The Debate

Having a blog and not covering some aspect of the debates is like having a 60 inch flat screen TV and not watching the Super Bowl. So I'm going to give my impressions, observations, and thoughts on the second presidential debate below. Hopefully some people will find them interesting.

As in the first debate, I thought the debate did a good job of highlighting the differences between the two candidates position-wise. This is more important for Kerry than for Bush I think because people already know where Bush stands, but aren't so sure about where Kerry stands. Any contrast with the incumbent will help to define his positions better. I thought that the "town-hall" forum was a much better one for Bush, but Kerry also managed to be personable for him and not stiff.

I was not entirely surprised that in the foreign policy section of the debate, Bush was clearly repeating all of his stuff from the first debate. It was especially annoying when he started with "you can't be the commander in chief if you waver" and "I know how the world works; these foreign leaders aren't going to listen to a president who shows indecisiveness...wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time..." Whatever validity there may be in the criticism of Kerry's incoherence on the Iraq issue seems to be nullified by the fact that Bush repeated it so many times. A point that stood out to me as particularly interesting was when Bush answered the question about the draft, which was probably the only time in the debate that caused me to think. After promising that there would be no need to reinstate a draft, he made an interesting statement that a smaller all-volunteer army is better suited to fighting the new kind of war on terror. I assume that's because the new kind of war doesn't require sheer manpower in order to overwhelm an enemy in the battlefield by numbers but rather relies heavily on intelligence and small-scale operations.

As before, Kerry was better at citing specific facts to argue his points, which on a pure debating basis has to gain him some merit. I was also happy to see that he finally seems to have come up with a politically functionable "stance"(I put it in quotes because it's not so much a stance in that it's something he has adhered to with conviction, but rather a successful formulation that is both consistent with his previous positions, and is politically viable) on the Iraq issue. Basically he acknowledges that Saddam was a threat, he needed to be dealt with, he gave George Bush the power to deal with him which he used unwisely thus causing the current troubles there, and that a less hasty, more carefully thought out, and more multilateral (at least in terms of support) effort would have been more successful. He can assert that the war was a mistake because 1) the president didn't go about it in the "right" way that he would have and 2) ex post facto we know there aren't any weapons of mass destruction, which undermines the primary rationale for the war, and thus making it a mistake. At the same time, he can commit to winning the war because a loss would create an even bigger mess. It's an ideal position for Senator Kerry because he can be both the anti-war and pro-war candidate and have some justification for it; he's anti-war in principle, but pro-war as a realist. Note that I don't know if Kerry actually believes in his stance, let alone "has always held it consistently," but politically, it's a smart formulation that utilizes the current troubles there now to his advantage. Kerry's point about the importance of having strong alliances for securing the intelligence which is vital to winning war we're currently fighting also struck me as a very good point.

On domestic policy Kerry did worse I thought. He said something about the Patriot Act, which got me listening, but then it wasn't clear what his position was. Although he has said he supports the Patriot Act in the past, he spent the full minute talking about not eroding civil liberties and I wasn't sure what that meant in terms of actual policy change. Also when asked about embryonic stem cells I felt he was pandering and hedging as he acknowledged the feeling of the issue, or something to that effect, but refused to answer what he believes and whether he would ban it or not. In contrast, Bush's answer was much more definite, and he was much better at conveying what he believes about the issue. In answering this question, I think that stating personal belief is quite important because of the moral and religious dimensions to it.

In the beginning, Bush was still trying to attack Kerry's character which I find off-putting, but I was impressed that at one point Kerry countered it by directly calling him on it, after which I don't think Bush did it anymore. Actually I'm surprised that so far, both debates have been remarkably good-spirited, and honest, in the sense that each candidate is honestly portraying his stances - not necessarily in terms of factuality and accuracy.

In terms of the closing statements, I thought Kerry's was better. Bush of course emphasized the importance of having a resolute president to lead during a war like the one we're involved in now. This got me thinking: why is that necessarily true any more for an intelligence-based war than for a more conventional old-fashioned war, which seems to have been the implication? I wished he would give more specifics on that, but like in most of the debate he seems unable or unwilling to provide them. Maybe in the future I'll do a post on what I think of that.

From The Complaints Dept.

I just finished watching the second "town hall style" debate and before I say what I thought, let me make one complaint. Everyone in the country is obsessed with determining who won the debate, which is fundamentally stupid in my opinion.

In my understanding the debate was originally used as a forum for educating the voters about the issues and helping them to see the differences in the candidates' stances on the issues. The debates used to be informational affairs where candidates truly extemporaneously engaged the issues and debated stances and solutions. Today, can anyone honestly say that after a debate their understanding of the issues is deepened? Of course there will be some people for whom the debates will be their only exposure to the issues. But for the rest of the people, for whom the issues addressed in the debate will be predictable and nothing new, there are no great breakthroughs or revelations to be made in watching the debates. It's simply candidate A reciting the same stump speech talking points that everyone has already heard and candidate B reciting his while asserting that his are better. Today it is just one more test at which the candidates must succeed in order to prove themselves presidential material.

Now, I'm all for subjecting the candidates to challenges to see what they're made of, but one must ask, exactly what does the process of going through the debate prove in a candidate? Will it elucidate their knowledge and grasp of policy issues? Not the way the debates work now, with candidates robotically recycling stump speeches or regurgitating pre-learned, prefabricated answers to generic questions. Does it demonstrate their ability to hold up under pressure? Yes, but in the context of public speaking! And frankly that doesn't mean that much. Does it demonstrate, their ability to compete? Given that the format discourages any kind of direct confrontation I'd say no. It would be another thing if the debates took place in a roundtable-like setting, where they were actually allowed to address the other candidate, or ask and answer direct questions. Unfortunately, the way it is now candidates have at most the opportunity to request a thirty second rebuttal in which to expound on something the other candidate said.

Then the other question is, what does it even mean to win the debate? It's not as if the debate is being scored by impartial judges (unless you think that the media are effective impartial judges) according to a set of definite criteria and therefore there is a clear objective winner and loser. There are, I'm sure, lots of criteria floating around out there used by different people, like "The winner is the one who most persuasively argued his positions" or "The winner was the one who attacked the other candidate's arguments most effectively" or "The winner is the one who appeared most self-contained and self-assured," "The winner was the one who came off more presidential." The potential for all sorts of stupid criteria is vast. Even wading out the stupid stuff, the more common, accepted criteria would seem to be the same as those used to define a good debater in general: making strong, clear arguments. Showing obvious preparation and knowledge of the subject matter and not straying from the topic. Citing numerous and relevant facts to support those arguments. Good counter-responses to the opponent's arguments. Finally, maybe you'd find some things about style such as overall persuasiveness and facility with using language. So, the most optimistic view of how we evaluate the candidates would suggest that winning the debate confirms that you are a good debater, which has no bearing in my opinion on your ability to be president.

In reality, unless we are judging a debate competition according to debate rules, there is no meaningful way to say that one of the candidates won the debate. John Kerry could "win" because he had more at stake, and he pulled through the debate without totally messing it up and ruining his chances altogether. He could also "win" because he successfully countered allegations that he was a flip-flopper, which while a political liability for him, is external to and has nothing to do with the debates. George Bush could "win" because everyone's expectations of him were so low that when he managed to integrate his memorized lines relatively seamlessly without producing anything incoherent he was considered a success. He could also "win" because he stood on stage and maintained a minimum level of likeability while his opponent said and did destructive things (read: Bush/Gore debate).

Therefore, the whole business of establishing who won the debate is dumb and meaningless. You could say that Kerry used more facts and statistics to back up his points, or that Bush did a better job of making clear exactly where he stood on the issues. You could say that Kerry had more information at his fingertips, and that he was able to fill his speaking time with fresh and relevant material, or that Bush won over more of the audience. To base a win on any one of these things is limited and stupid, and unless we're using an array of sensible and objective criteria to evaluate the performances, there's no point in trying to determine a winner. Rather I think the debates should be refocused on the essential parameters, which are, what are the candidates' positions? how well did they explain their rationale for having these positions? who has the better positions? were they able to debunk their opponent's positions? how good of a grasp did they demonstrate of the topics of the questions? Clearly if one candidate performed miserably in all of these areas, you could say he lost the debate, in the sense that the debate has not served him favorably. But the idea that the debate is some kind of matchup zero-sum competition is just dumb.

Specializing In The Specialized

Bloggers take a certain pride in knowing that their blog is serving a wider purpose in the world than just being an outlet for their indulgence and an amusement to their friends. Today, I can also say my blog is a part of the wider network of abundant information sources that makes the internet so great. Just earlier, someone did an AskJeeves search for "from where does corned beef hash originate" and arrived at my blog. Clearly, you can see from the provided description that my blog has nothing to do with corned beef hash, so I like to think that the person decided to visit it just because it looked interesting. I hope they weren't disappointed.

Spin Award Nominee

David Brooks has an unusually balanced column today. Still he manages to get in a marvel of pro-Bush spin, calling Bush's mind "more abstracted from day-to-day reality" than Kerry's. Wow. You'd think Bush is applying to be the Dalai Llama or a buddhist monk or something. "Abstracted" over "he doesn't pay attention to reality" is quite the spin accomplishment.

Andrew Sullivan makes an excellent point about the whole abstracted thing:

...it is Kerry who is the practical conservative in this race; and Bush who is the airy-fairy idealist. If Bush didn't have the abstract theological support of evangelical Christians, he wouldn't have a, well, prayer.

The Brooks column was also notable (or not notable perhaps) for its usage of a cultural or professional stereotype to make a point.

The atmosphere of Kerry's mind is rationalistic. He thinks about how to get things done. He talks like a manager or an engineer.

The atmosphere of Bush's mind is more creedal or ethical. He talks about moral challenges. He talks about the sort of personal and national character we need in order to triumph over our enemies. His mind is less coldly secular than Kerry's...

But I thought Bush was the manager president? I'm all confused.

More Stoner News

I don't know how to break it to this pet store owner enthused over the good sales of her new product that the catnip cigars probably aren't being purchased for feline consumption.

Says Alice Lerman, the owner of pet store Barker & Meowsky in Chicago: "I don't think I've ever looked at anything and said, Oh, that's the most ridiculous thing." Her brother, a businessman who deals in metals, once lectured her about how no one would ever pay $6 for a catnip cigar. She still has trouble keeping catnip cigars in stock.

KrisKraus: Balancing Out The Big Media Since 2004

As election day draws near and America is sure to hear but a scant mention of Ralph Nader's name by the press, I think it would be a good time to call some attention to this figure and give some of my thoughts on the matter. Ralph Nader has been clearly shunned by the mainstream media. It would be ok I think for people in the press and in positions of influence who have strong feelings on the matter to make clear that they feel voting for Nader carries with it certain consequences, namely that he is a lost vote and liberal voters would be better served by voting for the more viable liberal candidate. It's another thing to arrange what really appears to be a concerted effort to block out the candidate and his views from the public discourse, because the liberal press knows what's best for the liberal voters in the country, or even more cynically, because they are using their position of power to influence political outcomes according to their liking. Somewhere along in the process of shunning this candidate, anti-Nader liberals in this country have developed something of a consensus justifying why the candidate isn't deserving of being heard. "He's an egotist," "he's a megalomaniac" are some of the charges that are routinely offered but not questioned. If I may, I'd like to take issue with these assumptions, because I don't think they are true.

He's power-hungry and a megalomaniac: Clearly this is something that could be said for every person running for political office; it's a prerequisite for the job. There are no illusions about the fact that the president has a lot of power, and so naturally a person seeking that position will be power-hungry. There's nothing wrong with that unless there's something wrong with all politicians. And yet Nader, unlike the other two candidates, is the one who has devoted his life to public service, whereas they have devoted their lives (or a significant portion of it) to the pursuit of political office. Who is more in the business of seeking power here?

He's an egotist: The only reason Nader is running is for his ego, the charge goes, or even better, for his legacy. Just examining this allegation on its face, you can come to the easy conclusion that it's invalid. If Nader wanted to stroke his ego or guarantee his legacy he would not have run this year. Perhaps you could make the argument that there was no way he knew ahead of time how universally criticized he would be for running in 2000, but don't think he's not aware of it this year, however dense he may be. He knows he's going to be even more scorned this time around. The deeper reason is that there's manifestly nothing egotistical about his motivations. I know that sounds like circular reasoning so let me explain what I mean. His platform as a candidate is entirely consistent with what's driven him all along, which is to protect citizens from abuses of corporate and government power, to help to enlighten them as to the things that the people in power are not telling them, or not telling the truth about, encouraging innovation for the common good, civic responsiblity toward the poor... These are hardly selfish goals.

So he wrote a few books about his trials as a presidential candidate and trying to save the world...does that make him an egotist? Is his candidacy just a stunt to up book sales? What exactly is egotistical about what he's doing? Of course by "egotistical" people could mean that he's doing something they don't want him to do, or maintains resolve despite the good advice and appeals of everyone else. "Egotist" clearly isn't the best word then. "Pariah" may be the better term, because of the way its use self-fulfillingly makes it true.

He's crazy: This I think refers to the fact that he has no chance of winning. The first thing is, the reasonableness of his own personal aspirations really must be separated from the reasonableness of what he has to say or what he stands for. The fact that he's running and he's at 2% in the polls doesn't make his general sanity equivalent to that of Lyndon LaRouche. Saying "he's crazy" in this sense amounts to nothing more than saying his bid is a very long shot. That being said, I don't think he has any illusions about winning. So I think that, given his motivations, his behavior is quite sane. As I've said before, I believe his run is an activist measure intended to 1) increase the long-term acceptability of third parties 2) influence the candidates by bringing up issues that would be impossible for a politically-viable candidate. In fact, just looking at the statements that these figures make, if you were to define craziness on the basis of disconnection with reality, at this moment President Bush would be scoring higher than Ralph Nader.

That Name's Already Taken For The Wall

In other developments, the army decided to change the military code name for the Gaza withdrawal, to avoid offending religious Jews. The name initially chosen was “heavenly splendor,” a phrase used in a Jewish prayer recited at funerals, a security official said. No new name has been chosen, but the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot said “stepping stones” was being considered.

Seems like a good call overall. I would also add that God might be offended also.

Update: Other rejected code names include "Adventures in Unilateral Disengagement," "The Fence and Forget Project," "Visions for a more integrated middle east," "Scorpion Jar" and "Hamasland."

No Puedo Hablar En Espanol

On a more personal note, I love singing in Spanish. People who know me know that I don't sing a word of English, but I just spent a whole car ride singing along to a cd in Spanish (the Buena Vista Social Club Ibrahim Ferrer one.) I'm really bad at speaking Spanish, so I think when it comes to Spanish I'm like one of those stage performers who's only comfortable in his own skin when singing or acting or something.

This makes me think that singing is an under-utilized technique for teaching languages. Song lyrics require a very low level of linguistic sophistication. Think of the majority of hits and popular songs on the radio today. Even with a beginner's vocabulary, a reasonably entertaining and compelling song can be constructed (Everyone who's taken a high school language knows that the same cannot be said for short stories and narratives.) This would be a better alternative to reading lame stories or filling in mindless vocab blanks which you always end up doing at the beginner level.

Second, and I know this sounds cheesy, music is a language we can all understand. Seriously, how else do you explain the ubiquity of music across all cultures and the prevalence of nursery rhymes? The scientific camp would argue that music is an even more primal form of communication than language, which makes some sense if you think about how animals communicate. It seems logical that teaching a language through music would catalyze the learning process. Music is fun, and kids will be more engaged by songs than they will by dry and laughable stories. It will also result, I would think, in better language acquisition and retention; people have a remarkable capacity for remembering lyrics.

And music will do wonders to squeeze in that cultural element that every Spanish teacher for some reason seems so eager to include in their class. It would seem that the average Spanish student would be able to sing real contemporary music by the third or fourth year of study, which obviously cannot be said in regard to written items. Perhaps if singing were used more, future classes of a certain teacher I had who loved to salsa dance would be spared the experience.

A Coeducational Response

Reader Jung has responded to my controversial post defending single-sex schooling. He writes:

Yeah, but the issue of mixing the sexes aren't the only social pressures that distract students from learning. To eliminate that one issue will not help students to learn better. In fact, it may be the case that because of their lack of interaction with the opposite sex, students become less socially adept when they are faced with the unsegregated real world. Single-sex schools may quite possibly repress the sexual urges of these students, forcing them to release these urges at a later time, and stalling their emotional and psychological development. Releasing these sexual urges, that is to say, gettting in a "high school" relationship and then having it inevitably break apart, is an EXTREMELY valuable learning tool to understand the world we live in. I'm not going to go into that much detail, but maybe I'll post something about that later on...

My overall point is that the issue of mingling with the opposite sex during school hours is something that "must be overcome" so to speak, and not something that children must be protected from. It is the equivalent of having a parent keeping a child indoors their entire lives for fear of abduction, injury, skin cancer, or whatever. Let them overcome these problems and grow from them, instead of shielding them from it, making them weaker and more vulnerable later on in life. Because if these social pressures aren't dealt with now, they will inevitably have to deal with them later on.

First off, people seem to have the impression that single-sex schooling precludes in some major way interaction with the opposite sex. Precisely, what I was calling for was that all aspects of school that were considered educational would be carried out in a single-sex environment. This is because I think that school-type education, whether it be academics, etiquette, athletics, organization-building, whatever, doesn't mix well with the other kind of equally important education that we get as adolescents, which is learning how to relate to ours peers and members of the opposite sex, both functionally and romantically. My impression is that having to navigate the trials of romantic relationships during school only distracts and detracts from the business of learning and training that school provides. And I think it would be hard to make the case that having the two types of education concur is synergistic somehow.

But say you think boys and girls should learn how to interact in a cooperative, work environment. This is a laudable goal for its effects on later inevitable interaction between men and women in the workplace. School, the way it is set up now, is a very individual endeavor, with each individual striving for achievement, grades, learning etc, and where there is very little cooperative work. Group work and collaborative projects are subordinated by the push for individual achievement. So having girls and boys together in the same classrooms won't teach them how to work together nearly as much as some people would think.

If you're going to start getting into the "it's tough but it will make them stronger argument" or "it's natural" I think you should seriously re-evaluate your position on the matter. Do we, for instance, have a system where students with only higher than a certain grade point average cut-off are eligible to take the more advanced classes? This would certainly exaggerate any competitiveness, raising the stakes at all times, increasing stress levels and making school generally a harder experience. My high school doesn't even rank students, because they see it as unnecessarily competitive and something that will detract from the education. Do we permit taunting and teasing in school, which is both difficult for the victims and happens naturally, because it will make the victims stronger?

By all means, there should still be school dances, and school-sponsored socializing with the other sex. This way even the timid and less proactive youngsters will have experiences with the opposite sex at a critical developmental stage. And all students will find an outlet to "release their sexual urges" so that, as Jung cautions, we don't raise a group of children "forced to release these urges at a later time, and stalling their emotional and psychological development." There's nothing about having school-aged girls attend a different school than boys that makes dating difficult. Sleep-away camps have been built on the prototype of brother and sister camps for many years, and yet summer camp is still known for being a time of experimenting with the opposite sex.

I know my stance is controversial, and there may be some structural effects arising from this scheme that I haven't anticipated (like perpetuating workplace segregation / inequality) which would be bad, but for now I'm going to hold to my belief that this could be good and is something people ought to consider.

Update: (pub -- I fear this view won't sell with the mainstream of Americans...)

I'm Getting Cynical

Lots of people are saying that Kerry's campaign is all but over. I don't know if I believe that, but one thing is for sure. The Democrats made the conscious decision to take the high road this campaign, starting with their carefully controlled convention, hoping to set an example for the other party to do the same. And the Republicans have taken this more as an opportunity than a positive precedent to follow. That is what makes me sad. I don't know any other word for it than cynical when your opponent nobly uses his convention's earlier placement to try to direct the political dialogue toward the things it should be focused on - the candidates' merits and the future, not on negative campaigning, character assassination and slander - and you not only don't follow the lead but devote a repulsive amount of your convention to doing just that. And the fact that the Republicans' tactics seem to be working by increasing Bush's popularity while decreasing Kerry's makes the whole thing even more repulsive. Republicans say that Kerry milks his Vietnam service, arguing it's really something that happened thirty years ago and shouldn't weigh on his level of qualification for the presidency. The argument that military service doesn't make one any more fit to be commander in chief is a whole other debate, and certainly not a closed one. Yet they didn't hesitate to bring to attention isolated quotes taken out of context which Kerry made thirty years ago trying to call his strength on defense into question, as if they were more relevant (about the UN giving the U.S. authority to go to war). This is not just negative campaigning, it's deception.

The fact that Kerry has so many areas in which Bush is quite vulnerable to negative campaigning tactics (such as questions about his guard service, his "flip-flopping" on the intelligence director proposal), and that he hasn't addressed them seriously undermines my confidence in his campaign's competence and judgement. As many people have been saying, at this point, any further decline in the polls is Kerry's own fault.

Whatever happens in November, it will be the American people's fault if they continue to let this kind of discourse to be effective in politics. And only they can render it ineffective and thus raise the level of political discourse beyond the utterly cynical state which it is currently at.

Voting, Writing and Arithmetic

Another great example of David Brook's almost-too-aburd-to-be-true sociologizing in today's Times. It starts out "there are two sorts of people in the information-age elite, spreadsheet people and paragraph people." There are so many things to say about this article, but it's not even worth getting into them. Here's a representative snippet:

I subscribe, however, to the mondo-neo-Marxist theory of information-age class conflict. According to this view, people who majored in liberal arts subjects like English and history naturally loathe people who majored in econ, business and the other "hard" fields. This loathing turns political in adult life and explains just about everything you need to know about political conflict today.

(Emphasis added.)

This is proof that David Brooks is living in some kind of weird ivory tower parallel universe. All political affiliation breaks down to college majors...uh huh.

We are dealing with classic Brooks: "there's a rift forming between segments of American society, and it's growing!" Invoke an implicit class war, not the Marxist kind which is passe (pub -- and not in line with his conservative leanings), but cultural, which is chic. The rift must conform with some commonplace stereotype, or at least something that can be easily understood by a five year old. See, half the country works with numbers - they vote for Bush - and the other half work with letters - they vote for Kerry (who votes for Nader then? [pub -- people who work with grow lights]) Of course there's an obvious flaw in the theory, and that is that all professors vote 11 to 1 democratic. But Brooks just lumps them all into the "paragraph people" category and everything is all right. As Brooks says, "At M.I.T.,[democratic support among the faculty] was 94 percent." I suppose that 94 percent of M.I.T. professors spend more time working with paragraphs than numbers. At least it is clear the scientific method doesn't apply much to the Times editorial page.

Another great piece of reasoning..."C.E.O.'s are classic spreadsheet people. According to a sample gathered by PoliticalMoneyLine in July, the number of C.E.O.'s donating funds to Bush's campaign is five times the number donating to Kerry's." Which, of course, is because they all learned Microsoft Excel in college and has nothing to do with the fact that Bush's economic policies overtly favor them.

Here's another great line: "Why have the class alignments shaken out as they have?... Numerate people take comfort in the false clarity that numbers imply, and so also admire Bush's speaking style." I don't know if he means to imply that when Bush speaks he evokes a false clarity. Would "false clarity" be synonymous with "convincing lie?" That must mean scientists, mathematicians, quants, actuaries, accountants, statisticians, and engineers are stupid. They might be, but they're certainly not stupid enough to write and seriously back an editorial promoting the ideas quoted above.

At any rate, I don't see any of this as a very big complement coming from a Bush supporter.

He Would Have Fought The Wrong War Right

I don't have any problem inherently with Kerry's more nuanced view of the world. I think that nuance is a positive thing in a decision maker, as long as seeing nuance leads to making a decision.

A month ago Kerry said that "even if he had known in October 2002 that US intelligence was flawed, that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, and that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001," he would have voted to give president Bush authority to go to war with Iraq. ''Yes, I would have voted for the authority. I believe it was the right authority for a president to have." Now, this is all perfectly consistent with Kerry's main challenge to Bush on Iraq: his handling of the war. It's saying that from a constitutional basis the power to decide when, where and how (with a coalition, number of troops etc.) to go to war ultimately rests with the president. This is a defensible stance, and it's consistent with Kerry saying that as commander in chief, he would have chosen to go to war at a different time, with a different plan etc.

Now Kerry has passed over the line of plausible coherence on the Iraq issue by saying that this was "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time.” If Iraq was the "wrong war," then of course he shouldn't have voted to give the president the authority to wage war. Also, if the war is "the wrong war," the argument that he would have "handled the war better" is sort of a moot point, contradicted by the fact that he wouldn't have started it at all.

Sticking it To the Telemarketers

Blogger Grobstein wrote a post a while back about clever ways he likes to deal with telemarketers. I'm not personally in favor of just hanging up, or being rude, mostly out of pity for the poor soul whose job it is to call people's houses unsolicited. I am in favor of clever solutions and ways to turn the situation into entertainment. I think this would be a good opportunity to share my favorite methods of blowing off telemarketers:

Ask them to loan you money. If they decline, try to get them to loan you whatever they're selling to exchange for money.

Act as if you know they're a friend or a relative pretending to be a telemarketer, "I know it's you Jim. Ha ha. Very funny, you can stop pretending now."

Act very old and lonely and ask them to be your friend.

Tell them that you only pay for things with sex.

Tell them that whoever they asked for on the phone is dead, then go into a whole bereavement routine and try to elicit sympathy.

Tell them you need 911 and ask them to call for you.

That's all I can think of for the moment, and I know some of those are fairly random. If anyone has any other favorite methods, don't hesitate to post them in the comments section!

Update: Note that I've never actually used any of these...

War President Hopeful

Andrew Sullivan, whose blog you should check out if you have the chance, provides something of an answer to the question I posed earlier asking whether personal experience in a particular domain gives someone more credibility in making decisions involving that area.

My good friend Lawrence rightly decries the assertion by the Kerry campaign that somehow having been in combat makes you better suited to be a war-president.

I don't agree, especially for this election. This misses the main point, which I think those who emphasize Kerry's war experience are getting at, that someone who has been in a war has more appreciation for the gravity of the act and the horrors it can entail than someone who only deals with it in the abstract. Having been in a war doesn't make you a more effective military leader or strategist (being a general in a war is another thing), but it will guarantee a respect for the import of war which will lessen the chances of needlessly endangering troops. Some people (doves) think that this is the only important thing to consider. I see other important factors, such as national security in both the short and long terms, and to some extent tactial geopolitical factors, none of which is much affected by combat experience. So being a veteran in a war isn't a deciding factor for me.

However, given that there are legitimate questions surrounding the necessity of the war we were led into, and that we are currently fighting a War on Terror - which very likely will mean more instances that could call for some kind of military action, many of them ambiguous and preemptive - and given that this war is based very heavily on intelligence gathering and interpretation which is all undergone in secret (much of it by the executive branch), it's very important to me to have some ability to asses the president's judgment and level of respect for war. I'd say that issues that tell me something about a candidate's attitude / likely attitude toward war are very relevant.

Political Self-abnegation

This is worse than Kerry positioning himself as the herald of more aggressive taxation of the rich.

Guns Don't Kill People

See, video games do cause violence.

Tell Me How It's Different

Dennis Prager, whose opinion I respect but do not always agree with, makes an excellent point in this column:

The first thing you have to do when hearing Hollywood stars make foolish comments is to avoid being surprised.

As a rule, over the last few centuries, artists have been more likely to be morally confused than members of almost any other profession (except academia).

Many, perhaps most, great artists are geniuses in one area and underdeveloped elsewhere in life. It seems that when God grants great artistic talent to an individual, that individual is given few other gifts, least of all moral clarity or wisdom.

I also get annoyed when artists speak out about political issues, as if their talent and competence in one area translates to universal virtue or ennoblement of perspective. There is however another, much more interesting question brought up by this. Does being smart and articulate and even persuasive give you any more authority to opine on politics and global issues? For instance, there are plenty of people who have an opinion about the military draft, or about the policy establishing democracies in place of oppressive theocratic societies that limit freedoms, but most of these people haven't been in the military or lived in a theocracy (or will be directly affected by policies aimed at eliminating them for that matter). So I would ask, what makes people who are smart and can construct convincing arguments who argue about how the country should conduct itself any different than artists who are socially prominent, and maybe even revered for their talent, pontificating about the right thing to do?

This is where the issue of credibility comes in. It certainly helps to be in the field of whatever issue you're addressing. But is there some kind of general moral credibility, and if so, how can one gain it? I suppose one philosophical answer would say that given any moral question, there is a correct answer that all humans would eventually reach if given the time and the ability to think it through sufficiently (perhaps this is Kantian). Following from this, it would be true that the more intelligent among us would be bestowed a natural moral advantage (or at least latent advantage). In this case, someone could through contemplation alone claim moral superiority even without having experienced anything. Or does someone need to have some kind of personal experience with the issue that they're dealing with to have a legitimate opinion? What does this say about the opinionists that litter our literary and journalistic landscape?

College: Why isn't it Fair and Balanced?

It's a well-known fact that academics tend to be much more liberal than the average professional. I remember reading a poll that the highest proportion of faculty campaign contributions to Republicans of any Ivy League school was at Princeton, where the faculty gave something like 17 percent (how's that for reliable fact reporting). The question that's gone unanswered is why.

Intellectuals on the whole, including writers, artists, thinkers, tend to be liberal. This has led many to infer that the more intelligent or intellectually engaged one is, the more likely one will be liberal, and hence that liberalism is somehow a more correct or thoughtful stance. But this is based on a faulty premise. The problem with this is that intellectuals are by no means necessarily smarter than their professional counterparts. Speak to someone who goes to an Ivy-League or equivalent school and you'll hear time and time again that the brightest people were routinely going into competitive high-paying competitive careers in business and finance. More discussion on the relationship between intelligence and intellectualism on Oren Cass's blog, here.

We could take the Arnold Schwarzenegger approach and say that intellectuals as a class don't do manly things, like build things, or make vital decisions, that they are "girlie men" who fear war, want to nurture the sick and needy, prefer peace and negotiation to conflict and aggression etc. - and hence become Democrats. But there are some better answers I think.

For one, take the free market. Intellectuals (the definition of which seems to me to be a worker whose product is not produced for the market) don't participate to the same extent as their professional counterparts in the market economy, and aren't rewarded as much when they do. Works of art, scholarly ideas, purely intellectual products don't command nearly as high a price in the free market as products that were specifically designed for the market. But the work that goes into producing a great painting or doing thorough research isn't any easier than the work it takes to produce something marketable. So it could be that intellectuals tend to be liberal as a matter of self-interest, because liberalism tends to de-emphasize the market, in which their efforts are rewarded less.

Another explanation is more psychological in nature, but I think it might have some credibility. Everyone's job affects their way of thinking, and hence to some extent their perspective on life. If you're an academic, your job is to constantly learn new things, and to think of new ways to categorize what we do know or explain what we don't know. If an academic is constantly required to learn new facts and new advancements in the field, they're going to naturally benefit from having as open and accepting an approach to new ideas as possible. It's possible that this approach is translated into openness and acceptance on the political front as well, which amounts to pluralism, multi-culturalism, multilaterism - all views that you would find in liberalism. The identification with liberalism in this case would be in some way due to force of habit.

Whatever the liberalism of academics is due to, it is not some kind of superior intellectual contemplation. As I wrote in a previous post, professors now, humanities included, are specializing in narrower and narrower areas of scholarship. Within the boundaries of their fields, they may be serving a very practical end, but when it comes to global pragmatism nothing much is required of them. I would not say someone with a PhD. who spends his or her life studying the literature of the Southern Caribbean is any more qualified to assess this country's political situation than someone who didn't end up thinking for a living, but went to college, did well, and pays attention to the what's going on in the world. In fact I'd say that the second person is probably more in touch with the whole range of issues that politics involves and thus can be expected to take the more thoughtful, intelligent position when it comes to politics.

(Note: this is not to say whether or not liberalism originates in deep thinking, just that the liberalism we see associated with professors does not originate from their qualities of thoughtfulness and learnedness.)

(Counterpoint: But political science professors surely are better equipped to assess political causes and effects than the layperson or the obscure academic specialist, and even political science departments are heavily left-leaning. Perhaps the other two factors are still at play here. Also, perhaps the schemes and dreams of the left have up until this point provided much more fodder for idealism. After all, if you're not going to actually be implementing any of your ideas isn't it more interesting to spend your time meddling in the possible, rather than the practical?)

Academic Specialization continued...

Reader P.F. responds:

I still think college experience is unique. At this age, in this well-developed country, and being the fortunate people that we are, sources of knowledge are readily available at our finger tips and within the reach of our grasps (or our commuting distance). But how many people, if they don't feel intellectually stimulated, will go to local library and spend hours exploring arcane subjects (starting from introductory books that everyone can read!) after work? Yes, there will be a few, but the majority of them have their other priorities pile on top of out-of-work intellectual pursuit.

Compared with this scenario, for most of us, being a student in college is the most carefree time where you are not burdened with bills to pay, food to cook, family to take care of, utility bills to pay and a life to earn, not to mention the duty or privilege of a student is to learn.

This seems to be missing the drift of my argument. Nowhere am I claiming that your college years aren't a unique opportunity to learn. The question is of how you're going to use that opportunity.

Are you going to use it to learn lots of things that come straight out of books? Book knowledge won't change very much over a lifetime (unless it's cutting edge science), and college presents itself as no special advantage when in comes to learning this kind of knowledge. By your logic that the thing that makes college special is that it is a carefree time free from responsibilities, you would be just as well served during your college years if you were sent off to a desert island for four years with a bookcase full of books.

What does make college unique is your almost unlimited access to professors, the people who spend their entire lives advancing the frontiers of knowledge and thinking of new ways to use that knowledge. Yes, some of your professors can help you to understand your academics better. But I would argue that by college age, one should be moving towards the goal of teaching him or herself things. When you're out in the real world, in a job, no one sits by you telling you what the relevant skills to learn are and making sure you learn them. It's up to you to pick out and pick up on these things, so I would argue that having a teacher be intimately involved with your own learning process all the time when you are college aged is regressive and counterproductive. What is the use of professors then? Most professors, I would hope, are producing something of value to the world beyond their small academic field. Even an african-american literature professor can be an "expert" on black cultural trends and attitudes in contemporary America who may be interviewed on a TV talk show or cited in the newspaper. This kind of knowledge is not purely academic, but that doesn't make it any less valuable. Now, it is this, rather than book knowledge, that you get the unique opportunity to experience in college.

In one of you previous comments you wrote: "The main aim of college is to educate us in academics. After all, where else can you go for an education like that?" Actually, I think that high school is a pretty accurate answer to your question. I for one would hope that my college experience offers something my high school experience didn't.

We Have a Comment!

Itt looks like my previous post on academic specialization has generated a comment. Reader P.F. writes:

Specialization is inevitable as our knowledge branches out to every known and unknown corners of this world, physical and theoretical. There is indeed, more and more to learn, and more basic information in every subject to swallow. The question is, at what point should we start specialize and does specialization put us on an irrevocable path that is devoid of real world attachment and application?

I, on the other hand, have thought that your undergraduate education provides what you probably will never experience once you step into the work force. Classes in esoterics, ancient history, classic theories and advanced science are doors that will likely never be opened again for you after college. Certainly, most of them have no practical value in the real world. They don't necessarily make you a better citizen. The society as a whole teaches you how to be a good citizen, not an institution. In college, you still have time off school to get a little taste of the the world outside of the academia through your part-time jobs, internships, traveling, etc. In school, it depends on the individuals to seek out problems to solve and challenges to take on academically and socially. Out in the real world, problems thrusted upon you no matter how ready you are. So it is a personal choice as to how much exposure of the real world you want to have before entering the jungle; college neither limits or, in your words, broadens such opportunity. The main aim of college is to educate us in academics. After all, where else can you go for an education like that?

A few points:

The point is not to end specialization. Specialization is inevitable at this point in history, barring some kind of massive civilization meltdown. The point isn't that we should halt the progress of knowledge from probing deeper into specific areas of inquiry, or that we should prevent the formation of a class of specialists who get to know limited areas of knowledge very well; both of these are probably inevitable given the limitations of the human intellect and the current stage of sophistication in many fields.

And there's nothing inherently obscure or inapplicable about specialization. In the sciences at least, specialization simply reflects the wide scope of things capable of being explained by research.

About the "college experience," I don't at all agree with the view that college is the last time you have to study impractical, intellectual things, that once you graduate some door to learning is closed behind you. If you have a job that doesn't stimulate you in this respect then go to a library after work. There are more scholarly works available to you in your local library network than you could possibly care to finish. You're not going to be getting a class in them, but are books in classics, ancient history or history of science so difficult that you'll require a class to help you understand them? To motivate you?

Given that the world is becoming a more complicated place with "problems being thrust upon you no matter how ready you are," the goal of any college concerned with the future well-being of its students should be to cultivate the skill of applying known knowledge to new problems. The best way to do this is to teach how the methods of the past and today are being used to solve today's problems, not studying some narrow academic field devoid of context.

David Brooks on Why You Shouldn't Go to College (again)

Judging from his previous column on the utter baselessness of college admissions, one would think that David Brooks really hates college. But this column which critiques esoterica in academia makes a much needed point:

It is no accident that Worthen and so many others are drawn to a teacher who is not a lifelong academic, but who was active in the real world. Yet our universities operate too much like a guild system, throwing plenty of people with dissertations at students, not enough with practical knowledge.

Why aren't there more scholars, like Hill, Gaddis and Kennedy, who teach students to be generalists, to see the great connections? Instead, the academy encourages squirrel-like specialization.

Too many universities have become professionalized information-transmission systems, when teaching should instead be this sort of relationship between the experienced Hill and the young Worthen, on whom little now is lost.

Bomb Breaks 4 Month Lull in Israel

In more unfortunate news, there was an explosion set off by Palestinian militants in Tel Aviv today, killing one. It was the first explosion like it in Israel since March 14th.

Let's listen to the international response:

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in Bangkok, Thailand, for the World AIDS Conference, condemned the attack and sent his "sincere sympathy to Israel and the families of the victims."

"No cause whatsoever can justify terrorism," he said. "In this connection, the Secretary-General urges the Palestinian Authority to do everything possible to end terror."

Does referring to yourself in the third person constitute a weaker form of a statement? I don't know what that's about. Next response:

"We are against all bombings like this," said Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

I think he should just say "no comment" from now on.

The real news, however, is to be made by Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, the group claiming responsibility for the bombing, whose spokesman asserted after the bombing, "This says that we can reach every place, even when there is a fence." This strikes me as very unlikely. I suppose the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades could have waited until everyone thought they were completely safe, and then suddenly detonated a huge surprise attack to shatter everyone's sense of confidence. But the authorities are reporting that this blast was caused by a five pound bomb, hidden in the bushes alongside a bus-stop - hardly the kind of blast that says, "see, you're not safe anywhere." I'm not an expert in terrorist bombs, believe it or not, but that does seem like a relatively small bomb.

Actually it seems to me that Palestinian terrorist groups would be trying as hard as possible to sustain their previous level of attacks in spite of the wall, since what better endorsement is there for a temporary security wall than the fact that it's working? Certainly I have been converted to a supporter of the wall. At first I thought it was merely going to be inflammatory but now it's clear that it's saving lives on both sides. It also continues to put pressure on the Palestinian leadership to reform itself into a viable negotiating partner or lose out in the negotiating process altogether. Certainly the people who condemn Israel whenever it defends itself with force should be happy that the wall is making it less necessary. If they're not, what's their good alternative, and do they expect Israel to just do nothing?

It should show the double standard which Israel is weighed against that it is internationally criticized whenever it raids militant groups responsible for attacks on its citizens, but then also criticized when it enacts a plan for unilateral disengagement so that it doesn't have to. Ultimately the wall is supposed to be a temporary measure, and I hope it is. But for now, it gives Israel a non-violent way to unilaterally disengage itself from the Palestinians while protecting its own citizens from terror attacks.

John Kerry Chooses...YOU!

So it looks like Kerry chose a running mate while I was away. Newspapers don't usually screw this kind of news up, but when they do it's always kind of funny. The New York Post, New York's version of the Boston Herald, was behind the latest lapse of journalistic veracity, by printing a story that announced that Gephardt was John Kerry's VP candidate.

The New York Post, in a front page gaffe reminiscent of the 1948 headline wrongly announcing President Truman's defeat, proclaimed Tuesday that Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry would select Rep. Dick Gephardt as his running mate.

"KERRY'S CHOICE," read the headline over the page one "exclusive" story. "Dem picks Gephardt as VP candidate."

It's good to know that their journalists have such an intrepid respect for the facts that they printed up an entire story ahead of time about something that never happened. On the other hand, it's only the New York Post, a third-rate newspaper. Oh, but it's not their first time!

Last October, after the New York Yankees defeated the Boston Red Sox in the American League playoffs, the Post mistakenly ran an editorial bemoaning the home team's loss. Post Editor in Chief Col Allan blamed that foul-up on a simple production error.

Production error? Like we went ahead and produced two versions of the story and the one we released turned out to be not the one that happened? This is especially troubling because it was an editorial, and editorials are supposed to be gut reactions to actual events, not something some guy writes up hypothetically, although in this case I think the error speaks more to the fact that Yankees fans have far less confidence in their corporate monstrosity of a team than they like to convey.

In the case of the latest gaffe, the post cites "inaccurate information" as being responsible for the mixup:

Post editor in chief Col Allan said in a statement that he made the decision to go with the Gephardt story based on information that turned out to be inaccurate. He did not elaborate.

I wonder what the source of that bad tip was? Hmmmm:

The Daily News gleefully chortled Wednesday's front page about the embarrassing Tuesday "exclusive" by its fierce rival in naming Rep. Richard Gephardt rather than Sen. John Edwards as Democrat John Kerry's choice to be his running mate for the White House.

In the latest skirmish between the morning newspapers in their nearly century-old battle for New York's blue-collar readership, the Daily News cover blared "KERRY'S REAL CHOICE," with a picture of Kerry and Edwards.

"N.C. Sen. John Edwards will be the Democratic veep candidate, and the Post is wrong again," added the Daily News, which is privately owned by publisher Mort Zuckerman.

Welcome Adam

Following Noah's lead, I will take it upon myself to welcome myself back from my 5 day long stay in New York City. A large contingent of my family lives in New York so I'm no stranger to the place. But being in New York for the first time without parents allowed me to put some things I've always noticed about New Yorkers into light:

* They're all obsessed with shopping. I used to just write this off to a culture of japiness, whatever that means. Now I understand what's behind it: in New York there's so much to buy, and so much of it is good stuff you would want, as opposed to the stuff you can buy around here.

* They're status and image-conscious. Then I realized, when you're from New York, it's not like you live in a rich town or a poor town, you live the same place as everyone else. The only way to define yourself status-wise is to wear it on your sleeve, literally.

* They have this sense of self-importance, like they're living at the center of the world. Because they do, at least financially speaking, and probably commercially as well. They have every right to be proud and self-important. New York is a microcosm of everything that works about America: open free society, capitalism, lots of ethnic diversity melding harmoniously - and it works so well that it's the greatest city in the world. I think that's something to be proud about. Going from one amazing building to the next, I couldn't help but think that these buildings are the equivalent of royal palaces in other countries, except the difference is that in this country they're completely open to anyone and everyone. And then I thought that's what makes our country great.

Brooks Still a Sociologist

David Brooks has apparently not given up on sociology, as evidenced by his column this week. I'll put on my sociologist's hat and do my best to keep up. This week, David writes about one of his favorite things: cultural segregation. After doing lots of research, he puts forth the conclusion that political and cultural polarization in America are increasing, and that this effect is structural. This is because a) Americans are better educated and b) the information-based economy leaves people more flexible in choosing their residence.

To a large degree, polarization in America is a cultural consequence of the information age. This sort of economy demands and encourages education, and an educated electorate is a polarized electorate.

In theory, of course, education is supposed to help us think independently, to weigh evidence and make up our own minds. But that's not how it works in the real world...

Once you've joined a side, the information age makes it easier for you to surround yourself with people like yourself. And if there is one thing we have learned over the past generation, it's that we are really into self-validation.

I think he's right, but the point is a little too ambitious to try to get across in a single column, and leaves questions. Like why would education make people more radical? Maybe it's time for another treatise.

This clip highlights one of David Brooks' favorite ideas, his "social modules" idea. Basically, it states that American culture is on the whole remarkably unhierarchical, because it lacks a uniform basis for defining status. Bankers, lawyers, inventors, sports stars all populate America's elite, and likewise, no singular kind of excellence holds preeminence over any other. On the other hand, within any given endeavors, there are clearly defined criteria for achievement which in turn define status within that field. So America is modularly hierarchical. The problem with this is that it's a little too utopian. A preeminent sports star certainly has more status than a preeminent school teacher, and Brooks has to know this. What determines the differential value of various endeavors?

Here's an answer I would venture: Say there's a social role for both athletes and teachers. The value of each profession as a whole is determined by how much money it can bring in. Even if sports stars and teachers are equally valuable to a society, there are many more teachers than sports stars, and thus the benefits of that profession are spread thinner and individual teachers are valued less than individual sports stars.

Hyperbole, Conspiracy, and the Best Target a Liberal Could Wish For

Like Bowling for Columbine and even more than Roger and Me, Michael Moore’s latest film is skillfully crafted piece of rhetoric. Facts, speculations, opinions and conspiracy theories are combined to provide what is supposed to be a K.O. indictment of the Bush administration. From the misguided war in Iraq, to the Patriot Act, to incompetence of our current commander and chief, the Bush administration supplies Moore with plenty of ammunition. An effective critique of the president should not require either hyperbole or conspiracy. That Moore relies on such strategies, as he does in his previous films, is therefore a disappointment. The time Fahrenheit 911 spends exposing dubious ties between the Bush and Bin Laden dynasties could have been used to more thoroughly dissect the Patriot Act or examine the administrations stonewalling of the press. The effect of Moore’s overkill is that in searching for a sinister plot he overlooks many of the most relevant and important, though perhaps more banal, transgressions of the administration.

That being said, there was much I liked in the film and I didn’t expect anything else from this filmmaker. Moore is to the left what Rush Limbaugh is to the right: a polemicist entertainer for whom provoking a reaction is of greater importance than giving a coherent, or completely truthful, argument and in this role he’s damn good. A scene in which Bush reads Peter and the Wolf to a group of elementary school kids for several minutes after being told that America is under attack (the truth of this is confirmed by the 9/11 Commission’s report) visually exemplifies the Commander and Chief’s utter incompetence. As he sits there he looks confused and nervous, like a man who is way, way over his head and that is exactly what he is.

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.