Pain Caucus Self-Parody
It’s hard to get more Serious than Alan Simpson. Why, he’s won trophies for his game face alone and he bowls overhand.
Conversations with former students in food courts
The previous post was too depressing to share over here, but I figure there are enough teachers reading this make cross-posting it worthwhile.
FORMER STUDENT: Hey, Scott!
SEK: Howdy, FS.
FS: I miss your class, man. This [next one in the writing sequence] sucks ass. I got a fucking [non-passing grade] on the first paper.
SEK: Did you [do everything SEK taught him to do, e.g. revise, revise, revise]?
FS: This prof doesn’t make us revise.
SEK: But what led to you earning an “A” in my class?
FS: All the revising.
SEK: So what do you need to earn an “A” in this next class?
FS: I told you, though, this prof doesn’t make us revise.
SEK: But how did you earn an “A” in my class?
FS: Revising.
SEK: So how can you earn an in this next one?
FS: I don’t know, Scott, that’s what I’m asking you.
SEK: But—
FS: You gotta help a brother out.
SEK: One more time: How did you earn an “A” in my course?
FS: I already told you, this prof isn’t telling us to revise.
SEK: (shrugs)
FS: (shrugs back)
SEK: (emphatically shrugs while repeatedly overturning invisible cups on an invisible table)
FS: (stares for a minute, turns, walks away) Right, dude, I see what you’re saying. Cups it is, man, cups it is!
SEK: “Cups”? Come back! (FS moves briskly through the food court) WHAT IS “CUPS”?
SEK realizes that standing alone in the middle of a food court yelling “WHAT IS ‘CUPS’”? leaves an odd impression on bystanders and walks away muttering something, most likely “What is ‘cups’?” under his breath.
“I Have Never Had a Real Job in My Life. I Am Just Like a Student. Who Gets Paid.”
What office hours can be like (a painfully humorous diversion from grading for academic readers and contributors). H/T to Stacie Goddard and Tom Burke.
Very Briefly on Chomsky
Noam is taking some deserved hits for this, as well as some that aren’t quite deserved. I think it’s best to view Chomsky as of limited utility as a theorist of international politics. When I say “limited utility” I mean it; he has some utility, but that utility is limited. In younger days, a friend (an engineer who had never read anything about international politics except for Chomsky) repeatedly insisted “For God’s sakes, Rob, read Chomsky!” My rejoinder was “For God’s sakes, Nate, read something that’s not Chomsky!” That said, I think that Chomsky probably offers a bit more than most political scientists who study international relations are willing to concede; he writes about subjects that hover at the edge of the discipline, but that are quite important and that don’t receive enough attention. At the same time, his vision of international politics is badly impoverished by a set of elementary misunderstandings.
- Reductionism is probably the most consistently annoying problem with Chomsky’s approach. He’s not the worst example of a writer who substitutes lazy quasi-Marxist analysis for sophisticated analysis of why states do things, but he’s pretty bad. The “elite Beltway consensus” theory of foreign policy behavior extant in the progressive blogosphere is limited in its own ways, but is a hell of a lot more sophisticated in terms of connecting interests and ideas with foreign policy that Chomsky’s crude economic approach.
- A second major problem is his US-centric approach. Like neoconservatives, Chomsky acts and writes as if the United States is the source of all activity in the international sphere; dictators rise and fall at our behest, multilateral institutions collapse or persist based on our interests, etc. Chomsky rarely bothers to turn the lens that he uses to analyze American foreign policy on any other country. Again, he’s better than some; Chomsky was never much of an apologist for the Soviet Union. Moreover, a focus on the United States is understandable in terms of a political program to attack US foreign policy. However, one can’t begin to understand the genuine dynamics of international politics without recognizing that the factors that motivate the United States often motivate other countries as well.
- Chomsky’s understanding of international law is simply terrible. He doesn’t know much about the content, and he doesn’t know much about the process, which leads him to say things that are either flat wrong or that are mystifyingly stupid. For Chomsky, international law is more of a rhetorical cudgel/trope than an actual body of law and process of producing legal agreement. In particular, the notion that international law is somehow “leftist” in orientation is really quite odd; I recall his famous debate with Foucault which left Michel simply flummoxed at Chomsky’s naivety with regard to what international law is, how it’s produced, and what it means for the pursuit of left wing politics.
And so this isn’t so much “LEAVE NOAM ALONE!!!,” as “recognize what Noam Chomsky can offer, and recognize the serious shortcomings in his approach to international politics.”
No Jail Time in Prince Case
Given that Bazelon’s exceptional reporting on the subject convinced me that the prosecutions that followed in the wake of Phoebe Prince’s suicide ranged from “dubious” to “outrageous,” it’s almost certainly a good thing that none of the six people charged will be going to jail. The Prince case does bring up important issues about the effects of bullying and sexist double standards, but I remain unconvinced that on this particular set of facts criminal law was the right remedy. Not having a “kids will be kids” attitude toward bullying is a great thing; trying to send people to jail for writing mildly unkind things about people on a third party’s Facebook wall really isn’t.
…since I’m being criticized in comments for things I didn’t say in this post and specifically contradict in my more extensive writing on the subject conveniently linked in the first sentence above, allow me to link again.
Thrones and Crones
So far I am a tad disappointed by HBO’s rendition of George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series. Granted, I’ve only just watched the pilot so far, but what’s the deal with the re-imagined Catelyn Stark?
First they ditch Jennifer Ehle. Then they gut the character herself. The scene in the book where she compels her husband into the king’s service for tactical reasons was really the first that got me hooked on the novels. But in the TV version they’ve reduced her to begging him to stay, so it’s clear she’s to be cast as an archetypical Waiting Wife rather than a strategist with some political sense. It’s particularly frustrating given that most other elements of the series so far seem to follow the novel Fire and Ice in intricate detail.
What other monstrous revisionist herstories HBO intends to unleash on its unwitting audience is anyone’s guess. Thoughts so far from readers/viewers?
Things I Would Like to See More Of
Material like this post from GSGF on the Foreign Policy site.
Not because I agree with Courtney Messerschmidt’s take on OBL… nope. And not at all convinced she speaks “for her peer group.”
But because even the briefest gust of fresh perspective is welcome change in a stuffy room.
What’s that you say? Zombies? Oh… OK, fine, the perspective at FP is reasonably fresh (that is to say, not exactly festering), but let’s face it, the albino sausage-fest that is the FP masthead could stand to diversify its portfolio in more ways than one.
Some Good News
Rebel progress in Libya:
In the besieged western city of Misurata hundreds of rebels broke through one of the front lines late on Sunday, and by Monday afternoon were consolidating their position on the ground a few miles to the city’s west.
The breakout of what had been nearly static lines came after NATO aircraft spent days striking positions and military equipment held by the Qaddafi forces, weakening them to the point that a ground attack was possible, the rebels said.
While not in itself a decisive shift for a city that remained besieged, the swift advance, made with few rebel casualties, carried both signs of rebel optimism and hints of the weakness of at least one frontline loyalist unit.
But more potential signs of loyalist weakness emerged in a battle near the eastern oil town of Brega, where rebel fighters killed more than 36 Qaddafi soldiers and destroyed more than 10 vehicles, according to a senior rebel military official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about military operations. Six rebel fighters died in the battle, the official said, adding that the rebel troops retreated east from Brega after the attack on orders from NATO, presumably in advance of airstrikes.
I think that Chivers wrongly puts the emphasis on airstrikes, which have been more or less a constant since the NATO intervention began. It’s possible that the key development here has been attrition of Gaddafi’s forces, but I rather doubt it; attrition is rarely a major factor, and Loyalist forces have increasingly taken precautions to limit the damage that air attacks cause. Airstrikes work best in combination with coordinated ground assaults. Accordingly, I’m curious as to how the effectiveness of rebel ground forces has changed in the last month. By most accounts it takes quite a while to create an effective, cohesive infantry force. However, all military effectiveness is relative. British and French special operations forces have been working for several weeks, and it’s possible that the early part of the learning slope is sufficiently gentle that substantial gains can be made in a relatively short time. With coordinated airstrikes in support, even a very basically trained infantry force might be able to make progress. It’s also possible, of course, that the rebels are being directly (but secretly) supported by NATO SOF.
We’ll see. The rebels have made progress before, only to see it overturned by new Loyalist offensives. The hope remains that some kind of tipping point can be reached that will lead to significant Loyalist surrenders or defections. Of course, it would be best if the rebels would stop summarily executing surrendered Loyalists, but that’s also something that NATO SOF might be able to help out with.
The Values of Free Inquiry Prevail
The CUNY executive committee unanimously voted to restore the honorary award initially denied to Tony Kushner. Good. Now the question becomes why the Pataki bagman who smeared Kushner was in that position in the first place.
Republican Proposals Have No Bad Consequences By Definiton
Shorter WaPo: “Kathleen Sebelius should be ashamed of herself for arguing that a plan designed to reduce the money seniors have available for medical care will reduce the money seniors have available for medical care. Saint Paul Ryan has made clear that the health care will be provided by magical doctors who make house calls riding on unicorns.”
…see also. Any Fred Hiatt-approved piece on Medicare has to talk about Democrats “scaring” seniors without actually explaining why the Democratic charges are false.
…Atrios beat me to the joke.
Poor Bobo
I’m very much enjoying this new tradition of Krugman shredding whatever nonsense Bobo offers up in his previous column, and today’s implicit response to Brooks’s lament about how the dumb people won’t allow elites to save the country is the best one yet.
One thing to add to Krugman’s point is the same media elites who see the deficit as the greatest immediate threat to the country since Saddam’s balsa wood drones of terror viewed Al Gore — who advocated using the budget surplus to preserve entitlements and was the most prominent political figure to opposed the Iraq War when it mattered — with utter contempt.
Geektacular!
James does Colbert.
| The Colbert Report | Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Bill James | ||||
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Saving the book for an upcoming cross-country flight, but will have some thoughts about his recent greatest-team-of-all-time analysis, which regrettably (but probably correctly) lands on the ’98 Yankees.
