Smackdown: Shakespeare vs Philosophy

In this article you have a great combination: philosophy, clarity, and Shakespeare. Martha Nussbaum reviews three books by philosophers about Shakespeare. She likes Cavell (not reviewed but discussed) and most especially Zamir, a young Israeli philosopher.

Shakespeare sometimes appears as deep as experience itself, unanswerable to equation or formulation. But we keep trying, and the philosophers which Nussbaum touts are often very insightful. It is just fascinating reading the speculations — Shakespeare chides us to a higher level of discourse.

Nussbaum considers one of the mysteries of Othello's character — the ease with which he can be manipulated. Not that Iago isn't one devilishly clever fellow, but Othello almost seems enabling a lie about Desdemona's fealty — everyone knows she is faithful. Why does Othello seem so complicit in the slander? Cavell feels that it is the view Othello has of himself, as being pure, that does Desdemona in — because conceptions of purity have trouble with physicality; Desdemona knows Othello's physical self and thus seeing him more fully, threatens his narrow self-conception.

In other words, we are all to some degree ashamed and horrified at our own sexuality, of which another person's sexual response to us is the proof. We are horrified because we wish not to accept our finitude. We wish to be pure souls without limit or imperfection.

What makes Nussbaum such a gem is not only her clarity, but her balance, which you might think goes along with being a philosopher herself, but in fact, current philosphy is so congealed by arcane language that it has become a monster, gobbling up understanding.

There is a wonderful section in the article about Antony and Cleopatra, representing a mature love, of play and understanding, contrasted with the young love of Romeo and Juliet, which swims in the heavenly abstractions embodied by physical love.

Nussbaum's sense of context — her appreciation of the limits of academic understanding:

To write philosophically about Shakespeare, or any other great author or artist, one needs not so much philosophical learning, or even philosophical argument, but a genuinely philosophical temperament, puzzled and even humble before life's complexities, and willing to put one's sense of life on the line in the process of reading a text. As Plato rightly said, it is no chance matter that we are discussing, but how one should live. The philosopher needs to turn to literature because literature gets at depths of human experience, tragic or comic, that philosophical prose does not reach; but then the philosopher will need to show the imprint of that complexity, to reveal something of the pain or the joy that the work evokes from his or her own character.

Gadget Funnies

One of the funniest blog entries we've read in a long time. It is a comment on an aggregated 15 monitor setup.

Oh, look at you with your three monitors. I bet you think you're king nerd of computer mountain, don't you? Well you know what? You suck. That's right. That's because I have fifteen monitors strung together making my screen bigger than all of yours. Did you hear me?! I HAVE THE BIGGEST SCREEN! Finally, I win at something!

…Sure, it's likely to topple over and pin me down, leaving me to slowly starve to death in my own home, my cellphone just out of reach up on my desk and no one coming to visit me or check on me because I've alienated all of my friends and family with my constant bragging and boasting about my gigantic monitor setup…

Pogue Goes Bonkers Over Pangea Day

David Pogue was emoting today about an upcoming global movie marathon spectacle called Pangea Day.

Pogue's hypervigilant wit and upbeat game-show-contestant enthusiasm is very winning and informative when he writes about gear — he is down-to-earth reliable about gadgets and their real world value. He's value-added Dave, putting more fun in fun stuff. Six Flags!

In addition, Pogue's manuals, which seem to reproduce in the dark, there are so many of them, reveal he is a wonderful, gifted teacher. His manuals are models of clarity and in-depth knowledge. When he wanders off that reservation he tends to devolve solely into his game-show-contestant persona, sans usefulness — not much context or depth there.

I think the quality of Pogue's enthusiasm for this event makes me sour on it proactively; in description Pangea Day reeks of the photographic Festivus, with names like “A Day in the Life of Wisconsin”. In the latter, you have people with high-priced photo gear and bucks to travel running off to arbitrary places to take pics, hoping it will be meaningful and aesthetic. It's great, for the participants, and the expectation is that the audience will react appreciatively. (It is actually predatory in its shallow use of place and people.) In events such as Pangea Day — yikes, the dumbo name: one continent, pre-human — the participants think they are protected by a bonus — an umbrella of social value. The howler is that the creator of this event thinks she will be “fostering tolerance and understanding”. The subtext here is that the public needs to be taught, in a condescending Obama sense, by the…filmmakers.

Perhaps this upcoming marathon of here-I-am-with-gear, all-over-the-place, will be a unifying force, bringing us all together, a group expression bringing us into remarkable harmony, all of us breaking into that dreadful We Are the World. I suppose, like the Super Bowl, or international soccer, there is a pleasant sensation in thinking we are, many of us, sharing the same experience.

On the other hand, it might principally be an ego enhancer for craftsman who affect being artists, and whose egos need no enhancement, but for which the large audience will provide oodles of enabling. There is no explicit claim to art, it's only implicit, heavily implicit. Art at its best is interior, meditative, complex, layered, ambiguous, suggestive, individual, averse to groups and din and ideological agenda. Art can be an entry way into our inner lives, our true, common humanity. Then again Pangea Day might be game show exciting.

The Moon Says Hello

A scientist proposes that we say hello to the aliens out there.

When angled to catch the Sun's rays, the mirrors [on the moon] would increase the amount of light the Earth-moon system reflects by 20% …more than enough to catch the eye of a vigilant alien astronomer.

I've never understood why the assumption is made that aliens would be friendly good old boys wanting to share a beer rather than hungry, meat-eating, demented monkeys with death-ray spaceships.

"Dirt" on FX

The FX series Dirt was a real discovery for us. We had been searching hulu.com for something worth watching. The site gives the appearance of a dumping ground for the not very good. It was put up by entertainment companies as self-defense. At least they would be in control of content. Fox, Universal, NBC, many big names. (Here is a list provided by the wiki man: “Hulu carries shows from the USA Network, Bravo, Fuel TV, FX, Sci Fi, Style, Sundance, G4, and Oxygen channels.”) Re-purposing content is what the network execs would call it.

Dirt is a great show. The acting has a richness that is fully framed by the excellent directing and smart, funny scripts. The characters are given a real story arc — they change and learn or can't learn as the show evolves. I have to mention it again — the acting is just terrific. The part of the schizo principal photographer is wonderfully acted (the actor is English); he is a central character, but like any good show, everyone comes off well. Even the smallest part is embraced by actors doing wonderful turns. Cox herself plays the lead editor, a withheld, angry, damaged human property. The slight pull back in her manner is perfect — she exudes obsessive, ruthless predation.

The show is an exposé of the exposers. It is about the gossip rags and their world. You would think, given that Courteney Cox and David Arquette are the executive producers, and prey to the very predatory paparazzi harassment they portray, that they would delineate the denizens of this dubious world as flat characters — just creeps. (That last sentence was so alliterative I must be channeling Walter Winchell.)

But the scripts are smart, the presentation makes the point that these predators, who think of themselves as the top of the Hollywood food chain, making and breaking careers, are fully aware that often they are the ones who are being used by celebrities who are so hungry for fame that they help out, tip off, and beg these magazines for an article. The celebrity subjects of the gossip rags also view themselves as product. Being famous is all that is necessary in the entertainment industry according to this show — it doesn't matter for what. That seems to be confirmed by the value system embedded in the media culture in which we all swim.

Obama on Fox

Obama's appearance today on Fox News had a percolating humor to it. Fox made it funny with its countdown to appearance. Obama was reasonable and extremely appealing — you understand the enthusiasm of his supporters. Finally though Obama offers a weak-tea of formulaic pronouncements.

Ironically, Obama's claim is one of bringing folks together, but the outcome seems to be one of divisiveness. It is at least in part because the burden was too great for Obama's frail understanding of the Reverend Wright issue — he has little to offer but condescension and an overweening confidence in his ability to convince “folks”. He seems incapable of understanding why his pastor is a parasite on the African-American community and a force for divisiveness. Like many demagogues, Wright can't shut up, and he will do inestimable damage to Obama because Obama early on didn't fully confront the issue. Obama needs to show he has some character and a connection to serious issues. He seems incapable of offering more than a rally speech.

One note about the Fox talk crew — in particular, Mara Liasson. She has been very impressive for a long time. You can see the respect and seriousness with which the other members of the panel listen to her. She seems clear eyed, free of tendentiousness, and makes comments that genuinely enlighten. The other pleasant change is in Juan Williams, who for some reason seems more balanced. Fox is slanted to the right, and it would be easy to polarize, but Williams seems to feel less compelled to advocate and more likely to discuss now. The same seems true of the effect David Brooks has had on Mark Shields on Lehrer. The discussions are more reasonable since the deeply ideological Paul Gigot left the Newshour.

Hitchens Considered

[via Denis Dutton]

Christopher Hitchens' fertile, ideological mind, his contentious personality, his very need for provocation and conflict as a clarifying enzyme, makes articles about him ( article 1, article 2 ) fascinating. Hitchens' arguments themselves are those of ideas — ideas at a high level. Hitchens thinks like an educated ideologue with deep moral feelings; he sees history as unfolding. His brother said they both try to tell the truth though they get to the same place through very different routes — at least by the brother's estimate. This isn't the passive aggressive “I wouldn't tell you this if I weren't your friend…” type of truth, it is the effort to understand larger patterns and not be intimidated by politically correct fashion.

An anecdote in the article was illuminating about this man who seems to have all his energy entangled in a public life — Hitchens' better self, who writes on Proust so well, submerged to polemics. Hitchens overheard his mother say to his father that if there is an upper class in England, then Christopher should belong to it. This is perhaps explanatory. Hitchens befriends those in power, from many different viewpoints. This marks him as distinct from ideologues who keep to their own and despise those with whom they disagree (they won't say it, but you can tell from their tone). In the article it indicates that Hitchens would later in the day meet with Talabani's son, and then Sean Penn, whom Hitchens admires, “for his independence”. The former meeting is understandable on intellectual grounds, the latter only on the terms proposed by his mother — Christopher wants to know the players and in a media culture celebs are an upper class. (To label the feckless Penn as independent is risible.)

The vile denunciations of Hitchens are touched on as a phenomena, indicative of the reactionary left,

Thomas Cushman says, that “at the hands of his former comrades, Hitchens has been subjected not just to criticism, but to actual disparagement. He has been denounced and excommunicated, purged from the orbit of the left, and subjected to a plethora of what the sociologist Harold Garfinkel referred to as “degradation ceremonies.” … Hitchens is accused, variously, of being a racist; an alcoholic; a snob; dishonest; venal; overweight; unkempt; psychopathic; and a closeted homosexual. Hitchens has thus been, to paraphrase Garfinkel, “ritually separated” from the left; his former identity defamed as a sham. Marc Cooper is perhaps right: “Leaving the left can be a bit like trying to quit the mafia. You can’t get out without getting assassinated.”

This despicable aspect of extremist left wing ideologues makes it easy for not only Hitchens, but many of us who identified with the left, to seek a more independent course.

The price the ideologue pays is a lack of depth. The interviewer says,

Listening to him recite Macaulay on the English civil war is to be confronted by a riotous admixture of the revolutionary, the puritanical, the bacchanalian and the theological. Yet from this Hitchens derives unequivocal conclusions: progress, rights, atheism. The argumentative tactic is essentially that of splitting off the things he advocates from those he rejects, even if they have shared sources.

Thus does a complex mind become simple of volition.

Hitchens' militant evangelical atheism is jarringly contradictory:

“The belief that history is a directional process is as faith-based as anything in the Christian catechism,” [philosopher] Gray writes. “It is a myth created by the need for meaning.”

Attacking extremist and literalist interpretation on extremist and literalist grounds doesn't make you one of the Brights, as his friend Richard Dawkins labels their group. This might be a clue to Hitchens about the excesses in his position — he does discount the term.

But his depth of understanding about the bizarre unfolding of left wing thought is brilliant:

After what he calls the “high tide of the rogue left” had been reached in 1968, he says, “you started to hear the slogan: the personal is political. That was the worst legacy of the 1960s. And I just felt the most awful premonition when I heard it. What that proved to be was the midwife of feckless, narcissistic postmodernism; a pseudo-radical concentration on the self and that sort of thing. It’s now a curse from one end of every campus to the next: stultifying, boring, horrible—and, I think, part of the reactionary left. Suddenly the measure became how much you could talk about your own specific sense of grievance. People would begin sentences with ‘As a…’ Then it would be ‘woman, homosexual, Pakistani’ or something. It’s no longer what you think, or what you know, but how you feel and who you happen to be. As if these were achievements, that you’d done something to earn it. No, no, no. I hate that.”

The public discussion of important issues would be deeply impoverished without the voice of Christopher Hitchens.

Cameron Johnson and the Invisible Hand

This story is about a perfect genetic match. The DNA of a societal system and the DNA of an individual. Cameron Johnson, a 23 year old Oprah ordained entrepreneur, has businesses coming out of his ears. It isn't forced, it is as natural as a Michael Jordan slam dunk for Cameron.

Every society has its blessed, those who fit so well they just need to follow their inclinations and the world is theirs. The more freedom in a society, the more democratic, the wider the scope of personality to whom conventional success is a natural outcome. But there are always those who ride the very crest of the big simple machine that any society finally is, manifesting the implicit direction the invisible hand of that society encourages.

“He was starting these businesses, and it would be 2 o'clock in the morning with him working on the computer,” father Bill Johnson, 56, said.

But Cameron Johnson kept going. At 15, he was invited to advise a corporation in Japan. When his flight landed in Tokyo, he was greeted by a mob of cameras. “We thought Mariah Carey or somebody was on the plane,” he said. “But then they started shouting my name.”

Spandrels, Kluges and Language

In this discussion a scientist and science writer talk about Kluges — a name that was coined to indicate a jerry-built but needed structure for a job at hand. The Apollo 13 movie was given as an example, where the astronauts got in trouble, the scientists on the ground threw a bunch of materials available to the space dwellers on a table, and said, we have to create from this something that will make a connector or the astronauts are finished.

So this cognitive scientist derived the idea that maybe that is how language forms, appropriating various brain structures, which he analogized as, “Chomsky meets the genome”. His idea of Kluges really sounds to me like Gould's idea of spandrels. Structures that are byproducts of evolution trying to achieve something quite different. Spandrels are necessary to create the structure as support, but serve no purpose. But eventually they do. (Dennett claims this is merely selection by another name.) Spandrels, or kluges (the difference, I really don't understand), seem a likely suspect; essentials of the human spirit, like language, imagination, culture, morality, law — little things like that — could have arisen from the play of possibility inherent in life evolving — built from what is at hand, from the genius of tinkerer Nature, from the drive of life to survive.

After all, in one view we are constructed of the detritus of stars that have exploded, re-accreting into new stars like our sun, and the leftovers — that would be us — evolve on a planet rich with the complex elements created by that star. Why wouldn't language also be a byproduct, of another scale? It can seem a concept reductive of human beings and our cultural and spiritual achievements, but what greater affirmation than to think we are endowed from the play of the spheres and the dance of evolution?

It Is A Template World

This article by David Brooks about Obama's cut and paste rhetoric is reminiscent of this article appearing yesterday in the NYT which describes a professor who aggregates online content into books using templates. 200,000 of them at last count. A human being hardly touches the content, sort of like Obama's speeches.

About the prolific litterateur,

But these are not conventional books, and it is perhaps more accurate to call Mr. Parker a compiler than an author….[Parker] has developed computer algorithms that collect publicly available information on a subject — broad or obscure — and, aided by his 60 to 70 computers and six or seven programmers, he turns the results into books in a range of genres, many of them in the range of 150 pages and printed only when a customer buys one.

Brooks about Obama,

Obama stuffed his speech with the textbook clichés that Democratic consultants tell their candidates to use when talking about trade — warnings about Chinese perfidy and lead paint in toys….He made a series of on-the-one-hand/on-the-other-hand distinctions about which sort of trade deals he’d support and which he wouldn’t. It added up to a vague, watered-down version of economic light beer. In the end, he suggested a few minor tweaks in the U.S. tax code that would have a microscopic effect on outsourcing, and a few health and safety provisions which might have teenie-weenie effects on investment decisions. The ideas he sketched out in the speech aren’t dangerous. They’re just trivial.

Art Collecting Gone Awry

“It is a tale of greed, ego, status-seeking, and unbridled enthusiasm”, is the way Seinfeld's Kramer might describe this tale of art world woe.

The art dealer in question is represented as having a sympathetic viewpoint — he disliked the big new money going to artists whose work he considered more fashion than substance. He started a business to sell Old Masters — affirming value you could say, and perhaps a savvy business move into a declining market. So far so good. But the well-done, detailed article suggests that although he derided trendy cluelessness in the art world, the dealer was on some level attracted to the publicity and money garnered by those dealers who served the fashionistas. The story then devolves into what could provide a novelistic opportunity — it is so far off the charts as to the personalities and bucks involved. This story begs to be a cable movie. (Even tennis guy John McEnroe plays a role in this tale.) The art dealer attempted to impress, showing that he was doing fabulously, to the very collectors whose decisions he derided.

If the allegations are true, the collapse of Salander-O’Reilly would be among the most massive art frauds in history. All told, more than $100 million in art, bank loans, and client investments appears to have vanished into thin air. The scandal has shaken the art world, raising troubling questions about the darker side of this secretive, totally unregulated market into which investors have poured billions of dollars in the past decade.

There are many reasons people collect art beyond love of art; many art collectors want to associate themselves with what confirms their idea of success. Many find collecting a thrill — like hunting. If collectors aren't honorably focused on the art, rather than social status and rich-folk group approval — and let us not forget greed — they can easily find themselves mired in the very horror they seek to avoid, that of high-school un-coolness; the very opposite of social standing.

There is, although seldom mentioned in discussions about art as ego enhancement (a common subtext in much writing about art — “I get it and you don't”), a genuine potential for inner growth that can be derived from an association with, and love of art.

Do You Want to Remember Everything?

This cognitive scientist says we could improve our short term memory so,

… you would never again forget a face or a name

His speculative idea is that of a computer chip which could be implanted in the brain to enhance short term memory. A USB connector in the head could enhance the capacity. The latter is my idea. Kidding.

The scientist says that maybe, even better than location based memory on memory chips, would be a Google search model,

…which combines cue-driven promptings similar to human memory with the location-addressability of computers.

Would you really want to remember everything? Doesn't forgetting serve its purpose for our…sanity?

Zane Lamprey, Three Sheets

We haven't seen many TV shows or movies recently that have made us laugh out loud as often as Three Sheets to the Wind. It is very funny. A show about a guy going to exotic locales to get drunk doesn't sound promising. You just have to watch it and you will get hooked by its convivial spirit. Zane Lamprey is hilarious — the editing and production very clever.

Give up all laughter, ye who enter here.

Martin Amis Reviewed

In one Seinfeld episode George becomes enamored with Jerry's girlfriend, “because she hates me so much”. By that measure, after reading this NYT poison pen book review, you can't help but feel Martin Amis has found a new love.

Boy does Michiko Kakutani hate Martin Amis. The review begins, “In one of these chuckleheaded essays…”; just so you don't miss that the reviewer is about to shred her credibility, she alerts you at the outset. Here is what the reviewer has to say about Amis' remarks:

[ Amis ] suggests that the Islamist war on the West is…rooted in sexual frustration and anger at Islam’s impotence on the world stage (completely ignoring the experts like Michael Scheuer, the former C.I.A. officer and Qaeda specialist, who argue that Osama bin Laden’s declaration of war is a reaction to specific United States foreign policies like support for Israel and an American presence in Muslim lands).

Of course, 9/11 is a result of our support of a democracy; 9/11 was an understandable response to a policy disagreement. It is only logical in her estimate. Kakutani says later,

And his own reasoning in these pages tends to be specious or skewed. He sets up ridiculous paper tigers to knock down easily: For instance, he suggests that Western liberals acted as if “suicide-mass murder” committed by Islamic terrorists was “reasonable, indeed logical and even admirable.”

No wonder Kakutani is so angry — she turns out to be the “ridiculous paper tiger”. In other words, she instantiates Amis' point.

The substance of her criticisms of Amis' book, if it could be called substance and not, as she might say, chuckleheaded self-indulgence, is that she doesn't agree with Amis on hallowed politically correct grounds; so, having discarded her honor as a reviewer (she has problems with the word “honor”), she becomes a serial ad hominem attacker, devolving into staccato incoherence. She can't help herself. Like George Costanza, she manifests her own variant of neurotic self love.

It is too bad Bill Keller, the NYT executive editor, doesn't realize that his tendentious book reviewer has been too long at the job — Kakutani was actually okay years ago. Kakutani discredits the publication Keller cares so much about, and has a toxic impact on the book business — who would buy a book, or shun a book, based on this reviewer's judgments? Kakutani is absurdly influential, solely derived from a conferred institutional aegis. Maureen Corrigan of Fresh Air fame, a deep, non-ideological, and caring reader, would be a whiff of fresh air Bill.

John Burns and Dexter Filkins on Rose

This discussion with John F Burns and Dexter Filkins is filled with insight and valuable on the scene observation about the confusing landscape of Iraq. Their general understanding is that we have a brief window in which things might turn for the good; very conditional, without tendentious assertion, these are reporters who have hard won credibility.

Filkins' observation that the “wind went out of the sails” when the looting began underlines the failure of Bush's leadership and oversight. But the larger discussion underlines the fact that the Iraqis are human beings who want freedom and risked their lives many times to prove just that. The hope and desire implicit in the allies attempt to improve a uniquely important junction in mid-east history affirms the removal of Hussein. Filkins' account of visiting a “caucus” he was sure would never happen, in the most chaotic part of Iraq at the time, was a touching tale well-told.

Olympic Torch in San Francisco

Today in San Francisco there is now in progress a police parade accompanied by what looks like a torch. No one can see the Olympic torch but the gauntlet of club wielding police. In front of the torch bearers was a big yellow truck, dutifully recording a Potemkin Village celebration, with the police and protesters out of sight of the Chinese television cameras, as were the police helicopters. The cameras were recording the Chinese fantasy, which will be broadcast to the elites in their population, to make it seem all is going great, their honor validated. In the countryside, the Chinese peasants will gasp on the fumes generated by 19th century capitalism, knowing nothing of all of this. In Tibet, a society will continue to be eviscerated.

The route follows, pretty much, our daily run. In fact, we were just out where they are now an hour ago. Apparently they are going to continue on, to the Golden Gate Bridge, and then take a submarine, ur, ferry, to their original destination, for the “celebration”. They completely changed their route, escaping the protesters, escaping the non-extant cheering crowds, escaping their wished-for triumphalism, but not escaping our notice. It was a sad spectacle.

John Rawls About Baseball

Sports yields to the mind a speculative allowance. John Rawls, whom those who know about such things regard as perhaps the greatest of American philosophers, put his feet up in a letter and explained why baseball rules.

… from the start, the diamond was made just the right size, the pitcher’s mound just the right distance from home plate, etc., and this makes possible the marvelous plays, such as the double play. The physical layout of the game is perfectly adjusted to the human skills it is meant to display and to call into graceful exercise. Whereas, basketball, e.g., is constantly (or was then) adjusting its rules to get them in balance.

I noticed that myself, not only in the often acrobatic double play, but also in the run of the mill play. Even a routine grounder has to be very well-played or the runner can make it safe to first — the distance between bases seems perfect for mini-dramas at every turn. This is remarkable given the advantages in speed current players have over their forebears — the geometry of the game persists, like a golden mean, in its canny match-up with human capacities.

When I was a kid I didn't have the patience to watch baseball although playing it was fun. Many memorable early experiences revolve around sports. Now, when a game is loping forward on TV, I'll glance on it, finding its presence oddly reassuring; I enjoy the slow cadences, a rhythm as much determined by the pitcher as the ump, but with cranky prompts on the part of the batter if the pitcher takes too long.

Watching the beautiful parabolic flight of a routine fly-out to center, you can miss that the center fielder was already moving at exactly the right angle to field the ball, his efforts begun at the crack of the bat, an ocean of grass away; like some inexplicable quantum entanglement.

Tibetan Boycott

As usual Anne Applebaum nails it. Her WaPo article about the calls for an Olympic boycott deconstructs many of the arguments against. There seems two strains of objection about demonstrations. One is that a boycott will make things worse for the Tibetans, whether or not it succeeds. The second is that it isn't in the spirit of the games to politicize them. The latter absurdity is evident to anyone who watches the build-up to the Olympics. The Olympics are transparently a political exercise, particularly for the host nation. What yields especial cognitive dissonance is that the non-politicization argument is often delivered in a sanctimonious fashion.

The former argument, about causing further harm to the Tibetans, seems difficult to counter without knowing what they would want the world to do. There is much evidence they would welcome help.

No wonder then, that everyone who hates or fears China, whether in Burma, Darfur, Tibet or Beijing, is calling for a boycott. And the Chinese government and the International Olympic Committee are terrified that those appeals will succeed. No one involved in the preparations for this year's Olympics really believes that this is “only about the athletes,” or that the Beijing Games will be an innocent display of sporting prowess, or that they bear no relation to Chinese politics. I don't see why the rest of us should believe those things, either.

Michael Kinsley Gets Older

The heading in the New Yorker says “Reflections” and that is a good way to describe Michael Kinsley's musings about getting older. The article interlaces his experience with Parkinson's disease with the fact of aging and the effects on social status. Kinsley sees the slow discounting of the individual as we age — the way people look at the old as of another country. He is describing the United States — it is hard to know how relevant this is to other cultures. He is also reflecting on a particular value system in contemporary America, which is that of the careerist Yuppie, which he at first distances himself from and then implicitly identifies with.

In this perspective aging is a game in which you win by living longer — an extension of competitive capitalism. You don't win because of the putative intrinsic value of living longer, but because it yields status. This is such an odd, insulated view of the greater issue it might have made the entire article dismissible. But Kinsley is so sharp, his exposed nerves as to social interaction so sensitive, that it is worth following along, if not for his value system of longevity triumphalism, but for the details, sensibility and personal honesty. Here is Kinsley's description of his encounter with a 90 year old man:

Perhaps sensing some condescension in my praise [ the old man “didn't look 90” ], he then stuck out his chest and declared, “I used to be a judge.” And I started to resent this intruder on my morning and my pool. Did I now have to tell him it was marvellous that he used to be a judge? What was so marvellous about it? What was his point? But, even as he said this, a panicky realization of its absurd irrelevance seemed to pass across his face, and then a realization of its pathos. When he was a judge—if he had been a judge—he had not felt the need to accost strangers and tell them that he was a judge. And then he seemed to realize that he had overplayed his hand. He had left this stranger in the pool thinking the very thought he had wanted to dispel: the old fool is past it. And finally (I imagined, observing his face) came sadness: he had bungled a simple social interchange. So it must be true: he was past it.

Kinsley's observational acuity and sensitivity to social interaction is a novelistic gift. However, Kinsley's mischievousness noted in a previous post, can yield to a narrow, cranky nastiness. But the article for all its foundationalist faults does honestly deal with the falling away that is getting older in the United States.

Michael Kinsley

This review of a collection of Michael Kinsley's essays is entertaining in itself. Kinsley himself is great fun to hear or read — the reviewer shrewdly labels Kinsley as “mischievous”. I don't always agree with him, but he is no ideologue; Kinsley seems to have a saving sense of context.

I was sorry to read that Kinsley has Parkinson's disease. I hadn't known that. The reviewer points out Kinsley's wonderful combination of insight and humor:

Could anyone top this distillation of Tim Russert’s interview style and its simultaneous display of the “contempt, deference and bonhomie” that Kinsley insists are essential postures of the “Anchorhood” when confronting those in power: “With all due respect, Senator, you’re a lying bastard. Bowling next Tuesday?”

Isn't that great? The timelessness of skewering hypocrisy and “phoniness” makes Kinsley's collection of Slate essays — what would normally be bottom of the birdcage fare a day after — into a more lasting contribution.

Politics and Addiction

The political news is depressing and addictive. The candidates all seemed okay until more came out. Hillary now looks tired and devious; her coronation will not come as she clearly expected.

Obama appears an empty suit; a cynical careerist who refused to acknowledge his true motives in joining a church with a toxic pastor, derived from a cynical careerist calculation (as he did admit in his book) for street cred; instead of a mea culpa, Obama arrogated to himself the role of lecturer, instructing the groundlings (that's us) on race. It was an opportunity missed — he could have admitted his ambition and mistake in judgment — it would have been a stirring instantiation of his motto of change you can believe in — an honest, self-aware politician.

McCain, according to a Fresh Air interview today with an expert on the mortgage crisis, has as his economic adviser a politician who introduced the bill that allowed the crisis to exfoliate. The bill introduced by McCain's adviser essentially removed oversight of the banks and insurance companies which then indulged themselves in the cloaked betting that resulted in the mortgage crisis. And McCain is clearly not interested in economic issues, except in the sense of letting things fall where they may.

Great.