Tag: Andrew Sullivan

John Self defends the place of bloggers in the firmament of literary criticism against attacks from Sir Peter Stothard, editor of the TLS and Man Booker Prize judge:

The books that [Sir Peter] Stothard and I both want to celebrate – those with
“extraordinary and exhilarating prose” – tend to come from the edges
rather than the centre, and increasingly from small presses. He would
surely agree, as his panel has this year chosen a Booker shortlist on which half the titles come from tiny independents: Salt, And Other Stories and Myrmidon.
These are the publishers who get more attention from bloggers than they
do from the literary press, because a one-person blog has a flexibility
and manoeuvrability that larger literary publications lack. When
Deborah Levy’s Swimming Home, one of the most interesting titles on the shortlist, was published last October, the first national newspaper review, in the Guardian, was by a blogger – me, in fact. Most other papers didn’t cover it until it was longlisted for the Booker.

The
greatest tool bloggers have at their disposal – to be exercised with
caution – is space. Former fiction editor of the TLS, Lindsay Duguid,
said that “in a short review, you can probably only get over three
points”. A blog can explore a book at a length that all but the most
prominent literary critics would envy.

Norm Geras adds two cents.

via The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/10/in-praise-of-book-bloggers.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+andrewsullivan%2FrApM+%28The+Daily+Dish%29

Graphed (click to enlarge):

Amber Williams applauds the work of Emil Johannson, the proprietor of lotrproject.com, perhaps the most neurotically wonderful resource for Tolkien fans imaginable:

Johansson is on a quest to track every character from Tolkien’s
fictional world. He started by creating a massive family tree, and from
there he crafted an interactive map of Middle-earth and a timeline of
events in Tolkien’s stories. He has even performed statistical analyses
on the characters’ race, lifespan, and gender. Johansson points out that
the lopsided gender split (81 percent male, 19 percent female) reflects
the world Tolkien included in his tales of the ultimate war, but
probably not Middle-earth in its entirety.

via The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/09/life-expectancy-on-middle-earth.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+andrewsullivan%2FrApM+%28The+Daily+Dish%29

Joe Klein took Netanyahu to task yesterday on Morning Joe, in a few moments that made Bob Wright’s day:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Money quote:

I don’t think I’ve ever, in the 40 years I’ve been doing this, have
heard of another of an American ally trying to push us into war as
blatantly and trying to influence an American election as blatantly as
Bibi Netanyahu and the Likud party in Israel is doing right now. I think
it’s absolutely outrageous and disgusting. It’s not a way that friends
treat each other. And it is cynical and it is brazen. And by the way, a
little bit of history here: In December of 2006, George W. Bush went
over to the Pentagon, met with the joint chiefs of staff and asked them,
“What do you think about military action in Iran?” They were
unanimously opposed to it. And as far as I know, the United States
military, the leaders of the United States military, are unanimously
opposed to it to this day. This is a fool’s errand. It would be a
ridiculous war with absolutely no good coming of it.

Klein elaborates at his blog:

Netanyahu is doing two things that should be intolerable for any patriotic American: he is a foreigner trying to influence our presidential campaign and he is a foreigner trying to shove us into a war of choice in a region where far too many Americans have already died needlessly. The Romney campaign–as well as AIPAC, the AJC and every other American Jewish organization–should make it clear to Netanyahu that his interventions into our political process and policy-making are not welcome here.

Recent Dish on Netanyahu here and here.

via The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/09/he-wants-us-to-do-his-dirty-work.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+andrewsullivan%2FrApM+%28The+Daily+Dish%29

Sean Smith, one of the Americans murdered in Benghazi was a huge force in the online multiplayer game EVE Online. He was on Jabber when
the attack happened. His last words there, one reader tells us, were “FUCK”, “GUNFIRE”. This is an obituary from his “alliance leader”. A reader writes:

I am a player in EVE Online, part of the coalition where Sean (aka Vile Rat) was such an important player. Here’s an excerpt of the coalition’s jabber announcement channel (which on a normal day is mostly filled up by fleet operation announcements), after his death was made public:

(11:08:36 PM) directorbot@goonfleet.com/directorbot: My people, we have been dealt a grevious blow tonight, as people and as players. I, and all of us who knew Sean, are still reeling. And yet, to my horror, already Vile Rat’s death has become a machination in Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. I do not speak of politics often because American politics do not matter in an international game of internet spaceships. But this sickens me, and Vile Rat would not have wanted to become a tool for the Romney campaign. Just this morning, he said this in Illum regarding the RNC:

(12:41:07 PM) kismeteer: vile_rat: Was there anyone in that group that you even partially respected?
(12:41:14 PM) vile_rat: on the republican side?
(12:41:17 PM) kismeteer: yeah
(12:41:20 PM) vile_rat: nope. not a one.

And now we see this: “I’m outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi,” Romney said in the statement. “It’s disgraceful that the Obama Administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.”

My fury is boundless. Our friend should not be used in this way. We have only so many ways to make our voices heard, but if enough of us shout loudly enough we can – as we have seen – force the media to notice. Retweet this. ALL OF YOU. I will not have Sean’s memory desecrated by American presidential politics.

(Photos from Eve Online and Facebook, via Russell Jones)

via The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/09/a-diplomat-in-the-real-and-virtual-world.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+andrewsullivan%2FrApM+%28The+Daily+Dish%29

Seth Stevenson subjected himself to 45 hours of Ohio TV advertising, which at this point largely consists of campaign ads:

Something happens when you’ve been exposed to the same short video clip 21 times; your mind untethers, shifting its focus from the script to the symbols. I began to dissect Romney’s body language. Why, I wondered, was this spot so intent on establishing a side-by-side spatial relationship between Mitt and the viewer? Mitt chauffeurs us, gripping the wheel, looking at the road, throwing sidelong glances as he lists his accomplishments. “Aha,” I exclaimed: a classically male, shoulder-to-shoulder, barstool conversational alignment—in tune with Romney’s big advantage among male voters. By contrast, President Obama is usually gazing directly into the camera lens, locking in eye contact as though he and the viewer are on a promising first date.

Relatedly, a reader in Colorado reacts to Romney’s big post-convention ad buy:

As a resident of Denver, I’ve been experiencing the avalanche for many months. It’s worst from 4-6 during local news and national network news, when we routinely get 4, 5, 6 back-to-back ads at every commercial break. One or two will be from Obama, with the rest from Romney and his super-PACs. Like many others here, I jut hit the mute button when they start. I hear friends joke that they now watch everything via DVR, so they can fast-forward through the commercials.

I loathe and fear Citizens United as much as anybody, but I do believe there is a law of diminishing returns with the onslaught of ads.

I lived in California in 2010 when a flood of outside money and money from wealthy candidates blanketed TV for months supporting the Republican statewide candidates, especially Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina. It was as relentless as the Romney avalanche is now. Yet the Democrats won every statewide office, largely, I believe, because the Republican “brand” is so toxic in California.

The Obama campaign has blanketed Colorado with field offices and young, energetic organizers who are busy canvassing, registering voters and getting the word out with friends and neighbors. My only complaint is that they stopped airing a very effective response to the welfare-work lies, and I hope that ad reappears soon. The election will be close, but I’m confident Colorado will stay blue this fall.

via The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/09/ad-overdose.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+andrewsullivan%2FrApM+%28The+Daily+Dish%29

This weekend I argued it has since Charlotte – here and here.

via The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/09/has-the-race-now-changed.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+andrewsullivan%2FrApM+%28The+Daily+Dish%29

Anna North excerpts 15 of the strangest passages from Naomi Wolf’s Vagina: A New Biography:

Throughout this book, I will be referring to a state of mind or a
condition of female consciousness I will call, for ease of reference,
but also for the sake of the echo, ‘the Goddess.’ […] I am carving out
rhetorical space that does not yet exist when we talk about the vagina,
but which refers to something very real.

Zoë Heller tackles Wolf’s claim that good orgasms make women more creative:

Wolf claims to find strong evidence in the biographies
of women writers and artists (Georgia O”Keefe, Emma Goldman, Edith
Wharton) that women often “create best after a sexual awakening or a
particularly liberating sexual relationship.” … Whatever moral Wolf draws from the fact that Edith Wharton wrote The Age of Innocence after experiencing orgasms for the first time is surely rather undermined by the fact that Emily Brontë wrote Wuthering Heights
after having no sexual intercourse at all. (She might have masturbated,
of course, but Wolf specifically disqualifies masturbation as a method
of achieving high orgasm: “A happy heterosexual vagina requires, to
state the obvious, a virile man.”)

The Neurocritic demolishes the book’s spotty science:

This unlikely combination of pseudoscientific and mystical elements
provides a little something for everyone to hate. Among neuroscientists,
howlers
such as “dopamine is the ultimate feminist chemical in the female
brain”, oxytocin “is women’s emotional superpower” and the vagina is
“not only coextensive with the female brain but also is part of the
female soul” have been making the rounds of social media. I almost feel sorry for Ms. Wolf because it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. Dopamine is not a feminist neurotransmitter, unless snails and insects have been secretly reading Betty Friedan and listening to Bikini Kill.

via The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/09/does-sex-make-us-more-creative.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+andrewsullivan%2FrApM+%28The+Daily+Dish%29

In a world of turmoil and constant change, there’s a strange comfort in knowing our political ads stay the same:

“The Oldway and the New” is a 1912 campaign film put out by the
Democratic National Committee on behalf of candidate Woodrow Wilson.
Housed at the Library of Congress, it is the earliest known example of a
political party or candidate using the medium of motion picture to
communicate with voters.

And the subject? Massive concentrations of wealth in the private sector:

This film portrays Republican William Howard Taft as a mouthpiece for
special interest groups and Woodrow Wilson as a champion of working
class citizens aspiring to the ranks of business owners. … In 1912, large trusts and
corporations were amassing power and exerting their influence over
Americans’ private lives. This made financial regulation a major
platform issue for the candidate. Likewise, financial regulation remains a topic of political debate to this day.
“The over-the-top comic approach of the film suggests that the
success of those who already have wealth will somehow trickle down
through better wages for workers is a joke,” [Trygve Throntveit, US historian and Wilson scholar] said.

via The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/08/the-first-attack-ad.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+andrewsullivan%2FrApM+%28The+Daily+Dish%29

Wonder why FRC is still backing him? Or that he sees no reason to quit? The answer is that his view of female reproduction is based on the work of one Dr. Jack C. Willke. Willke is not, as one might expect, some obscure quack, far, far away from the center of Republican and Christianist politics. He is, the LA Times notes, the founder and president of the International Right to Life Federation, president of the Life Issues Institute, and a former president of National Right to Life, the oldest and largest pro-life group in the country. He was president from 1980 to 1983 and then from 1984 to 1990. In 2007, Willke was described as “an important surrogate
for Governor Romney’s pro-life and pro-family agenda” in the words of the Romney campaign. “I am proud to have the support of a man who has meant so much to the pro-life movement in our country,” Romney said at the time. Willke, of course, has defended Akin forcefully since the uproar. Here he is, pioneering this wingnut version of female sexuality back in 1999:

First, let’s define the term “rape.” When pro-lifers speak of rape
pregnancies, we should commonly use the phrase “forcible rape” or
“assault rape,” for that specifies what we’re talking about. Rape can
also be statutory. Depending upon your state law, statutory rape can be
consensual, but we’re not addressing that here.

Yes, you read that right: “statutory rape can be consensual”. There’s more:

How many forcible rapes result in a pregnancy? The numbers claimed have
ranged the entire spectrum of possibilities. Some feminists have
claimed as high as 5 to 10 percent, which is absurd. One problem has
been the lack of available studies and accurate statistics. Often women
do not admit to having been raped. On the other hand, it has been known
that women, pregnant from consensual intercourse, have later claimed
rape. Is it possible to know the actual facts?

My italics. Lying behind all of this is some kind of notion that women claim they have been raped to get an abortion. It’s this loophole they are trying to fill. It becomes much less obviously cruel or drastic if the odds of pregnancy by rape are close to non-existent. You can see how easily it could become a Christianist talking point, picked up by someone who lives and breathes the evangelical base like Akin. But his statistical method is as surreal as his conclusion.

Willke first posits 200,000 rapes a year and then winnows that number down to rape-pregnancies of around 225 in the entire US in a year. Among the statistics he uses to prove his point are the following:

One-fourth of all women in the United States of childbearing age have
been sterilized, so the remaining three-fourths come out to 10,000 (or
15,000).

Only half of assailants penetrate her body and/or deposit sperm in her vagina, so let’s cut the remaining figures in half. This gives us numbers of 5,000 (or 7,500).

Fifteen percent of men are sterile, that drops that figure to 4,250 (or 6,375).

I kid you not. Here’s the “science”:

To get and stay pregnant a woman’s body must produce a very sophisticated mix of hormones. Hormone production is controlled by a part of the brain that is easily influenced by emotions. There’s no greater emotional trauma that can be experienced by a woman than an assault rape. This can radically upset her possibility of ovulation, fertilization, implantation and even nurturing of a pregnancy.

It’s important to understand that this man is a central figure in the history of the religious right. What he is spouting is the orthodoxy you don’t hear outside of Christianist circles – but it’s there. And it’s why Akin seems baffled, and why Ryan had no compunction in using Willke’s specific term “forcible rape” as part of a bill he sponsored.

Partisanship should help keep the base with Romney and not go rogue with Akin. Or it might not. The first thing I thought when I heard that Romney had picked Ryan was that Romney, a man who couldn’t win a majority of evangelicals in a single contested primary, had picked a Catholic as his team-mate. If they both pick a fight with a Christianist, evangelical pro-life authority like Willke, they could dig an even deeper hole.

(Photo: Chris Maddaloni/Roll
Call/Getty Images)

via The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/08/akin-is-the-christianist-mainstream.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+andrewsullivan%2FrApM+%28The+Daily+Dish%29

by Zoë Pollock

After a bad breakup, Tracy Clark-Flory consulted the experts for some advice:

I thought I’d be good at this alone thing by now. I’m an only child, for crying out loud. Instead, on the heels of another split, I’m amazed at how difficult just being by myself can be. I have friends – they are wonderful — but I feel a suffocating solitude at the end of the night, in the morning or at any moment of the day that isn’t scheduled with distraction. It wasn’t this way when I was coupled. Just the knowledge that I had “a person” to call my own (even though I know in my bones that you can never truly call another person “your own”) was a comfort; that knowledge itself was a constant companion. 

Judy Ford, author of Single: The Art of Being Satisfied, Fulfilled and Independent, points the way after the jump:

Her practical tips for conquering solitude are to get creative (“creativity is the cure of loneliness”), push yourself to “do something you have never done before” (like taking yourself out to dinner), admit your loneliness to others (“you might be surprised that they feel lonely too”), “get cozy with the gaps,” those empty spaces in between plans, and remind yourself, “Loneliness is not going to kill me.” These aren’t easy fixes — and may induce eye-rolls from self-help haters — but they’re crucial to happiness, she argues: “To experience wholeness, first we experience the void.”

Slate excerpts part of Michael Cobb’s Single: Arguments for the Uncoupled:

Certainly being single is a variation on being individual. Even Thoreau had to keep reassuring us that he was not too lonely in the woods: “I am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a bumble-bee.” I’m not sure if he can prove or commit too many pathetic fallacies in these comparisons. Such rhetoric betrays a sense that the question of his loneliness is still very much open, and something about individualism must be thought about as we consider the single.

We’ve previously covered Cobb’s book on the Dish here and here.

(Photo courtesy of Lee Materazzi, via Flavorwire)

via The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/08/instructions-for-being-alone.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+andrewsullivan%2FrApM+%28The+Daily+Dish%29