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Via the Modesto Kid, William Zantzinger has died.
(This isn’t a guest post by nobody’s friend, Ben Shaprio. This is just a tribute. Via S, N!)
I first got into HBO’s hit television program The Wired about two years ago. A stranger mentioned it to the person in front of him at the 700 Club cafeteria, and by the time I finished the first episode, I knew I would be telling people I was completely hooked. (This, by the way, is my Recruitment Rule for The Wired: watch the first four minutes. If you don’t like it by then, dump out.) I am so excited by my enthusiasm for the show, in fact, that I often tout the first episode of The Wired as the best show in the history of television. I don’t simply love this episode for its terrific acting, wonderful writing, quirkly plotting, or mind-boggling twists. I also love it because of its subtle conservatism. Here are the top five conservative characters on the first episode of The Wired. Beware—SPOILERS INCLUDED.
1. William Rawls: John Doman’s tough Homicide investigator, William Rawls, is the top conservative character on television, bar none. Rawls is a real man’s man, a true paragon of conservative integrity. He knows that America is a meritocracy and, according to Wikipedia, in Season 4 openly attacks the reverse racism of affirmative action by proving that, instead of working up the ranks honestly like he has, the blacks in the Baltimore Police Department were recruited up the chain of command because of the color of their skin. This racism created a leadership vacuum, and like true conservatives, Rawls knows the value of a true leader of men. He may not always love the men beneath him, but he knows they need discipline and is determined to give it to them.
2. Jimmy McNulty: If every public servant showed McNulty’s commitment to civic duty, we would never have heard the odious phrase “President-Elect Obama” said without a snigger. In this episode alone, McNulty attends a trial when he could have been at home and stays up all night to make sure his report is on his deputy’s desk at 0800 clean and with no typos. Here he is in a clip from Season 2, going above and beyond the call of duty:
He’s also a family man who wants nothing more than the judge to give him more than three out of four weekends with his children.
3. Snot Boogie: Every Friday night, anonymous young black men would roll bones behind the Cut Rate, and every Friday night, Snot Boogie would wait until there was cash on the ground, grab it, and run away. Snot Boogie knew these games were unsanctioned and bravely confiscated the illegal proceeds even though he knew the young black men would catch him and beat his ass. To do what you know to be right, no matter the consequence, is a true conservative value.
4. The Anonymous Young Black Men behind the Cut Rate: The anonymous young black men behind the Cut Rate are American icons. They let Snot Boogie in the game even though he always stole the money because “[i]t’s America, man.” But it’s not liberal America, man, as should be obvious both by their devotion to the idea that while this is a free country, all decisions have consequences, and their commitment to capital punishment. They could have just whooped Snot Boogie’s ass like they always whoop his ass, but the anonymous young black men behind the Cut Rate know how to prevent the next generation of Snot Boogies from repeating the mistakes of the previous.
5. Avon Barksdale and Stringer Bell: I cheated here, but this is a Top 5, not a Top 6. Avon and Stringer are pure capitalists, compassionate but tough. Avon is a family man. When his cousin D’Angelo comes to him asking for a job, Avon and Stringer decide to give him one. But both men know there’s no such thing as a free lunch, so they also decide to teach D’Angelo that, in America, hard work is its own reward. Everyone has to start in the pit, but with a little hard work, anyone can end up running a tower.
The first episode of The Wired is a show chock-full of conservative values. It mentions God and quotes the Bible on a regular basis. It debates police vs. criminals and free enterprise vs. socialism. It promotes the value of the nuclear family—virtually every character on the show has dealt with a broken home, and they all pay the price for it. But everyone should know that the first episode of The Wired is one of the most conservative shows on TV. That’s part of what makes it so juicy.
(x-posted.)
Several people ask of the WPA graphing question, why not use a log scale? Commenter Stinky (no, I don’t know who s/he really is) kindly supplies a graph showing just this. For my money, it speaks for itself—which is to say, it screams, “don’t use me!”
We want to accomplish two things: (1) show how very outsized a chunk of money went to highways and (2) show also meaningful distinctions among lesser expenditures.
The log scale permits (2) while pretty much wiping out (1), unless you know how log scales work. I don’t think the likely consumers of such a graph do really know. But I’m wrong, Stinky says.
I find that if I teach a course in the afternoon I have previously taught in the morning, I am left at the end of the fifty minutes with a fair amount of uncovered lecture material—maybe as much as ten to twenty percent of what I thought I’d do.1 Which suggests of course that I talk markedly more slowly in the pm than in the am. Or maybe I dilate more expansively on a given point.
Students who believe I talk too fast or cover too much too quickly may wish to consider the availability of slower, afternoon Eric.
I bet there are other odd factors that determine the relative quality of one’s teaching—how much sleep one gets, how much coffee2 one drinks, etc.
1Based on an observed sample of two instances of am/pm shifting.
2There are of course other beverages that have marked effects; I remember one person who argued white wine doesn’t count, so you can drink it in the morning, and another who would place a pint on the windowsill in the lecture hall, for ready access… these are obviously not stories of our time and place.
Should I go to grad. school because of the downturn?
First off, let me thank the proprietors of this fine sea vessel for welcoming me aboard. Eric’s insistence that my turn at the tiller can only lead the ship straight onto the rocks of post-Cliopatria decline is heartwarming. And with that, I will drop the nautical metaphor before I really do go aground.
Though I’ve been something of a regular presence already, let me introduce myself further. I’m a military historian focusing on the 19th and 20th centuries, and the mass industrial warfare of the first half of the 20th century. I’ve taken a particular interest in World War I, and imperial insurgencies and counterinsurgencies. I’m currently working on a project on the Boxer Uprising of 1899-1900 in China (warning: wikipedia link) and the western intervention that destroyed it.
Military history as a specialty has evolved substantially over the last two generations. The traditional school (“drums and trumpets” as it is known) gained a rival and complement in the 1970s with the New Military History, which brought the insights of social history to warfare. Succeeding historians have started to integrate later methodological innovations, including the linguistic turn and cultural studies. A good recent analysis of the field is here (subscription required, sorry). If there is a guiding force behind my work, it is the attempt to tease out how societies and cultures create their militaries and their wars.* But I don’t think that there should be a divide between the traditional and cutting edge forms of military history. Strategy, operations, and tactics are just as important to understanding the history of war as are language, race, class, gender, and culture.
Which brings me back to my current project and my initial string of posts here at Edge. The outbreak in 1900 was one of the first media crises. By this, I mean it was one of the first to be reported by the newspapers almost immediately, as it developed. In that way, it resembles the modern world of CNN and the Internet rather more than we might think. I’m reading the newspaper coverage for the project anyway, and I thought it might be interesting to do it in chronological order and write about it as I read it: insert myself back into the flow of the crisis, as it were. I’ve chosen to use the New York Times for this as they have (kindly enough) opened their archives back to 1851. So, over the next few months, I’ll be trundling through the Boxer Rebellion*** day by day and trying to treat it as if it were an ongoing moment, details murky and end unknown. I have no idea how this will turn out, but I hope it will be both useful and interesting.
Update: Brett Holman’s work liveblogging the Sudeten Crisis is the inspiration and model for this.
*For example, should we be surprised that the one of the most industrialized and technologically advanced countries in the world is not particularly good at counterinsurgency, the least technological of strategies?**
**A strategy that was developed in the first place in its various forms (Spain, Mao, Gandhi, Ho Chi Minh) to prevent conquest or domination by superior military powers?
***There are arguments about its name. The traditional name has been Boxer Rebellion. Historians of Asia prefer Boxer Uprising, as the consensus has been that this was not a rebellion against the Qing Dynasty but an uprising in support of it against the foreigners. At the moment, I don’t really have a dog in the fight, though I’m coming to the sense that the Boxers were supporting the Chinese Dowager Empress in the sense of pushing her to live up to her responsibilities. They probably had–to steal a idea–bumper stickers announcing how disappointed they were in her.
Sentence from an email I sent a student:
You don’t need to apologize for emailing me two hours after class about an assignment not due until [much later]. It shows that you’re on top of things, and professors love stupids who are on top of things.
I know they’re not homonyms, but, you know—if anyone’s looking to unload property under a rock, drop me a line.
The top, oh, I don’t know, let’s name twelve best jobs, according to the WSJ this week, citing a study that takes into account “environment, income, employment outlook, physical demands and stress”:
1. Mathematician
2. Actuary
3. Statistician
4. Biologist
5. Software Engineer
6. Computer Systems Analyst
7. Historian
8. Sociologist
9. Industrial Designer
10. Accountant
11. Economist
12. Philosopher
I have mixed feelings about the message of this essay. Surely a moderate form of its wisdom — that there is more ways to have a satisfying academic career than landing a prestigious R1 appointment, and that in many ways one is in control of one’s own happiness — should be accepted. And there are certainly enough cases where this wisdom isn’t recognized. I have friends that landed in jobs that many would describe as “wow! that’s really great! there’s no shame in your job! good for you [strained expression]“, and who worked hard and turned their departments around and made them better places.
But. The entire essay suffers from more than a basenote of kids-these-days scented with topnotes of ivory tower worship. Pence’s first two examples are of thirty-year-old academics who landed solid jobs at non-prestigious places, discovered they didn’t like living in small towns with no social life*, and left (or contemplated leaving the profession.) Pence seems to think they’ve shown themselves to be entitled brats unwilling to sacrifice for the Lady.
I think they’re making exactly the right decision. Moreover, I think philosophy would be better off if it stopped treating itself as the One True Calling, and instead recognized that philosophers who decide that the great joy they get from teaching and research fails to balance the negatives however they can construe them should leave. Like other people do when they hate their jobs! Academia has got to be the only profession in the world where the news of someone deciding to find another professional job, suited to their skills, in a great location, that pays more money, does more to help the world, and is intellectually stimulating is discussed in the same hushed tones one would use to say “stage IV ovarian cancer.”
The other major criticism of the essay is that it seems to overestimate how easy it is to move from full-time adjuncting into tenure-track appointments in 2008. Pence seems to have worked his tail on in the early 1970s, teaching as many as 12 courses in a year, and managing to publish enough to get noticed. A couple quick points: I remember reading back on Leiter six or seven years ago that the level of philosophical accomplishment required to secure a tenure-track position is much greater today than it was years ago. Not to take anything away from Pence’s impressive accomplishment, but I wonder if the same mobility is likely in 2008, especially if one took time off to sell real estate as he did.
One wonders, too, about income. Around here an adjunct position pays anywhere from $1,500 to $3000, meaning that if one were to secure 10 positions, one might still run the risk of not being able to pay the rent. And again, there is nothing wrong with looking at that situation and saying “You know, I have a Ph.D. from a good school and I don’t love philosophy enough to impoverish myself for another ten years. I have options. O options, give me money.” A fortiori if one needs things like health insurance or has a family to support.
The advice to bloom where you’re planted is well-taken, and I think the profession would do well to remember that there are more than ten universities, and philosophy actually happens at those other schools.
But to find fault with someone who is unhappy and decides to do something else, to find fault with them as insufficiently dedicated? Bugger that for a bag of chips. As the kids say.
*I read both of these stories as saying “I’m single, I’m in a small town, I’m 30, and there’s no one to date.”
After writing a prompt for a paper based on one of Eric’s books, I decided to google it and found this. You can buy a term paper on Murdering McKinley for $20.95 per page; rather steep, I thought, but then graduate-level papers are even more. My prompt is quite different than the one offered by the site, but the company will write a paper to fit the assignment if necessary. I wonder what Eric would charge.
Every quarter I refer at least one student to judicial affairs for this sort of thing. But the plagiarism-industrial complex is getting so sophisticated that it’s harder and harder to outwit the cheaters.
Serious question: are there good reasons why an individual’s background or cultural positioning should provide that person more authority in a political argument?
I ask, because as I read the incredibly predictable debates about the nightmare unfolding in Gaza, I keep seeing people say things like, “Well, I’m a Jew, and I think what Israel is doing is wrong/immoral.” The implicit points apparently are: 1) “My Jewishness should insulate me from charges of anti-Semitism. So don’t go there.” And 2) “My Jewishness provides me with a window, through which the goyim can’t possibly see, into this intractable problem.” I’m slightly sympathetic to the former point. Maybe. (Really, though, I’m more sympathetic to the argument that so long as someone isn’t an anti-Semite, they probably shouldn’t be labeled as such by people who are looking to score easy points in a fight.) The latter argument, though, leaves me shaking my head. I’m not entirely sure it’s wrong. But I don’t like its implications at all. And if it’s valid, I’d like someone to explain why.
It gets more complicated. I’m also reading people saying some version of, “I used to live in Israel. And violence, even insofar as it leads to massive civilian casualties, against Hamas is necessary.” The implicit argument here, if I’m getting this right, seems to be, “You can’t understand Israel’s security needs until you’ve lived in the region.” Again, there may be a kernel of truth here. But the logical extension of this kind of argument, as with the one above, seems dangerous to me. It suggests that outsiders, no matter how thoughtful, can never be on equal footing with insiders.
In the end, I’m increasingly tired of people claiming they have a secret decoder ring that allows them to make sense of an impossibly complicated situation. But I still wonder about the validity of cultural authority in policy disputes. I should note: I know this post runs the gamut from inchoate to incoherent. It’s also intentionally vague. The thing is, I don’t feel like linking to Marty Peretz, professional asshat, or the incensed commenters weighing in on the Gaza incursion in various corners of the blogosphere. Sorry. I’m both a bit flummoxed by the whole thing and also, as this post notes, more focused here on the broader question of argumentation.
Our friends over at Bitch PhD are up for a Weblog Award, which they deserve. So if you’d be so kind, please go here to vote for them. And if I understand the rules correctly, you can vote once every twenty-four hours, so plan on voting early and often. Sorry, no street money this time. It’s a new age.
Update: And speaking of friends of this blog, Eric points out in the comments that while you’re voting for Bitch PhD, you should also click over and cast a ballot for Fafblog in the Best Large Blog category. Just because.
On a fine/cold/sweltering/rainy/sunny/etc. day/night/etc., a young/middle-aged/old/etc. white/black/Asian/Hispanic/etc. man/woman/etc. strode/struggled/strolled/etc. up/down/along/between/etc. the steps/street/trees/field/etc. on his/her/etc. way to church/school/work/etc., little knowing/fully aware/etc. that these were the first/last/middle/etc. steps of an epic event in history.
Please, just don’t. It would be much better to speak directly to the reader, saying what you’re writing about and why it matters.
And, on that point, “this hasn’t been looked at before” isn’t an adequate explanation of why it matters. As one of my colleagues used to say, “This work fills a much-needed gap in the literature.” Or, as Murray Edelman wrote, “Any datum that can be anticipated does not have to be transmitted.”
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Hmmm. Lemme give this a whirl.
The technical concept “therapeutic obligation” has come under an
unbelievable amount of attention recently, largely due to the sheer pluck and
nerve of certain unpopular advocates who insist that the only reasonable duty
of physicians is to provide a minimally acceptable standard of treatment to
people who are mentally or physically incapacitated. Those opponents
who argue instead that physicians have a strong obligation to
try even experimental treatments at the cost of time, money, and pain, attempt
to ground their disagreement on the idea that to do any less would be to
cheat their patients. In this essay, I seek a middle ground.
I smell a growth industry.
In addition to being a thoroughly wretched president, Franklin Pierce delivered the most inarguably depressing opening sentence in the history of American inaugural addresses. On 4 March 1853, the fourteenth President began his unremarkable 3,334-word speech by harshing even the mellowest of mellows. With snow plummeting from the sky, Pierce observed to his audience that
[i]t is a relief to feel that no heart but my own can know the personal regret and bitter sorrow over which I have been borne to a position so suitable for others rather than desirable for myself.
Pierce’s audience would have understood immediately that the New Hampshire Democrat was referring to the unimaginable personal horror that befell his family eight weeks earlier, on January 6. Pierce and his wife, Jane, had already known a lifetime’s worth of hardship during their two decades of marriage. Their first son, Franklin Pierce, Jr., had died within days of his birth in 1836, midway through his father’s second term in the House of Representatives. Jane Pierce, a devout congregationalist who loathed the culture of Washington, D.C., became convinced that her husband’s political career had roiled an angry God against his family. Her theory was seemingly disproved in 1843, when Pierce’s retirement from the Senate — a decision Jane herself had urged — was rewarded with more death. Less than a year after resigning early from his only term in the upper house of Congress, Pierce’s second son, Franklin Robert, succumbed to typhus at the age of four. With fate having vanquished his two brothers, little Benjamin Pierce was now the sole heir to his father’s vast misfortune.
When the Democratic Party summoned him from retirement in 1852 and placed him at the top of the presidential ticket, Franklin Pierce knew that neither his wife nor his son wanted to leave Concord and return to the swampland of the Potomac River. This is why he told them — quite duplicitously — that he was an unwilling nominee, the servant to the “unsolicited expression of [the public] will,” as he claimed in his inaugural speech. Jane Pierce prayed daily for her husband’s defeat; Bennie, her precious son, commiserated with her. Two months after their petitions to the Lord were discarded, the unelected members of the Pierce family joined their husband and father on a journey by rail to Boston. During their return trip, a coupler on the train failed and threw several cars — the Pierces’ among them — down a snowy embankment. Benjamin Pierce’s head was crushed and partly severed, and he died instantly.
Jane Pierce initially believed that God had taken their son for the nation’s benefit, so that her worse half might focus on the affairs of state without the distractions that a son might introduce to the White House. When she learned shortly before the inauguration that her husband had not been the reluctant candidate he claimed to have been — that he had in fact encouraged friends to submit his name when the Democrats could not decide between four equally craptacular nominees — Mrs. Pierce withdrew into an impenetrable brume of grief and resentment. She neglected her minimal, ornamental duties as First Lady and refused to appear at the White House for several weeks after the inauguration. When she did, she draped the state rooms in black bunting and retired to her room, where she spent most of her days staring into space or writing letters of apology to her deceased son. (A devastating, pre-inaugural specimen of these letters can be found here).
The President, debilitated by his own grief and sapped of enthusiasm for the office, returned with great avidity to the only hobby that continued to interest him: palsying himself with drink, a purpose to which he could devote himself without hindrance, now that he was no longer living in the wastelands of New England temperance.
On Friday, when I was in New York for the AHA, I also got to go around to the NPR studios and talk with some of my favorite radio hosts.
Doing a radio interview by phone is weird; there’s none of the normal intimacy you get in a telephone conversation. Doing a radio interview in studio is more natural, because you can see the hosts and get all the normal cues you get in conversation—but it’s still weird; you’re being timed, and monitored, and there’s a big microphone in your face.
Still, after we’d been talking for some time, it got to seem more natural. Which was probably about when I stopped making sense—if you’re jet-lagged from the redeye, and also sitting comfortably in pleasant company, you start to lose coherence I fear.
Anyway, here it is: what if there’d been no New Deal?
Michelle Malkin’s vaunted list of “investigative online reporting published on conservative blogs” demonstrates, for the umpteenth time, that Michelle Malkin can’t tell the difference between reporters and partisan political operatives. She opens the list reportly enough—Patterico’s posts on William Jefferson, Alex Kozinski and Chuck Philips are, in fact, works of investigative journalism—but after that you have:
- a hit-piece on Air America
- a hit-piece on Al Franken
- an unpublished hit-piece by Larry Grathwohl that Confederate Yankee posted because neither knew the New York Times doesn’t print op-ed rebuttals
- something or other in which someone talks about attending political rallies
- a hit-piece on Ayers in which one “Zombie” did a Lexis-Nexis search
- numerous failed hit-pieces by Charles Johnson—representative—about trolls on Obama’s community blogs
- a hit-piece on Jeremiah Wright
- a hit-piece on Obama Jr. via Obama Sr.
- numerous hit-pieces by Stanley Kurtz—representative—on Obama
- numerous hit-pieces on Obama for his “abortion extremism” in which his public voting record and campaign statements were “reported on”
- some “top notch investigative work” that links to back to Malkin’s post
- some video hit-pieces on YouTube that rebroadcast Obama’s never-before-heard and never-anywhere-seen statements about “redistributing wealth”
- a Google search for Ed Morrissey at Hot Air that “brought down [Canada's] liberal government in 2005
- a whole slew of hit-pieces written by Malkin herself which I won’t bother to link to
My point?
Doing a Lexis-Nexis search is not investigative reporting.
Reprinting material from social networking sites is not investigative reporting.
Rebroadcasting clips that every network—including Foxnews—had in heavy rotation for weeks on end is not investigative reporting.
Attacking people with whom a Presidential candidate had some contact is not investigative reporting.
While it’s possible for partisan hacks like Malkin to do investigative reporting, little of what she presents as investigative reporting is investigative reporting. The majority of her links are to undisguised attacks by unpaid political operatives, and—say it with me now—an undisguised attack by an unpaid political operative is not investigative reporting.
(via Young Matthew.)
I’ve resolved to be more stone-hearted this year. With that in mind, I’m revising my syllabi and am wondering if this includes just the right amount of stone. (It’s in the “etiquette” section of the syllabus where I urge the kids to show up on time, turn off their phones, use the spittoons, stop blowing their noses on the tablecloth, etc.)
A Brief Word about Laptops
Based on several years of anthropological fieldwork, I assume that 95% of the students using a laptop in HIST132 are either
- instant messaging their friends, or
- streaming hardcore pornography.
If you’re comfortable with those assumptions, I heartily welcome you to use your computers during class.
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