That's My Line

This has been a time of rapid change at KrisKraus, and I will do my best to clarify any confusion. Having co-founded this blog with me and bestowed the "Kris" half of the name KrisKraus, Kris Jenson has decided to leave us after a scant one post. Now Noah Kistler, my old friend from when I used to live in Stow, has stepped up to replace Kris as my blogging partner. He's not a socialist, but he does go to Wesleyan, so that's pretty close I figure.

It's good that Noah took it upon himself to welcome himself so I didn't have to do it. To that fine introduction to Noah Kistler I would just like to add that because of where Noah goes to school, I'm not supposed to affiliate with him or like him at all. But I'm a deep person and Noah's a complex guy, so I can overlook that aspect of him.

As you can see, Noah leads a riveting life eating, surfing the internet, reading, watching movies, and occasionally doing something productive. Maybe if we have this blog long enough we'll add a web-cam feature to capture Noah in action. With continued reader support / donations, one day we'll be able to make that happen.

Hopefully the format will be the same, with each of us responding to each others' posts, but it may end up that we post on separate topics. Noah's more politically engaged than I am so maybe he'll take up posts on that topic. He's also a big movie buff who knows about all kinds of films, American and foreign. In fact, he has a photographic memory and can give you the dialogue at any point in any movie made between 1986 and 2001. Well maybe the last part's not true. Either way, Noah will surely play a valuable role helping to defend the blog from right-wing attacks.

Welcome Noah

I'd like to introduce myself before I contribute any more blogs. My name is Noah Kistler and I am the newest contributor to the soon to be renamed KrisKraus blog. A little bit about myself. I'm a tentatively a philosophy/government double major at Wesleyan University where I just completed my sophomore year. At home I bide my time between eating, surfing the internet, reading, watching movies, and occasionally doing something productive. I'll be posting sporadically on politics, film and whatever else happens to catch my interest.

This Review Gets a Good Review

Just a follow-up to the earlier review of the review of Clinton's book. Here's a review from the New York Times that is much more on target:

William Jefferson Clinton's "My Life" is, by a generous measure, the richest American presidential autobiography - no other book tells us as vividly or fully what it is like to be president of the United States for eight years...

D.A.R.E. to Create a Program That Works

Why are these people so happy?

Are they celebrating their anniversary, 40 years and counting? Or did they just ask their doctor about Levitra? Actually, they're smiling about the good news, that "Teen drug use continues to decline in America, and use of Ecstasy is down by 25 percent in two years." I'd be happy about that too and everything, but is it really arranging flowers (sniffle-free!) and windsurfing through fields of ragweed, Allegra good news? I didn't think so.

Silly pictures aside, there is an actual post I want to do here. If you went to school when I went to school you remember the D.A.R.E. program. And if you're from my age group you know that the results of the program are hardly something to smile about. Drug use actually increased in the group of kids receiving the original D.A.R.E. program. Why? Probably the same reason many parents objected to it in the first place: too much information about the specific drugs and their use.

Back in the day the officer came into your classroom and would tell you all this information, "This drug increases your heart rate and blood pressure, and if you do it long enough you can get cancer. This drug plays with your emotions and can psychologically scar you for life. This drug is addictive after only one use." For me, as someone who was not liable to use drugs very early on anyway, the drug education approach was effective. If someone offered me a drug then I would know all about it and therefore all the reasons I didn't want to do it. But you have to be incredibly naive to not know that in the majority of kids, all this is going to do is feed their curiosity and produce the opposite effect you want.

Except for that one major flaw, D.A.R.E. is a really good idea. That's why I'm happy the program has revised its mission statement:

D.A.R.E. gives children the skills needed to recognize and resist the subtle and overt pressures that cause them to experiment with drugs or become involved in gangs or violent activities.

I read through most of the basic information on the site, and from what I gather the new D.A.R.E program forgets about drug education and instead emphasizes learning to resist peer pressures (not the singular,"peer pressure," which was always kind of a dumb concept).

Conservative Bias in the Liberal Media

Perception of liberal bias in the media has grown in the last several years. According to a September 2003 Gallup Poll 45% of the American public thinks the news media is too liberal while only 14 % think it’s too conservative. This perception doesn’t accurately reflect reality. Some of the mainstream news media is clearly liberal. The New York Times is a fine example. For instance, an article in May titled “Darwin-Free Fun For Creationists,” clearly took a mocking tone toward the religious dinosaur theme park it described. Furthermore, the Times war coverage has far less hawkish and far more skeptical than most other news outlets. The bias, though, is subtle and sophisticated. A liberal perspective is endorsed through article placement and strategic writing. Support for the liberal position is never stated overtly, but is sometimes implied. A reader can therefore read the Times and still come away with conservative interpretation of the news. By comparison, the position of New York’s other newspaper, The Post, is never subtle. The paper’s war reporting has been at least pro-war and at most jingoistic (i.e. using the rhetorical language of the Bush administration in articles and Iraq headlines that read like action movie slogans). To the Post’s credit I don’t think it makes much of a claim to non-partisanship.
A somewhat similar situation exists in cable news networks. CNN is considered by most to be centrist, while Fox, the news station that laughably claims to be “fair and balanced”, is staunchly on the right. A recent Maureen Dowd article claims that eighty percent of Fox News viewers believed: W.M.D. had been found, that Al Qaeda and Iraq were tied, or that the world had approved of U.S. intervention in Iraq. Misconception among viewers of other networks was significantly lower.
The situation in radio is no different. NPR catches a lot of slack for its supposed liberal bias. Admittedly many of the stations hosts are openly liberal off the air. However, their work on radio displays a genuine effort to balance left with right in order to facilitate probing and insightful discussion. In his nightly show On Point Tom Ashbrook works as a moderator, not a pundit, when he bridges conversation between commentators and callers on both sides of the issues. Here in Massachusetts the other major talk radio station is 96.9 FM Talk. With a few notable exemptions the station’s personality lineup is a list of far right rabble-rousers. From 1 PM to 1 AM it features Bill O’Reilly, Jay Severin, Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity. Each of these caustic conservatives uses their time to deliver liberal bashing monologues and answer calls from listeners who either agree completely or occasionally offer an opposing opinion, which is crushed by the belligerent host. Whatever you may think of NPR, it cannot be argued that 96.9’s Bill O’Reilly and NPR’s Teri Gross, whose shows air simultaneously, provide an equal right/left balance.
My point, finally, is not that the media is too conservative or too liberal, or that conservative bias exists in greater quantity than liberal bias. The point is that they both exist throughout the media and to unequivocally call the news too liberal is to ignore the fierce conservatism that has an equal, if not greater, presence in the press.

Write your own book

Even though I haven't read the book yet, I was very disappointed by this review of Bill Clinton's memoir. The reviewer seems more interested in finding out the juicy details of Clinton's scandals than he is about evaluating how well the book transmits Clinton's experience as president. Almost everything he finds wrong with the book relates to the scandals and their inadequate coverage:

In truth, it is hardly an edge-of-your-seat experience. Throughout its leisurely 957 pages, however, every facet of Clinton's complex, nuanced and sometimes maddening personality is on display. He is by turns introspective and willfully obtuse, expansive and curt. One moment, he forces the reader on a joyless march through an arid policy debate. The next, he offers up a raw, confessional moment that almost makes the book seem worth the $35 price of admission...
For such a big book, there are a lot of things curiously missing. Clinton denies sexually harassing Paula Jones, but doesn't give his account of what did, and didn't, happen during that infamous hotel encounter...

This is not a serious enough review of a what is meant to be a serious memoir. Does the reviewer really expect Clinton to produce something worthy of the tabloids?

And though he says more than once in the book that he knows he let people down, he never seems to grasp just how much anger and disappointment he caused—not just among his enemies, but among those who believed in him most. But then, did anyone really expect Clinton to make himself the villain of his own book?

Clinton is an interesting and inspiring guy. I am much more interested in hearing about what it was like to be president, how he got there, and what he was thinking along the way. I would not give the book a lukewarm review because he failed to condemn himself.

Scapegoating Israel

For people who say that the kind of anti-Zionism you see coming out of the middle east is a legitimate criticism of Israeli policies, read this statement made by the Prince of Saudi Arabia to his country after the latest series of Al Quada attacks there. It always amazes me what they're able to get away with saying over there and still be heard. Such statements should serve as proof that misleading, completely untruthful and harmful propaganda directed at Jews is still commonplace in the middle east, and actually in other places in the world as well.

NBC News translated Crown Prince Abdullah remarks from Arabic: "Zionism is behind it. It has become clear now. It has become clear to us. I don't say, I mean... It is not 100 percent, but 95 percent that the Zionist hands are behind what happened."

Other senior Saudi officials reaffirmed the claim that supporters of Israel - Zionists - were behind the terror attacks.

Prince Nayef, the Saudi Interior Minister said, "Al-Qaida is backed by Israel and Zionism."

Apparently it wasn't just a slip-up either. Saudi officials continue to defend the statement:

As for the alleged Saudi doublespeak, a Saudi official in the United States defends the remarks, arguing that Zionists and others who argue for regime change in Saudi Arabia "share the same objective as Osama bin Laden."

My friend Oren did a nice discussion on the sheer stupidity of the people who believe these claims. A Saudi Arabian has to have the information available to him to make the easy conclusion that Israel supporting Al Quada is absurd. Just because they share the same objective of regime change in Saudi Arabia - and for totally opposite reasons; Israel would like to insert a regime that doesn't spew dangerous demagoguery and instigate hatred of Israel, Al Quada would like a regime that practices Islamic totalitarianism - doesn't make collaboration between the two anything but completely unlikely. Or does the statement mean "Israel has inflamed and fomented these extremists, and now we have to deal with them in our own back yard?" This reading is incompatible with the main premise, which is that Israel backs Al Quada and is behind the latest series of attacks in Saudi Arabia.

Call me E.O. Wilson

Have you ever thought about culture, why it is unique to humans, and why it exists in the first place? Being of a relatively scientific ilk, I have come up with this answer, within the framework of evolutionary theory:
Mammals learn skills and strategies from their parents. Think of the kitten that learns to hunt for mice by watching a parent (cats who haven't watched a parent hunt generally don't learn how to hunt), or baby hyena who learns to avoid lions from its mother. Communication of learned information from parent to child, generation to generation, is adaptive and helps the species survive. Humans pass this kind of information too when they teach their kids to look both ways before crossing the road, or how to do their laundry. But humans are much more sophisticated than other mammals. And what is culture but the body of what has been thought, said and done in the arts, sciences, civilization etc? Culture must then be a body of transmissible information, albeit a very sophisticated human version of it, which is passed from one human generation to the next.

Time for some observations from the world's worst sociologist...

Me! -- about the world's second worst sociologist: David Brooks. For those who don't know him, he's the New York Times' very own conservative op-ed columnist. To his credit, that's a tough position to be in. It's like getting tossed into a roomful of wolves with a big sign that says "Sheep". I wonder if he gets bashed by the Times' staff as much as he seems to get bashed by its readers. Certainly the blog-world has taken notice, mostly to his disadvantage.

I kind of feel bad for David Brooks. As the Times' liaison to the world of conservative thought (comparatively), he's either dismissed or hated by liberal readers, because that's what he's paid for. But the really sad thing is I can't imagine conservatives wanting to own him either.

Would you want to call someone one of your own who engages in relatively thoughtless generalization such as:

'When it comes to yardwork, they [Red States] have rider mowers; we have illegal aliens,'

'The energy that once went into sex and raving now goes into salads...bathroom tile is their cocaine.'[refering to the new generation of young adults]

'In America, it is acceptable to cut off any driver in a vehicle that costs a third more than yours. That's called democracy.'

More importantly, many allege that Brooks isn't really a conservative. Michael Kinsley voices the doubt in a review of one of Brooks' books:

When he ridicules consumer appetites, Brooks is safely within the permissible, rueful conservative critique of capitalism's ''contradictions.'' When he writes of the 'tediousness of pod after pod of the highway-side office parks'' and the 'sheer existential nothingness of an office-park lobby,'' he sounds quaintly like the cultural critics of American capitalism in the 1950's and 60's. But when he declares that hard-working business executives are living their 'whole lives'' in a furrow -- 'I'm that furrow, your personality becomes a mere selling device. Friendships become contacts. The urge to improve deteriorates to mere acquisitiveness. Money becomes the measure of accomplishment'' -- well, frankly, that sounds more than a bit like Karl Marx, doesn't it?

Theories abound in the blog world for why The Times gave Brooks the job, and why they are letting him keep it. Here's a particularly direct, if undiplomatic, statement of opinion, entitled 'Fire Brooks'...its best lines are:

I suspect they didn't realize how rabid he was at first, and, now that they know, don't want to look weak by removing him.

and,

I have this fantasy that the editors systematically refuse to publish letters that point out Brooks's stupidity because it reflects poorly on their hiring decision and general mental soundness.

I honestly think the first statement has some plausibility. There are lots of possibilities. Maybe The Times' rationale is that Brooks is a particularly easy target for its conservative-weary readership who won't challenge their assumptions too much. Or he could be a kind of ideological double-agent, destroying the neoconservative agenda's credibility from within. I would definitely be curious to hear from a strong supporter of neoconservative agendas as to what they think of Brooks.

Being the world's worst sociologist, I'm not normally qualified to assess someone else's sociological work. But, in this case, I can say that after reading a bunch of reviews of Brooks' books, I'm quite sure that the ideas Brooks puts forth as 'sociological analysis' are things I could and would come up with if you asked me to write a piece of pop sociology on the spot. From reading a few columns, I can also say that Brooks, with his fondness for coining terms, like 'Crunchy Zone,' 'Meatloaf Line' and 'Patio Man,' along with his tendency to exaggerate - about '16-foot refrigerators with the through-the-door goat cheese and guacamole delivery systems,' S.U.V.'s 'so big they look like the Louisiana Superdome on wheels' - writes columns that read like the columns I used to write for my high school newspaper. Read Kinsley's review for a critique of Brooks' latest book and general methodology. You'll see that Brooks defends himself by saying he's in the business of illuminating and clarifying what we already know by presenting it in an entertaining form. I say, if you're not going to tell me something I don't know, or going to present something I already know in a useful and new way, then you are not really an authority on anything and shouldn't be presenting yourself as one. I surely hope that Brooks doesn't think he's producing anything profound.

It's Called Lying

Ronald Reagan sure is turning out to be a great president. The only thing is, he's not president anymore, in fact, he's not even alive. But dying never hurt anyone's legacy. Now, I do think it's nice to honor our deceased by emphasizing what was good about them in memory, but frankly the homage being paid to this man and revisionism going on about his presidency are ridiculous. The press is heaping a ridiculous amount of praise and doing an amazing job of spinning his recognized bad points. Here is a perfect example from an msnbc piece titled "Reagan: Man of Contradictions?"

In his speech at the 1980 Republican convention, candidate Ronald Reagan announced, "Indeed, it is time our government should go on a diet."

From the very beginning he was a man of contradictions: a deficit cutter who, over eight years, almost tripled the size of the federal budget.

In the 1988 State of the Union address he emphasized the size of a report, "1,153 pages report, weighing 14 pounds."

He engineered the biggest tax cut in history in his first year in office, and then raised taxes every year after.

He promised to eliminate the Education Department, and then let it flourish...

...But perhaps the biggest contradiction in his record was his promise to get tough with terrorists. "Our policy will be one of swift and effective retribution," he announced on Jan. 27, 1981.

Still, when terrorists killed 241 sailors and Marines in their Beirut barracks, Reagan withdrew the troops.

And despite his early denial that he was trading arms for hostages, "Those charges are utterly false," he said on Nov. 13, 1986.

When the Iran-Contra scandal threatened his presidency, he apologized on Mar. 4, 1987: "A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages my heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not."

The title of this article is so utterly absurd in relation to the content that it makes me wonder if it was intended to be some kind of ironic rhetorical question. After the title states quizzically, "man of contradictions?" the article goes on to assert "From the very beginning he was a man of contradictions." So why the question mark in the title then? But that's not the best part: Isn't it great how this article spins the everyday phenomenon of a politician lying into sophistication of character? If only all politicians were such men of mystery and contradiction...

Update: The sub-heading states, "His words conflicted with his deeds on many issues." That's a welcome, to the point clarification. Perhaps the article's title is getting at the distinction between contradicting yourself and being a man of contradictions.

J. Lo / Homosexual Conspiracy to De-sanctify Marriage Proceeds as Planned

Time for a little change of pace here at KrisKraus. A topic suggested by reader Nate.

If Bush is Dumb, Does It Matter?

I thought I'd jump in on the "is Bush a stupid president" debate, seeing that it is just as big, if not bigger, than the "is Kerry a douche" debate. This question is getting a lot of play over at the blog belonging to my colleague and embattled Bush supporter, Oren Cass, who seems to think that not only is Bush not stupid, but that Kerry is actually stupider, and challenges Kerry supporters to prove otherwise.

Ok, a bunch of things need to be defined here, such as what is intelligence, and what is intelligence in the context of politics and political leadership, and is there a difference? First of all, political acumen is a great quality, but I don't think that's the relevant kind of intelligence we're talking about here. For instance, Hitler was politically very astute, and that's what allowed him to rise to power rapidly and completely, but that doesn't make him a desirable leader. Political shrewdness is good for the politician, not the country.

As Oren points out, one can mean a lot of different things by calling someone "stupid." Specifically, is Bush lacking verbal skills? Is he not able to comprehend the complex realities that make up the international scene and which should dictate any prudent policy decisions? Stupid can also mean imprudent, such as being short-sighted or reckless. Maybe a president, being the elected representative of the nation, is supposed to demonstrate adequacy in all recognized areas of intelligence. Bush may or may not be any of these things. But the kind of intelligence that really matters, I think, is the ability to effectively manage a government and to steer the country in the best direction, domestically and internationally.

But, in the case of the Bush administration, these matters are much less affected by Bush than the various members that make up the administration. Unless you're Clinton, who regularly brainstormed about policy with his appointed officials, the major input a president has in his administration's various policy agendas is who he appoints as advisers. No one claims it was Bush's inspired initiative to staunchly support Israel and back the Sharon plan. It was most probably a combination of the neo-conservative agenda which strongly influences Bush policy, and the calculation of his political strategist, Carl Rove (incidentally, this move demonstrates political intelligence of the highest order).

I'm not going to take sides and make an assertion to the effect that Bush is stupid or not; I'll save that for a later post. But assuming the worst judgments about him are true, that he is a complete idiot when it comes to understanding the salient policy issues of the day, you're still going to get, basically, what you've already seen. Cheney would still be bent on Iraq, Rumsfeld would be trying for more funding for a better, sleeker and more devastating military, Wolfowitz would also be harping on Iraq, except from the framework of visionary nation-building, Richard Perle would be pushing support for Israel. The members of Bush's administration seem to be the ones who run the show, not Bush. And realistically, I can't think of a circumstance where one stupid decision by Bush could doom the country to catastrophe. It seems more sensible to object to the Bush Administration because of its policies, not because Bush is dumb.

It's possible that when she objected to Bush being stupid, Oren's mom was expressing concern about the kind of example that is set when a leader is openly ignorant or doesn't value education. That's valid. It's also the same condemnation issued towards President Clinton when the country found out about his scandalous behavior and lying. This presupposes that the president is uniquely influential in setting the tone of the whole social fabric of society. There's something to be said for this argument. I'm not sure how much though.

Blatantly Creepy Lurking

Don't ask me how I found this guy from Yale's blog site. I don't have any friends from Yale, and the people I do know who go there I don't particularly like. I have no idea what series of links brought me to this random kid's site, but I would bet that if you mapped out and then traced the links geographically according to IP location, you would travel the circumference of the earth approximately seven times. So anyway, in the vain of being an anonymous cyber-lurker, I am going to quote and link to a post written by a kid I don't know.

There's a reason I'm going to do this. I think this post has something to contribute to the gay marriage debate. According to this guy's friend who's stationed in Iraq, the incidence of male homosexuality in Iraqi society is amazingly high. In the inimitable words of my stranger friend:

I have reached the tentative conclusion that in male-dominated societies where women are treated as subhuman, homosexuality is much more acceptable, or maybe unacceptable but is more common. The men feel bad about having sex with women, so it's much more acceptable to have sex with someone who is worthy, another man. Ancient Greece fits this theory, as (seemingly) do Muslim dominated countries.

I'm not going to link to the post because this guy's friend also happens to be somewhat of an amateur telescopic-lens photographer, and some of the pictures he's taken to help visually corroborate his observation are rather unsightly. I will link to the main page, where you can read the text-only version of the post.

Now I'm not going to treat this guy's theorizing as gospel or anything, and I don't think I agree with the contention that in male-dominated societies "men feel bad about having sex with women" because they are less worthy, but I think there may be insight in the observation that homosexuality is more common in patriarchal, oppressive societies. It may have something to do with the natural human tendency to rebel against authority. If a society is based on a strict code of masculine behavior and scorns anything unmasculine, people are naturally going to want to rebel and do things that are less masculine. It's like how in Europe, where the drinking age is much lower, kids drink, but juvenile alcohol abuse is not nearly as widespread as it is in the states, where underage drinking prohibition is much more strictly enforced.

This observation seems to at least call into question the argument that if we condone homosexuality by instituting gay marriage, tacitly accepting it in our religious institutions etc., there are going to be more homosexuals in the future.