tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-357623782024-03-09T21:45:58.997-05:00Doctor ClevelandBooks, Politics, and Strong CoffeeDoctor Clevelandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07326408523926507003noreply@blogger.comBlogger465125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35762378.post-8256218948991994722021-01-03T17:00:00.028-05:002021-01-03T17:00:00.690-05:00Fatherhood at Fifty-One<p>One year ago last night, as my spouse and I were getting ready for bed, she complained that her waistbands were feeling tight although she hadn't gained any visible weight.</p><p>"Could you be pregnant?" I asked, and she told me that was ridiculous. She was probably right. We were too old. We had missed the window for having children and reconciled ourselves to growing old together as a childless couple. So I went to sleep.</p><p>One year ago today I woke at 5:30 in the morning and found my wife had already been awake for hours. My question had nagged at her until she dug an old home-pregnancy test out of the bathroom closet. Positive. A baby was coming.</p><p>But was that right? The test was so old it had expired. So off to the drugstore for another (inconclusive) and another (positive) and then a hurried call to her ob/gyn and a trip to the nearest emergency room for an ultrasound. And there was our daughter on the screen, wriggling happily away.</p><p>"I can't take a picture for you," the ultrasound technician said. "I'm only trained for the first trimester, and we're obviously past that."</p><p>As Gomer Pyle used to put it: surprise, surprise.</p><p>My spouse and I met late and married late, when I was already past forty, and spent our first years of marriage commuting between jobs hundreds of miles apart. There was no responsible way to start a family when I spent the work week two states away. By the time we'd landed jobs in the same city I was very distinctly middle-aged. Could we start a family so late? Should we? We decided to let nature take its course and then accept its verdict: no IVF or other medical interventions, no adoption. We'd just see what happened, and nothing did. We thought that was that. And then it wasn't.</p><p>So in this worst of years, filled with calamities, we were also given an enormous, unexpected gift of joy. Our daughter was born in the Pandemic Summer of 2020 and we've been home with her ever since. I mean, where else would we go?</p><p>Being older parents means getting warned about every possible complication or grisly birth defect. The testing was constant. But the baby is healthy. Being pregnant during the pandemic meant worrying that there won't be a hospital room at all when the time comes, but the line held. Being an expectant father during the pandemic meant I had to live in the hospital room with my wife and newborn; if I left the hospital, I wouldn't be allowed back in. But I wouldn't have had it any other way. I began fatherhood as I meant to go forward, and living together is the point. Having a newborn in a pandemic means you never go out or see anybody; in some ways the two parts cancel each other out. </p><p>Working from home with a newborn when both parents teach at the same university, means that the fact of the newborn cannot be hidden. She has sat on my lap through Zoom meetings and through online teaching videos. I wouldn't recommend it as standard practice, but I also wouldn't have it any other way. And why should the work of raising a child be hidden, except to keep employers from recognizing that work?</p><p>And Christmas came to our small family at home, the first time I've celebrated Christmas without traveling since before I left home for college and I think the same for my spouse. But all I wanted for Christmas I had, here under my own roof. </p><p>I'm old to be a first-time father: as old as my own grandfather was when I was born. I don't have the physical energy I had in my twenties or my thirties, but I have a little more cunning and much more patience. I will worry about my daughter every day for the rest of our lives, but that's the job description. </p><p>Being half a century older than your child brings home mortality like nothing else, not even a global pandemic. If I'd forgotten how fragile everything is, I'm never going to have that luxury again.</p><p>And I know what I'm going to be doing for the rest of my life. Happy New Year. I hope yours is joyful and safe.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9brvAEynjEMsUt8A1nzUYrGa5KG6KBYnHIXGLynrJ2GqEu85N8fyc0k4o3gv3O3X5IWHuCt2vnC5VlPmUS6u8hRScBhkqWODXT6CU5ekA_2BemYfJb9Z1iMilvpCfOmsOHusr/s2048/Thumbs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9brvAEynjEMsUt8A1nzUYrGa5KG6KBYnHIXGLynrJ2GqEu85N8fyc0k4o3gv3O3X5IWHuCt2vnC5VlPmUS6u8hRScBhkqWODXT6CU5ekA_2BemYfJb9Z1iMilvpCfOmsOHusr/s320/Thumbs.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>cross-posted from <a href="http://dagblog.com/fatherhood-fifty-one-33496">Dagblog</a></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Doctor Clevelandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07326408523926507003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35762378.post-72802567839862724382020-10-12T22:28:00.002-04:002020-10-12T22:29:21.384-04:00Arrivederci, Columbus<p>All statues, like all politics, are local. They're about the place where they are put up, and they change that place (which is to say, they're political). It's a mistake to think a statue is put up to represent some eternal truth; they're a local statement about the politics of the moment. So it is with Christopher Columbus, who got statues and a national holiday for political, and progressive reasons. Those statues don't seem progressive anymore, for a simple reason: they worked. So they've outlived their purpose.</p><p>Columbus Day, and the statues of Columbus all over America, were introduced in the 2oth century in order to promote immigrants' rights. Italian immigrants, and Italian-Americans born in this country, were despised as perpetual foreigners, looked down upon as unassimilable and un-American. They weren't the only immigrant group treated this way, but they stood in for the larger group of Southern and Eastern European immigrants that nativists hated, and they were conspicuously despised. They certainly didn't count as white people in the first half of the 20th century. Elevating Columbus was part of a larger campaign to assert that immigrants were Americans, too. After all, "America" is an Italian word.</p><p>And it worked. Italians, like the Poles and Lithuanians and Portuguese, have been promoted to the full privileges of American whiteness. The category has expanded to include them, which means the borderline of racism had been moved.</p><p>And regressive approaches to immigration worked too. The first laws limiting immigration were passed in the 20th century to keep out the Italians, specifically, along with the Poles, Greeks, Czechs, and so on. The flow of immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe was choked to a trickle, and over the decades after that those immigrant groups lost touch with their home countries. Being Italian American now is its own thing, heavily diluted and even at its purest divorced from Italian culture. Virtually no American Italians today speak the languages their immigrant ancestors did, regional Italian dialects that no American college teaches. (What one learns in an American university is the artificial national language created for reasons of other, strictly Italian, politics. Your great-grandmother didn't actually talk like that.) </p><p>And plenty of Italian Americans, at this moment in history, have gone over to the anti-immigrant politics that would have once kept them from being born in America. A large slice of Trump's base comes from white ethnics descended from immigrants themselves, people who show up in most polling as "white Catholics." Look at Rudy Giuliani spitting bile on cable. The Italian Americans no longer need help. We arrived a long time ago.</p><p>And now that the America's racist imaginary is focused on the border with Latin America, and on despising Latinx as permanent foreigners, Columbus comes to symbolize an anti-immigrant agenda that the people who lobbied for his statues and holiday never intended: a celebration of European colonization by Spain. The reversal of the original intent is just ghastly.<br /></p><p>So arrivederci, Colombo. I'm done with you. We don't need you, and you're not helping. My people weren't from Genoa anyway. Anything I have to say to you I can say in Sicilianu, the handful of words that have come down the generations. But all of those words are obscene.<br /></p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHLSF2-mOSLsyHH55wBc-sE4w5gL_e0qhzWTY3kvp8FNv6_AK255EgrIn-iqz84DuN1C-LsgpCDxa-PpdkV4B7DftHE41y5BPucpk5Y23sEtjv2EoxrmewGnopFgTHbb4SiONV/s960/Con+Colombo.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHLSF2-mOSLsyHH55wBc-sE4w5gL_e0qhzWTY3kvp8FNv6_AK255EgrIn-iqz84DuN1C-LsgpCDxa-PpdkV4B7DftHE41y5BPucpk5Y23sEtjv2EoxrmewGnopFgTHbb4SiONV/s320/Con+Colombo.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Doctor Clevelandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07326408523926507003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35762378.post-6477830943135110002020-09-30T17:39:00.001-04:002020-09-30T17:40:49.656-04:00He Knows He's Losing: Trump as Mike Tyson<p>The most obvious thing to me about last night's toxic sludge fire of a debate is that Trump knows he's losing. Bigly. And he has no idea what to do about it. Many pundits are confused on this point, because they treat Trump as a conventional politician or as a media figure rather than as a psychiatric patient. And if you don't view Trump through the lens of his maladies, you misunderstand him. Trump is not a serious politician. Comparing him to other Republican presidential candidates doesn't help you understand him. This is not Mitt Romney. Let me compare him instead to someone Trump does resemble, deeply: Mike Tyson.</p><p>Back in 1997, just before Tyson's infamous rematch with Evander Holyfield, the <i>Boston Globe</i>'s boxing columnist, a guy named Ron Borges, predicted that if Tyson couldn't beat Holyfield in the first three rounds, he'd try to disqualify himself. Tyson no longer had the stamina for a full-length championship bout, Borges explained, although he still had a furious opening attack that had won him some matches, and even a heavyweight belt, with early knockouts. But if he couldn't knock out Holyfield by the third, Tyson had no chance. He would only get weaker as the match stretched on. So he'd try to disrupt the match and get a DQ instead.<br /></p><p>Holyfield won the first three rounds. In the third, Tyson bit off part of Holyfield's ear.</p><p>What people forget is that Tyson bit Holyfield's ear <i>twice</i>, because the referee didn't stop the fight after Tyson had actually chomped off part of his opponent's ear. (If you want to make a comparison to last night's debate moderation here, feel free.) So Tyson bit Holyfield <i>again</i>.</p><p>This was crazy, but not spontaneous. It was Tyson's plan. He actually came out for the third round without his mouth guard, which is a crazy thing to do if a heavyweight contender is about to punch you in the mouth over and over again, but efficient tactical preparation if your plan for the upcoming round is to bite some dude. The ref made him put it back in. Tyson came out of his corner looking to get thrown out of the fight. When biting didn't work, he kept biting until he got thrown out. Then he threw a tantrum blaming the referee.<br /></p><p>What we witnessed last night was an attempt to bite off the opponent's ear, to look for a DQ rather than take a public beating. Trump destroyed the debate because he had no legitimate way to win, and he knew it. He can't stand on a stage with Joe Biden for ninety minutes in a conventional, legitimate debate. I mean, what would he talk about? His record? He can't afford to do that. Trump has no affirmative case to make for his presidency beyond childishly obvious lies. So his goal was to <i>keep Biden from talking</i>. His handlers talk about how he was trying to goad Biden into some gaffe, and maybe that's part of the truth, but I think Trump's handlers don't understand the real goal: keep Biden from talking so Biden couldn't score any points. Trump couldn't beat Biden, so he tried to derail the match so Biden wouldn't be seen beating him.</p><p>This strategy only intermittently worked. Sometimes Biden was rattled, because it's hard to have a serious conversation while a floridly symptomatic mental patient shrieks at you. But when Biden got a chance to breathe and focus for 45 seconds, especially when he spoke directly to the camera, it became very clear why Trump couldn't afford to let Biden speak for any longer than that.</p><p>Here's the thing: this is not a strategy for a candidate who's behind, and Trump is behind. Keeping Biden from gaining more ground on him isn't a win. Biden's <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/national/" target="_blank">ahead by 7</a> or <a href="https://projects.economist.com/us-2020-forecast/president" target="_blank">eight points</a>. Trump needed to use the debate to close some of that gap, and ruining the debate, getting the DQ, doesn't do that. (To switch sports metaphors briefly, it's the equivalent of trying to get the last innings of a baseball game canceled when the other team is ahead. If you're losing after six innings, you don't want the last three rained out, because then you lose.) So this was less strategy than pathology.</p><p>Getting DQ'd out of the Holyfield match was not to Tyson's advantage. Getting disqualified is not better than losing. It's actually much worse. Not only did Tyson forfeit the match, he lost his boxing license and got fined millions of dollars. It would be much better to fight through the next twelve rounds, take his lumps, and lose honestly. But that would have meant Tyson letting people see him lose. Instead, no matter how high and insanely self-destructive the cost, he preferred to end the match and keep the option of pretending he <i>might</i> have won. Tyson was willing to throw his career in the toilet in order to shift blame for his defeat onto the ref.</p><p>Trump, like Tyson, can not accept or admit defeat. He would rather hurt his campaign than have the experience of letting Joe Biden beat him on live TV. But doesn't that invite the even greater humiliation of having Joe Biden beat him on Election Night? Yes, but here's the thing: Trump knows he can't win the election either.</p><p>Let me say that again: Trump knows he cannot win this election. He knows he cannot get more votes than Biden, that he will lose the popular votes by millions. Listen to him, if you can stomach it: this man who constantly boasts never boasts about the vote count he's going to rack up, because he's read the polls. He knows he's losing. No one associated with the Trump campaign talks about the popular vote. They have given up hope of winning it.</p><p>They barely, if ever, even talk about the Electoral College. Trump doesn't brag about which states he's ahead in. Because he doesn't have a strong lead in any state with more than about 11 electoral votes. He's way behind, playing defense on most of his map. He's going to have to defend Georgia and Texas.</p><p>Instead, Trump talks about voter fraud and Supreme Court rulings and voter intimidation. He's shouting that it's going to be stolen, because he knows he's losing.</p><p>We should take this very seriously, because it represents a genuine threat to our election. He's shouting that the election is going to be stolen because he wants to steal it if he can.</p><p>But even more important to Trump is <b>ruining the election itself<i>,</i></b> disrupting it the way he disrupted the debate. Even if he can't hold onto power, he wants to avoid the humiliating spectacle of public defeat. Trump knows he can't win. He's looking for the DQ. You saw him last night. He's already taken out his mouthpiece.<br /></p><p>cross-posted from, and all comments welcome at, <a href="http://dagblog.com/he-knows-hes-losing-trump-mike-tyson-32574">Dagblog</a><br /></p><p> </p>Doctor Clevelandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07326408523926507003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35762378.post-20939742420018476522020-09-10T11:57:00.000-04:002020-09-10T11:57:20.448-04:00The Mayor from Jaws Explains Those Quotes He Gave to Bob Woodward<p> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" Name="Revision"/>
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" QFormat="true"
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Name="List Table 1 Light Accent 6"/>
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Name="List Table 6 Colorful Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="52"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<w:LsdException Locked="false" SemiHidden="true" UnhideWhenUsed="true"
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</w:LatentStyles>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]>
<style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
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</p><p class="MsoNormal">Everyone knows I want to be a cheerleader for Amity Island,
right? You want to project confidence. So while I might have told some reporter
from the mainland that we were facing “a<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>grotesque, Biblical monster of the deep,” “a bloody, churning nightmare
of teeth,” or “a lean, mean tourist-eating machine,” there was no reason to
tell the general public that. You don’t want to start a panic, fellas. Just
think of the kids.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span>On the
subject of kids, the media’s distorting my comment about the unfortunate Kitner
boy being “a fit offering and sacrifice to our mighty fish-god Dagon”
completely out of context. First of all, I was brought up never to criticize
someone else’s religion. I don’t know how you were raised. Second, if I have
the worshipers of Dagon right – and they’ve been fine, upstanding members of
our Chamber of Commerce – then Dagon brings wealth and prosperity not just to
his followers, but to the whole community. Who wouldn’t like a little more
prosperity, am I right? Here on Amity Island we depend upon the ocean for our
very lives. So you gotta keep those obscene, scaly, aquatic monster gods happy.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span>Look, if it
wasn’t for me, this whole island would descend into real darkness and
bloodshed. I’m talking about roaming mobs of young radical leftists – some of them
nearly four foot ten – destroying our picket fences with their karate. If my
opponent is elected Mayor, they’ll just run wild. Then the only white, pointed
pickets you’ll see will be the row upon row of pitiless shark teeth closing
down on you. I think I got off the subject somehow.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">When I told
that reporter, “We want to play this down, so the suckers don’t avoid the beaches,”
I simply meant that it was time to reopen our beaches and our economy. It’s
lost business that’s the real killer: not just people, but whole communities.
Do you want to kill our community?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe
I should quote you in a newspaper.</p>So it’s
exactly what I was saying on twitter at the time, except a few minor details
about the insatiable marine predator <span class="hgkelc"><i>Carcharodon
carcharias</i></span>. Twitter has a character limit, as you’re well aware.
<p class="MsoNormal">And when I
said that “We should get everyone we can to go swimming and thrash wildly in
the closest possible imitation of a distressed seal,” I was simply calling upon
the spirit of loyalty and public service in our nearly 346-year-old community
and its citizens. “Amity,” as you know, means friendship.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">When I said
“Have you seen some of those off-island girls’ bikinis? I wouldn’t mind eating
them myself,” that was simply boat-locker talk, and a compliment to our
beautiful young guests and the fashionable swimwear for sale here in our town. Life’s
too short to get upset about stuff like this, particularly with a frenzied
cartilaginous fish honed to homicidal perfection by millions of years of
evolution around to shorten it.<br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I don’t
think the voters are going to hold a little banter against me any more than
they did last election, when I was recorded talking about inviting Chief
Brody’s wife for “a little midnight harpoon practice.” And speaking of the
Chief, I don’t expect voters to mind me hoping “the shark eats that snotty New
York bastard, so I can show his widow my blow hole.” People from New York can
be prickly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>No one
cares what I may or may not have said to a famous investigative journalist who
explicitly asked permission to record me. Who are you going to believe? All
that matters is, the sun is shining, the beaches are full, and we’re going to
have the best Fourth of July we’ve ever had. You’re the one who says it’s
September. I prefer to be an optimist.</p>
Doctor Clevelandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07326408523926507003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35762378.post-18323741334705023352020-03-07T22:10:00.000-05:002020-03-07T22:18:44.460-05:00Fear, Loathing, and PandemicsAn epidemic turns out to be a rotten time to have a germophobe President. Trump's more obvious pathologies -- ignorance, narcissism, magical thinking, pathological lying -- have gotten the obvious attention, because those are all real dangers to public safety. But Trump's germophobia makes him fundamentally unsuited to a public health crisis. His focus on making sure that he, personally, does not get ill, is just the mindset that increases the number of people who will. Selfishness helps an epidemic thrive. The outbreak can only be defeated by cooperation. It attacks the whole society, and the society needs to fight back together.<br />
<br />
<i>How do I not get it?</i> is the wrong question to ask in plague time, although of course everyone would like not to get it. <i>How do I not spread it?</i> is the more important question.<br />
<br />
If your goal is to be one of the lucky ones, to be spared while others fall ill, that will be counterproductive, because other people getting it raises your risk. The fewer people get it, the less likely you are to be one of them. (This logic can be particularly difficult for elites or the super-rich to grasp, since they're used to being spared from widespread problems.) If your whole strategy is just to protect yourself, that will likely fail. Viruses gonna virus. If your strategy is to help your whole community control it, your individual odds will probably go up.<br />
<br />
I've found myself, for the last week or two, treating myself as presumptively infected. There's no sign I have covid-19 or anything like it, but I live with someone I don't want to get sick. So I'm acting as if I have something and trying not to expose my wife to any germs I might have. Likewise, I'm trying not to do anything in the classroom that might expose my students. I wash my hands a lot these days.<br />
<br />
I'm middle aged, but not elderly, and there are no known covid-19 cases in my area yet. My odds if I come down with covid-19 aren't as good as they would be if were 10 years younger, but they're not bad. Should I come down with a case, I will probably ride it out fine. But I don't want to spread the damn thing.<br />
<br />
Pretty soon, this very infectious little bug is going to get close to Trump. I don't expect him to respond well.Doctor Clevelandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07326408523926507003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35762378.post-73205311899029345322019-10-31T12:05:00.001-04:002019-10-31T12:06:07.130-04:00Halloween Goofiness (Self-Promotion Edition)I have a <a href="https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-am-just-trying-to-have-a-civil-online-conversation-about-vampires">new piece</a> on <a href="https://www.mcsweeneys.net/">McSweeney's Internet Tendency</a> today, right on time for Halloween: "I Am Just Trying to Have a Civil Online Conversation about Vampires." Here's a taste:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: #fffefa; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212121; font-family: garamond-premier-pro, Cochin, Baskerville, Palatino, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 24px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.8em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 700px; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; width: 700px;">
Whoa there! That’s a pretty extreme claim. Surely you don’t mean to call <span class="caps" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 1em; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">ALL</span> vampires “blood-sucking ghouls?”<span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: #fffefa; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212121; font-family: garamond-premier-pro, Cochin, Baskerville, Palatino, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 24px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.8em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 700px; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; width: 700px;">
Have you ever donated to a blood bank? How is this any different?</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: #fffefa; box-sizing: border-box; color: #212121; font-family: garamond-premier-pro, Cochin, Baskerville, Palatino, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 24px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 1.8em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 700px; padding: 0px; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; width: 700px;">
I am not pro-vampire and I am not anti-vampire. I am just trying to have an objective discussion here without using loaded words like “kill.”</blockquote>
<br />
The rest is<a href="http://i%20am%20just%20trying%20to%20have%20a%20civil%20online%20conversation%20about%20vampires%20by%20jim%20marino%20%20%20whoa%20there%21%20that%E2%80%99s%20a%20pretty%20extreme%20claim.%20surely%20you%20don%E2%80%99t%20mean%20to%20call%20all%20vampires%20%E2%80%9Cblood-sucking%20ghouls/?%E2%80%9D%20%20Have%20you%20ever%20donated%20to%20a%20blood%20bank?%20How%20is%20this%20any%20different?%20%20I%20am%20not%20pro-vampire%20and%20I%20am%20not%20anti-vampire.%20I%20am%20just%20trying%20to%20have%20an%20objective%20discussion%20here%20without%20using%20loaded%20words%20like%20%E2%80%9Ckill.%E2%80%9D"> here.</a>Doctor Clevelandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07326408523926507003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35762378.post-53262797168661537152019-10-30T11:20:00.001-04:002019-10-30T11:23:21.628-04:00Why Booing Trump MattersVarious elite media types clucked, scolded, and clutched their pearls after Donald Trump got booed at the World Series and some of the crowd spontaneously chanted "Lock him up!" Because when ordinary voters do it, it's "uncivil." When Trump does it, it's the Voice of the People. But the talking heads' discomfort was about something more important: cognitive dissonance. Trump being booed threatens their worldview. The American media cannot accept the fact that President Trump is unpopular.<br />
<br />
Donald Trump is very unpopular. More than half the country dislikes him. The polls have always shown this. But the media and political establishments refuse to digest this. They always find a way to attach a but or a qualification.<br />
<br />
Unpopular, but that's just the other party. (Forget what the polls say about independents.) Unpopular, but only in the big cities (where most of the people are). Unpopular, but not in "Real America" (where most of the people aren't). Unpopular, but that's just the elite.<br />
<br />
There's no such thing as a small elite that makes up more than half the population. If you think about that for a second, it's obvious. So some people work very hard to avoid thinking about it for even a second.<br />
<br />
Having a random World Series crowd lustily boo the President of the United States threatens the pundits' world view. It undermines what they "know" to be true. So they organize all the excuses they can to protect the conventional wisdom from the facts.<br />
<br />
Here's the thing: Trump, as a reality TV type used to creating false appearances, has carefully managed every appearance of his Presidency, precisely because he was afraid of this. He knows he's deeply unpopular and is afraid other people will catch on. So this may be the first time in his presidency that he's been outside without hand-picking his audience.<br />
<br />
And look: people hate him. 100% of Trump's genuine public appearances have resulted in him being booed and jeered. The last time I saw him enter a public place where he didn't control the guest list was election day, when he went to vote in his local precinct. He got heckled. The video clearly captures some guy shouting, "You're gonna lose!"<br />
<br />
Donald Trump is an unpopular figure with a small, fiercely loyal cult following. That cult following is a real political fact, which needs to be confronted. But it is not at all the same as wider popularity, and it becomes impossible to think about him, or strategize against him, if you don't think about the actual situation. And yet, our media establishment refuses to take the depths of his unpopularity on board. They are not at all interested in what is really happening. They'd rather go out and interview one of his stalwart superfans again, as if that told us anything.<br />
<br />
Because Donald Trump is right about one thing: if the false perception of his popularity went away, that would change things.<br />
<br />
cross-posted from <a href="http://dagblog.com/politics/why-booing-trump-matters-29436">Dagblog</a>. All comments welcome there, not here.<br />
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<br />Doctor Clevelandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07326408523926507003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35762378.post-85608002261350326302019-09-26T17:35:00.000-04:002019-09-26T17:38:57.118-04:00Impeaching the Black SwanI have no idea how the impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump will play out. Neither does anyone else. The most important thing to remember when reading media coverage of the impeachment process is that the writer has <i>no</i> idea how the impeachment process is likely to go. This goes for everybody.<br />
<br />
The standard conventional wisdom has been that impeachment will backfire on the Democrats in a replay of 1998, when the Republicans impeached Clinton but made him more popular. There is no real reason to believe this. I'm not saying it won't happen. I'm just saying there's no evidence it will. There's only reason to expect an exact repeat of 1998, and I'm using the word "reason" loosely, is that a lot of political journalists covered 1998 and therefore assume this will go the same way. That assumption has nothing to do with logic or evidence.<br />
<br />
Impeachments of a sitting president are so rare that it's impossible to generalize about them. This has only happened three times in the last 230 years, and one of those times the president resigned before the process finished playing out. Every single instance of impeachment is an outlier. They are all black swans.<br />
<br />
There haven't been enough presidents of the United States, or even presidential elections, to constitute a valid statistical sample. But we fudge that, and run the numbers anyway, not always admitting how unreliable the results are. But no one can pretend that <i>three</i> is a statistical sample. That's ridiculous. No one tries to extrapolate anything from a baseball player's batting average after only three at-bats, or should. But this is more like a situation where only three games of baseball have ever been played. Predictions based on that are folly.<br />
<br />
Would you read a sex-advice book written by someone who's only had sex three times? 'Or someone who started having sex three times, and finished twice? Pontificating about how impeachments turn out is the same way. No one has enough experience to know what's likely, or what's normal, and what isn't.<br />
<br />
Over-generalizing from limited experience is a common mistake and a basic part of many political journalists' approach to their work. If you've ever heard a political journalist talking about some candidate's "Sister Souljah" moment, you've been given a good example. The journalist takes a thing that happened one time during Bill Clinton's 1992 primary run and treats it as something that must happen in all campaigns always. Woe betide the Democratic candidate without his or her Sister Souljah moment. But in fact there is no reason to expect the Sister Souljah incident to be repeated.<br />
<br />
There are some people who try to argue that a 2019 impeachment will be a replay of Watergate in 1974 rather than of Clinton in 1998. But there's no reason to think that, either. It's no more likely than a replay of 1998. This doesn't have to be a replay of anything. Something totally different could happen. If there were such a thing as smart money in this case, and there's not, it would probably be on <i>previously unforeseen outcome</i>.<br />
<br />
All three of the previous presidential impeachments were weird and therefore hard to compare to one another in any meaningful way. This one is also strange. The first impeachment was of a president who'd been vice-president before the president was assassinated, which had never happened before either, and he was not from the murdered president's party but the opposing party, because of a national unity ticket during the Civil War, and ... you get the idea. Totally unrepeatable circumstances. Watergate was also very strange. The Clinton impeachment was maybe the most "normal," in the sense of the impeached president's wrongdoing being the least unusual (which is not an excuse for illegality but a comment on its statistical distribution), but that arguably makes the Clinton impeachment unusual in its own right, another freak occurrence. Impeachments are so weird that you learn nothing from one experiment that you can generalize to the next. Nate Silver isn't going to help you out of this one.<br />
<br />
The circumstances we're faced with are extremely strange, and so is the current occupant of the White House. Trump doesn't fit many precedents or norms. He's a kind of black swan president himself, who sometimes gets treated in the press as if normal probabilities don't apply to him. Trump won despite being behind in the poll and despite losing the popular vote by a bigger margin than any electoral-college winner ever had, so there's a sense in the press that the normal political expectations don't apply and that Trump's awful poll numbers, for example, won't hurt his chances at reelection. (This is another version of the generalizing-from-one-result error. Trump won a massively unlikely victory last time, so some people expect him to win next time. It's a bit like expecting someone who just turned an unassisted triple play to do it again tomorrow.)<br />
<br />
It's not simply that we lack the experience to know what <i>will</i> happen or what will <i>likely</i> happen. We don't have the experience to foresee everything that <i>can</i> happen.<br />
<br />
If you've only rolled a pair of dice three times, most of the possible outcomes have never occurred. There are eleven basic outcomes, from rolling a two to rolling a twelve. After three rolls, you haven't seen most of those. In fact, you may not have seen the <i>most likely </i>outcomes yet. Seven is the most likely result, coming up once in every six throws. But if you've only thrown the dice three times, the odds of seeing at least one seven are only between 42 and 43%, less than half. You are more likely not to have seen a seven than to have seen one.<br />
<br />
That doesn't mean seven can't or won't happen on the next roll of the dice. It remains just as likely as it ever was, as do all the other results you haven't rolled yet. (Similarly, if you have only seen three at-bats of baseball, you may not have seen a hit, or a strikeout, or a walk, which doesn't make them any less likely in at-bat number four.) Expecting the next throw of the dice to produce the same result as the throw just before it, and discounting the possibility of an outcome you haven't previously seen, is obviously a mistake. But that is exactly how many people are discussing impeachment.<br />
<br />
The current thinking is that the party that impeaches the president will be punished by the voters, because that's the conventional wisdom about what happened last time. (We can debate that, too, but for purposes of this argument I won't.) No one talks about any political risk for the party defending its president, or facing a backlash from voters for shielding a president who's committed crimes, because that's never happened before. But "never happened before" in this case means "has not turned up in a minuscule and not necessarily representative sample of three freakishly-strange events." That something didn't happen in the first three tries doesn't make it impossible. It doesn't even necessarily make it unlikely.<br />
<br />
In the same way, the three results you <i>have</i> seen aren't necessarily the high-probability ones. You might have rolled snake-eyes or boxcars in the first three rolls, either of which only happens once every 36 times. A thing that happens only three percent of the time is something that could and does happen. To bring things back to American political history: in 1804 the United States had only had three vice-presidents. One of those three had shot another Founding Father dead. That didn't mean that future veeps had a 33.3% likelihood of killing a Cabinet secretary in a duel (which would get us up to sixteen killer vice-presidents at this point). It just meant that three examples is nowhere close to being enough to get a sense of what's normal. (Presidents Washington, Adams, and Jefferson weren't exactly a representative sample themselves.)<br />
<br />
We don't have enough of a historical track record to know what's likely, or even the full range of what's possible. As the late, great William Goldman said about the film business, nobody knows anything.<br />
<br />
Alea jacta est, kids. Buckle up.<br />
<br />
cross-posted at <a href="http://dagblog.com/impeaching-black-swan-29153">Dagblog</a>. Please post comments there, not here.Doctor Clevelandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07326408523926507003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35762378.post-61369709270682328902019-06-11T23:10:00.003-04:002019-06-11T23:12:10.464-04:00Hoarding, Archiving, and the Public Domain: Universal Vault EditionThe <i>New York Times Magazine</i> just dropped a piece on <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/magazine/universal-fire-master-recordings.html" target="_blank">the complete destruction of every master recording</a> in Universal's West Coast vault. I haven't even finished reading it, because it's so terrible I have to digest it in installments and take breaks. Hundreds of thousands of irreplaceable master tapes were destroyed.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: , "georgia" , "times new roman" , "times" , serif; font-size: 20px;">There were recordings from dozens of record companies that had been absorbed by Universal over the years, including several of the most important labels of all time. The vault housed tape masters for Decca, the pop, jazz and classical powerhouse; it housed master tapes for the storied blues label Chess; it housed masters for Impulse, the groundbreaking jazz label. The vault held masters for the MCA, ABC, A&M, Geffen and Interscope labels. And it held masters for a host of smaller subsidiary labels. Nearly all of these masters — in some cases, the complete discographies of entire record labels — were wiped out in the fire.</span></blockquote>
<br />
There are no more original recordings by Buddy Holly. They were all in the vault. The core of Chuck Berry's musical achievement burned. Decades of seminal work by Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Billie Holliday ... that's just the beginning of the list. Read it for yourself, but maybe only a few paragraphs at a time. It's hard to take.<br />
<br />
It's a major loss to the history of human culture. And the company had kept it hushed up. I applaud the <i>Times</i> on their investigative work.<br />
<br />
Oh, by the way, there were unreleased session masters in there, too. Lots of them.<br />
<br />
And here's the thing: those recordings were part of our shared heritage. On one level, that musical history belonged to all of us. But on a legal and financial level, they belonged to Universal Music Group, who kept them in part of a warehouse they rented from former sibling company Universal Studios, who let them incinerate.<br />
<br />
But a lot of the music in those recordings only belonged to UMG in the 21st century because copyright laws had been repeatedly changed. Everything in that vault recorded before 1952 would have been public domain before the fire hit, based on the laws in place when the music was actually recorded.<br />
<br />
Would that have changed anything? I don't know. We're talking about one-of-a-kind physical artifacts, which would have retained some of their value even after the music in them became public property. In fact, they might have had much more value, as unique assets that allowed UMG key advantages over their competitors. And maybe that would have changed the incentives.<br />
<br />
The incentives of nearly-interminable copyrights, which are allegedly designed to protect our artistic heritage, often align to damage or destroy it.<br />
<br />
Let's start with the fact that a lot of that music, including lots of unreleased music, was just sitting in that vault. Why hadn't UMG released it? Because they didn't have to. No one else could. The law gave them exclusive rights to those recordings, so they had no competitors. UMG could just keep all that music in the back, like the crate with the Lost Ark.<br />
<br />
We think of copyright as the right to publish something, but it is more accurately described as the right to <i>keep</i> work from being published. Exclusive rights to publish means that you can keep other people from publishing it. That's what copyright is on a practical level: the right to get the court to stop someone else from selling something. But if you have exclusive rights, you also have the right NOT to release something. No one can make you sell your property, right?<br />
<br />
What that leads to, when you have copyright terms lasting an unprecedented 95 years, is big music companies (and film companies, and book publishers, and, and, and) ending up owning a lot of old things that no longer have huge commercial appeal and that don't seem worth reissuing. But on the other hand, all those things collectively are the company's property, and there may be a way to make money on them someday, so there's no reason to let anyone else have them, ever. 95-year copyright means a lot of things get kept in the back room by private owners who don't really want them and don't want to let them go.<br />
<br />
This is how priceless cultural artifacts end up in a hoard when they should be in an archive. God forbid massive corporations give, or even lend, their libraries of priceless master tapes to libraries or museums that would protect them. Because, you see, that would let other people have access to that art.<br />
<br />
And the incentives change when your copyright protections run out. When you know that every other record company is about to release their own copies of Billie Holliday's <i>Stay with Me</i>, you have an incentive to reissue it yourself. And more, importantly, to remaster it with improved sound quality, exploiting those original master tapes. Maybe even to throw in some previously unreleased material. But if there's no competition, you don't get around to it.<br />
<br />
"But wait, Doctor Cleveland," some of you will say, "doesn't the long term of copyright create an incentive for companies to protect all those old masters?" The answer, evidently, is no. Not enough. Our intellectual property regime didn't cause this fire. But it sure didn't help. And that's a damned shame.<br />
<br />
cross-posted from <a href="http://dagblog.com/politics/hoarding-archiving-and-public-domain-universal-vault-edition-28325">Dagblog</a>. All comments welcome there, not hereDoctor Clevelandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07326408523926507003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35762378.post-78322348337209673732019-05-15T18:08:00.000-04:002019-05-15T18:28:31.838-04:00Shakespeare Wasn't PerfectSo The Atlantic has seen fit to publish more <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/06/who-is-shakespeare-emilia-bassano/588076/" target="_blank">"Shakespeare authorship" conspiracy-mongering</a>, this time masquerading as feminism by proposing a female candidate. But the piece doesn't quote even a single line of the real poetry that woman wrote. It can't, of course, because that would give the game away. If the piece let you read Emilia Bassano Lanier's <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/aemilia-lanyer" target="_blank">actual</a> <a href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/emilia-laniers-salve-deus-rex-judaeorum-1611" target="_blank">poetry</a> it would become dangerously easy to hear that Lanier sounds like herself, not like Shakespeare. So the "feminist" conspiracy theory is dedicated to <i>silencing the voice of an authentic woman poet</i>. (Nobody said it was a <i>good</i> masquerade.)<br />
<br />
The Atlantic piece rehashes the same old tired arguments that have been rebutted hundreds of times before. This isn't about real debate. But the biggest mistake is the assumption that Shakespeare is above criticism, and always has been. That has never been true. Shakespeare authorship conspiracies are outgrowths of an unhealthy hero-worship of Shakespeare, treating him as some infallible demigod.<br />
<br />
Don't get me wrong. I think Shakespeare is terrific. I wouldn't spend my professional life teaching and writing about him if I didn't. But I also think he's great enough that we can admit his failings. Bardolatry, the idol-worship of Shakespeare, keeps you from understanding him.<br />
<br />
So the Atlantic article begins by talking about how great Lady Macbeth is as a character (true enough), and rhapsodizes about how many other great female characters Shakespeare wrote. Then the first argument is basically that Shakespeare must have been a woman to write such great women. There's a little hedging, but that's the claim. Only a woman could write Lady Macbeth. If something seems wrong there, wait. One of the other examples is <i>The Taming of the Shrew</i>.<br />
<br />
Yes. That <i>Taming of the Shrew</i>. Where the wife is, uh, a shrew. Who gets <i>tamed</i>. That <i>Taming of the Shrew.</i> Which apparently only a woman could have written.<br />
<br />
And that, uh. Well. Kind of a surprise.<br />
<br />
Or it would be if we were applying normal everyday logic to Shakespeare's works. To most casual observers, and a lot of professional ones too, <i>The Taming of the Shrew</i> looks sexist, what with Petruchio starving his wife into submission. (That is not my interpretation. That is what the text itself says. He doesn't allow her any food until she knuckles under.) But maybe it gets better if we look more closely? Say if we apply some English-major tools, like looking hard at all the metaphors Petruchio uses to describe Kate? Oops, sorry, no, he's always comparing her to domesticated animals. Whoops. Actually worse than it looks from a distance.<br />
<br />
Now, Shakespeare being Shakespeare, there is a tradition of serious scholarship, much of it by feminist women, dedicated to saving the play from misogyny and discovering subtle anti-sexist messages inside it. We don't want Shakespeare to be a sexist pig, so we're going to work hard to get around any politics we don't agree with. I've read a lot of that criticism, and it's smart. But other feminist scholars disagree and say, Nope, sorry, all the stuff about dominating and subduing women means exactly what it says.<br />
<br />
What's different is saying, <b>No. <i>The Taming of the Shrew</i> is SO feminist that NO MAN COULD HAVE WRITTEN IT.</b> And that, to borrow a phrase from psychoanalysis, is crazy talk.<br />
<br />
Rather, it's a defense against cognitive dissonance, much like what we see with members of cults. The unpleasant truth has to be closed out. Our doomsday prophet isn't wrong! It's proof of how right he is! Shakespeare isn't a sexist with bad four-hundred-year-old politics! He's a feminist! In fact, he's the greatest feminist <i>ever</i>. He's such a great feminist that he <i>could not actually be a man</i>!<br />
<br />
Whoo boy.<br />
<br />
The <i>Atlantic</i> article's preferred ghost-writer, Emilia Lanier, also features in Shakespeare scholarship as a way to get past things that make modern readers uncomfortable. You see, her maiden name was Bassano (which is the name the <i>Atlantic</i> article uses, even though she didn't publish under it). And she had Italian heritage, and maybe-just-maybe Jewish heritage as well, so she got put forth forty years ago as a candidate for the Dark Lady of the sonnets. There's no reason to believe that. All we know is that the Dark Lady had dark hair and dark eyes, which doesn't narrow much down. We can't prove that Shakespeare and Lanier ever spoke with one another.<br />
<br />
But, you see, if we can say the Dark Lady was a Venetian Jewess, then some things that make us uncomfortable about act four of <i>The Merchant of Venice </i>cease to be problems. See, Shakespeare can't be an anti-Semite! He had a Jewish mistress! (As if an anti-Semitic Gentile marrying his Jewish mistress were not part of the plot of <i>The Merchant of Venice</i>.)<br />
<br />
As with <i>Taming</i>, there's a lively debate about whether <i>Merchant</i> is anti-Semitic or cleverly critiquing anti-Semitism. But having Emilia Bassano Lanier actually <i>write</i> <i>The Merchant of Venice</i> is three steps further into crazy land. If <i>Merchant </i>had actually been written by a Jew, that would be one seriously self-loathing Jew. It's a shonda, I tell you.<br />
<br />
The problem here is that Shakespeare is treated as above reproach, so obvious complaints have to be explained away. No one is allowed to speak ill of the divine William. But Shakespeare was not a god. He was human, and flawed, and when we refuse to see the things that make us unhappy or uncomfortable we are refusing to read him. Better to take him as he is, flaws and all.<br />
<br />
It isn't just the so-called anti-Stratfordians who do this. They merely express a mutant form of the excessive reverence that keeps many people from looking at Shakespeare honestly. It's not an accident that the authorship conspiracy theories don't start until 1850, when the Shakespeare cult had already taken full hold. Shakespeare got built up into a secular divinity, and then people looked at his all-too-human biography and decided it was uncomfortably ungodlike. So they looked for a better candidate. It's the literary-biographical equivalent of making up a divine ancestor for the founder of your tribe.<br />
<br />
The author of the <i>Atlantic</i> piece, like many other conspiracy theorists, claims that the "doubts" began in Shakespeare's lifetime. She went <a href="https://www.blogger.com/%3Cblockquote%20class=%22twitter-tweet%22%3E%3Cp%20lang=%22en%22%20dir=%22ltr%22%3EThe%20first%20alternate%20candidate%20(Francis%20Bacon)%20was%20proposed%20in%20the%201850s,%20but%20doubts%20about%20Shakespeare%20are,%20indeed,%20400%20yrs%20old%3C/p%3E%E2%80%94%20Elizabeth%20Winkler%20(@ElizWinkler)%20%3Ca%20href=%22https://twitter.com/ElizWinkler/status/1127294925429780481?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%22%3EMay%2011,%202019%3C/a%3E%3C/blockquote%3E%20%3Cscript%20async%20src=%22https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js%22%20charset=%22utf-8%22%3E%3C/script%3E" target="_blank">on twitter</a> to say so, and to complain that documents critical of Shakespeare had been suppressed by scholars. I mean, some of those documents get reprinted in collected editions of Shakespeare for students, and they were in my college textbooks, but I guess if you have to look in the back of the book that's a conspiracy or whatever.<br />
<br />
The real point is that none of those critical comments about Shakespeare are disputing that he wrote the plays. <i>They are saying that his plays suck</i>. The conspiracy theorists claim that the plays are too wonderful for mere William Shakespeare from Warwick to write himself. But the critics they point to as "evidence" are actually saying that <b>the plays are not good</b>.<br />
<br />
That seems unthinkable to us, but that's only because we've drunk the Kool-Aid. Not everybody liked Shakespeare during his lifetime. At least one person is on record liking Shakespeare as a human being but not liking his art, because he thought Shakespeare was a hack. Not that Shakespeare was too much of a hack to write <i>Julius Caesar</i>. He thought that <i>Julius Caesar</i> was hacktastic. No really.<br />
<br />
Shakespeare also had fans and admirers, lots of them. But he had haters, especially at the beginning and the end of his career. At the end of his life, and for many decades afterward, he was considered an intellectual lightweight whose plays were not learned enough. Not that he wasn't learned enough to write the plays. That the plays themselves were not learned. Not sophisticated. Not intellectual. Pretty good, for an old guy, but no John Fletcher and no Ben Jonson.<br />
<br />
This goes against everything our culture tells us about Shakespeare. But it's true. It's documented fact. For a lot of the 1600s the works of Shakespeare were not treated as lofty works of erudition. They were considered good, stupid, old-fashioned fun. A guilty pleasure.<br />
<br />
That's not the way we look at those plays any more, but it isn't necessarily wrong. And it isn't crazy. Shakespeare's worth taking seriously, but he's not supposed to be a religion. If he's never fun you're doing it wrong.<br />
<br />
cross-posted from <a href="http://dagblog.com/shakespeare-wasnt-perfect-28148">Dagblog</a>. Please post comments there, not here.Doctor Clevelandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07326408523926507003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35762378.post-65585104965593318972019-04-28T21:29:00.000-04:002019-04-28T21:31:06.178-04:00Should Our Allies Hack Our Elections?Two things about the Mueller report are not up for debate: the Russians interfered in our last election, and no one is going to do anything about that. One party is hobbled by the need for bipartisanship, and the other so blinded by partisanship that they'll treat attempts to ward off foreign interference as political attacks on their own side. While we're making this about Trump, out foreign adversaries are preparing to attack our elections again. We haven't punished them or done anything to stop them, so why would they stop? All we've done is give them time to improve their methods.<br />
<br />
But it won't just be the Russians. It will be other hostile intelligence services. The Chinese, certainly. The North Koreans. Maybe the Iranians, surely the Saudis. Everyone might as well try, since we've created no downside for them. They get a risk-free shot at influencing American policy against American interests, and if that fails they still get to weaken us. No matter what happens, we lose and they don't.<br />
<br />
The question, if we're going to allow foreigners to hack our elections without doing anything about it except saying they shouldn't, is at what point even our allies have to join in. If your nation's most important ally is allowing hostile powers to interfere in its elections, and those hostile powers want to weaken your alliances and harm your national interests, at what point do you have a duty to try to sway American elections yourself? When does it get so bad that the French have no choice but to hack us?<br />
<br />
Let me very clear: I am absolutely opposed to any foreign power meddling in our elections. I don't want the French or Germans or Canadians messing with this any more than I want the Russians and Saudis and North Koreans. Every foreign power should stay the hell out.<br />
<br />
But if we don't stop outside meddlers, outsiders will meddle, and the number of meddlers will only grow.<br />
<br />
When I am trying to think through something strategically, I try to imagine myself not as the other party, but as someone charged to give that other party the best advice possible. Instead of thinking about what I want, or what I hope or think or imagine the other side wants, I try to imagine what I would tell the other side to do if I were an adviser with a duty to lay out all the options. That gets me away from wishful thinking to strategic realities.<br />
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If I were a Canadian (or Frenchman or German) staffing Justin Trudeau or Emanuel Macron or Angela Merkel, I would have to put forward hacking the American elections as an option to consider, and I would have to make sure to offer the prime minister (etc.) a plan to do that effectively. No one counseling them can take that option off the table.<br />
<br />
If you're Justin Trudeau, you're facing a real danger of your neighbor to your south crashing your economy, and his own, and Mexico's, for no particularly good reason. The President of the United States routinely threatens to shut borders and disrupt North America's integrated supply chains. That is hard to stomach on its own, because if Trump crashes the whole NAFTA trade bloc Trudeau's voters will be out of work and nothing else will get accomplished but dealing with economic catastrophe. But it's all especially hard to take when this danger actually comes from a foreign power. Should Trudeau let Russia do this to Canada? Would you let them? Or would you do what it took to protect your country?<br />
<br />
Hacking our elections on the side of positive values and international commitments would be harder than just sowing chaos and tearing down responsible leaders, as the Russians have done. It has always been harder to build than to destroy, and it's almost impossible on Facebook. But on the other hand, our allies have a better sense of our culture than our enemies do. But if it comes to running psy ops against us, the Canadians have a built-in advantage. Who knows us better?<br />
<br />
This will of course, be a disaster, and part of a larger disaster, as friendly and hostile countries play cloak and dagger to swing Rust Belt electoral votes. It's a nightmare. It's also probably inevitable.<br />
<br />
The only way to stop it is to protect our country's elections, for real. And our political establishment isn't ready to do that.<br />
<br />
cross-posted from <a href="http://dagblog.com/should-our-allies-hack-our-elections-28041">Dagblog</a>. All comments welcome there, not here<br />
<br />Doctor Clevelandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07326408523926507003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35762378.post-19348548419432163992019-04-15T15:25:00.001-04:002019-04-16T14:44:52.541-04:00Alas for Gene WolfeGene Wolfe, one of the greatest of science-fiction writers,<a href="https://www.tor.com/2019/04/15/gene-wolfe-in-memoriam-1931-2019/" target="_blank"> has passed away</a>. His work was subtle and superb. Wolfe wrote paragraphs you could lose yourself in, like a labyrinth, and come out a changed person on the other side. He thought profoundly about what story-telling means as few other writers have. He was honored inside the genre and sometimes outside it, but deserved far more honor in both places. Any account of 20th-century American literature that omits Gene Wolfe is incomplete.<br />
<br />
There are many places to start reading Wolfe: his novella "The Fifth Head of Cerberus," and his epic masterpiece <i>The Book of the New Sun</i>. But I would put in a word for the short story "The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories," a meditative story which, depending on how you look at it, depicts neglected boy losing himself in a book of pulp science fiction or a book of pulp science fiction entering a boy's abusive environment to salvage him. It's the title story of the hilariously-named collection <i>The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories.</i> (Wolfe also wrote "The Death of Doctor Island," which won the Nebula, "The Doctor of Death Island," and, somewhat later, "The Death of the Island Doctor.")<br />
<br />
"The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories" was part of a famous and ghastly faux pas. The Nebula Awards MC, Isaac Asimov, actually announced at the awards banquet that "Island" had won that year's Nebula for Best Short Story, and Wolfe stood up to accept the award before Asimov realized that Wolfe was the runner-up. "No Award" had won for Best Short Story that year. If that sounds to you a bit like the story about Pynchon, the Pulitzers, and <i>Gravity's Rainbow</i>, both stories are from the same era and feature profound, boundary-pushing work. As I said, Wolfe was never honored enough, in his parish or out of it.<br />
<br />
Here are just the first two paragraphs of "The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories":<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Winter comes to water as to land, though there are no leaves to fall. The waves that were a bright, hard blue yesterday under a fading sky today are green, opaque, and cold. If you are a boy not wanted in the house you walk the beach for hours, feeling the winter that has come in the night; sand blowing across your shoes, spray wetting the legs of your corduroys. You turn your back to the sea, and with the sharp end of a stick found half buried write in the wet sand <i>Tackman Babcock</i>.<br />
<br />
Then you go home, knowing that behind you the Atlantic is destroying our work.</blockquote>
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Godspeed, Mr. Wolfe. You wrote in something far more durable than sand.<br />
<br />
cross-posted from <a href="http://dagblog.com/alas-gene-wolfe-27920">Dagblog</a>. All comments welcome there, not here.<br />
<br />Doctor Clevelandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07326408523926507003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35762378.post-44389714148888195592019-01-01T22:52:00.000-05:002019-01-01T22:52:01.787-05:00Your Public Domain Day Report, 2019: YES!!!Today, at last, is Public Domain Day in the United States. For the first time in decades, some American copyrights were actually allowed to expire naturally, a mere thirty-nine years later than planned. So after years of blogging, every January first, about what <i>wasn't</i> entering public domain and what <i>would have</i> entered public domain under earlier laws, I can finally blog about what <i>is</i> entering public domain.<br />
<br />
Various media outlets are covering this as a strange oddity, to the point that they're trying to explain what the public domain is to a puzzled and skeptical public. But the oddity is that we've kept so much in copyright for so long. What is happening today should not be news. It is a return to normal.<br />
<br />
So today everything that was originally published in 1923 becomes free for anyone to republish, repurpose, or reuse. If that seems drastic to you, remember that all of those copyrights were originally set to expire in 1980. After the copyright law was revised in the late seventies, those works should still have become public domain in 1999. Ninety-five years of copyright protection is much more than enough. <br />
<br />
Other places have already compiled lists of the big hits becoming publicly available: Robert Frost's Pulitzer-winning collection <i>New Hampshire</i>, with its smash hit single "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening," Harold Lloyd's classic short <i>Safety, Last! </i>(the one where he dangles off the clock), the Charleston, "Yes! We Have No Bananas," King Oliver's recording of "Dippermouth Blues" with his kid sidekick, Louis Armstrong. Hemingway's stories "Up in Michigan" and "My Old Man," become free for anyone to use today, and Brecht's <i>In the Jungle of Cities</i>, and Cather's <i>A Lost Lady</i>. Dorothy Sayers's detective Lord Peter Wimsey enters public domain as his first appearance does, but woe betide you if you try to publish a Wimsey mystery that draws on elements of his character from later, still-copyrighted appearances. 1923 was a busy year. We should have everything from 1962, or at least everything from 1943, but I'm happy to have the public-domain clock ticking again.<br />
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Perhaps more importantly, anyone is now free to rescue any obscure work from 1923 that they think deserves more attention. Want to digitize an old silent film before the last copy disintegrates? Want to republish a novel from 1923 that was totally ahead of its time? Go ahead. You don't have to track down the copyright holders to pay them. A lot of works that should have already been rescued in this way haven't, because after this long copyright holders are impossible to track down. One of the problems of making copyright terms so ungodly long is that it prevents salvage and restoration efforts, because the original copyright holders have lost track or lost interest.<br />
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We think of copyright as the right to publish, but what it really is, in practice, is the right to prevent publication. If you're making money of a novel that's in copyright, you can keep anyone else from publishing it. But copyright also means many things can't be published at all. And it frees the copyright holders, who are protected from competition, not to publish particular versions of the works they control. If Disney wanted to take the 1977 theatrical release of <i>Star Wars </i>out of circulation until 2073, they would have the legal right to do that.<br />
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So Vintage Books will be republishing Frost's <i>New Hampshire</i> this month, right on time, in an edition that recreates the woodcut illustrations from the original publication. (Those illustrations just entered public domain today, too.) No one's been able to buy a copy of <i>New Hampshire </i>as a stand-alone for decades. The original publisher, Henry Holt, could have brought one out any time they liked, pictures and all. But they didn't want to. They wanted to sell you Frost's complete poems, or a selection of favorites. Imagine the Beatles's rights-holders would sell you a box set, or a collection of greatest hits, but not <i>Sergeant Pepper's</i> or <i>Abbey Road</i>. If you wanted to see the actual book of poems that Frost put together, in the form he chose at that point in his career, you basically couldn't.<br />
<br />
Starting now, readers will have a choice. You can still get the collected poems from Holt. You can get an individual collection of poems from Vintage. If Holt doesn't like that, they can reissue <i>New Hampshire</i> themselves. Maybe they'll have to commission some extra bells and whistles to make their book more attractive to buyers, like a new introduction or notes or copies of Frost's drafts. The choices will only increase. You can combine "Stopping by the Woods" with its original illustration as a poster if you want, and that's not necessarily a bad idea. In fact, putting Frost back into circulation in a competitive market economy might give the old boy some new life. It's probably good for him. In fact, it should have happened thirty years earlier.<br />
<br />Doctor Clevelandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07326408523926507003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35762378.post-54724329295461795952018-12-24T12:39:00.001-05:002018-12-24T12:51:58.555-05:00Advent in Herod's KingdomLong before Christmas season was a consumer extravaganza starting just after Halloween, it was a period of solemn religious reflection starting four Sundays before Christmas. For some of us, it still is. In America that means it's both. I experience, and enjoy, the secular Christmas of eggnog, gift wrap, and Dean Martin, but I'm also mindful, maybe a bit more each winter, of Advent and its quieter demands. We're in the bleak midwinter, of the season and sometimes of the spirit. And midwinter's never seemed bleaker than when I watch the news.<br />
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Advent was originally a period of fasting, a shorter chillier Lent before the twelve days of Christmas feasting. Part of me still prefers that model to the current model of feasting until the 25th and then collapsing into post-holiday blues. I don’t diet in December, although maybe I should, but it’s worth a little sobriety and reflection. We are in the desert of short days.<br />
<br />
Jesus of Nazareth was not really born in winter. But he came in the midst of a spiritual winter. He came into a dispirited world. And, as our parish priest recently reminded me, Jesus was born into a political winter: into an occupied country, whose local puppet rulers had grown corrupt and whose imperial masters had let their own republic die. It was a season for cynicism, a solstice of despair. And the faint gleam of hope that Jesus brought was a long way off. As I’ve blogged before, Christmas is Christianity’s second holiday. Easter celebrates the fulfillment of hope. Christmas only gives a far-off sign, a cold shimmer on a winter night, to keep hope alive. The promise will be kept, but not yet. Not for years yet. You need to hold onto your faith for decades more.<br />
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Jesus was born poor and naked in Herod’s kingdom. And Herod was no good king. The gospel of Matthew says that Herod sent soldiers to kill the infant Jesus, and to massacre hundreds of children hoping to get the one they’d been sent for. That story isn’t historical, but it is a lesson about power and fear and how monarchs lead.<br />
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Medieval and Renaissance England loved to stage King Herod. He was one of the great roles of English theater. He ranted. Long, insane rants about how great and powerful he was, how he was the greatest of the great. An incarnation of the Sin of Pride, made ridiculous by that sin. Hamlet is still using Herod as the example of over-the-top acting: to “out-Herod Herod” is to out-ham the hams.<br />
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So Shakespeare’s vision of the Christmas holidays involved a ranting, egomaniacal king, an absurd boaster who was actually a foreign puppet. But that vainglorious buffoon sends armed men to tear children from their mother’s arms. There’s such a thing as getting too close to the original meaning of Christmas.<br />
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It’s Advent, and we live in Herod’s kingdom. Children are taken from their mothers, and the king is angry with the wise men. Virtue and kindness are out of favor. Despair comes easy. But Advent’s promise is hope in the distance: a star on the horizon, an obscure birth in a village far from fame or power. Tomorrow may not be better. Tomorrow may be even darker than today. But a better day is coming, in its own time, and when it comes no earthly power will be able to delay it.<br />
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What to do in the cold dark days between the promise and the fulfillment? Stay faithful. Make ourselves ready. Remember that Herod will not last forever. And hold tight to the advice the angel gives the shepherds: “Be not afraid.”<br />
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Happy holidays and merry Christmas.<br />
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<br />Doctor Clevelandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07326408523926507003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35762378.post-18108395883029718622018-12-23T16:12:00.001-05:002018-12-23T16:16:51.898-05:00Harvard and David HoggParkland survivor David Hogg, one of the most talented of that talented crop of activists, just got into Harvard. I’m happy for him. He was immediately attacked on social media by haters who called him unqualified. But he is a perfect example of Harvard’s long-standing admissions process, the “holistic” method they’re currently being sued over. That method is once again favoring a white kid. But it’s a reasonable and smart decision by Harvard.<br />
<br />
The first thing to remember is that only about 10% of Harvard students are admitted strictly on academics. Most people assume it’s a hundred percent. It’s ten. (This figure is from Jerome Karabel’s excellent book, The Chosen. I should disclose that I do almuni interviews for Harvard, but am not using anything I’ve been told by Harvard itself for this post.)<br />
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Even that ten percent won’t necessarily have the best GPAs; Harvard turns down hundreds of valedictorians every year. A perfect GPA doesn’t hurt, but it’s not what Harvard’s looking for. Those ten percent are academically exceptional “in Harvard departmental terms,” meaning exceptional in a particular field of study. These are the students admitted to make the faculty happy. Some are strong in other areas as well. But some are “pointy, in admissions lingo, rather than “well-rounded.” Think of a physics prodigy who’s only a B+ student in English, or the future Pulitzer-winning historian who just gets by in calculus class. The ten percent of “scholars” are not the kids who always do everything they can to get a hundred on every piece of homework, but the kids who show some exceptional talent and might eventually help an academic field of study move forward.<br />
<br />
Hogg’s application is private, and none of us know how it looks. But it’s not impossible that he’s in that ten percent. He intends to major in Government (what other schools usually call political science), and it may be that his hands-on experience in political organizing, and the skill with which he’s done it, is an asset that the Harvard Government Department wants in its classrooms. I am not saying that is the case; I have no idea.<br />
<br />
Of course, the odds are nine out of ten that he’s in the rest of the admitted class. What are those people admitted for, beyond their grades? Things like “leadership” and “character,” which may sound like empty buzzwords but which schools like Harvard take deadly seriously. Harvard’s core business is producing future leaders. Business leaders. Political leaders. Leaders in the arts. Leaders of non-profits. Religious leaders, if they can. They are successful and rich because their alumni, as a group, are rich and successful. They are not joking about this. And they have spent a lot of time and money fine-tuning their strategies for finding kids who will be successful alumni some day.<br />
<br />
They admit athletes in sports that will never make money, because they believe that leadership on the playing field prepares people for leadership in other fields. Does looking for future business leaders by recruiting the captains of prep-school fencing teams sounds crazy? Mark Zuckerberg was his prep school’s fencing captain. It sounds crazy, but it works.<br />
<br />
Harvard admits kids who led a huge number of clubs at their high school; at various points their admissions office has referred to kids like this as “a wheel” or “Mr. School.” (Think “Mr. [Name of School].”) They’re not looking for kids who’ve just done a lot of extra-curriculars; they’re looking for kids who show the ability to engage and motivate others. They’re looking for people who are already showing leadership skills. They know it’s easier to develop students whose personalities incline them toward leadership roles than trying to teach “leadership” to students with very different personalities. Harvard has introverts, for sure, but there are a lot of extroverts on that campus.<br />
<br />
Harvard also deliberately recruits students who’ve shown leadership in charity and volunteer work. There is, or used to be, a nickname for these applicants, too, taken from the building in Harvard Yard set aside for students’ charity work. Again, we’re not talking about the kids who participate in the annual blood drive, but about the kid who founded the annual blood drive.<br />
<br />
Harvard also looks for kids with special artistic talents. If they took Matt Damon over someone with slightly better grades, that wasn’t a mistake. They did that on purpose. Did Yo-Yo Ma have the best GPA in his high school class? It could not possibly matter. Admitting Yo-Yo Ma was the right move and it has worked out beautifully.<br />
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(If you’re a role-playing nerd, or a recovering role-playing nerd, let me break it down for you: Harvard doesn’t just look for intelligence, or even for intelligence and wisdom. It looks for charisma.)<br />
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If a university obsessed with looking for signs of leadership gets an application from David Hogg, who has already shown enormous poise and leadership on a national stage, the outcome should involve exactly zero surprise. Harvard searches high and low for kids who might someday show the kind of leadership that David Hogg has been showing in public every day now for months. He is the closest thing to a sure bet that the Harvard Admissions Office will ever see. If you’re screening for leadership, that kid is a slam dunk, the surest bet the Harvard Admissions Office could have.<br />
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Politics has nothing to do with this. Harvard wants to produce leaders from every party. There are plenty of conservative senators who went to Harvard. And frankly, as a Harvard alum who wishes the school well, I couldn’t be happier about this choice. That kid has far too much potential to let Yale have him. I want him to be one of us. So, bravo, Harvard. And David: welcome to the family.<br />
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<br />Doctor Clevelandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07326408523926507003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35762378.post-48826544718849524182018-12-18T16:33:00.000-05:002018-12-18T16:33:10.050-05:00My First Short Story in a WhileAs previously mentioned, I have a new short story out this month: my first in 21 years. I am very happy about this. And, as promised, here's a taste and <a data-cke-saved-href="https://www.apex-magazine.com/captain-midrise/" href="https://www.apex-magazine.com/captain-midrise/">a link to the full piece</a>. I hope you enjoy it.<br />
<blockquote>
The thing that broke your heart was, he could still fly. Nothing else to call it. There he was in those silly clothes, going wherever he pleased and not falling, as if gravity were just some tired social pretense and he’d grown too old to bother. But it <span class="scayt-misspell-word" data-scayt-word="wasn" data-wsc-lang="en_US">wasn</span>’t the same. </blockquote>
Doctor Clevelandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07326408523926507003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35762378.post-44819253654390788812018-12-05T00:03:00.001-05:002018-12-05T00:16:20.268-05:00Writing Short Stories, Then and NowI used to write short stories. Then, for many reasons, I stopped writing fiction. Today I had my <a href="https://www.apex-magazine.com/issue-115-december-2018/" target="_blank">first story</a> published in more than twenty years. (It will be posted on the web in two weeks, and I will link to it then. If you can't wait, the issue's<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07L22LDTX/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=apexsciencfic-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=B07L22LDTX&linkId=0a41858ebb40a9c1c4df9998351950d5" target="_blank"> for sale here</a>.) More stories may be along; we'll see. If it takes another twenty-one years, I'll have something to look forward to in 2039.<br />
<br />
It's a little strange returning to an art form after two decades away. One of the things it means is that in my old stories, no one has e-mail. Most people didn't. Or cell phones. Any temptation to dredge up old pieces is held at bay by the fact that they've become historical fiction.<br />
<br />
So what else has changed?<br />
<br />
Electronic submissions have made the business of sending out stories easier, and vastly sped up response times for science fiction markets. I loved the ritual of going to the post office, and I enjoy an occasional return to that, but in the old days after stories went in the mail you had to put them out of your mind for at least a couple of months. Now you sometimes get a response in less than a week. Sometimes it's still months, of course, but things are more efficient. <br />
<br />
(Literary magazines are still as slow to respond as always, or slower. Budget six months for a reply and be happily surprised if you hear back within three.)<br />
<br />
The small cool science fiction magazines I used to love, with their tiny press runs, have largely been replaced by cool online science fiction magazines. That's a useful change, especially in terms of how many people potentially read a story. I didn't have many links to share in the old days. I'm back to being a fiction rookie again, trying to break in just as I did when I was younger, except that rookies today get to play for bigger crowds.<br />
<br />
I am now older than my characters. In my twenties, my typical
science-fiction narrator was about 45 years old. I had real storytelling
reasons for that: one way to write about the future is to use a
character who's old enough to have lived through the key social or
technological change, and who remembers how things were before. On the
other hand, I used a middle-aged protagonist at least once in a
straight-realist story, so I don't know what I was thinking. My
go-to protagonists are still middle-aged, but now I don't have to
imagine what that's like. A 45-year-old narrator might just be me with
marginally better knees. And maybe some of the emotional tone I was reaching for as a younger writer, the rueful complexity I associated with my elders, is nearer to my midlife grasp. At least I'd like to think so. <br />
<br />
Fiction writing is no longer my vocation. I've learned there's something else I'm better at. I will never know how well I write either scholarship or fiction, because that's something you can never know about yourself. But I know which one I write better. The best thing I have ever written is a scholarly article about Shakespeare, and so is the second-best thing. Ten years from now, that will still be true. If I had been asked twenty-five years ago whether I'd prefer to be a better fiction writer or a better Shakespeare scholar, I wouldn't necessarily have chosen the way it's turned out. But no one gets asked. It's great luck to feel any vocation as a writer, and I'm grateful. It feels like ludicrous good fortune to discover I can still publish in a second field, years after leaving it behind.<br />
<br />
Knowing that fiction won't get me anywhere means I don't have to worry about getting anywhere with my fiction. I can write short stories because I don't have to make a living from them. It's no longer possible to make a living writing short stories. Even commercial markets (and I should say Apex Magazine has been both fair and generous) won't pay a month's rent or mortgage in America, and no one can sell a story every month. But my stories don't have to pay my rent. Neither do I need to use stories to get attention for my novel, or worse yet my unfinished novel, or get myself an agent. If I write a novel, I'll try to get it attention, and probably an agent too. But right now the point of my stories is to be the best stories I can make them. If I end up writing a novel, the point will be to create the best novel I can. There don't need to be other reasons.<br />
<br />
I suppose this is all to say that my ambition is to write fiction with "a professional's skills but an amateur's goals." But I lifted that phrase from the scholarly article I have coming out next month. I'm better at some things than others.<br />
<br />
cross-posted from, and all comments welcome at, <a href="http://dagblog.com/personal/writing-short-fiction-then-and-now-26903" target="_blank">Dagblog</a><br />
<br />Doctor Clevelandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07326408523926507003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35762378.post-16789199978323843042018-11-12T19:04:00.000-05:002018-11-12T20:13:34.075-05:00Where Is Donald? Veterans Day EditionToday, Veterans Day 2018, the President of the United States stayed in the White House. He did not go to Arlington National Cemetery to lay a wreath. He did nothing to commemorate Veterans Day. The excuse was a forecast of rain. This makes no sense.<br />
<br />
Two days ago, in France, Trump cancelled a trip to the Aisne Marne American military cemetery near Bellau Wood, about 50 miles outside Paris, with the excuse that Marine One has trouble flying in the rain. That's not a great excuse, but it's just barely plausible enough to get away with. And Trump took immediate blowback for skipping that ceremony. But Arlington is two miles from the White House, and it wasn't even raining. Rain was forecast for later. This is political malpractice, at best. Every President commemorates Veterans Day. It's easy. It costs you nothing. It looks awful if you skip it, let alone with combat troops in the field. And it's the right thing to do. (This is especially weird when Trump makes such a point of glorifying, or even fetishizing, the military.)<br />
<br />
I don't believe this was about the rain.<br />
<br />
The White House press corps was notified at 10 am that the President would have no more public events or movements for the day. So Trump's day ended early. Why?<br />
<br />
<b>Theory #1: Trump has taken ill.</b> Trump is 72 years old. He eats poorly. His general health is probably not great. And he just flew back from Europe.<br />
<br />
There's a long American tradition of not telling the public the full truth about the sitting President's health. Routine health problems get concealed, and sometimes major health problems that the public really might want to know about do, too. American presidents are always navigating middle or advanced age in the midst of an incredibly stressful job which takes a real physical toll on them. It's considered better for the country if we don't hear about every health setback.<br />
<br />
So one explanation is that the septuagenarian President is feeling too physically exhausted after returning from Paris to have any public events and needs the day off the recuperate. That's not great, because it suggests the President has even less energy or stamina than I feared, but it's less consequential than the other possible theories.<br />
<br />
Trump did tweet four times after 10 am (from 11:30 to a little before 2:30), but that's not strenuous. Maybe he could do that while taking a sick day.<br />
<br />
<b>Theory #2: Dealing with a Crisis</b>. When a president of the United States suddenly and unexpectedly clears out the daily schedule, it sometimes means a crisis has arisen and the president can't spare time for anything else. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK's press secretary, Pierre Salinger, was sent out to tell the press that all events had been canceled because President Kennedy had a cold. Most recent presidents would still have found an hour to get to Arlington, lay a Veteran's Day wreath, and motorcade back, but it all depends on how serious Trump perceives the (hypothetical) emergency to be.<br />
<br />
He could be holed up with his advisers trying to cope with a crisis of some description: maybe a military or other national-security crisis, maybe a political crisis, and maybe a legal crisis. All are possibilities for this Administration right now.<br />
<br />
If there were suddenly some national-security emergency, the public wouldn't necessarily know about it right away. The Cuban Missile Crisis, which was kept secret for days, is an obvious example. So was the terrorist threat against LAX back in the Clinton Administration, which had Bill Clinton demanding status updates every hour but which the public didn't hear about until the plot was disrupted. So it could be that Trump has been in the Situation Room all day, getting briefed by generals.<br />
<br />
But Trump is also facing a number of political and legal challenges, some of which overlap. His party has just lost the House, meaning subpoenas and investigations by Democrats. His appointment of Matthew Whitaker as Acting Attorney General may not take, with even some conservatives calling it unconstitutional, so the Whitaker Gambit to shut down Special Counsel Muller's investigation is looking less plausible.<br />
<br />
And there is the Mueller investigation itself, and related investigations, which may be progressing in ways that aren't yet public. There are a number of rumors about imminent indictments, so Trump may feel the investigation getting uncomfortably close.<br />
<br />
What was bothering another president of the United States would be a mystery, but Trump kept tweeting throughout the day, so we have a sense of what was foremost on his mind. It wasn't national security.<br />
<br />
He begins his online day at 8 am with three tweets basically threatening to pull the US out of its military alliances, which is a hell of a way to start Veterans Day but not something you do when you're trying to deal with a pressing security problem. At 8:44 he demands an end to vote-counting in the Florida elections, basically calling vote-counting fraudulent. At 10 am the press is told his schedule for the day is over.<br />
<br />
At 11:34 he tweets that the stock market will somehow tank if the House Democrats investigate him:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
<div dir="ltr" lang="en">
The prospect of Presidential Harassment by the Dems is causing the Stock Market big headaches!</div>
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1062005636488142848?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 12, 2018</a></blockquote>
<br />
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script><br />
<br />
At 12:31 he tweets good wishes to the firefighters and first responders fighting the California fires, an attempt to make up for some unhelpful things he said about those fires over the last week. At 2:13 he tweets an attack on Comcast, the parent company of NBC. At 2:21 he tweets that Saudi Arabia and OPEC should not cut oil production (after Saudi Arabia announced that it would cut oil production) and that oil prices should be lower. That tweet seems especially useless, but they all read like reactions to whatever news Trump found unwelcome.<br />
<br />
Overall, Trump seems upset and a little besieged: still upset enough by his party's election losses to try intervening in the Florida vote-count, anxious that about a stock-market downturn (as evidenced by both the stock-market tweet and the OPEC tweet), and angry at the media. The Comcast tweet may suggest that he's particularly upset at NBC or MSNBC at the moment. I read a president who's fearful about a number of developments. But my money is on the "Presidential Harassment" tweet revealing the core anxiety: the President is about to be under a lot more investigative scrutiny and he experiences that as a real threat.<br />
<br />
<b>Theory #3: The President Is Freaking Out</b><br />
<br />
But the President may not be holding strategy meetings on his political and legal woes. He may just be melting down. Maybe he's too upset and overwrought to go out to Arlington, even briefly, and canceled his daily schedule in a giant tantrum. Or maybe his handlers are scared of what he'd say today if he were in front of the press for even a minute. He's been noticeably unraveling since the day after the election. There's a real possibility that he hasn't gotten better, but worse. He may be cracking under the political and legal strain.<br />
<br />
I don't know what's going on. But I feel like we may eventually find out. Mark your calendars: Monday, November 12, when things got so bad that Trump couldn't celebrate Veterans Day.<br />
<br />
cross-posted from <a href="http://dagblog.com/where-donald-veterans-day-edition-26731">Dagblog</a>. All comments welcome there, not here.<br />
<br />Doctor Clevelandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07326408523926507003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35762378.post-9895434475399599102018-10-31T15:52:00.000-04:002018-10-31T15:52:32.220-04:00The Death of Whitey Bulger<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden">
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even">
I
never thought I would be upset to see Whitey Bulger die. But somehow
that happened. Because Bulger's death, like Bulger's life, promoted
organized crime.<br />
<br />
I'm seeing a lot of the usual nonsense about the man, filled with
praise he never deserved, from people who should know better. I <a href="http://dagblog.com/media/last-white-gangster-10863">blogged about the Whitey myth</a>, and the way he the press builds him up into a folk hero, back when he was first arrested:<br />
<blockquote>
Bulger is the last Irish-American mob leader who's likely to control
even a slice of the underworld in a major American city. He is
ethnically similar to many of the journalists and editors covering him,
and they obviously love writing about him. He's the last gangster who
looks like Jimmy Cagney, so even very good coverage of him gets tinged
with sympathy and sentimentality that Bulger has never come close to
deserving. It's a nostalgia trip. Reporters call Bulger "colorful," but
it's only because he's so very pale.<br />
</blockquote>
But I'm also seeing various tough-guy iterations of "he had it
coming." But Whitey Bulger died because the Mafia (the Italian-American
Mafia, which still persists in the Northeast) orchestrated a revenge
killing inside a high-security federal prison.<br />
<br />
The Mafia being able to murder snitches in a federal prison is a
very, very bad thing. Don't celebrate that because you didn't like that
particular snitch. I loathed and despised Bulger, but I'm not happy
about La Cosa Nostra having an 89-year-old man beaten to death in his
cell.<br />
<br />
Bulger was killed because he crossed the Patriarca crime family, the
New England mob, and therefore by extension their godless
Genovese-Family patrons in New York. And to hell with Whitey, but to
hell with those guys even more.<br />
<br />
Those of who've still bought into the whole colorful-gangster bullshit about Whitey are invited to check out my post <a href="http://dagblog.com/media/last-white-gangster-10863">here. </a>Those
of you whooping it up over his brutal death (some of whom are the same
people), just remember: Whitey Bulger died to make other criminals safer
from punishment. Safer to rob you and safer to kill you. Pardon me if I
don't applaud.<br />
<br />
cross-posted from, and all comments welcome at <a href="http://dagblog.com/death-whitey-bulger-26607">Dagblog </a><br />
</div>
</div>
</div>
Doctor Clevelandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07326408523926507003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35762378.post-36792082958553825892018-10-26T16:10:00.000-04:002018-10-26T16:13:07.642-04:00Talk Like Crazy People Are Listening Dear politicians: talk like crazy people are listening to you. Because they are. We're a big country, with hundreds of millions of people and no guaranteed health care. That means there are a lot of Americans who are mentally ill, and a lot of those people can't get proper treatment. Every time you speak in public, remember that there are some disturbed people who will take what you say, whatever you say, seriously, and that they might act on it.<br />
<br />
We've been having a lot of public debates about "responsibility," 'unity," "civility," and other complicated, nuanced words that are easy to twist around to mean different things. So I'm going to keep it simple. Every public figure speaking in public has got to remember that some crazy people are listening. Don't say anything that those people will understand as a call to violence.<br />
<br />
But won't mentally ill people misunderstand things, and hear calls to violence that weren't intended that way? Yes. Exactly. They may well hear you calling for blood when you thought you were carefully staying on the right side of the line. That's why you should get nowhere near the line, at all, ever.<br />
<br />
This rule is not hard. Don't act like it's not simple.<br />
<br />
There are troubled people watching TV and listening to the radio and reading the internet all day, and they have trouble sorting out what's real. Don't scare those people into using bombs or guns. <br />
<br />
But what if the talk-like-crazy-people-are-listening rule cramps my style? What if it takes away my big rally lines that excite the crowd, or the new spike in my ratings? What then?<br />
<br />
Then you're risking people's lives for personal gain. What good do you think is going to come of that?<br />
<br />
cross-posted from <a href="http://dagblog.com/talk-crazy-people-are-listening-26556">Dagblog</a>; all comments welcome there, rather than hereDoctor Clevelandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07326408523926507003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35762378.post-40103593913616742222018-09-13T23:23:00.001-04:002018-09-14T18:36:17.840-04:00What Just Happened in Northeast Massachusetts [UPDATED]Dozens of fires and explosions broke out in three small Massachusetts cities tonight. Lawrence, Andover, and North Andover have been evacuated, and power has been cut off to prevent more houses from blowing up. People are injured. Many have lost their homes. And at least one man is dead, because his chimney fell onto his car. <br />
<br />
The news isn't talking about causes except to say it was an overpressurized gas line. How did the gas line get overpressurized? How did it get so overpressurized that dozens of separate buildings, across three separate municipalities, actually exploded? No one is willing to say yet, because the obvious culprit is an energy company and speaking too soon might get a paper or TV station sued. The Governor of Massachusetts has gone on TV to say that we can talk about causes after people are back in their homes, which is fair enough as far as it goes. But there's still no timeline for getting people back in their homes.<br />
<br />
But it's hard to see a whole lot of other explanations here. Columbia Gas of Massachusetts was planning to do some upgrades in the area today, and now all three cities are a disaster area. And the company's enjoying a whole lot of public deference, considering those facts.<br />
<br />
I still have friends in that area, because I went to high school in Lawrence. I was actually planning a visit for next week.<br />
<br />
For those of you who aren't from the area, Lawrence is one of the poorest cities in Massachusetts, with a heavy minority and immigrant population. It's squeezed right up against the very affluent Andover and the more economically mixed North Andover. Lawrence has three times the population of the other two cities, squeezed into a smaller area. It was basically carved out as a separate city for factory workers back when the Merrimack River was a booming industrial belt. The point was that those workers would not share a town with their more affluent neighbors.<br />
<br />
Lawrence is more than three-quarters Latinx. It has the lowest per-capita income in Massachusetts. Andover is more than ninety percent white, with a median household income over a hundred and ten thousand a year. And it's the home to an extremely wealthy prep school, Phillips Andover Academy. Phillips Andover is the boarding school where the Bushes went. So somehow this disaster managed to set both a poor city and a rich one on fire.<br />
<br />
I'm not going to exaggerate Lawrence's poverty. It's not some fearmongering cable-news fantasy of The Ghetto. It has some perfectly nice middle-class neighborhoods. The school I went to, a regional Catholic school, has a good share of affluent students. But Lawrence definitely did not need this, and it won't be easy for a lot of the people affected to recover. This is a major disaster, and Columbia Gas needs to explain.<br />
<br />
[UPDATE: Columbia Gas of Massachusetts is now officially the villain here, just because their disaster response has been so un-responsive. The Governor, Republican Charlie Baker, has declared the region a disaster area so he can take cleanup away from Columbia Gas and hand it over to another, more functional, gas company. This happened after Baker and Elizabeth Warren got a tour of Lawrence 1. filled with catastrophic damage and 2. empty of Columbia Gas repair crews. The Mayor of Lawrence denounced Columbia at length, in damning detail, on live TV. So the most likely suspects behind the disaster have been conspicuously unhelpful in fixing their damned mess.]<br />
<br />
cross-posted from <a href="http://dagblog.com/what-just-happened-northeast-massachusetts-26181">Dagblog</a>. All comments welcome there, not here.Doctor Clevelandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07326408523926507003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35762378.post-78400907063679565082018-09-05T21:35:00.000-04:002018-09-05T21:39:09.077-04:00I Am Part of the Resistance Inside King Lear's CourtKing Lear is facing a test to his monarchy unlike any other faced by a
fictitious British monarch. It is not just that he parceled out his
kingdom and left himself nothing. Or that the country is bitterly
divided between his scheming, ungrateful daughters. Or even that the
kingdom may soon be overwhelmed by French invaders.
<br />
<div>
</div>
<div>
The tragedy – which he does not fully grasp – is that many of his
own followers are working diligently from within to frustrate his goals.</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
I would know. I am one of them.</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
To be clear, ours is not the mealy-mouthed “resistance” of Cordelia
and her sore-loser followers. We strongly believe in the division of
this kingdom into unstable warring duchies. But we believe our first
duty is to unchecked, unreasoning monarchical authority, and the King’s
continued ravings bring autocratic one-man rule into disrepute. That is
why many of his followers have vowed to do what we can to preserve
tyrannical feudalism while thwarting King Lear’s more misguided impulses
until his o’erburdened heart cracks and can bear no more.</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
The root of the problem is that the King is outdoors, yelling at
clouds. We are not even sure if he knows it’s raining. But whatever he
is shouting for us to do, we’re not doing it. We could be hit by
lightning out there. If he asks later, we’ll just pretend we don’t
understand iambic pentamenter.</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
Don’t get me wrong. There are bright spots. Both Regan and Goneril
are pretty hot – like, at least eights. We’re all much bigger deals at
court than we were before everyone got banished. And seeing the old Earl
of Gloucester’s eyes put out was, face it, pretty hilarious.</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
But these good things have come despite – not because of – King
Lear’s leadership, which is impetuous, petty, and obsessed with setting
up obscure punch lines for his Fool.</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
He veers off into long, ranting monologues that force us to check
our footnotes. He shows up to important meetings dressed mostly in
wildflowers. And he can angrily berate the furniture under the
impression that it is part of his family.</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
This erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren’t for
unsung heroes like us. Some of his courtiers have been cast as villains.
But in private, we have gone to great lengths to keep his demented
soliloquies out on the storm-tossed heath where they belong.</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
It may be cold comfort as Britain descends into bloody civil war,
but you should know that there are adults in the room. We fully
recognize what is happening. And we are trying to keep King Lear from
messing it up for us.</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
So when King Lear say orders us to execute a stool for the crime of
being an ungrateful child, we definitely don’t do that. And we don’t go
bothering Goneril or Regan. We just take away the stool. Problem
solved! And also, more office furniture for us.</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
Also, whenever Lear has one of his crazypants "character-growth"
insights about doing more for the poor naked wretches or whatever, we
don’t do that either. I mean, that money could go for something useful.
We just say, “Ooooh, Your Majesty, how profound! It’s like the mad have
really been the sane ones all along! Who’s really blind here, and who’s,
like, <i>symbolically</i> blind?” Then he forgets and moves on to something else.</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
This isn’t vulgar flattery. This is artful, steady flattery. Thou. Art. Welcome.</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
Given the instability many have witnessed, there were early
whispers of crowning some capable, legitimate successor in King Lear’s
place to guide our country back to peace and sanity.. But no one really
wanted to precipitate a dynastic crisis, especially when basically we
already have one. So we will do what we can to steer this monarchy until
-- one way or another -- it’s all over. Really, how much worse could it
get?<br />
<br />
<br />
cross-posted from <a href="http://dagblog.com/politics/i-am-part-resistance-inside-king-lears-court-26089">Dagblog</a>; all comments welcome there, not here </div>
Doctor Clevelandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07326408523926507003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35762378.post-10761531825890764152018-08-18T18:31:00.000-04:002018-08-18T22:41:19.001-04:00Some Bodies Matter More Than Others: The Judith Butler ThingThis week I started <a href="https://www.thepetitionsite.com/750/313/841/judith-butler-must-resign-as-mla-president-elect/" target="_blank">an online petition calling for Judith Butler to resign</a> as president-elect of the Modern Language Association. If you're a member or past member of MLA, I'd invite you to sign it and to share it as widely as you are comfortable doing. Here is a letter to the <a href="https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/letters/judith-butler-must-step-down-as-president-elect-of-the-mla/" target="_blank">Chronicle of Higher Education</a> making a similar case.<br />
<br />
I started this petition because Butler and a bunch of other leading scholars <a href="http://leiterreports.typepad.com/files/butler-letter-for-avital-ronell.doc" target="_blank">sent a letter</a> to NYU to intervene in a Title IX investigation in which a professor had been found responsible for sexually harassing a graduate student. [NOTE: Link opens Word document.] The case had already been adjudicated, and the verdict was in. Butler and various other big-shots were trying to lean on NYU to minimize the harasser's punishment. They should all know better. But what sets Butler's action apart is not just she was the first signature on the letter but that she explicitly signed as: <br />
<blockquote>
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<span style="color: #212121; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Judith Butler, Maxine Elliot Professor, Department of
Comparative Literature, University of California, Berkeley, President-Elect,
Modern Language Association (2020)</span><span style="color: #212121; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"></span></div>
</blockquote>
<br />
The last part is the biggest problem for me. Because the point of including that title is to add more clout to Butler's signature. That letter is about marshaling clout on the abuser's behalf. And it is beyond outrageous to use the Modern Language Association's collective authority to try to protect a senior scholar who's abused a junior one.<br />
<br />
The other signatories of that letter have embarrassed themselves, maybe
disgraced themselves. But they were not explicitly speaking as the
leader of a major scholarly organization. Butler was. And that makes it
impossible for her to lead that organization effectively after this. <br />
<br />
I have no particular connection to this case. I don't know the victim, or the harasser, or Butler. I am an obscure scholar, rather than a star like Butler and her co-signatories. I am just a concerned bystander: a member of the MLA who has grown tired of the endless excuses made for sexual harassment in our profession. I heard too many of those excuses when I was a graduate student and couldn't speak up without ending my own career. Now I'm far enough along to have tenure and be safe from reprisal, but perhaps not so far along that I've completely forgotten how this looks from the bottom. If you're another scholar who's tired of the excuse-making and wagon-circling, please sign. <br />
<br />
Most of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/13/nyregion/sexual-harassment-nyu-female-professor.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news" target="_blank">the attention this case has gotten</a> has been about the role-reversal angle, because in the accused harasser is a woman and the harassed student is a man. That's extremely rare. The vast majority of academic sexual harassment cases involve male professors harassing female students. There's also an unhealthy share of male students being harassed by other men and female students being harassed by other women. (For what it's worth, the victim in the NYU case is a gay man, a traditional target of harassment.) Female professors harassing men is not something that never happens, but it's very unusual, because that particular abuse of power turns out to be harder to get away with than the others.<br />
<br />
But the gender switch didn't affect Butler et al.'s letter in the slightest. It slavishly follows the establishment playbook used to get male harassers off the hook. It talks about how brilliant and important the harasser is, it talks about what a great person the harasser is socially, threatens the university with blowback if they dare to punish the offender, and personally attacks the harasser's victim. It's the familiar structural problem of professors abusing doctoral students (who are extremely professionally dependent upon their dissertation director, and therefore extremely vulnerable to harassment) and then trying to use their pull to escape consequences. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.<br />
<br />
Many people have various beefs with Butler that I don't. Some people are hostile to feminism, and want to use this incident to discredit feminism. Some people are hostile to literary theory, and want to discredit theory. Some people are hostile to Butler over the boycott-Israel movement, and would like to see her discredited ... you get the idea. I don't share any of those agendas.<br />
<br />
Judith Butler is very smart. Her work is useful. I've taught it to students, and would teach it again, this instance of bad behavior notwithstanding. Literary theory is useful and valuable. Feminism is great. And I have no position on the boycott and anti-boycott movements; I am much more interested in the fight against sexual harassment in the academy. The MLA should fight to protect its junior members. If it won't, it doesn't matter to me what resolutions the organization does or doesn't pass. <br />
<br />
Nor do I think for a second that feminism itself is discredited by this incident. Butler, and the other high-powered feminists who signed that letter, are not the only smart feminists in the world, and you can find lots of feminists fiercely objecting to their behavior.<br />
<br />
Men harassing female students is by far the biggest problem here. But you can't end that problem while giving the rare women who harass men a pass. Yes, women have much less power in the academy than men, and still face enormous misogyny. And that is exactly why letting an occasional powerful woman off the hook will make it impossible to stop men's abuses.<br />
<br />
It will never be the case that women in the academy are allowed a set of privileges that men are not. Men will always get away with at least as much as women, and almost always more. There is no achievable future in which women can still harass students but men cannot. Social privilege doesn't work that way. (By the same principle, there is no achievable future in which queer faculty can get away with sexual harassment but straight faculty can't.) If you preserve the old excuses and dodges for a handful of abusive women, abusive men will keep running wild.<br />
<br />
Precisely because the number of female abusers is so small compared to the number of female victims, gender-neutral enforcement of Title IX rules still represents an enormous win for women. Holding a small number or powerful women accountable is a small price to pay for protecting thousands, and it is literally thousands, of less powerful women.<br />
<br />
Remember, abusers can't do it alone. They rely on enablers, and in academia the enablers have been extremely reliable. We talk about the abusers themselves and the administrators trying to make problems go away quietly. But the real infrastructure of abuse is provided by colleagues. Sexual harassment flourishes in our profession because the rest of us run interference. We look the other way. We hope the rumors aren't true. We give colleagues the benefit of the doubt, but give their victims only doubt. We write letters of support. We have a friendly word with the Dean. Or we just keep our head down and stay out of it, as if staying out were an act of neutrality. Abusers flourish in our field because of our collective connivance, because of what we do but most of all what we fail to do. As a dearly-missed professor once said to me about <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/146049/a-professor-kind-like-priest" target="_blank">a case of sexual abuse</a> in my old graduate department, "These are supposed to be enlightened guys, but they stick together like the fucking mafia." It's not any one criminal act that's the problem. It's the ongoing structure of conspiracy. And women, as well as men, have helped to protect the abusers.<br />
<br />
The abuser in the NYU case is one person who harmed another. The letter trying to get that abuser out of punishment is an institutionalized response aimed at enabling future abuses. Protesting against one instance of punishment is only a means to the larger end of preserving senior faculty's privilege of impunity. That is what needs to end. No more letters to the deans pleading for harassers. No more lending our reputations to wrongdoers' cause. Judith Butler wasn't just standing up for one colleague in trouble. She was standing up for an old, corrupt, and long-standing way of doing business. The time for doing business that way is over. We should never look back.<br />
<br />
cross-posted from <a href="http://dagblog.com/social-justice/some-bodies-matter-more-others-judith-butler-thing-25909">Dagblog</a>. All comments welcome there, not here.<br />
<br />Doctor Clevelandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07326408523926507003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35762378.post-68642477842670707522018-07-25T17:05:00.001-04:002018-07-25T17:13:27.662-04:00The International League of Dark MoneyDonald Trump and Vladimir Putin are bent on destroying the peaceful international order that the United States built after World War II. They're hostile to the World Trade Organization, NATO, you name it. But Trump is not the only complicit American here. Because Trump and Putin are champions are a very different, more lawless international order, which many wealthy Americans participate in and derive benefit from: the international league of dark money.<br />
<br />
Whatever else does or doesn't bind Trump and Putin, they're united by their dependence upon international money laundering, which moves large amounts of cash across borders in disguised transactions. Putin's oligarchs routinely move their dirty money into the West through shady means, and Trump's real estate business has become heavily dependent on Russian customers whose money should not be examined too closely. The Trump Organization may not actually launder money, but they accept a lot of well-fluffed money straight out of the laundry room. Both Trump and Putin have strong vested interests in keeping the dark money flowing and keeping it out of sight.<br />
<br />
They're not alone. There is a robust international infrastructure of shell companies, off-shore banks, and shady middlemen devoted to moving money around while disguising where it comes from. This is especially convenient for people who can't admit where how they got that money or even that they have it. Money laundering allows corrupt government officials in Russia or Nigeria to spend their graft in the West. It allows organized criminals to spend their profits from drugs, gun-running, and human trafficking. And it allows international terrorists to fund operations overseas. So there are strong reasons for the world community, working through the post-WWII international order, to close the flow of laundered money down.<br />
<br />
Without access to money laundering, big-time criminals would not be able to use most of their ill-gotten money, because to spend it they would need to explain where they got it. Without access to money laundering, money stolen by corrupt officials could only be spent in the same country those officials help to impoverish. Without money laundering, terrorists could not support sleeper cells in foreign countries or fly volunteers to battle areas. A world where every bank transaction was transparent and on the level would be a better and safer place.<br />
<br />
But the money-laundering infrastructure also enables tax evasion. (I mean, no one launders money so they can pay taxes on it.) And many wealthy and prominent people in America and the rest of the developed West use their legal resources to evade taxes. They use shelters and shell companies and foundations to avoid paying their full share of the tax burden, to pass on multi-million-dollar inheritances tax free, and to disguise some of the ways they spend their money. Take a look at the <a href="https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama-papers/" target="_blank">Panama Papers </a>some time, which opens to a window on a single law firm's efforts to get around tax laws for its clients. You see both Russian oligarchs and Western celebrities and politicians, including a former British Prime Minister, in those pages. Lots of nominally law-abiding people rely on offshore accounts and tax havens and largely fictitious legal entities to keep from paying taxes like the rest of us. Closing down the money-laundering system on criminals and terrorists would also close down the tax-evasion system on otherwise legitimate rich people. After all, they're the same system.<br />
<br />
Trump and Putin want a world where legal and financial accountability stops at every border, where moving money overseas moves it out of the authorities' sight forever. The existing maze of international loopholes, which already allows tens of billions of secret dollars to flow through anonymous bank accounts, is still too transparent for them. So they want to destroy any lawful international agencies which might have the tools to close down the dark money. They want a world without effective international institutions, because only international institutions can effectively fight money laundering.<br />
<br />
But you will find plenty of well-placed Americans and Europeans who don't want international financial controls, either. They want their shell companies and make-believe charitable foundations and secret accounts in the Caymans. They might not care much for Putin. They might detest the jihadists or the Mafia or the Crips. But they won't support the steps necessary to close down Putin or the Crips, because that would mean closing down other businesses that they actually own. It is just one of the many ways that elements of our ruling class are complicit in Russia's attacks on this country.<br />
<br />
cross-posted from <a href="http://dagblog.com/world-affairs/international-league-dark-money-25668">Dagblog</a>; please comment there, not here<br />
<br />
On the Doctor Clevelandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07326408523926507003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35762378.post-87684983918703598322018-06-10T19:42:00.001-04:002018-06-10T19:42:54.180-04:00What Kim Jong-Un Wants<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden">
<div class="field-items">
<div class="field-item even">
What
does Kim Jong-Un want from this week's summit from President Trump?
More than anything else, he wants what he has always wanted, like his
father and grandfather before him: to split the U.S. off from its allies
South Korea and Japan. The worst part is, he is already getting what he
wants.<br />
<br />
Now, I am not in any way an expert on Korea. But no Korea experts are
involved, or apparently allowed to participate, in Trump's North Korea
summit. Trump himself has openly refused to prepare for this summit,
raving about how his first impression of Kim's body language will tell
him everything he needs. [Pro tip: if you are planning to make a crucial
strategic decision based on an adversary's body language, do not let
the adversary know that. Too late, I understand.] That I know more about
Kim Jong-Un's goals than the President of the United States is a
scandal. I'm just a random person who tends to remember what he reads in
the newspaper.<br />
<br />
One of North Korea's longstanding diplomatic goals, maybe on a
tactical level their most important goal, has been bilateral peace talks
with the United States, meaning two-way talks, just us and them. The
United States has refused, insisting since the George W. Bush
administration on <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/6partytalks">six-way talks instead</a>.
And for many years, we did participate in those six-way talks, refusing
North Korea's requests for one-on-one sidebars. Our official reason for
demanding six-way talks has been that if the North Koreans are building
nuclear weapons, all of North Korea's neighbors need a seat at the
table. I mean, that's true enough.<br />
<br />
The six-party talks from 2003 to 2009 involved the U.S., North Korea,
Russia, China, South Korea, and Japan. Why would we insist on the
presence on Russia and China, who aren't always particularly helpful to
us? Because we refused to be in a room with North Korea without South
Korea and Japan there. The North Koreans could bring their friends,
because we weren't showing up without ours. If North Korea wanted to
talk to us, they have to talk to our regional allies, too. Because we
were never hanging Japan and South Korea out to dry. That was our
longstanding, bipartisan position.<br />
<br />
Trump's two-way summit gives the North Koreans what they have long
wanted: a chance to deal with us separately from the South Koreans. Just
giving them that is a major concession. A lot of people have focused on
the fact that giving them a presidential-level meeting is also a
massive gift, and that the normal plan would be for Kim to have to earn a
face-to-face with POTUS by giving concessions and having a deal almost
done. But any meeting with the North Koreans that doesn't involve the
South Koreans is an even bigger concession, maybe the biggest.<br />
<br />
Kim Jong-Un wants, more than anything, to get the United States out
of his potential sphere of influence. Because what he ultimately wants
is South Korea. He doesn't want to negotiate peaceful reunification. He
wants to unify Korea by taking the rest of it over, and the thousands of
American troops in South Korea make that impossible. If he could do
that without a shooting war, negotiating reunification on his terms by
using the threat of military force, I think he would. But he may also
like his chances in a straight military rematch with South Korea. But he
knows he can't fight us. He wants us to leave, so he can use his
military muscle on South Korea (and, secondarily, to intimidate Japan).
This is why there was a flare-up a few weeks ago after regularly
scheduled joint drills between the U.S. and South Korean military. Kim
hates that most of all.<br />
<br />
Now a normal president of the United States roped into two-way talks
with the North Koreans would still not sell the South Koreans out, or
the Japanese. Obama and Bush refused to hold two-way talks with Kim's
government, but if they had they would have kept America's commitments
to its allies clearly in mind. But those commitments have never fully
entered Trump's mind. He does not value America's international
commitments and instinctively dislikes them. Jis recent misbehavior at
and after the G-7 summit makes that all too clear. And Trump is,
unfortunately, stupid. He is more than capable of giving away Japan and
South Korea's security without thinking.<br />
<br />
In fact, he is stupid enough that he's eager to do that. He's already
mouthed off about pulling all US troops out of South Korea, which would
be Kim Jong-Un's geopolitical wet dream, and Trump is not smart enough
to make Kim trade for that. He's talked about that as something <em>he </em>wants.
It's like holding a summit with Fidel Castro in 1964 and suggesting,
during the run-up to the meeting, that it might be easier just to get
rid of Miami.<br />
<br />
Can Trump be trusted to protect South Korea's interests? Two years
into his administration, he has not appointed an ambassador to South
Korea. I don't mean hasn't gotten one through the Senate. I mean, hasn't
given the Senate a name. Any name. And Japan is one of the G-7
countries at which he was venting his intemperate toddler fury this
week. You tell me: can a man who gets into a fight with our closest ally
over milk be trusted to protect the security of our Asian allies?<br />
<br />
Kim Jong-Un has already won. This week, he gets to find out how much he's won.<br />
<br />
cross-posted from <a href="http://dagblog.com/world-affairs/what-kim-jong-un-wants-25337">Dagblog</a>. All comments welcome there, rather than here. <br />
</div>
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</div>
Doctor Clevelandhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07326408523926507003noreply@blogger.com0