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fraywatch: What's happening in our readers' forum.

A Super Tuesday QuizMatch the reader comment with the victim

Compiled by Moira Redmond
Posted Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2008, at 12:43 PM ET

What do we like to see in the Fray? Today (it may well change by tomorrow) we have decided on good questions, mysterious phrases that might apply to anyone, and cheap jibes. So here are some sample lines: we have mixed Super Tuesday with a couple of other current topics--can you tell what each post refers to?

1) All I can say is, he's very sexy for a drunken 50-year old.

2) The election ….was often a buzzard's banquet of…bribes, threats and promises to the electors.

3) At this point the only fresh air we can expect is currently in the void between Mitt's ears.

4) You can't beat Somebody with Nobody.

3) And now [that you've posted in the Fray], They have your IP address. You'll probably just have time to get your affairs in order before the helicopters arrive.

6) Who is "the one person in politics today who can reunite the Republican coalition?"

7) See what happens when voters choose so-called charisma over a real program.

8) If someone were named 'Satan' they would likely also not be [chosen].

Answers:

1) French President Nicolas Sarkozy. SandyHook's post, here. La Duchesse (see no. 7), on the other hand, thinks his behavior "unspeakably vulgar."

2) Historical elections in Europe, according to jack cerf, here. What the US system was set up to avoid.

3) Self explanatory. Cheap Jibe category, from Middleview here .

4) The current Republican primaries, but not completely clear who is who: we just like the aphoristic sound of it. Written by The Slasher14, here

5) Reply by Thewolf05827 to post on McCain and Conservatism that might be described as slightly paranoid. Helpful addition from the true conservative: "I can hear the rotors spinning now!"

6) Hillary Clinton, according to JLF.

7) Nicolas Sarkozy, in the opinion of Duchesse de Guermantes here.

8) To work in his father's firm, Tundrayeti says. Nothing to do with elections.

If you got them all right, you need a detox from politics, or a job on the Fray. …MR 5:30 pm GMT

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

"I immediately felt ill and almost depressed, like I should commit suicide." Heath Ledger's untimely death or perhaps even the announced withdrawal of John Edwards from the Democratic presidential primaries might seem like the most plausible occasions for such a dramatic statement to be uttered in Slate's Spectator Fray.

On its face, the precipitating event was far more mundane: "the horrifying light" emitted from a compact fluorescent light bulb, or CFL, purchased by nerdnam on a recent trip to Home Depot.

Ron Rosenbaum's ode to the soon-to-be-extinct incandescent bulb elicited strong reactions from readers. Indeed, the sentimental attachment we have to the most common of objects can make their disappearance or alteration feel like a profound disruption to the order of things.

Is it all irrational, a reflexive clinging to the familiar? Some of the arguments against CFLs appear to be quite practical. Fitzpatrick expresses frustration with the time needed to reach full illumination, knickname with their limited use in certain fixtures, zahniser7 with imprecise wattage equivalents. Chris_O dislikes their incompatibility with dimmer switches.

After a year "of straining my eyes to read a book, of holding letters over my head to get enough light to read by," darwinite ends an ill-fated experiment with energy-efficient lighting and further vows to "stockpile incandescent bulbs before the ban."

But there also seemed to be a deeper strain of conspiracy theory running through some of the Fray postings. The supposed environmental urgency behind the compulsory adoption of CFLs amounts to a campaign of "fluorescent fear-mongering … on a scale that would impress Rudy Giuliani," quips strive. OIFVet might also count himself in the mildly paranoid camp, characterizing the push for these "science lab lights" as "a movement by folks who have invested in the new technology and prey on the conscience of the American people."

viral considers the current CFL mania as a political case study in why reform always fails, as our misguided fixation on a small detail (light bulbs) obscures the aims of a much broader social goal (energy conservation).

The color-rendering index provides some scientific basis for qualifying the "hospitalesque hue" of fluorescents as inferior. timrichardson explains: "A CRI of 100 shows colors like natural light: incandescents are basically CRI 100…fluorescent lamps do not produce the spectrum of visible light in the even distribution of the sun, or a glowing filament."

Tann upbraids Rosenbaum for his misplaced sentimentality and resistance to change:

He confuses "incandescent" with "warm light" the same way the some people conflate "all-natural" with "healthy." Incandescent light can produce harsh light too, and there are warm spectrum CFLs that produce light better than a soft white bulb.

waliyuddin is also a voice for progress and embrace of the new:

All aesthetic considerations aside, incandescence is, taken in the aggregate, a wildly wasteful means of lighting … and one that needs to be supplanted along with lots of other survivors from the technology of the past century and a quarter.

Beyond the environmental debate, OIFvet imagines what the demise of the incandescent bulb might mean for pop culture: "cartoonists will forever be in a quandary as to what icon to use to symbolize an idea being formed in the head of their character." AC … 9:47pm EST

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

The wait is finally over! After long anticipation, Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism has reached the market at last. Timothy Noah's book review gives the overdue manuscript strong marks for scholastic effort, but docks it heavily for overall silliness.

While the term "fascism" has no commonly accepted referent, as Sycamancy helpfully observes, it always seems to provoke interesting discussion. Since we're all agreed that we're opposed to it—even if we can't agree precisely what it is—"fascism" seems to serve as the Rorschach test of American political values. Who we see smirking back at us when we peer into the blurry darkness of fascist ideology reveals something about who we are.

From the conservative perspective, vepxistqaosani spies a perfectly clear resemblance between Hillary and Hitler:

The Clintons play right into Goldberg's hands. Remember Hillary's dictum, "It takes a village to raise a child?" That is too easily interpreted -- especially given Hillary's oleaginous self-righteousness -- to mean that parents can, and should, be overruled when they contravene the village's will. Or Bill's short-lived surgeon general, Jocelyn Elders, who said, "every child [should be] a planned and wanted child." What can that mean but that children who are unplanned, unwanted, or both should be aborted?

The smiley-Hitler face on Goldberg's book is, in fact, a bit of PR genius: If fascism ever does come to America, it will come "For Our Own Good," and those who bring it will smile unceasingly.

Across the aisle, johnnyb stands up for the leftist principle of calling it as you see it:

The instances of fascism practiced by the Republicans when they controlled Congress are legion. Democrats hounded out of caucus rooms, denied the right to speak against legislation, funding for organizations viewed as unsympathetic to business slashed or cut off altogether. They didn't even try to obscure it; after all, their spiritual leader was Tom "The Hammer" DeLay. Both in his campaigns, which in 2000 featured hundreds of strategist-led shock troops literally shaking the building in Miami where recounts were taking place, and of course, in his presidency, George W. Bush's hallmark has been, and legacy will be, using government to crush dissent.

RightNow finds fascists to the left and right, poxing both major parties:

I'm sorry to disappoint Mr. Noah, but a lot of very calm and normal progressives consider the United States to have become a fascist society. The Republican pro-corporatist class is blatantly fascist, while the Democratic pro-corporatist class has instincts that lead it in two directions... but certainly since Bill Clinton genuine anti-fascist beliefs and actions have been on the decline. […] We live in a fascist society, and its power is evident in the unwillingness of powerful institutions, media and commentators like Noah to acknowledge this reality.

If fascists simply believe the trains should run on time, Richmond is only too happy to be counted as one. To Madai, fascism is less an ideology than a mental disease:

The trick is to stop thinking it's a straight line between left and right. It's a circle.

At the top of the circle, is the political center—normal people. Left is left, right is right. But as you go further left or further right, you follow the circle DOWN. At the bottom is bat-shit insane, where the left and right intersect in a blur of violent and repressive ideas.

Bringing some scholarly heft of his own to the debate, mernlar tries to lay out an objective definition of the term:

Fascism is, in its most essential form, condensable to two concepts. Its core principle is nationalism. Nationalism and the struggle for national power replaced class struggle in Marxist thought. The State itself becomes a character, and the dictator, as the head of the State, its personified form.

Second, fascism is the aestheticization of politics: the dawn of the political spectacle. Goose-stepping marchers in wartime parades; charismatic dictators who inspire fanatical devotion in followers; towering architecture that conveys culturally-laden messages of dominance--these, too, are the hallmarks of a fascist state.

If "fascism" is indeed an empty signifier, then Anse opposes it for its vacuity rather than its content:

It sounds to me like Goldberg would rather investigate the motives behind various political movements or philosophies than the movements themselves. This is the great bane of public discourse. We have stopped debating the tenets of political ideals; instead, we attack candidates and parties for more personal foibles and for supposed ulterior motives.

Is all this fancy talk of fascism merely sleight of hand? If so, dsf3g thinks its consequences are more than an illusion:

The sad thing is the end result of "proving" that liberals are the true [heirs] of Hitler and Mussolini's political legacy. You reduce the essence of Fascism to such commonplace ideas as Keynesian market stimulus and the promotion of organic foods, while aspects such as the ideology's racism and militarism are seen as trivial, secondary offspring.

Is discussion of fascism relevant in contemporary American politics? Would it be more enlightening to ask how our friends are more like fascists than our foes? Why are we still, after all these years, measuring our political beliefs against Hitler's? We want to hear your thoughts in The Fray. GA … 11:10 p.m. PST

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Christopher Hitchens, in this "Fighting Words," regretted that there had been limited reaction to some remarks by Mike Huckabee about the Confederate flag. So, Mr Hitchens must be thrilled by the amount of reaction he managed to provoke in the Fray, where long vicious arguments are under way. There is a thread there with 73 contributions—not something we find every day.

There were two key, tightly-connected, questions: is that flag racist? Readers went for it here. And, was the Civil War was actually about slavery or not? Battle lines drawn here. Nobody seemed to change anyone else's mind, and it wasn't all that civil. Richmond says "We're beyond the point of asking 'What would Gen. Lee do?' partly because we know the answer ('Surrender and tell the troops to go home.') and partly because he's dead." And he also says "When I see that flag on a car or shirt, I think: you've got some nerve. Where do you think you'd be if the South had won the war? Sipping tea and getting yourself fanned by Ole Joe? Afraid not. You'd be working the damned fields getting a penny a day for your labor with no chance of a happier life."

Ryanlindly was interested in regional identity:


A lot of people say it's about history... given the short duration of settlement and frequent intrastate immigration and emigration, just how strong is any person's link to the South? This isn't Bosnia and Serbia. I always thought one of the great things about America was the historylessness of the individuals. State, regional, and even national identifications are kinds of self-deluding jokes. "Are you proud to be from Texas? Are you proud to be from the South? Are you proud to be from America?" Who would answer no? How about the question, "Is it worth creating an idea of yourself around any of these regional qualities? If so, why?"

Pilot22a argued out the issues before concluding, fair-mindedly, "So, Huckabee didn't do anything wrong, except be a wacko religious freak."

The entry that most resonated with the Fray Editor was from MrcpBlair, who said "Sometimes you read a post and go, 'What just happened?'" Well, yeah. Rows raged on and on, about strange side-issues: we've read the entire thread but still couldn't explain how Revelations came into it, leading San to say "I am only saying that anyone believing [that] is wrong and/or illiterate," but it certainly was a very typical Frayline.

Dreamweapon explained some of the strong feelings:

Name-calling can be fun and cathartic, there is no point in writing it off completely…Why not shout down the retrograde idiocy [other posters] represent, in all its forms? Rather than idly endure the slings and arrows of semi-literate nimrods…I say why not let loose with a return volley? It's kind of fun.

But it's not clear who exactly he thought needed encouragement—most posters seemed to have drawn this conclusion already. For more examples, look for featured Fray posts at the end of most of the past week's Slate articles.. MR … 4:30 p.m. GMT

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Another week, another primary, another set of long, long arguments about the candidates, particularly Hillary Clinton and the question of experience. Many posters are very serious, and their posts are well-argued, thoughtful, and usually lengthy. So, naturally, instead we're going to highlight some short Fraylines that we found striking, tendentious, or just plain weird— go to the Frays for balance and context. (Well maybe not, but you will get even more variety.)

I didn't watch TV for most of the years he [Bill Clinton] was President for fear of becoming ill by viewing his psychopathic self on the television screen. If she wins no TV for me. --Payback

Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are probably the most experienced people in American History. They both served in Congress and each held several cabinet posts while they spent most of their adult lives in Washington. Would anyone in his/her right mind have wanted either of these guys within 100 miles of the Oval Office during the Cuban missile crisis? ----Clark Kent

The Queen could, in fact, govern the UK, and without the aid of a Prime Minister, if necessary…This is the kind of background Sen. Clinton has. It doesn't matter how she got it. It matters that she has it. --Richmond

I was married to an accountant for 30 years, but that didn't make me a CPA--Grammagram

Republicans won't attack experience… They want voters to be afraid of what Hillary would do; if they go for the "she's never accomplished anything" line, that will diminish the fear factor. After all, if Hillary managed to "do nothing" while her husband was busy chasing interns in the White House, how would she be able to enact her nefarious plans now? --Madai

And, just for fairness:

It is hard to look at Mitt [Romney] without visualizing a wind-surfing board beneath his feet.--NightSwimmer, a poster with John Kerry on his mind

Elsewhere, there are excellent Frays, with featured posts, on the "Dismal Science" article on race and consumption; on the "Explainer" on garbage (readers showing an unnerving, but very entertaining, level of knowledge); the books on Tom Cruise and mind-body medicine; and (not chalk and cheese but) cheese and childbirth. On that last one, this Fray Editor is proud to have stirred up some trouble by highlighting a well-hidden post suggesting that women may use too much pain relief in childbirth—"we have gotten a little too generous…with pain" Sarvis claimed. Can we feature MessyOne's reply from the same thread? Yes we can:

I'll make a deal with you. As soon as it becomes necessary for you to shove a mass the size of a Seville orange to the outside world through your penis, you'll be allowed to dictate whether or not a woman needs pain killers during labor. Until then, clear the decks and stay out of her way.

Yes, overall a good week for gender relations…MR ...1:30 GMT

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Moira Redmond is a freelance writer and a former Slatester. You can e-mail her at .
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