liars who will try to deceive you like Iago, but also it's Emilia's who will help protect you. Thus Lana Del Rey's music isn't suppose to argue that having your boyfriend punch you is great, she's instead exploring different types of relationships indeed different ways of thinking about what love can be. Love that can make you very sad, love that can feel like being kissed when emotionally you are actually being punched.

These are pretty basic ideas here, it's a shame they've been ignored or forgotten.

In other words I'm open to arguments about why someone thinks King Lear is better than Othello. But I'm going to dismiss someone who calls Othello "stupid and offensive" or "dangerous" or "misogynistic" because Othello kills Desdemona. And why? Well because these plays aren't about politics in the second decade of the 21st Century, they are about a lot more than that.

Which is a long way of saying I'm not going to be reading much cultural criticism for a while. If I want to read about politics I'll read about important people like Hillary Clinton, not unimportant people like Lana Del Rey. And if I want to read about culture I'm more interest in reading about how Lana dodged the dreaded "sophomore slump" and made an even better second album than her first great one.

Also for what it's worth the lyric that "he hit me and it felt like a kiss" is a Phil Spector lyric from the 60's, performed by The Crystals. So yeah Lana isn't saying she likes getting punch by her boyfriend, she could just be referencing pieces of pop culture from previous eras (which she does a lot of). Or doing something else entirely. In fact maybe you should ask the artist her intent instead of making a "sinister" one up for her.

Poor Writing On Pop Culuture

Vox published a look back at how Seinfeld influenced television the other day. Some of it is quite good, for example their look at how Seinfeld moved the way sitcoms are shot from a multiple camera style where people perform on a stage with different cameras covering different angles, think Cheers, to a single camera style with long shots and close ups, more like a film. The piece's points about how the show changed sitcom writing were also pretty good.

But the author really missed the boat when it comes to looking at the characters. He tries to do it through the lens or contemporary liberal writing about race and I think really misses the boat. For example he claims this about George:

George essentially believes he deserves to have sex with a beautiful woman because he's a white guy living in modern America, and when he doesn't succeed (but Jerry or Kramer do), he grows ever more petulant. He doesn't particularly want to strive to succeed. He just wants life handed to him on a silver platter. 

I think that really get's the character, and the show in general, wrong.

George doesn't "believe" that he "deserves to have sex with a beautiful woman because he's a white guy living in modern America..." he's a pathetic loser who really wants to have sex with beautiful women, not because of "white privileged" or anything but because he's a greedy person. Since he has neither looks, nor money, nor status, he is forced to go through all sorts of contortions to try and achieve his goals. And since he is so shallow and greedy hilarity ensues.

Hence George willing to pretend to be a famous neo-nazi author in "The Limo" as long as he can use it as a way to be able to date tall, blond, aryan-looking women. George doesn't care about the racial or ethical implications or what he's doing, he just wants to get the blond, hence pretending to be a neo-nazi while sitting next to his Jewish best friend no less! These aren't the actions of someone who thinks their race or nationality "deserves" anything, they are are the actions of a shallow person trying scam their way by hook and by crook into what they want. Another example would be George pretending to be an architect or marine biologist to try and impress women.

But it's not just George that is lazy and wants things handed to him. Kramer famously doesn't have a job and mooches of Jerry for almost everything. But even Elaine, the strong female character or whatever, isn't any better put together than any of the others, she's just better at hiding her dysfunction. Sure she has better jobs than George, but once she get's her big break with the J. Peterman catalog she screws it up with idiotic ideas like the urban sombrero.   

This is what makes Seinfeld's comedy about things like race or sexuality so good, and so potentially offensive to some people. George and the gang only address questions about things like race or sexuality when it directly affects them or how they could appear socially. Hence George and Jerry work frantically to try and prove to the world that they aren't gay, while also stressing, "not that there's anything wrong with that!" Meanwhile Jerry get's upset when another man asks his gay acquaintance out on a date while Jerry is sitting next to him. Jerry get's offended when someone doesn't assume he's gay and then goes back to trying to prove to journalists that he's not gay! Or more bluntly George wants to date a woman from Senegal because she doesn't speak English and hence he doesn't have to worry about what to say to her. Or he's excited to date a woman in prison because she is locked up and thus can't boss him around.

In short these characters only address these issues when there's some sort of social advantage to gain or faux pas to avoid, otherwise it's completely irrelevant to them due to their shallow narcissism. That's what made the show so funny.

But the biggest problem of the piece is that they forgot the fact that so much of the show was about pushing boundaries and making reference to themes that normally wouldn't be discussed on network TV. They did this by oftentimes talking about it in an opaque manner, like in "The Contest", but that was one of the biggest legacies of the show and it's a shame Vox missed that point.

How Not To Write About The Iraq War

The Atlantic recently published a long expose about how terrible Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki is. It's not very good and frankly you can tell they've really missed the boat from their story's subhead, "How America empowered Nouri al-Maliki—and then failed to keep that power in check."

On a basic level that is correct. The US hasn't been able to control Iraqi politics. But the implied assumption in the subhead, and that runs throughout the piece, is that it was totally possible for the US to control Maliki or someone like him if we just did a few things a little differently. Personally I think it's interesting to think about what possible evidence could disprove analysis like this. Imagine a hypothetical scenario where a leader is picked who is destined to be a diaster. After he screws everything up you could always write this kind of piece saying "look at all the mistakes that were made!" And of course there would have been mistakes, what would a destined to fail but well run political regime look like?

Simply put when you set out to do something unreasonable or course terrible things happen along the way. It was always unreasonable to assume that the political reality in the Middle East was simply clay in the hands of the West, ready to be changed and molded as we see fit. The Bush Administration spent years trying to tear down the Palestinian Authority so something better, more American that is, would rise in it's place. Instead they got Hamas taking over Gaza. American presidents have pressured the Saudis to open their country to democratic reforms since the 70's, it hasn't worked. Name me one Middle Eastern country whose politics have been successfully controlled by Washington?

So yes Maliki was a terrible choice to lead a secular, democratic, liberal, and multicultural Iraq. But that doesn't mean there was some hypothetical better one out there that could have done it. How do you have a secular and multicultural democracy when most people vote for conservative Islamist parties that identify along sectarian lines? Indeed if eight years of occupation and a trillion dollars spent couldn't shape Iraqi politics they way we wanted, why would have Obama complaining to Maliki or "fewer missteps" have done any different.

This should be a pretty simple idea for most people to get, apparently they haven't learned that lesson yet at The Atlantic.

Glenn Greenwald In A Nutshell

I like most of the current wave of media sites that are being launched these days. I think Vox is great and The Upshot is a prime example of how traditional media organizations can launch their own "explainer blogs" while staying true to their traditional mission. I'm not a huge fan of Nate Silver's new FiveThirtyEight site, honestly I don't read it that much, but I certainly think it has a right to exist and might get better as we move into election season.

But if there is one project that is, well kind of pathetic, it has to be Glenn Greenwald's First Look Media "empire." I put "empire" in quotes because basically it still consists of one "blog" called The Intercept that publishes about one story a week usually about the whole Snowden-what-have-you or about why Greenwald hates President Obama (for the record he's hated President Obama since before he was sworn in.) I think that's fine for somebodies personal blog, I don't publish ever day and I took a break from Longwalkdownlyndale recently, but if you are a professional journalist with a big staff? That's just pathetic.

Now in Greenwald et al's defense they claim that they are still working through all that Snowden stuff and so can't "really" launch right now, even though they said they launched back in January. Umm okay. I think now is a good time to point out that they got $250 million to put do their "fearless" and "adversarial" journalism and this is all they can come up with.

Wow, just wow.

I'm a bit of a biased source here, I'm not a fan of Greenwald. I think he approaches journalism like a trial lawyer, that is he always skews things to support his side of the argument and if he can't skew facts that way he just ignores them. This makes sense for how a litigator should approach a trial, but it's a terrible way to go about journalism. In addition I don't think he really understands politics or how the government works at all and more importantly has no interest in learning.

But still, come on. Oh also I should point out that the whole First Look organization is set up as a tax exempt charity. Umm okay.

So for review Greenwald's new venture is a nonprofit with $250 million in assets that produces little to no output and is focused, for now at least, and just rehashing an old story (the NSA spies on people!) that just happens to be Greenwald's greatest (and only) professional triumph. Yeah that's about him in a nutshell.

If only we had some fearless and adversarial journalists to look into that whole set up, then we might have a juicy story.

How The Political Media Thinks

Ezra Klein had a short post over at Vox the other day where he outlined how it's a good thing that Hillary is committing all these gaffes right now because now she has time to get back into the swing of things before the 2016 cycle really heats up. As Klein put it:

Hillary Clinton is rusty. Her book tour is proof. She got in a fight with NPR's Terry Gross over gay marriage. She said, ridiculously, that she and her husband were "dead broke" upon leaving the White House (you have to be pretty damn rich to be that broke). She told the Guardian that "we pay ordinary income tax, unlike a lot of people who are truly well off"  —  an odd statement for someone who is, by any measure, absurdly well off.

The gaffes have occasioned a rapid reassessment of whether Clinton is really the fearsome campaigner so many assumed. "She's an overrated politician," writes the Washington Examiner's Philip Klein. "Some Democrats fear Clinton's wealth and ‘imperial image' could be damaging in 2016," reports the Washington Post.

The big thing here isn't to argue that Clinton didn't commit any gaffes, yelling at Terry Gross counts as a gaffe when there are so many other ways to doge her questions. The big thing is to point out that gaffes don't matter. Yes they really, really don't (okay a Mel Gibson type meltdown would probably matter, but that wouldn't be called a gaffe right?) Indeed the big take away from 2014 (and 2013 I guess) is that Hillary is dominating the invisible primary as no non-incumbent Prez or VP has ever before. Meaning, bad radio interview aside, it's quite possible that Hillary has already wrapped up the nomination. Like right now. Which mean that Klein is really missing the big picture here.

Which makes me ask the question, how could a smart and talented reporter like Ezra Klein miss this big point? I don't think it's because there is something wrong with Ezra, I think it just illuminates a bigger point about journalists that cover politics. And so I want to coin my own way of describing this strange anomaly, let's call it Anderson's Razor which states that: to journalists in the political media, there is no politics outside of the political media.

What do I mean by that, well I mean that journalists like Klein see politics as being fully contained by the political media itself. In other words "politics" is everything that the political media learns about, writers about, and talks about amongst other people in the political media. So things like "dominating the invisible primary" doesn't count as "politics" for the political media because by it's very nature the invisible primary is impossible to cover. The collective opinions and actions of hundreds of thousands of party actors in the Democratic Party is at is core something you can't know, so the political journalist simply ignores the whole concept. Saying roughly, "it's not something that we can really cover, so it isn't politics", even though the invisible primary is very important in deciding who the next president will be.

This is a big part of why gaffes get so much coverage in the political media, even though they don't really matter. There's nothing else to write about! Since the self-imposed rules of Anderson's Razor keep you from discussing things like the invisible primary the only things that are happening in the 2016 race, that is in terms of things that the political media can write about, are the gaffes. There's nothing else to write about.

Now why do people like Klein follow these self created rules? I have no idea, but it goes a long way to understanding the poor coverage of the 2016 race.

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I'm still posting regularly at The Good Men Project but I'm also going to start posting here more regularly as well. So feel free to come back, that is if everyone hasn't already left.

Jill Abramson Invented The Polio Vacine

Maybe not, but some of the writing about Jill Abramson reminds me of Larry David's old stand up routine about having to live next to Jonas Salk's mother.

I've haven't been using this blog for a while because most of my efforts are still being directed at The Good Men Project (you should go read my stuff over there) but I did want to comment on the whole Jill Abramson situation and so I am going to do so here. Since everyone is talking about "what it takes to be a great editor" and all those Pulitzers she won single-handed I'm going to break the tyranny of newspaper form and get to it with a listicle on why the coverage of Abramsongate is a little annoying:

• A self-obsessed press: I've always thought that the the national media, especially the national media in New York, was filled with self obsessed people, but I think I've been giving them too much credit. About 50 times more words have been written about one editor losing her job than the fact that the world's largest democracy quite possibly just went through it's biggest political earthquake in half a century, possibly even longer. Yes Abramson's dismissal touches on important issues, and yes the Times is an important newspaper but a nuclear power with 1.2 billion people undergoing a radical change in government due to the the largest election ever conducted in the history of the human race is also, uh, important.
• Please say "I don't know" when you don't: Yes it's possible that Abramson was fired because of her complaints over equal pay, or because of sexism at the Times, or any number of other unfair and terrible reasons. It's also possible that she really was hated by the newsroom staff, or couldn't get along with publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. or any number of other reasons that while not being very fair result in people losing their jobs every single day. As Ezra Klein pointed out the other day since all the principles involved aren't talking nobody really knows what happened. If you don't know, say "I don't know", especially if you are writing about this in a professional capacity. Or don't, but please be aware that you are guessing at best and at worst are just churning out Derp.
• Turning a manager into a god: Yes the Times is making money and wining Pulitzers while other newspapers are struggling to stay afloat. Abramson deserves her fair share of credit for this. But so do all the other thousands of people who also wrote those stories, and sold those ads, and made sure the website didn't explode. When conservatives talk about "job creators" and such we progressives point out how unfair it is to assign success to one person and devalue the fact that other people were involved too (sometimes we call this devaluing labor). As Uncle Brecht liked to put it: "Young Alexander conquered India. / He alone? / Caesar beat the Gauls. / Was there not even a cook in his army?" Jill Abramson didn't write those prize winning stories, reporters did. She wasn't the only one to pull an "all nighter" after the Boston bombing. And she did it making half a million dollars a year plus stock options plus pension benefits plus full bennies plus the exposure to snag a book deal or launch a solo project or get a nice gig teaching basically anywhere. Good for her, but she sure as hell didn't do any of this alone.

So yeah, she might have been fired because of sexism, or the fact that Sluzberger is a dunce. But then again she might not have. She might have been fired for failing to up manage the publisher and chairman of the board and keep him satisfied. Which is the type of thing most of us peasants have to deal with throughout our miserable lives. Indeed all these things could be true at the same time, but that's no excuse for people to dive to the lowest common denominator when it comes to writing about it.