Needles & Threads
The week's best in the Fray.
Mr. Noah, you claim that your assessment of Jack Abramoff when you were 17 was adolescent then, and it's still adolescent now. To pat yourself on the back because you had a knee-jerk reaction to someone in high school who, in your limited imagination, somehow fulfilled your childish bad impression is something one does in private, or with some equally intellectually dishonest friends over cocktails. "Hey, I knew this guy in high school...never liked him...boy, am I prescient..."…Don't give yourself too much credit or gloat too loudly over your brilliant 17-year-old mind. And for sure, don't pass it off as intellectually compelling journalism. —jschechter, here, not amused with Timothy Noah's epithet for Jack Abramoff. It's a shame to see that a smart guy like Blodget has fallen for the Chinese government's propaganda, hook, line and sinker. I've lived in China for more than 4 years, speak Chinese, and have contacts in both business in government here and I can tell you, Blodget is wrong about most issues he touches on… …The real reasons Chinese aren't out there protesting for democracy aren't complex but are visible to anyone who's actually looking. One is that a lot of Chinese have bought the same line that Blodget has, that they aren't interested in democracy. When you hear something over and over for years on end with no opposing viewpoint, it becomes the truth. That's why dictatorships take control of the media. Other people know better but are simply hoping it's true. And still others are just plain afraid of going to jail or getting a bullet in the back of the head… —IronBuddha, here, lacing into Henry Blodget. …the Republicans have a base that's close to 50% of the electorate. You can see this because they routinely break the 50% mark in elections and even approach 60% on occasion (as Nixon, Bush Sr. and Reagan all did). Where the Dems have a base that must be closer to 40%, since they have a very hard time even breaking 50%-- Jimmy Carter was the last one to do it by even a hair, and Clinton never did (he was elected only because Perot split the rightwing vote twice to his benefit). Ignore party affiliation and divide each race leftwing/rightwing (so that you combine, say, Bush Sr. and Perot as both being rightist candidates) and you have a strong rightwing tilt over time (albeit with one anomaly in 2000 when Gore and Nader combined to top 50% for the left side). —Emsworth, here, debunking the conventional 40-40-20 paradigm of the American electorate. The dominant narrative in our time posits that the composer's intent is knowable, reproducible, and paramount … But it's highly doubtful that we can really know authorial intent, since intentions go beyond the printed score. It's even more dubious that we can understand a work's original frames of reference well enough to reproduce the composer's intent in a way that would have seemed authentic when the work was written. As for the idea that the interpreter's insights ought to be completely subordinate to the "architect," just try applying it to theater. Should actors and directors be primarily concerned with presenting a play "exactly as written," whatever that means? Would that be entertaining, edifying, inspiring, moving? No. —Radioguy, here, rebutting Liam O'Rourke's contention that the best conductor doesn't inject personal aesthetics into a composer's work. If the matzo balls make you sick, would the appropriate cure be chicken soup? —historyguy, here, to Emily Yoffe, who's going mano a mano (or boca a boca) on the competitive eating circuit.
What does this mean? Simply that Democrats always have to get a LOT more of the middle than Republicans ever do. The Republican base is probably not enough to win but it's damn close; only when they nominate a stiff and/or face a significant rightwing spoiler (and only Perot has fit that bill in decades) do they lose enough of the middle to lose the election. So while Perot is certainly a precedent for the idea that the middle could be lost to someone MORE rightwing than the Republican nominee, there's very little precedent for the idea that the Republicans will lose a lot to a McCain-Giuliani type centrist.
Meanwhile, there are lots of "Reagan Democrats" who would defect from almost any typically wussy-seeming Mondale-Kerry-type Democratic nominee if a tougher-sounding but non-evangelical Republican occupied the center. In fact, that's exactly what happened in 1980-- the Republican party spawned a center candidate (John Anderson) and he mainly took liberal votes away from people who were happy to vote for anyone but Carter. I should know, I was one of them....
O'Rourke gives the lie to his own claim when he writes about Aida, "Muti feeds this drama by drawing out climactic passages, creating a riveting sense of anticipation." Where, exactly, does Verdi tell the conductor to do this? And the contradictions in O'Rourke's positions are even more obvious when he claims that Muti "— being a purist — tries to honor what he believes are the intentions of the composer" by presenting Nino Rota's film music in synthetic concert suites. If he were literally a purist Muti would play the scores exactly as composed for the films.
In retailing the platitudes of current discourse in the guise of talking about Riccardo Muti, O'Rourke says little that is useful about either.
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Dancing About Architecture: After nearly a century in a cozy, Renaissance-style gallery in suburban Merion, the Barnes Foundation and its diverse collection have one foot out the door. According to Witold Rybczynski, the Barnes wants to move to a glitzy new ballpark in downtown Philly. In his slideshow presentation, Rybczynski offers several images ranging from Daniel Libeskind to Renzo Piano and a bevy of factors that a new architect should be mindful of when cultivating a space for the Barnes' impressive display of work. Not so fast, says Utek1, who objects that The author asks the wrong question: What would the new Barnes museum look like? When the paramount question is: Should the Barnes collection be relocated to a new building at all? The answer to that question is a resounding NO. For Utek, part of the Barnes' appeal is its "idiosyncratic" display that is "understood only by Dr. Barnes himself"… a Renoir might hang next to a soup ladle over an old chest with a Baroque masterpiece on one side and a picture by some forgotten artist on the other. All because Dr. Barnes discerned some formal relationship connecting the pieces in the room. But wouldn't the collected works better serve the public in a major city center? It's like saying that Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpiece "Fallingwater" should be uprooted from Bear Run to Pittsburgh because it's too inconvenient for the public to get to. Part of the Barnes charm is its location in a leafy suburb of Philadelphia. TheQuietMan respectfully disagrees and writes that it's all about the work: the real value is in each individual work and not in their relative arrangements. That was the intention surely, for each work. Insight into Barnes, while interesting, in the big scheme of things is something of a big sidebar - big, but only in sidebar terms. So which is it? Should a unique collection be more attentive democratic concerns and accessibility or its commitment to the unique mandate of its benefactor and the particularity of its experience? Get in on the discussion at Architecture Fray. Have Gun, Will Travel: Over in Today's Blogs, Careener offers up this on England and gun laws: England: Take Note of our Gun Laws? They do. There has been plenty of analysis of the different rates of crime and various restrictions on gun ownership in these two societies. (Keep in mind though, that England is far more urban than we are, with a much higher population density.) The data is in plain view, even if the argument isn't clear: Here, tsi1 counters with the "Guns of Brixton" shtick: Jamaica's gun laws are the same as merry old England, so you can add that rape and murder are far higher there than America. Fraywatch thinks wide-reaching gun control is probably a good idea in a civil society but feels that social liberals, whose insights find the right to virtually anything in the 14th Amendment, should have the intellectual integrity to call for a repeal of the 2nd Amendment if they want true gun control. The BOTF Files: Some good energy from The_Bell … KA9:50 a.m.
The rate of crime in England is higher for every type of crime...EXCEPT RAPE AND MURDER, which are more common in the US.
Monday, April 25, 2005
Credit Where Credit Is Due: Did Daniel Gross get it wrong in his most recent Moneybox column, in which he claims that credit card behemoths like MBNA are suffering because consumers are paying off their debt? After spending some time at MBNA's site and reading the company's business presentation, that's exactly what run75441 concludes. In his well-organized rebuttal to Gross, run lays it out: The first tip off is that Sales are up (page 7). This leaves you with the alternative that costs are also up which results in lower income. However I did not see this as a factor to destroy Earning per share. Losses are down from the 1st quarter of 2004. Money made in Europe is up due to the weakening dollar (page 12)… It also looks like MBNA is playing the dollar game well in Europe and increasing sales there to the tune of $4 billion. This has nothing to do with consumers paying down loans and more to do with MBNA playing a business strategy. Sorry Daniel Gross. I think you missed this one. Similarly, baltimore-aureole believes that consumers ARENT paying down debt … they are simply shifting it . .. they are taking out 2nd mortgages, or refinancing their existing mortgage and taking out equity, to pay that card balance in full. On the correlation (or lack thereof) between balances and sales, Game_Warden adds: There might be some irony (but not necessarily error) in the notion that lower credit card balances contributed to the weak retail sales number in March. After all, volume data from the credit card companies pointed to blowout strength in retail sales during March. The miss from credit card throughput to recorded retail sales was large enough to imply that the latter may get revised higher eventually. EducatorDan has gone to a cash diet: I have gotten a car loan but do not have a single valid credit card. I only spend what I make and not a dime more. Do I sometimes have to wait and put off and do without? Yes but damn its nice to be paying down all my old education and credit debt from 1995 (freshmen year of college) to 2002 (charged my last purchase to a credit card.) It makes one feel more alive. I have a debit card but hey on mine you can only charge what you have in your checking account. On the same note, gbpa suggests that we expend less energy on indignation and more "voting with your dollars" by weaning ourselves from credit cards. But How Does It Play in Peoria: Brendan Koerner's piece on Jeff Foxworthy's station atop the comic world generated this from andkathleen. Taking special note of the prominent placement of Foxworthy's material at Wal-Mart as a factor in his burgeoning sales, &k suggests: It seems to me that the redneck humor is indicative of an ability to laugh at---not yourself, but people who are, as you see it, a step lower on the social ladder. Wal-Mart people laughing at K-Mart people, so to speak. The problem arises, though, when the non-redneck-humor fans pigeonhole the humor as being about the Wal-Mart people. Class warfare based on stupid humor. It's safe, white, and probably of the non-thinking Christian variety. Totally non-threatening. Mountebank offers a smart defense of Foxworthy in response to &k, in which he suggests that "Foxworthy's world is not so different than middle class America. That is the beauty of comedians who do the racial/class schtick. Whether its Rock, Pryor, Paul Rodriguez, George Lopez, Margaret Cho or Foxworthy … they open their world up to us and show us it's not so different." The BOTF Files: Sometimes you don't know whether to laugh or cry. Thanks, -Iso … KA8:10 a.m.
Thursday, April 21, 2005
Aardsma, Aaron, Aarons…: HLS2003 appreciates the spirit of the filibuster…
Jimmy Stewart stands exhausted, reading the Declaration of Independence in a cracked whisper, sleepless and haggard, waiting for support that may or may not come. High drama ensues…
Contrary to conventional wisdom, minority party leaders don't whip out the Capitol phone book and begin burning the midnight oil each time they're looking at a 51-49 loss on an appropriations rider:
It requires a set of persons to be very committed to, and strongly identified with, their cause, enough that they are willing to completely shut down any other business of the government. You can filibuster, but you have to be willing to stand up and be visibly identified as the person who values your cause so much that you'd rather see the government crash to a total and complete halt rather than give up.
And there's a natural deterrent to the filibuster:
