cheese it, the cops!

the technical term for what just happened during the arizona/minnesota game on fox just now is that we were heidigamed. the nfl is going to get scads of hate mail; they cut out of a game during overtime! i was watching back in '68. it was hsysterially comical even for a 10-year old!

obama loves gandhi.

“He is a hero not just to India, but to the world,” the president wrote in a guest book on Saturday in Gandhi’s modest former home in Mumbai, now the Mani Bhavan museum.

Yet if paying homage to Gandhi is expected of visiting dignitaries, Mr. Obama’s more personal identification with the Gandhian legacy — the president once named him the person he would most like to dine with — places him on complicated terrain.

complicated indeed! but i just feel that that dinner would be a happy one. gandhi would start by enthusing about drone strikes. or massive american military aid not only to india, but to pakistan. and israel. and saudi arabia. we are arming the world to teeth, just as gandhi would prescribe. when obama pays tribute to america's heroes, just back from dismembering the enemy, or emphasizes again with understandable nationalistic pride that they constitute the greatest and most devastating force of violence the world has ever known, the shade of gandhi would be smiling and nodding along. obama could wave his nobel peace prize; they'd both get a good laugh out of that.

 

nice! it turns out that the length of an essay on the sat corresponds extremely closely with the numerical score assigned to it. it's hard not to get results like that, it seems to me, if you start with the notion that under decent circumstances a computer can assess an essay. here's one little issue with education: a culture can't really pull itself up by its bootstraps. so say the people who are designing your assessment instruments and curricula are idiots, or mechanisms, or, putting it kindly, themselves products of a system that has mistaken extreme ignorance for knowledge. then you assign to these people the task of re-making the next generation. you just can't get any better that way! the only possibility would be an invasion of alien pedagogues or something. the products of the system are running the system. by definition, as socrates pointed out, you can't actually know that you're ignorant. now that's a dilemma that faces all of us, but though i am always parading my ignorance, i am not using it to re-manufacture your children.

Want smarter kids? Make them study something - one thing - for a long time.

His idea goes like this: Assign each student a single, specific topic, which he or she will study over and over again, from every possible angle, from early elementary school through high school.

one thing i like about contemporary educational theory: its effortless inference from a theory of learning to a practice of slavery. you have a notion of how kids learn, or how they should be assessed or something. now the only question is: how can everybody be constrained to impose or realize it? the model in question here is certainly somewhat richer than, say, michelle rhee factoid automatism. but seriously? you're going to assign each child a topic in kindergarten and require the child to explore it for thirteen years? what if we let the child decide what to study and whether to switch at a given moment or something. so, you know, you get "beetles." you might love the topic of beetles beyond all reason or likelihood. or you might simply be chained to beetles without possibility of parole. memo to pharaoh: let my babies go. in all forms of education theory today the agency of the child is erased. i can live with the erasure of agency of teachers etc, though why anyone would want to be a teacher under such circs is beyond me. but the erasure of the agency of the child is entirely incompatible with learning as i would understand it.

of course, this is the primary political inference of our system: if x is a worthy goal then it follows trivially that we must develop a sufficiently pervasive coercive mechanism to impose it. that doesn't follow at all, of course. but in the case of education imposing the goal coercively is actually incompatible with the goal itself. or at a minimum education is a process - the end is inherent in the day to day practice, not a telos lying out there external to the process. and hence how that process is realized is itself part of the goal. i would think that in spending his life studying beetles it might suddenly occur to the child (let's say in sixth grade) that he is himself being treated as a bug.

hey andrew, if it's any comfort to you, you weren't alone. the very sharp joel achenbach did exactly the same thing.

just get clear on the obvious truth: the obama administration supports don't ask, don't tell.

an op-ed editor who runs a piece by the president of the united states should simply be removed. he has no idea what his page is for. he takes the person with the biggest fucking foghorn in the world and amplifies his already deafening voice. andrew rosenthal's task as he understands it is to speak power to truth. get that fucking bullshit out of my face and go hang yourself.

"David Corn, left, of Mother Jones and James Pinkerton of Fox News challenge Obama to cure Alzheimer's."

a nice formulation! i would think the skills he picked up in law school would help a lot here. i challenge obama to save my immortal soul, or to predict the weather in the interior of the malay peninsula for the next twenty years, or to develop a more plausible theory of everything than stephen hawking's. wait i am so disappointed! don't you think that what we expect from our political leaders has gotten a trifle fantastic?

anyone who doesn't understand that the russian state is just a bunch of thugs hasn't been watching.

nytimes rushed to post its little sunday interview with olbermann. on the equivalence between fox and msnbc, pointedly asserted by jon stewart, he responds as follows.

To present all this as the same is both unfair and injurious to the political system at the moment. One of the big flaws now is that there is all this noise on the right. When I yell there is a reason for it. There is a political and factual discernment behind it. I am not doing it gratuitously.

well this is a wacky self-delusion. who knows whether it is really sincere? but of course o'reilly or beck might say exactly the same of themselves, and they do, actually: beck in particular, though beck can also pull back into humility mode, which does not appear entirely sincere either. but what it should make you think is precisely the opposite of what it asserts. some people are almost obsessed with self-praise. almost every word out of their mouths has a self-congratulatory function. i guess maybe they get a good response to this, but the only plausible response is just to take it as discrediting their every assertion. or really, looking at it generously, the right response is pity. it's sad: it reveals the deepest insecurity, an insecurity so profound that it has swamped the whole personality, actually interrupted the person's contact with reality in a profound way: every sentence is a strategic attempt to impress you; the words have lost contact with truth in a way that deprives them even of their apparent meaning. 

people in this mode are kind of self-esteem monsters. they spend all day patting themselves on the back. they're profoundly damaged. i'd say that what they need isn't self-esteem, but self-reflection. they are under the impression that they have to praise themselves to feel good. but i don't think that the cure for their condition lies in that direction. self-esteem is of no value in itself, and one should seek not to esteem oneself, but to deserve to esteem oneself. but this strategy of always in a sheer way asserting your own wonderfulness, i believe, actually has the reverse effect. it makes you less deserving of your own esteem. you're always putting up this desperate external show. somewhere inside you are also doubting, maybe even cringing at the person you have actually become.

but in this case it only redoubles the validity of the charge. so entirely partisan is keith olbermann that he is under the delusion that he is merely reciting facts. so completely bent by partisanship is he that he has lost all sense of the idea that he is even advocating anything at all; in the context where he's constantly spouting his own opinions, while claiming constantly merely to be representing the objective facts, he simply asserts that there can be no rational dialogue. that is a very extreme example of exactly what stewart is talking about, the degree absolute of bent partisanship and self-delusion. describing this as megalomania and mental illness is not too strong. 

also it is a pandering move. it tells you that if you agree with olbermann - which his audience does of course - you aren't actually advocating controversial opinions which would oblige you to think about what your opponents are saying: you are merely reciting the objective facts and anyone who disagrees is an irrational monkey, hardly human at all. so the audience feels better about itself too: it's really aimed at their need to esteem themselves. you speak for reality; your opponents self-evidently for delusions. you don't have to think to yourself: right i think they're wrong. but how did they get to that opinion? how did i get to mine? the disturbing thing is that you got to it in order to feel superior to them, that you served not the truth but only a desperate internal need. after that, to represent your position as some sort of bastion of rationality is just to double down on the ultimately pitiful desperation to feel good about yourself. trying to have a political argument in that context is just ridiculous. what's driving them is their inner child, who is curled up deep inside, hugging himself, rocking back and forth and crying.

i guess what amazes me about the strategy of self-praise quite in general is that it actually appears to work. people actually believe that you are what you say you are as you just keep circling around to the theme of how great you are. it's exactly like believing, without thinking, the advertising claims of some corporation: surely you have to filter the information on the grounds that it serves the self-interest of the advertiser/self-praiser. it ought just to disqualify someone as a truth teller after awhile, but it often seems to have the opposite effect. i say this is profoundly unfortunate.

if, when people engaged in self-praise - especially when (gonna say it) like a few people i actually know, they did it all the time, at an ever-greater pitch of intensity - everyone reacted not by believing them but by cocking an eyebrow or snickering at them - if people reacted to individuals praising themselves as they routinely react to advertising - skeptically - this would devastate them for the evening. but in the long run it would serve their interests; it would force them back to the question of who and what they actually are and what they actually deserve. when people respond to someone's self-praise by being impressed, they just reinforce these people and they spin out of control; they become worse and worse as they assert of themselves that they're getting greater and greater. the external appearance detaches itself ever more from the internal reality. they aren't going to feel better about themselves in the long run; they are going to loathe and devour themselves.

if people routinely believed advertisements, we'd have incredibly shitty products. when we believe people who praise themselves, we get extremely shitty people. if people believe that bill o'reilly is a partisan but keith olbermann is engaged merely in factual discernment - or vice versa, for that matter - they get incredibly shitty television: smug, dishonest, with seething weirdness or gaping emptiness just beneath the surface. 

 

olbermann had his moment, and i was actually moved by his outrage on guantanamo and abu ghraib. but i would say the outrage paled: hard to do that every night for years. and he was just as outraged at bill o'reilly as he was at cheney, which is absurd. but he kept it going night after night, which had no effect at all except to make o'reilly seem very important. bill-o was the worst person, you know, 600 times: it was just boring and it attributed to o'reilly a preternatural power. plus i must say from the get-go that i got a smarmy vibe from him (he has that in common with his nemesis); i just sort of doubted that he was the outraged moralist he pretended to be. anyway, he was great on espn: he invented the rocking home run call, doing highlights: "yahtzee!" the golden age of sportscenter. maybe he'll show up in a gig like that again.

as readers of this blog know, i don't really like keith olbermann. but his suspension raises some interesting issues. now it is pretty funny that he was doing what he was criticizing fox for doing. on the other hand, msnbc is to a large extent an advocacy operation, and surely no one can be surprised that olbermann supports democratic candidates. no one in their right mind can think something like that compromises his objectivity: ain't got none, nor is he (really) pretending to. i think both fox and msnbc have to face squarely the question of whether they are news sources or advocates of particular positions. if the former then a ban on political contributions is (sort of) sensible. but if the latter, then not. really both these networks are hybrids; they maintain a sense of objectivity on some shows and at some moments, abandon it entirely at others. for example, andrea mitchell is a reporter/news anchor. rachel maddow (who i'd much rather watch than olbermann) is, of course, not. shepard smith is-ish, not hannity, obviously. but anyway, they need to decide what they are as they make policies about what their employees can do!

norman lear says says, "We ache to be led." i don't quibble with that at all. only i would point out that we ache worse afterward, if we are still capable of sensation.

thanks chris bray!

this is pretty brilliant, both as a skeptical take on keith richards' book and as an account of the career of the rolling stones. i might like some of the later albums better than he does (i say side two of the reviled  dirty work actually rocks). but still...

At least two Easton Area Middle School students received in-school suspensions in late October for wearing bracelets that say, "I (Heart) Boobies. Keep a Breast." October was Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

School officials have told The Express-Times of Easton that the rubber jewelry is inappropriate, distracting and demeaning.

i say these pea-brained slaves don't know the real meaning of 'inappropriate' and 'demeaning.' but i propose to teach them, using duct tape and a broom handle.  that's education.

i have an excuse to listen to taylor swift: my ten-year-old daughter jane who among other things in my opinion needs a way to sneak toward country music. miley didn't stick. usually i wouldn't be out here shoving toward you what all media are already shoving toward you. but i want to say that taylor swift is astonishing. it's the songwriting that i have a hard time believing. just to mention a couple of items from speak now: "never grow up," a theme for which i'm an absolute sucker. and even though i can't cry about deaths or breakups, the tears were streaming down my face when we were listening to that thing in the car yesterday. but i would really draw your attention to "mean." swift often writes in personae, here i believe of a male victim of abuse at the hands of his drunken, loutish father. ok what 19-year-old girl can do something like that and make it stick? exactly one, i believe. the rest of the album isn't as unbelievable (though check, for example "better than revenge"; avril lavigne should listen to that song a dozen times, taking notes not only on the lyrics but the melody and the arrangement; cf avril's 'boyfriend'). but all of it is good.

just one more time: people like ben bernanke and bill clinton have no place as writers on an op-ed page. the first thing i'd ask fred hiatt or david shipley: are you satisfied that the person whose name is on the article actually wrote it? and second, if you want their point of view covered, then go send a reporter to interview them. and third, don't these authorities have a big enough foghorn already? if they want to get their point of view out there, do they have any difficulty? aren't their points of view already represented more than adequately in the pages of your very own newspaper? maybe you should be more - much more -worried about points of view that are not the points of view of the existing authorities. remember when some newspapers actually conceived that as part of their task?

george will is as good as anyone on what that election means.

watchin bo's news conference. i think he could pre-empt a lot of these attacks if he said something like this: you know, the founders of the american republic envisioned a limited role for government. they were worried about tyranny. americans are still worried and suspicious about a government that is very active in various aspects of their lives. as well they should be! and then right back to: but we had an emergency to deal with, etc. but i too am always concerned with individual freedoms etc. but he can't bring himself to cognize this! i guess no liberal can. but perhaps in the long run they will have to, if we keep telling them that in elections etc. 

he's a professor of constitutional law! so he must be - or, i hope he must be - able to take something like this approach. if he kept deferring to the constitution, etc - said he was reminded of the importance of all this even by the tea party, or listening to the pauls, held up a copy and waved it around, though he disagrees about this and that matter of constitutional interpretation (which he could actually describe in some detail), that would go a long way toward flummoxing glenn beck. not only that but it would be of service in educating the american public just to engage at this level. beck and many tea partiers, whatever you think, are actually asking fundamental questions of american history and our form of government. ok bo is a pragmatist. but i know he can also go after the question of his vision of the role of the state as well as detailed policy prescriptions. i think he has to, because that is where the debate is at. and that's remarkable and it is good! so show some competence in these matters. challenge the right on these very things, because they are indeed challengeable.

what if he responded by showing the ways republicans want to mess with your individual rights? what if emphasized that he was doing nothing on gun control, then endorsed gay marriage, or decriminalization of pot or something? who stands for individual rights? who likes the first amendment? etc. he could get a lot of mileage out showing in detail that mitch mcconnell is no constitutionalist.

if you're a liberal etc, i just want to say: it will be ok! i predict a good 2012 for y'all. we really are in cultofthestate moment when we expect to be redeemed by our government. well we're gonna be disappointed! so we'll roll the other way next time. the most radical thing rand paul said in his victory speech was: government cannot save us; we must save ourselves.

feingold's loss really bums me out. but i'm glad to see the various billionaires go down. and angle (though i am also profoundly disturbed that harry reid will stil be on television). and tancredo. the very dull mike barnicle on morning joe: 'it wasn't a repudiation of barack obama's policies, but of his communication skills.' er! well y'all keep telling yourselves that. go find someone who talks better than barack, i guess, though there basically aren't any. if you think rand paul won because barack obama doesn't communicate very well, you are confused. but at least you can hold onto your self-esteem, i guess.

night night!

that marco rubio really is impressive. i might not love the idea that first we must acknowledge our dependence on an all-powerful god, or that we must declare every few microseconds that america is the greatest nation in the history of the world (i think zimbabwe beats us out, but only just). but lord he's a good politician.

when i served in vietnam (as a proud child soldier for the vietcong), i shot richard blumenthal. then i reloaded and shot him some more. but i only winged him, cause he wasn't actually there. but anyhow, i'm glad to have helped him to his purple heart, even if my idea was to put him in arlington beneath an eternal flame. 

i'm not saying that i agree with everything rand paul says. i personally would not really start with capitalism, and i think the distinction between state and, say, corporate power is anachronistic, and was never as clear as either, say, adam smith or karl marx made it. but do i want to hear a united states senator proclaiming liberty, allegiance to limited government, quoting jefferson? you betcher. and any way you look at it, that is a major and distinctive and important element of our tradition, and it is still something many, many americans believe. it needs to be represented in our legislatures. i know you thought that was all over, annihilated in the mighty inevitable march of human progress to our ecstatic and total capitulation. hahaha!

as you can tell, i am angry! where other people think, i just emote, and emotions have no place in politics, despite hume's famous declaration that 'reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions.' i don't even really know who or what i'm angry at or why. wait, it's black people! is it black people? i want my country back. remember when i used to run this country? maybe that's why i'm angry. more likely, i had a tough relationship with my dad, back when he ran the country. or maybe it's a chemical imbalance. that really fucked up my sat scores. oh god, i don't know. i'm too pissy to figger it out. get your government hands out my underwear!

on msnbc they're still  talking about that woman who supposedly said 'keep your government hands off my medicare.' don't they see that this is some kind of a confession that they have nothing? they caught some poor sappette in a contradiction two years ago, and they've been beating on her whole demographic ever since on that basis. i suppose they need whatever comforting self-delusion they can find as they get their asses kicked. hard. i don't begrudge them that! i'm surprised they're not all cuddled up stroking each other's hair as they sob.

no, no not you christine! oh well i really think bachman is cuter.

we can go back to the same failed policies that got us into this mess! it's hard to think up new stuff when like me, nancy pelosi, you only know three sentences of english. no wait i want to drive the economy into a brand new ditch. middle class!

oh dang i think alvin greene is going to lose.