by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

I watched (twice) the Beck rally video you posted and forwarded the link to a few of my Beck-loving and Beck-loathing friends.  I anxiously await their responses.  I do, however, feel compelled to make a comment or two with respect to the video, its producer's motives, and your choice to post it.

I'm no fan of Beck (or of Palin), and the people in this clip certainly represent the types of folks that I come up against every day here in small town NC-USA. But I think it's a bit unfair to use this piece as some sort of us-vs-them commentary on the state of contemporary American politics.  Does anyone (seriously) think that Beck's rally was completely void of thoughtful and intelligent people?  I may not agree with them, or with Beck's brand of conservatism, but I doubt these rubes truly represent the Tea Party types that showed up for this event.

Of course, I'm not surprised that the video exists, or that it was edited as it was.  Conservatives did the same thing with clips from the various Obama rallies in 2008.  I'll never forget the one that showed an unfortunate African-American female celebrating the idea that she no longer had to worry about her bills because "We got Obama!"  Sean Hannity practically dedicated an entire month to it, running it every chance he got.  It turned my stomach to see him imply that Obama voters were nothing more than a bunch of economic illiterates who deserved to be mocked viciously on national television every night. 

And of course, this brings up a more important point: both sides do it.  The right constantly paints the left as commie-loving freaks, and the left never misses a chance to portray the right as Bible-thumping inbreds.  The entire display (from both sides) is despicable.  I've sworn off cable news, talk radio, most blogs, and the NY Times editorial page because not one of them has anything interesting to say anymore.  There is no debate, no analysis, and no neutral commentary.  None. 

I've walked away from Andrew's blog on more than one occasion for the same reason, but lately I've been giving it a second chance.  I like the give and take, the constant revisions, and the interesting stories he tells.  This video, however, and your choice to post it with only an accompanying line of snark to introduce it, again makes me wonder why I even bother anymore.  How about a bit of grace?

The idiom I used to introduce the video, "straight from the horse's mouth," was meant to convey that the most direct, authoritative source on the mindset of aggrieved white conservatives was the rally-goers themselves.  The interviews were important because they bypassed blog commentary and allowed the people to present their own views (unlike this other interviewer).  Of course the video was edited, and selective bias was certainly in play.  But I do believe that the views expressed were largely representative of the crowd and Beck followers in general (and apparently so does the reader: "[they] certainly represent the types of folks that I come up against every day here in small town NC-USA.")

Giving someone a microphone and allowing them to voluntarily voice their views is not an "us-vs-them commentary"; it's an attempt to understand them. I for one didn't laugh or feel disdain for the people in the video. Rather, I felt pathos that people commonly confine themselves to such close-minded views. Also, I thought the young interviewer did show a "bit of grace"; he politely let the people speak and refrained from any snarky commentary, either during the segments or afterward.

But to the reader's larger point, I agree that the media tends to filter out sensible voices in favor of sensationalism.  So the video above is a small contribution to countering that filter.

by Patrick Appel

John McWhorter advocates for the end of the war on drugs:

What will turn black America around for good is not more theatrical marches but the elimination of a policy that prevents too many people from doing their best. After welfare reform in 1996, countless people thought that black women would wind up shivering on sidewalk grates. They underestimated the basic human resilience of black people. In the same way, if the War on Drugs is ended, the same people will assume that young black men will wander about jobless and starving. They will not, because they are human beings with basic resilience and survival instincts as well.

 

by Chris Bodenner

The first ads for medical marijuana hit the airways:

The 30-second ad, paid for by Sacramento-based "CannaCare" and produced by [Fox affiliate] KTXL, shows various people delivering testimonials on the benefits of marijuana when used for medicinal purposes. Text at the bottom of the advertisement indicates that marijuana can be used in the relief of many diseases and illnesses, including diabetes, HIV, Hepatitis C and hypertension among others. Marijuana is not shown in the advertisement, and the word "marijuana" is never used. Instead, patients and the ad itself refer to pot as "cannabis."

Another Fox affiliate, in Rhode Island, tackles the controversy in the news segment above. The female host makes a pretty strong case against the ads by criticizing the direct marketing any prescription drugs, whether they be pills or plants.

by Patrick Appel

Evan Osnos gives the Chinese perspective on Iraq:

China was never fond of the war for both practical and philosophical reasons. It was one of five countries—the others were Russia, Indonesia, India, and Vietnam—that had oil deals in place with Saddam Hussein when the U.S. invaded. It has since recovered its position, and far more, emerging, as the A.P. put it in June, “as one of the biggest economic beneficiaries of the war, snagging five lucrative deals.” While Western oil companies responded coolly to Iraq’s recent oil auctions, Chinese companies shrugged off “the security risks and the country’s political instability for the promise of oil.”

by Conor Friedersdorf

A reader writes:

On December 31, 1999, I along with programmers around the world sat apprehensively in front of my TV watching the date roll starting in the far east.  As each hour passed, and cities still had power, I became more elated.  We had done it!  I think if you had asked most programmers coming up on the date change, we were confident of our company's efforts but not sure whether other companies had accomplished their goal.
 
To hear people refer dismissively to Y2K as a disaster that didn't happen is a misreading of the event.  It's actually a case of people in thousands of companies and many countries working together to avert a potential disaster, and the fact that it looked like nothing happened means that we were successful, not that we were just saying "the sky is falling" when it wasn't!  I hate seeing "Y2K" used as a synonym for unjustified hysteria.  It ought to serve as an example of companies working together successfully to solve a real problem.

by Chris Bodenner

Scott Conroy says that Palin's planned appearance at the Ronald Reagan Dinner in Des Moines on September 17 is the "clearest indication yet that she is seriously considering a run for the presidency." Erik Hayden surveys the speculation.

by Patrick Appel

Ackerman compares:

[T]here’s at least one huge exogenous difference between the U.S.’s ability to help Haiti and Pakistan: sovereignty. In Haiti, the beleaguered and overwhelmed government of Rene Preval had no problem accepting help from its nearby American neighbor. Not so in Pakistan.

In Haiti, “We took over the landing strips. We took over completely the provision of assistance. There was not even a fig leaf of Haitian sovereignty,” observes Christine Fair, a South Asia expert at Georgetown University who just returned to D.C. from three months in Afghanistan and Pakistan. “The Pakistani military in particular is walking a very thin line. They do not want to take responsibility for this fiasco, nor be seen as overridden by American demands and further dependent on a country that a lot of people hate.”

by Chris Bodenner

Regarding Glenn Beck's fear of assassination, perhaps he had on his mind the closing scene of Network (Beck himself embraces the Howard Beale comparison):

Today on the Dish, Afghan men took boy lovers; we learned lessons from Iraq and picked at Obama's speech. More romantic Dish readers pitched in on progressively alternative engagement gifts; immigration could solve the housing crisis; and healthcare could determine November's election. Weigel wrote the post-mortem on Murkowski; political parties are not dead yet; and Andrew got dragged into the argument over Kos's new book, American Taliban.

In the lead up to Labor Day, we heard from pharmacists; mathmeticians; a paid pro-bon lawyer; teachers; a mortician; more sacrificing public sector workers and about how the economic downturn has affected the hiring of elites.

The Vanity Fair piece had some ripe Sullivan bait; we got more of Ms. Dina Martina; and Americans were exceptional.  We counted vacation days and inducted more musicians into the hip church (and synagogue) hall of fame. VFYW here; Malkin award here; MHB here; FOTD here. We enjoyed some snacks and shit (so did tigers); Swedish fathers pushed strollers; and we kept the law out of craft cocktails. Glenn Beck wore a bulletproof vest; bonobos are like humans; and men wooed virtual girlfriends on romantic getaways.

--Z.P.

by Patrick Appel

Ricks was underwhelmed by the speech:

As [Obama] said in the speech, he was fulfilling a campaign pledge to get all combat troops out of Iraq by today. Unfortunately, it was a phony pledge -- the mission of the U.S. troops still in Iraq is, if anything, more dangerous today than it was yesterday. And so the core of the speech was hollow.

Meanwhile, in the under-reported Iraq story of the month, the Iraqi army chief of staff said the U.S. military needs to stay in Iraq for another decade. "If I were asked about the withdrawal, I would say to politicians: "the US army must stay until the Iraqi army is fully ready in 2020," said Lt. Gen. Babaker Zebari.

by Conor Friedersdorf

A reader writes:

I work at a small family owned casket factory in Los Angeles that has been around since 1933.  The Let the Corpses Decay posts from last week captured a few of the peculiarities of funerals, but neither mentioned the grotesqueness of funeral industry overpricing. Funerals are overpriced mostly because of mortuaries and partially due to people’s lack of awareness of how to shop for a funeral (e.g. people usually spend an extra thousand dollars by shopping at cemeteries instead of through cemetery brokers). The biggest price gouging normally occurs at mortuaries.  Large mortuaries are usually very overpriced, but sometimes local mom and pop mortuaries are worse.  Even though the FTC attempted to regulate exorbitant funeral prices with the Funeral Rule in 1984 and put a stop to a number of deceptive marketing tactics, mortuaries have developed new sales tricks.  Prior to the Funeral Rule, mortuaries could refuse to accept outside caskets.  This allowed them to put exorbitant mark-ups of 2.5 to 7 times the cost of the caskets they would then resell.

After the Funeral Rule, some casket manufacturers sold directly to the public, and a savvy consumer could cut thousands of dollars out of a funeral transaction.  This is still possible; however, mortuaries have a number of methods to keep this from happening.  One is offering people “package deals” which sell a funeral service and a casket together, promising huge savings on the casket.  Listed prices for the casket and funeral savings are deliberately inflated to have no bearing on their real value, just to give the illusion of huge savings after their costs to the consumer are “cut.”  The remaining mark-up after the so-called “savings” is what is really huge.

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

Since you've extended this "Can Church Be Hip" storyline beyond just Christian music, I'd like to point out an absolutely beautiful adaptation of the classic Jewish prayer "Avinu Malkenu (My Father My King)" recorded and frequently performed by Mogwai.  Mogwai is a Scottish 'post-rock' band that has always held a very unique, and revered, place in hipster/indie rock music circles because of their high-brow, atmospheric instrumentals. This particular song is especially epic in that it accurately represents the sadness and reverence of the original liturgy, one that is left only to the highest of holy days of the Jewish calendar.

Throughout this thread I've been - like many readers I'm sure - continually amazed at the prevalence of religious influence in some of the best alternative bands out there. ("Sine Wave" is my personal favorite of Mogwai's.)

by Conor Friedersdorf

A reader writes:

Yes, law firms and consulting firms are easy targets when companies pass the buck. Yes, law firms want to be able to say that they have hired a bevy of Ivy-Leaguers to give comfort to their clients that, when they pass the buck, they've passed the buck to a highly-credentialed crew of professionals.  But there is something much more to the choice of Ivy-Leaguers (and their top-tier equivalents).  As much as the credentials that they bring, it is the network that they bring that makes recruiting offices (and those they work for) salivate. 

The people you meet at Harvard and Yale and Brown and Dartmouth will -- more often than not -- find themselves working in other law firms, other consulting firms, or businesses that may be clients.  When you go to Harvard or Yale or Brown or Dartmouth, chances are you probably went to a pretty good high school.  If you didn't go to Exeter or Andover, you probably went to Choate or Collegiate (or Dalton or Trinity or some other place your parents spent 30k per year to send you to Kindergarten).  You met people at all of those places.  More than that, you met people who also met people.  And you met people who know that, the key to success in the business world, is meeting people.  That network (the tentacles of which extend wide and deep even after college, grow further in graduate school, and expand exponentially in the "real world") is the real key to why these folks get hired.  As the old adage goes, it is, in very large part, not what you know but who you know.

Yes, I can't believe I neglected to mention this. Elite colleges don't draw from quite as narrow a range of high schools as the reader implies, but Ivy League universities are certainly filled with extraordinarily talented people, and those institutions do their utmost to cultivate a networked alumni that indirectly benefit their employers. Partners at big business consulting firms often land major clients through their business school alumni network, to cite one example.

by Conor Friedersdorf

Although it doesn't persuade me to end my long-running campaign against diamonds, I've received a note from a reader in the industry who I can't help but admire. If you must buy a diamond, then by all means get it from this commendable woman:

Until recently I shared Conor's view. I had never been a fan of diamonds, much less diamond engagement rings, and couldn't imagine myself purchasing one. Their tragic history, superficiality, and impracticality were major turn-offs, notwithstanding their geologic magnificence. So as my friends began to get engaged (I'm 28 and part of an über progressive culture in San Francisco) we discussed our options for how to symbolize our engagements in ways that aligned with our ethics. In the process we looked into diamonds.

When I say we looked into diamonds, I mean, we really looked into diamonds. I had spent the last year and a half as a fact-checker at Mother Jones, and I had just finished fc-ing Heather Roger's book Green Gone Wrong: How Our Economy Is Undermining Our Environmental Revolution (a good read if you get the chance). Prior to that, I had worked in the certification department at TransFair, the largest US Fair Trade organization. My friends are just as serious as I, so we tore into the industry from every angle, interviewing human rights researchers, diamond retailers, suppliers, traders, manufacturers, cutters, polishers, and the miners themselves. Ultimately we decided that nothing available on the market met our standards for transparency and fairness ("conflict-free" is a joke much akin to "gourmet"). Admittedly our standards were uncommonly high, but there was just nothing we could feel comfortable supporting.

Then we had an idea: What if we did it ourselves?

Ruth Imes, 19, left, comforts her brother Ariel, 16, at their parents' memorial service. Yitzhak Imes and Talia Imes along with two hitchhikers they picked up, Kochava Even Haim and Avishai Schindler, were shot dead by Hamas militants yesterday evening while driving near Hebron, on September 1, 2010, in Beit Haggai, West Bank.  Washington is preparing to host renewed Middle East peace talks. By Warrick Page/Getty Images.

by Patrick Appel

Marrying the Apatow debate to the costly gifts thread, Culture Channel editor Eleanor Barkhorn points me to an old exchange between Judd Apatow and his wife, Leslie Mann. Money quote:

JUDD

One year, as a present, I got Leslie a trip to Italy. We had never visited Europe together, and it was something I knew she would love to do. So I had a basket made with Italian bread, airline tickets to Rome, a guidebook. Stuff like that. Here is the shocking part: When I gave it to her, she got mad at me.

LESLIE

Why is that shocking? It was a terrible present.

JUDD

It was a great present.

LESLIE

Let me rephrase that. It wasn’t even a present. A trip is something we do together. It is something we would do whether or not it was a present for me. You get to go, so it is for you also. That means it is not a present. It is an activity that would happen anyway.

The gift violates Tyler Cowen's first rule of gift giving: that it can't be something you yourself will benefit from. But it satisfies Cowen's other rule: experiences are better than possessions.

by Chris Bodenner

Tracy Clark-Flory teases a WSJ report:

We've written before about the dating simulator Love Plus and how it brought about the world's first marriage between man and virtual woman, and inspired jealousy among Japanese girlfriends and wives. But Love Plus+, the sequel to the original Nintendo DS game, has brought the insanity to a whole new level. As part of a promotional package deal, more than 2,000 of the game's mostly male devotees have flocked to the resort town of Atami for real-life vacations with their virtual girlfriends. This fits with the whole point of the game, which is to woo one of three teenage girls and then to keep her around by doing all the things a good boyfriend supposedly does -- like, say, planning a romantic weekend getaway.

by Conor Friedersdorf

Let's begin with my favorite.

Your children tell me lots of things that would make you cringe from embarrassment, maybe because you didn't want them airing your dirty laundry or they misunderstood the way you said something to them.

Don't worry: I know they come home and misrepresent some of the things that I tell them, too. Let's just trust that maybe half of what they tell us about each other is true. This will save us all a lot of time when your child gets detention, and blames me for it.

by Chris Bodenner

David Cross' take on "white fright":

A reader writes:

Thank you for posting the video where participants were asked why they were attending the Beck event. I was struck how every participant referenced American exceptionalism in their answer. Even when criticizing Obama (much milder than I expected, btw), they mostly cited how he doesn't appreciate America's unique and exceptional standing in human history. Considering the economy, Katrina, the inability to dispatch, not one but two wars, their fear is understandable. Attributing it all to Obama and his election makes perfect sense, because he too is different and represents anything but the past. Call it ironic or a contradiction, but one of the exceptional parts of America (not the same thing as exceptionalism) is that considering our history, we elected an Obama so soon.

by Patrick Appel

Ezra Klein complains that Americans don't get much time off. Reihan adds context:

It’s true that American have fewer paid vacations and paid holidays. But the top 80 to 90 percent of U.S. households have more disposable income than their counterparts in the vast majority of OECD economies. Paid vacation is best understood as a form of non-cash compensation. It’s not obvious that we should collectively choose more paid vacation over more pay, and the lack of mandatory paid-vacation gives employers and employees more flexibility to choose an arrangement that works for them.

by Conor Friedersdorf

A reader writes "in defense of elites":

There is a reason why successful kids and tough schools get those jobs--because the grade/school attendance ratio is one of the best proxies for long term success on the merits.  The kid interviewing from Duke or Harvard or Stanford law school usually has this profile--(1) studied hard in high school and got very good grades, (2) followed by studying hard and getting average or better grades at a top tier college or getting very high grades at a lower ranked college, (3) followed by studying hard and getting good grades at a top tier law school or great grades at a lower ranked law school.  On top of that, they have to be personable, presentable, and have a weird type of work ethic that will keep someone working all night long to find the magic document in 20 boxes of emails between accountants. The work is not for the faint of heart.  It is mentally and physically demanding, and there is almost no moral satisfaction that comes from making sure that Company A, not Company B, gets that big pot of money. 

Furthermore, the analytical skills and creativity that go into making those types of legal arguments are not widely shared... Those creative and analytical skills are more commonly found (not exclusively found) at elite schools because those schools take a bunch of those little high school geeks who actually read all of Moby Dick (including the whaling chapters) and put them in a fishbowl for 4 years in college and then reshuffled them in different schools for three more years in law school, picking up stars from lower tier schools and shedding knucklehead legacy kids who were just coasting in college. 

There is a tremendous amount of learning, sharpening, and growth that happens between classes when those geeks are eating pizza.  Some of the key lessons and skills I learned when at my Ivy League College and Top Tier Law School were from other students who had picked up incredible skills before even getting there.  And I added what I knew to others.  I would like to say that you can get the same level of education out of every school if you are a self-starter, but you can only push yourself so much.  Sometimes you need others to push you as well.  Those elite schools create an environment where you get pushed a lot harder by your peers. 

Yes, I think that is all accurate. And it helps capture the thought behind the question I recently asked conservative critics of the current meritocracy: If you think it's flawed now, what better system do you suggest for replacing it? There's this weird dynamic in the United States where some conservatives will praise the hard working kid who gets good grades in high school, completes all their homework, avoids behavioral and legal trouble, plays varsity sports, takes a leadership role in student government, and studies hard for his SATs... until he or she attends Harvard, at which point they're put in the coastal elite box, especially if they wind up in politics, media, or academia. 

There are nevertheless solid critiques of a ruling class so heavily determined by a relatively small number of elite educational institutions.

More about that in another post.

by Chris Bodenner

A symbolic love story:

Spheremetrical (Here With You) from impactist on Vimeo.

by Patrick Appel

Douthat hones in on the big one:

[W]hat the war in Iraq has really impressed upon me is the bluntness of military force as an instrument of state, and the difficulty of predicting any of the long-term consequences that flow from a decision to make war. We can spin out complicated counterfactuals that justify the Iraq invasion, and complicated counterfactuals that make it look even worse. We can hope for long-range developments that make the Bush administration’s decisions seem prescient, and worry about long-range developments that would undercut the fragile achievements of the last few years. But I’m more and more convinced that when it comes to judging a decision for or against war, it’s actually better to confine yourself to the short-term consequences rather than the long-term fallout, and at assess the war based on its immediate military objectives rather than its deep strategic goals.

Exum is on the same page:

Andrew Bacevich says "The United States leaves Iraq having learned nothing." I disagree. I think we have learned a lot, tactically, operationally, and strategically, and I think the American people will in the future be more wary of the kind of military adventurism that led to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Bacevich should take heart in this. But honestly, does anyone out there see a U.S. administration ever embracing the kind of neo-isolationism that Bacevich is apparently demanding? And is it just me, or is he crankier than normal lately?

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

I can't describe my utter joy in your posting of the commercial clips of my favorite freak-tastic drag goddess, Ms. Dina Martina. She is THE must-see show for my partner and me every summer in Ptown. She was especially brilliant this year. And our annual tradition as we drive to his family for Christmas is to listen to Dina's holiday CD. We laugh just as hard as the first time we listened, singing along to all the twisted lyrics (baby Jesus loving baby-back ribs that Mary will serve to the three kings - can't be beat!).

I've also seen her perform live, and that clip doesn't do her justice; you simply have to be there. (Also, I don't know for sure, but that boisterous laugh in the crowd sounds exactly like Andrew's.) For another dose of Dina, go here. The Stranger did a great profile of her in 1999:

The primary fact that one must understand about Dina Martina -- beyond her stature as a superstar entertainer without peer -- is that she is in possession of not one shred of discernible talent or grace. Her voice sounds like a cat having an epileptic fit on a chalkboard, her body moves like two pigs fighting their way out of a sleeping bag, and her face looks like the collision of a Maybelline truck with a Shoney's buffet.

by Chris Bodenner

Weigel writes a post-mortem on Murkowski:

She voted for the Troubled Asset Relief Program in 2008. In October 2009 she said she was "open" to compromise on cap-and-trade legislation if it expanded drilling and nuclear power. She had a moderate record on abortion, siding with liberals on some matters of federal funding for the procedure. And she occasionally spoke dismissively of Sarah Palin. Tell me if I'm missing something, but I think that's it. Just like Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah), Murkowski wasn't so much an unreliable vote, like Arlen Specter used to be, as a Republican in a safe seat who was too often approached for possible compromises by Democrats. And that was unacceptable.

You really have to admire the strategic chops of tea partyers in taking down Bennett and Murkowski. In both cases, they only had to convince a small number of partisans to oust their incumbents. In both cases, they could smooth the path to victory by adding new people to the electorate -- in Utah that meant getting tea partyers to become Republican delegates, and in Alaska it meant activating some unaffiliated voters who could vote in the GOP primary.

Steve Chapman reminds us how Murkowski got into office in the first place: "It was the first time ever that a governor had appointed his own child to the Senate, and it was not popular." No doubt that lingering resentment fueled the anti-establishment fervor that rallied to Joe Miller. You can't get much more insidery than bald nepotism.

Regardless, the Tea Party win is yet another omen for a Palin nomination in '12.

by Chris Bodenner

Yes.

by Conor Friedersdorf

A couple years back a close friend landed a job at one of America's most prestigious law firms upon finishing her degree. Then the firm realized that it over-hired. As a result, it didn't retract its offer, but offered her roughly $80,000 to wait a year before starting. She did non-profit work in the interim, and never did wind up going back.

That must seem like an unbelievable story to a lot of people, but despite the economy, that kind of thing is still going on, as this reader explains:

I recently graduated from a top law school and find myself on exactly the path you describe.  Firms do indeed seek out graduates of the most elite law schools because clients want their work done by graduates of Harvard, Yale, Stanford, etc. if only because they have no other way to judge the quality of the newly minted lawyers who will be doing the leg work on their offerings and mergers documents.  You'll probably be deluged with replies critiquing and defending the legal recruitment system so I'll just mention a perverse side effect the current recession is having on the hiring of the public interest lawyers you mentioned in your post.

 

Top law firms are highly constrained by the need to preserve their reputation and relationships with the elite law school that feed their ranks each fall.  It's very difficult for a law school student to differentiate between top firms (called "BigLaw" in the industry) when making employment choices, so any negative press can severely damage a firm's recruitment at a given school.  It's a big reason why fresh law recruits with few substantive skills and even less real world experience command high salaries and are treated with kid gloves as summer associates.  Now, the economic downturn has led to a lot less legal fees for these big firms and they've understandably cut back on recruitment.  But what to do with someone in my position?  I was given an offer of employment but was then told that there wasn't enough work to justify bringing me on board at the market rate for 1st year associates.  Firms in almost every other industry would immediately tell me "sorry but we need to let you go" and I'd be out looking for work like millions of other Americans.  But elite laws firms don't work that way.  They're too worried I'd go back and tell my friends and the recruitment office at my law school that so-and-so firm laid me off before I started.  Then, next fall, students from my school would shun the firm and they'd be unable to hire those elite grads that their clients love so much.  So instead I've been "deferred" from my job till fall of 2011 and am drawing a salary from the firm that exceeds the median income in this country, despite the fact that I'm not working.  I don't claim to be anything other than the luckiest person I know.

And it gets even more ridiculous.  My firm has instructed us that they'd like to see us doing some pro bono work while we wait out our (paid) deferral periods.  This sounds like a noble thing to do, till you realize that now hundreds (thousands?) of newly graduated elite law students are flooding the public interest legal market and can work for literally nothing.  All those kids who went to law school and wanted to do government service, help the homeless, defend the indigent and any number of other worthy causes just saw their chances of landing one of the few top pro bono jobs go up in smoke.  I know I personally put both a legal assistant and a part-time paralegal out of a job when I started volunteering at a non-profit in Manhattan.  It's a boon to the public interest organizations but a disaster for those lawyers who eschewed the big firm, big money path.

A lot of people are predicting that the Big Law model is never going to recover after the current recession. I don't have any insight into that question except to say that I think the United States would be a better country if there were less incentive for so many bright people to spend their twenties doing grunt work at big law firms.

by Chris Bodenner

The new Vanity Fair hit piece on Palin is providing plenty of grist for her critics. Gryphen plucks out the juicier parts. Ben Smith finds the piece embellished, and Weigel backs him up. I find this passage believable (if a tad exaggerated):

“This whole hunter thing, for Sarah? That is the biggest fallacy,” says one longtime friend of the family. “That woman has never hunted. The picture of her with the caribou she says she shot? She got out of the R.V. to pose for a picture. She never helps with the fishing either. It’s all a joke.” The friend goes on to recall that when Greta Van Susteren came to the house to interview Palin “[Sarah] cooked moose chili and whatnot. Todd was calling everyone he knew the day before—‘Do you got any moose?’ Desperate.”

Some Sullivan bait from the piece:

Early in the 2008 campaign, when John McCain’s aides discovered that Alaska-size gaps existed in Palin’s general knowledge (among those previously unreported: she had no idea who Margaret Thatcher was), they from time to time would give her some books to read in hopes of improving the candidate’s learning curve.

And this:

One person who has been a frequent houseguest of the Palins’ says that the couple began many mornings with screaming fights, a fusillade of curses: “ ‘Fuck you,’ ‘Fuck this,’ ‘You lazy piece of shit.’ ‘You’re fuckin’ lucky to have me,’ Sarah would always say.” (This person never saw Todd and Sarah sleep in the same bed, and recalls that Todd would often joke, “I don’t know how she ever gets pregnant.”)

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

Glenn Beck said he wore a bulletproof vest because his wife insisted on it. And I don't understand how Hitchens can call the people at the rally self-pitying white people.  The Iraqi soldier with no hands (who is now training other soldiers in hand-to-hand combat, believe it or not) and the Vietnam vet whose face was burned off were far from self-pitying.  I believe the latter will be on Beck's Friday show, along with other clergymen and women.

I didn't see anyone there who was self-pitying.  I saw many people of all ages and races.  Maybe Hitchens is the one who is protesting too much.  Or maybe he was angry because Beck had 240 clergymen and women on stage with him (ministers, priests, rabbis, and imams), all different races, all holding hands. You should have watched Beck's show yesterday, not the Monday show.  Yesterday he answered Hitchens and every other reporter/journalist who wrote about the rally and got mostly everything wrong.  BTW, the rally raised $5,000,000 for the children of Special Ops.  Yes, what a self-pitying group of white people.

My problem with the Beck segment wasn't his wearing of the vest per se, but rather his martyr-like publicizing of it.

Elsewhere at The Atlantic, an interesting post about craft cocktails and the impulse to protect certain recipes as intellectual property.

Jacob Grier reacts:

Intellectual property exists to promote progress. Its purpose is not to ensure that no one’s ideas are stolen or that creative people can earn a living, unless those things are needed to promote progress in a field. The granting of temporary monopolies in the form of patents and copyrights is the price we pay for progress, not a goal in itself.

It might be completely true that bartenders are shamelessly stealing from each other, and that’s certainly something we should condemn, but we probably shouldn’t get the law involved unless we can show that this theft is causing mixology to stagnate. Along with fashion, cooking, and even magic, we’re in an industry that’s arguably better off with weak IP. This decade’s boom in craft cocktails is a sign that we’re doing OK without stricter protections, and I’d be worried that additional threats of lawsuits would have a chilling effect on the sharing of new techniques and recipes.

In response to Conor's post, many readers have written in to recommend PBS's Frontline documentary on the topic, which we linked to several months ago. A soldier writes:

I want to say that the soldiers on the ground know about this and know it is rampant. We used to call it “man love days.” We noted that attacks on our base did not occur during these events as all the men with money (Talibs) were engaging in this kind of activity. It is truly a disturbing sight to see something like this occurring and you can’t do anything about it. We were told it was a “cultural thing” and it wasn’t our business.

Another reader:

I was an aid worker in Afghanistan for a couple of years, so I certainly know the culture they are speaking about.

The bottom line is, women are off limits. You are going to see very few women once they reach the age of puberty, especially if you live in conservative parts of the country. And to mess with a woman is to risk your life: this is a part of the world that practices honor killings. So, you have an environment in which there are communities of men, with sexual urges, but who cannot have affairs with women. So what happens? The introduction of the "tea boy" (this is what I heard this position called in offices -- a young boy who fetches tea, but also provides other services). Someone quoted to me part of a Pashtun song: "There is a boy across the river with an ass like a peach/ but alas, I cannot swim."

Another:

The Kite Runner, Charlie Wilson's War, and Where Men Win Glory: Pat Tillman Story all discuss this type of behavior. Just about every book I've ever read about Afghanistan has touched on the issue of boy lovers.

by Conor Friedersdorf

A reader writes:

I'm currently a Ph.D. candidate in pure mathematics, and in my free time I like to think about how mathematics and mathematicians are portrayed in popular culture.  Usually, both are portrayed poorly.  For example, if everything you knew about a mathematician you learned from films like A Beautiful Mind or Pi, it would not be entirely unreasonably for you to assume that mathematicians are socially maladjusted and crazy.  Of course, the reality is much less dramatic: mathematicians are plenty of regular folks who study mathematics.  Of course, the media loves it when a mathematician does something strange, as when Grigori Perelman famously declined the Fields Medal in 2006 and the cash prize associated with his solution to the Poincare Conjecture, but such behavior is not so common, even among mathematicians.  On average we may be more eccentric than the general population, but it would be nice if we could claim some degree of normalcy in the way we are portrayed.

Of course, the fact that mathematicians are frequently portrayed as being somehow separate from the general population may have something to do with the way mathematics itself is represented.  For many people, math seems like an impenetrable subject that only a chosen few are able to understand, and it may therefore seem natural to ascribe to those chosen few certain characteristics that one can then point to as explaining why one person is good at math and another isn't.  Most people also don't have a very good idea of what exactly it is that a mathematician does (hint: it does not involve multiplying really big numbers together in one's head). 

by Patrick Appel

Jamelle Bouie reviews Kos's new book, American Taliban:

Like Liberal Fascism, American Taliban is another entry in the tired genre of "my political opponents are monsters." Indeed, Moulitsas begins the book with the Goldbergian declaration that "in their tactics and on the issues, our homegrown American Taliban are almost indistinguishable from the Afghan Taliban." And he fills the remaining 200-plus pages with similar accusations. In the chapter on power, Moulitsas writes that "the American Taliban seek a tyranny of the believers in which the popular will, the laws of the land, and all of secular society are surrendered to their clerics and ideologues." Which is, of course, why these American Taliban participate in the democratic system and hew to the outcomes of elections. Later in the chapter, Moulitsas argues that the right-wing hates democracy -- they "openly dream of their own regressive brand of religious dictatorship" -- loves war, fears sex, and openly despises women and gays. In the chapter on "war," Moulitsas calls Rep. Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota a "high priestess of the American Taliban" -- a veritable Mullah Omar, it seems! -- and in the final chapter on "truth," Moulitsas concludes by noting the foundational "kinship" between the two Talibans.

Serwer responds:

by Patrick Appel

Nate Silver is in the same ballpark as Bernstein:

Health care dominated the political discourse for about nine months; it seems implausible that it hasn’t played some role. But [Jay Cost] hasn’t offered much in the way of proof — nor is there much of it to be had: overdetermined phenomena usually beget underdetermined attempts to explain them.

by Patrick Appel

A reader points me to this Cary Tennis post on engagement rings from several years back:

We all know that in spite of social progress men still make more money than women and thus wield more power. So requesting that he buy this ring, although it sounds old-fashioned, may also be her way of asking that he recognize this continuing social and economic inequality; the act of buying the ring is a symbolic giving up of his unfairly derived power, a laying himself bare. It is also a symbolic sacrifice, much as one might spill wine or burn the flesh of sheep or goats. It makes ethereal beauty of a gross material good, as it were, much as the pressure of the earth itself over millions of years makes diamond of coal. It is a kind of alchemy, if you will: The man willingly transforms some of his economic power into a thing of beauty to adorn the woman. This could be a deeply satisfying ritual. It doesn't have to be seen as a brazen and crass gold-digging.

by Chris Bodenner

Christopher Ryan lays into McArdle's critique of his book:

Got that? Humans aren't like bonobos because we're not like bonobos. No way! So there! Case closed.

In addition to this somewhat embarrassing "reasoning," it's pretty clear Ms. McArdle hasn't read even the first half of the book very closely. Pages 77 and 78 contain a table listing some of the major similarities between humans and bonobos, many of them unique to these two species. Hard to imagine how she managed to miss that. In the discussion of her article, she flatly states that chimps are genetically more closely related to humans than bonobos are, which is not only just plain wrong, it's something we explain very early in the book (along with a graph, no less, on p. 62).

Agree with our thesis or disagree with it, nobody who knows anything about primatology would argue that chimps are genetically closer to us than bonobos are (they're equidistant) or that humans and bonobos don't have a great deal in common—particularly in terms of our sexual behavior and anatomy.

(Hat tip: Savage)

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

I'm not sure if you've covered anything other than Christian music here (I may have missed some other posts), but for many Jews, especially Jews from an Orthodox background (me included), a Matisyahu concert is a much more spiritual experience than a synagogue service. And his work stands on its own as excellent reggae as well.

Matisyahu talked about his faith with the A.V. Club in 2006:

AVC: Some have talked about your video for "Youth" and your live show as being pitched to the mainstream instead of focused on the Jewish community.

M: Well, it is. I would agree with that. I never aimed for the Jewish community. I aimed for a mainstream audience, because that's the world that I come out of. I spent 23 years in a secular lifestyle, going to Phish concerts and reggae shows and hip-hop shows and listening to that style of music. My focus has really been on the mainstream people: non-Jews and Jews who aren't necessarily religious. And while there are definitely a lot of religious Jews who get something out of it, they're not my main focus.

AVC: So instead of putting reggae into Jewish popular music, you're putting your own spiritual understanding into reggae.

M: Yes.

by Conor Friedersdorf

In my post on how professional elites are recruited and hired, the line I wrote that's getting the most attention is as follows:

Though it isn't defensible, it is unsurprising that a lot of people who eschew offers to work at these firms, favoring public sector work instead, imagine that they are making an enormous personal sacrifice by taking government work. The palpable sense of entitlement some of these public sector folks exude is owed partly to how few of 'our best and brightest' do eschew the big firm route (due partly to increasing debt levels among today's graduates, no doubt).

A reader writes:

Can you explain more about why it is not "defensible" for people who have turned down the big law/corporate route for government to feel some pride about it?  I mean, people who do that shouldn't be smug pricks about it, but if you're giving up money and professional standing for public service, you're not allowed to console yourself with just a little self-righteousness? Anonymous please, but I'm a Harvard law grad who was a summer associate and turned down all my offers for a government job that paid less than half the salary (which made my peers think I was defective in some way), and I'm still in Club Fed eight years later.  I made the right choice for me -- decent hours, more substantive and interesting work and responsibility, usually on the side of good instead of evil, and my wife and I make enough in our govt jobs that we have to worry about the AMT.  But as my friends from law school, some of whom were idiots, make partner and sprint ahead in the money chase, am I showing a sense of entitlement if I feel a tinge of envy? The self-righteousness is what gets me out the door in the morning....

I am very sympathetic to this person, and I must concede that self-righteousness can be a good thing if it gets him out of the door in the morning. In my experience, however, an excess of this attitude causes some of the better compensated workers in DC and its environs (state capitals too, for that matter) to conceive of their very employment in the public sector as a favor to the taxpayer. The core of the problem is that rather than comparing themselves to their fellow Americans, appreciating that they're better compensated than the vast majority of them for doing relatively enjoyable work, and being cognizant of their privileged position and the special trust it entails, this subset of professionals compare themselves to a tiny elite, correctly judge that they're worse off, and justify all manner of behavior accordingly.

To wit, another reader writes:

What you completely left out of your rant about “elites” is their grades and the difficulty of those programs. Firms that wine and dine summer associates don’t just hire any schmuck who gets into Harvard and skates by with Cs because his dad is a senator. They’re wining and dining the top tier of honor students in some of the most difficult and renowned programs in the world. People who can get a 4.0 at Ivy League grad schools are people who can work seven days a week, twelve hours a day, for months on end, and not complain about it. Doing what these people do is so brutal that movies have been made about it. If you resent those elites, if you really can’t grasp why people will spend so much to have them on board, it’s because you don’t know what it’s like to work that hard nor do you know what those people are really capable of.

And for those elite people working in the public sector really is a huge sacrifice—not just financially, but mentally. They’re the best and brightest, and when they go into the public sector, everyone around them is not. They’re getting paid crap for putting up with the people who couldn’t hack it in the big firm jobs. Meanwhile they know their career advancement is limited because being in government keeps them from doing the fund-raising work that gets political appointees those really juicy jobs. And no matter where they go half the people they meet automatically assume they’re just lazy crooked asshole government workers. Why should people degrade themselves like that when they can work in the private sector and be celebrated?

One thing that's surprised me as I've watched folks in my age cohort move from college to professional schools to highly paid careers is how rapidly they shift their baseline for what is normal. People who were happily buying Natural Light and eating microwaved Maruchan Ramen a few years back earnestly insist that their $165,000 salary isn't so much when you think about it, what with taxes, the cost of living in their city, the expense of dry cleaning... and that they really need a doorman building ("Do you know how hard it is to get packages delivered when you work 80 hours a week!") and a fancy car ("I can't show up to work events in a Hyundai"). I am talking about people who haven't even had kids yet.

I understand how this blinkered assessment of reality happens, and how it spreads in social circles so that even law school friends who aren't making big money find themselves thinking of big firm salaries as normal. I also see how this unhealthy attitude helps explain the middle-aged DC lawyers who started out in politics to do good, congratulated themselves for forgoing big law firm salaries, and justified their eventual turn at the public trough by thinking, "I know how the game works, I've sacrificed more than most to do good work, and sure, my 26-year-old self would've considered what I'm about to do unethical, but I'm tired of being the only one who isn't playing the game, and now I've got a family to think about."

Below the fold, other reactions to that passage:

by Conor Friedersdorf

Joel Brinkley writing in The San Francisco Chronicle:

Western forces fighting in southern Afghanistan had a problem. Too often, soldiers on patrol passed an older man walking hand-in-hand with a pretty young boy. Their behavior suggested he was not the boy's father. Then, British soldiers found that young Afghan men were actually trying to "touch and fondle them," military investigator AnnaMaria Cardinalli told me. "The soldiers didn't understand."

All of this was so disconcerting that the Defense Department hired Cardinalli, a social scientist, to examine this mystery. Her report, "Pashtun Sexuality," startled not even one Afghan. But Western forces were shocked - and repulsed. For centuries, Afghan men have taken boys, roughly 9 to 15 years old, as lovers. Some research suggests that half the Pashtun tribal members in Kandahar and other southern towns are bacha baz, the term for an older man with a boy lover. Literally it means "boy player." The men like to boast about it. "Having a boy has become a custom for us," Enayatullah, a 42-year-old in Baghlan province, told a Reuters reporter. "Whoever wants to show off should have a boy."

...As for Karzai, an American who worked in and around his palace in an official capacity for many months told me that homosexual behavior "was rampant" among "soldiers and guys on the security detail. They talked about boys all the time." He added, "I didn't see Karzai with anyone. He was in his palace most of the time." He, too, declined to be identified.

In Kandahar, population about 500,000, and other towns, dance parties are a popular, often weekly, pastime. Young boys dress up as girls, wearing makeup and bells on their feet, and dance for a dozen or more leering middle-aged men who throw money at them and then take them home. A recent State Department report called "dancing boys" a "widespread, culturally sanctioned form of male rape."

Am I the only one who hasn't ever read about this?

by Chris Bodenner

"Progressives and Islamists are indeed on the same side. Their common disdain for Christianity explains why left-wing judges in America find any inkling of Christianity in the public square unconstitutional, while Islamist judges in the Middle East deem it executable. Their common view that life is expendable explains the left’s embrace abortion-on-demand and why the Islamists don’t hesitate to deploy their own children for homicide bombings," - Gary Bauer.

by Conor Friedersdorf

Thanks for all the e-mails about America's professional elite and how they're hired. One frequently offered remark: the economic slowdown means that things aren't as lavish as they once were. Below the fold, a selection of other reader responses.

San Anselmo, California, 4.12 pm

by Patrick Appel

A reader writes:

I read with interest your series about maternity leave. I've been looking at the data and the anecdotes posted, but I think there is something  more related to deeply cultural expectations and less with the law going on here.

I lived in Germany for 4 years, working for a German research institution as a biology researcher. In that time period we adopted an infant. Germany does indeed offer 12 months paid parental leave after the birth or adoption of a child (14 months for single parents). Another 156 weeks of unpaid parental leave is also allowed. But notice the term "parental." The same leave is offered to both mothers and fathers. Both parents could take the paid leave, they share the total of 156 weeks of unpaid parental leave. The only difference I see is that mothers get another 6 months before the birth in addition.

I am one father in a same-sex couple. Since my husband was not able to take leave (he worked for a US company), I took a month before the placement of our infant girl and another 3 months after of paid parental leave.  It was a godsend and helped me keep my career going and raise a family. Ostensibly, either or both parents could take the paid parental leave, but overwhelmingly it seems to be mothers. This seems to be a cultural stricture and problem and not one with the law.

Along these lines, Nathan Hegedus looks at paternity leave in Sweden:

by Patrick Appel

Jay Cost contends that the Democrats lost electoral support because they passed health care reform. Chait counters:

It's obviously true that the Democrats lost a lot of support "during the health care debate." The health care debate took about a year. My argument is that, during a period in which unemployment was rising and the Democrats controlled the entire government, Democrats would have bled support regardless of what they were debating. If they declined to carry out their campaign promises, they would have lost support.

Bernstein mostly sides with Chait.

by Conor Friedersdorf

A male reader writes:

I'm a full time pharmacist in a smallish community hospital.  What people think about my job, and the media misinterprets, is that I spend all day counting pills.  Look at any news story about a pharmaceutical product, or a pharmacy, or a drug recall, and there is a stock loop of footage of someone counting tablets.  The media never shows a pharmacist counseling a patient, conferring with a physician, giving an immunization or any of the hundreds of other things that we do to keep our patients healthy.

And a female writer concurs:

by Conor Friedersdorf

The best thing you'll read about President Obama's speech on Iraq is here, and I'd like to associate myself with everything in this excerpt:

What President Obama called the end of the combat mission in Iraq is a meaningless milestone, constructed almost entirely out of thin air, and his second Oval Office speech marks a rare moment of dishonesty and disingenuousness on the part of a politician who usually resorts to rare candor at important moments. The fifty thousand troops who will remain in Iraq until the end of next year will still be combat troops in everything but name, because they will be aiding one side in an active war zone. The proclaimed end of Operation Iraqi Freedom has little or nothing to do with the military and political situation in Iraq, which is why Iraqis were barely aware when the last U.S. combat brigade crossed into Kuwait a few days ago. And for most of us, too—except, perhaps, those with real skin in the game, the million and a half Iraq war veterans and their families—there’s hardly any reality or substance to the moment.

It’s hard to have an honest emotional response or even know what one feels. After seven years of war, the occasion deserves some weight of feeling, but many Americans stopped paying attention a long time ago. And that’s exactly why the President made his announcement: because Americans want the war to be over, have wanted it for years. Tonight he told us what we wanted to hear. August 31, 2010, will go down in history as the day Americans could start not thinking about the war without feeling guilty.

This is not entirely ignoble, by the way.

George Packer goes on to explain why it isn't entirely ignoble. Read it all. I'll just remark on why it is partly ignoble: because even as President Obama spoke, some Marines were preparing to return to Iraq, having been recalled there, despite the fact that their tours were supposed to be over. They'll risk serious injury and death, a fate likely to befall dozens if not hundreds more Americans before we exit that country entirely, and as Mr. Packer observes, the effect of the speech is to give everyone permission to stop thinking about all the men and women who remain fighting.

Should the United States embark on another foolish war of choice, it'll be due partly to the willingness of our elected leaders across two administrations to hide from us the costs of war, and the complicity of the press in their efforts.

by Chris Bodenner

This clip is simply too much. It shows Glenn Beck talking about how he wore a bulletproof vest to his rally and how Alveda King - a "marked woman for standing on that step with me" - bravely chose not to. Can anyone point me to a single reported death threat against Beck? All I could find was one via Twitter, and that was six months ago, and it quickly disappeared. Google News has nothing.

I know Beck is a melodramatic showman, but the fact that he thought he might be assassinated like a civil rights leader on the National Mall is such a perfect illustration of what Hitchens calls "white fright". To rehash:

In a rather curious and confused way, some white people are starting almost to think like a minority, even like a persecuted one.

by Patrick Appel

Over the weekend, Ambidner wrote that national political parties are "withered." Hans Noel counters:

[T]his parties-are-dead diagnosis makes three mistakes. First, it extrapolates from a small number of cases, forgetting that such cases happen all the time. Second, it assumes that party insiders are incapable of learning from outsider challenges, despite all the evidence that they do. But most importantly, it misunderstands what an “intra-party squabble” really is. Today’s outsider is tomorrow’s insider.

Bernstein expands on those points.

by Zoe Pollock

Nick Baumann over at Mother Jones rightly points out that our nod to the Buzzfeed mashup of the richest rappers and their worst lyrics probably drew a good amount of inspiration from this amazing site, Snacks and Shit. Chris Macho and Chris D'Elia have been keeping tabs on the worst lyrics since February 2009. Thank you guys for my new favorite.

by Patrick Appel

A reader writes:

Costly signaling makes sense as a reason many people give for buying diamonds, although I'm not sure it really works as a defense given all the options of costly things.  More importantly, though, it seems to put the emphasis rather strangely on "signaling," a message which might be partially for your mate (one hopes she knows that message already) but is really targeting anyone else that might see and/or desire her. As such it's little more than designing and using the most ornate branding iron you can.

One alternative to the ring-as-signal model would be making sure your engagement is as memorable as possible. Make it into a story that you will both love to tell, forever. I'm not a fan of the Jumbo-tron marriage proposal - it always seems more egotistical than cute - but if that's your deal, have at. My idea is that you choose a unique time, place, or circumstance, meaningful to you both, of which the ring becomes a symbol and reminder of that moment, be it grand, intimate, sexy, terrifying, or all of the above. Do that and the ring could be made of baling wire; the metal and rock won't matter.

Although, let's be realistic, it'd better be most beautiful baling wire ring you can afford.  All the in-laws are watching.

Another reader, echoing many others, goes after the diamond cartels: