Master Feed : The Atlantic

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• Tom Coburn Can't Decide If Inflation Is 'Really' Higher or Lower
• The White House Is Optimistic About Its Limited Obamacare Goals
• Two Political Stories, Hold the False Equivalence
• A (Small) Sign of Progress for Female TV Directors at the Emmys
• Why Xi Jinping's 'Anti-Corruption Campaign' Is Hollow, Unserious, and Ultimately Doomed
• The Taming of Samantha Power
• Jay-Z Joins To-Day and Ice-Cream in the Hyphen Graveyard
• On Voting Rights, Discouraging Signs From the Hill
• The Unsurprising, Unjust Conviction of Russia's Opposition Leader
• 'The Royal Body Exists to Be Looked At'
• An Emmys Mystery: Why Nominate the Worst Part of <i>Arrested Development</i>?
• You Can Do Better Than 'Sent from My iPhone'
• The 3 Most Exciting Words in Science Right Now: 'The Pitch Dropped'
• American Politicians Should Stop Worrying About Chinese Pork
• How Watching 'Unbundled' ESPN and AMC Could Cost More Than Your Whole Cable Bill
• What Would the 'Exercise Pill' Mean?
• Meet the Underdog Who Could Beat Mitch McConnell
• Late-Night Comedy Roundup: How to Keep Illegal Floridians Out of America
• How Wyoming Democrats Feel About Liz Cheney
• The Mad Scientist of Sound
• What Happens to Places That Were 'the Center of the World for Two Weeks'?
• Gay and Transgender Migrants Face Staggering Violence in Mexico
• Young Chinese People May Just Not Be That Into Western-Style Democracy
• The False Equivalence Chronicles: 'NYT' Follow-Up
• Literature Is Dead (According to Straight, White Guys, At Least)

Tom Coburn Can't Decide If Inflation Is 'Really' Higher or Lower Posted: 18 Jul 2013 04:42 PM PDT Reuters Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn doesn't believe inflation is what the official numbers say it is. He just isn't sure whether it's really higher or lower -- that depends on whether he's playing the part of an inflation or a deficit hawk. Republicans are convinced, just convinced, that Ben Bernanke is going to let the inflation monster out from under their beds -- if he hasn't already. Now, for years, they've warned that the Fed's bond-buying risks a return of 1970s-style stagflation, and for years they've been wrong. Historically wrong. Indeed, core PCE inflation just hit an all-time low going back 50 years, and headline inflation is only 1 percent. So where is the inflation? Well, maybe the government is hiding it! That's what Coburn suggested to Bernanke during the latter's Congressional testimony on Thursday: One of the things that concerns me is that since 1980, we've changed the way we measure inflation 20 times. If you used the same measure of inflation we had in 1980, our inflation rate would be over 8 percent right now. Now, it's true that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has changed how it measures inflation the past 33 years. And it's true that the old methods would say inflation is higher now than the new methods do. But that's where things stop being true. Inflation isn't "really" 8 percent today. For one, as Paul Krugman points out, private inflation estimates like MIT's Billion Price Index mirror the official numbers. For another, with nominal GDP growing 4 percent, an 8 percent inflation rate would mean real GDP was falling 4 percent today, which is impossible to reconcile with an economy that's adding jobs. In other words, the old way of calculating inflation is the old way for a reason -- because it's not as accurate. As the BLS explains, it now accounts for how much people substitute between similar goods when the price of one goes up more than the other. Say, for instance, that the price of your favorite cereal shoots up, but your second-favorite does not. You're probably going to switch to the cheaper one -- so has inflation gone up? The new method says not as much. The question is how much people substitute. Now, even after all the tweaks the past few decades, some economists think people substitute more even than the current consumer price index (CPI) assumes. That is, they think inflation is actually lower than the official numbers. Deficit hawks have latched onto this as a sneaky (but fair) way to cut spending and raise taxes. Things like Social Security benefits and tax brackets are indexed to inflation -- so indexing them to a lower level of inflation like chained-CPI would mean fewer benefits and more revenue. Would you believe that a deficit hawk like ... Tom Coburn has endorsed exactly this? Well, here's what he said about it in his 2011 budgetBack in Black From the tax code to mandatory spending programs to Social Security, the benefits provided though many federal programs are adjusted each year to account for inflation. The measure currently used to calculate these automatic increases, Consumer Price Index (CPI), is considered by many to be outdated, leading to higher increases in federal spending than actually justified ... Chained CPI is widely regarded by economists and analysts as a more accurate accounting of inflation than the traditional Consumer Price Index. In other words, Coburn thinks inflation is understated when he's an inflation hawk, and overstated when he's a deficit hawk. It's almost as if he, and the rest of the Republican Party, don't know what they're talking about

The White House Is Optimistic About Its Limited Obamacare Goals Posted: 18 Jul 2013 04:06 PM PDT 75 days left! Only half the nation's governors have signed onto the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act and the bill's employer mandate has been delayed for a year, but the White House remains confident about its ability to make the state-based insurance exchanges that are a central part of the Obamacare roll-out a success. In this, its optimism is reminiscent of that of the Obama reelection campaign during the late summer and fall of 2012, when the people running the microtargeting and ground operations expressed assurance about their efforts even in the face of polls that raised doubts about the president's prospects. That's not too surprising, as the White House team conducting the roll-out in conjunction with the Department of Health and Human Services involves pollster David Simas, the former director of opinion research for the president's reelection campaign and since earlier this year a top communications and strategy aide in the White House. He is now operating with similar Census-tract-by-Census-tract targeting care to figure out how to find and sell insurance to uninsured 18-to-35-year-olds who want coverage and are eligible for subsidies under the new law, which goes into effect on January 1. The exchanges, or Health Insurance Marketplaces, are regulated, competitive regional markets that offer a range of plans that meet certain baseline standards, into which people will be funneled through a central website and application form. The key to getting them up and going is enrolling enough healthy people between 18 and 35 to make the risk pools work and keep rates competitive for the older, sicker people who will be drawn to the new insurance options. Insurers need young healthy people in the pool to keep rates lower for everyone; if only older, sicker people buy insurance at the outset, the calculus behind expanding health-care coverage through a private-sector market falls apart, because rates won't stay low enough for ACA subsidies to help low- to low-middle-income people afford insurance long term. Here's how the White House expects this to go, according to a recent briefing by Simas and conversations with other White House officials. All numbers are from a PowerPoint developed by Simas, unless otherwise specified. * The vast majority of Americans already have health insurance, primarily through their employers. * But there are 15.4 people in the individual insurance market, and there are 40 million people who are uninsured. * These are the people who presumably would be open to turning to the health-insurance exchanges to seek either better options for insurance, or novel insurance options. * The first year enrollment target for the exchanges nationwide is 7 million, to be enrolled between October 1 of this year and the end of March 2014. * For the marketplaces to work, 2.7 million of those 7 million applicants have to be between 18 and 35. Of the uninsured between 18 and 35, 57 percent are male, and 43 percent are female. Almost all -- 96 percent of them -- have no chronic conditions (compared only half of those between 55 and 64). Slightly over half of them are minorities -- 52 percent -- and 48 percent are white. Of those between 18 and 34 who don't have insurance, cost is the main reason preventing them from having it, stymieing 52 percent, according to June's Kaiser Health Tracking Poll. Only 17 percent of the uninsured in this group say they simply chose not to get insurance. A third of the uninsured have to be enrolled in just three states -- California, Florida, and Texas -- to hit the national number targets, but the risk pools have to be balanced internally in every state, since these are state-based markets. For the purposes of building the risk pools, it doesn't matter whether or not a state has accepted or refused the ACA's Medicaid expansion, because there are enough uninsured people eligible for insurance subsidies -- the tax credits provided for by the law -- that even without the Medicaid expansion, the numbers can be met if about 20 to 25 percent of the cohort of uninsured, credit-eligible 18-to-35-year-olds can be signed up for the exchanges. (There are 19 million uninsured between the ages of 18 and 34, according to the advocacy group Young Invincibles, about 9 million of whom are likely subsidy-eligible.) The exchanges will be open in every state and the District of Columbia. Again: The entire 2.7 million 18-to-35 cohort could be made up of people eligible for subsidies. It also could be made up entirely of minorities. It could even be made up entirely of women (only 11 percent of whom say they choose not to have insurance, compared to 22 percent of men). The size of the uninsured 18-to-35-year-old population is large enough in comparison to the first-year enrollment goal that any talk of sabotage by healthy young people refusing to sign up because of political opposition to the law is laughable. The cohort could even be made up almost entirely of people who live in cities -- cities governed by Democrats who have an interest in making sure their constituents get access to the new federal program. In Texas, that means people like the mayors of Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. Messaging on the exchanges will be rolled out through media that's been determined to be likely to reach the uninsured, such as: Galavision TV (a division of Univision), BET, MTV, G4, Spike, Oxygen, Style, and women's magazines, such as Cosmopolitan, which has the largest circulation in the category. It will involve six months of targeting of pockets of the uninsured in 19,000 American cities and their surrounding areas. Women -- moms and girlfriends -- are expected to be critical drivers of opinion on enrolling in the new plans, as women are already one of the major forces behind men taking the time to go to the doctor, lose weight, get that mole checked out, and so on. The central messaging will involve cost, since that's been the biggest stumbling block for the uninsured: finding a plan to fit your budget. Because there are no longer any pre-existing condition bans, there will no longer be an underwriting period when people apply for insurance. The enrollment website will show people the cost of each plan in their area, the amount of federal subsidy they are eligible for, and the final discounted price they would pay per month, depending on what plan they choose. Republicans have expressed concern that without the employer mandate and income-verification requirements, implementation of which have been delayed, the subsidy enrollment system is open to fraud, but supporters of the bill insist than any discounts people get that they are not eligible for will result in a bill from the IRS on the other end. The White House and Obamaland folks have previously made a lot of predictions. Some of them -- like Joe Biden's off-the-cuff 2010 prediction that there'd soon be 250,000 to 500,000 jobs created per month -- have turned out to be wildly off the mark. Others, like the more data-driven predictions about the 2012 election, have been remarkably accurate. It will be interesting to review the hopes of July 2013 in the spring of 2014, and see which category the current ambitions fall into. Even if 2.7 million young people do enroll and 7 million enroll overall, there will be tens of millions of uninsured as the administration heads into year two of the meat of the Obamacare roll-out. The White House keeps saying that the new health-care law will become more popular as more and more people begin to benefit from it. But it's an open question whether the pace at which it's realistically possible to transform the health insurance system is fast enough to make that opinion shift happen any time soon.

Two Political Stories, Hold the False Equivalence Posted: 18 Jul 2013 03:16 PM PDT Something truly remarkable is underway in party politics at the moment. One of our national parties has lost the popular vote in five of the past six presidential elections, and its future on the national level looks worse than its past. It is losing badly among the largest bloc of voters, women (who went for Obama over Romney 56-44 last year); and among the fastest-growing blocs of voters -- Latinos, young voters, Asians, the tech elite, etc -- it is losing by even more.  Yet all of the energy, pressure, and big personalities in this party -- and, you've guessed, I am talking about the Republicans -- are pushing it closer to its fervent but outnumbered base and away from more centrist positions and candidates who might give it a better national-election chance. That's the story behind the primary challenges that knocked off the likes of Dick Lugar and gave us the likes of Todd Akin. It's the story of the repeated debt-ceiling showdowns and filibuster abuse, plus the vote to eliminate Food Stamps. It's the story behind the intra-mural GOP struggle over the immigration bill. The party's Super-ego, in the approximate form of the Bush family (plus business allies, some evangelicals, etc; and technically maybe all these amounting to the party's Freud-parlance Ego) is pushing for approval. The party's Id is doing everything it can to resist. This contest will be chronicled in our histories -- but, as I've pointed out once or twice, it poses surprising challenges for mainstream journalism of the moment, given reporters' strong instinct to remain "fair" by keeping equal distance from the main parties' views.  Here are two illustrations of what you can do if you work free of that impulse. One is from Thomas Edsall, on the NYT's Opinionator blog, who examines the struggle between Republicans concerned about the party's national ambitions and those appealing to, or fearful of, the hard-line local base. Sample: "Their rigidity is killing them. It's either holy purity, or you are anathema," Tom Korologos, a premier Republican lobbyist and the ambassador to Belgium under George W. Bush, said in a phone interview. "Too many ideologues have come in. You don't win by what they are doing." A number of prominent figures in the Republican Party share this harsh view. Jeb Bush warned last year that both Ronald Reagan and his own father would have a "hard time" fitting into the contemporary Republican Party, which he described as dominated by "an orthodoxy that doesn't allow for disagreement." The other is from Rich Yeselson, who argues today in Politico that while freshman Senator Ted Cruz of Texas has essentially no chance of carrying the Electoral College and becoming President in 2016, he nonetheless has a plausible chance of becoming the party's nominee. Sample: So it's best to think of Cruz as the perfect expression of what Perry and Rubio were mere beta versions: the exemplification, brilliantly articulated, of the fringe pathologies trapped in the body of a major party that is today's GOP. Cruz is the real deal. He is deeply grounded in his worldview, and skilled in his presentation of it. He's the man that rightwing activists must wish had started his national political career just a few years earlier: Is there any doubt that Ted Cruz would have been a more daunting challenger for Mitt Romney than the charlatans and bozos Romney defeated for the 2012 nomination? It doesn't take much imagination to envision a titanic faceoff in 2016 between Cruz and the round mound of Trenton town, Chris Christie, his only peer in sheer political talent and chutzpah among the other GOP presidential contenders. My point in highlighting these articles, apart from their respective merits, is not to ask for more attitude or partisan bias in reporting. Rather it is to illustrate the adjustments "responsible" journalism is having to make to reflect the actual reality of our politics now. We know for certain that people looking back on our era, a generation from now, will be asking "What happened to the Republicans in the post-Lehman Bros, post-GWBush age?" Journalism might as well begin grappling with that question now.

A (Small) Sign of Progress for Female TV Directors at the Emmys Posted: 18 Jul 2013 01:39 PM PDT Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP Something pretty cool is happening at the Emmys: For the third time in Primetime Emmy history (and for the third time in the last four years), a directing award has a female-majority nominee field. Related Story An Emmys Mystery: Why Nominate the Worst Part of Arrested Development? In this year's Outstanding Direction For a Comedy Series category, Lena Dunham received a directing nod for Girls' "On All Fours," Gail Mancuso was nominated for Modern Family's "Arrested," and Beth McCarthy-Miller was nominated for 30 Rock's "Hogcock! / Last Lunch." It's the second Emmy directing nomination for Dunham and Mancuso, and it's the eighth (!) for McCarthy-Miller (who's also been nominated in the Variety, Music or Comedy Program category for her work on Saturday Night Live and other programs). None of these women have won a directing Emmy before, and only one woman has ever taken home the Outstanding Directing in a Comedy Series award: Betty Thomas, in 1993, for Dream On. The last time an Outstanding Directing category featured more female nominees than male was in 2011, when the Comedy Series nominees included two male directors plus Mancuso (also for Modern Family), McCarthy-Miller (also for 30 Rock), and Pamela Fryman for How I Met Your Mother. The first time a direction field featured a majority of female nominees was just a year earlier: In 2010's five-nominee Drama Series directing category, Michelle MacLaren was nominated for Breaking Bad, Lesli Linka Glatter was nominated for Mad Men, and Agnieszka Holland was nominated for Treme. If you've followed the last few years' worth of (rightful) "Where are all the female filmmakers" agony in the movie world, this development on the TV end of the entertainment spectrum is a refreshing one. Women working behind the camera are still a rarity in film and in television; the fact still remains that only four women have ever been nominated for a Best Director Oscar, and only one has ever taken home the award (Kathryn Bigelow, in 2010). Women working behind the camera are still a rarity in film and in television. It's refreshing to note, though, that in this year alone, eight women are up for Primetime Emmys for their behind-the-camera work—many of them for the second or third (or eighth) time. The Oscars, with only one directing award compared to the Emmys' six (two of which are in the Creative Arts division), obviously present a much narrower field of competition. And it's worth mentioning that on a TV series, a director's job isn't perfectly comparable to a film director's, either—a TV director generally takes charge of constructing particular episodes, but doesn't usually oversee the making of the entire series. (That's the showrunner. Since there's no single award for a showrunner, it's tougher to nail down how many female showrunners have been nominated for Emmys—but The Hollywood Reporter's 2012 list of the top 50 power showrunners spotlights 14 programs with either a female showrunner or a showrunning team that features at least one woman.) It's still refreshing to note, though, that in this year alone, eight women are up for Primetime Emmys for their behind-the-camera work—many of them for the second or third (or, you know, eighth) time. On the Drama Series side, two women were nominated in the field of five nominees: MacLaren received her third directing nomination for Breaking Bad, and Glatter received her second, this time for Homeland. Two more women were nominated in the Outstanding Directing for a Miniseries, Movie, or a Dramatic Special category—Allison Anders, for Lifetime's Ring of Fire, and Jane Campion, who was co-nominated along with Garth Davis for Top of the Lake—and Rory Kennedy was nominated for a second time in the Director for Nonfiction Programming category for her HBO documentary Ethel. So what does this flurry of recognition for women TV directors mean? It certainly doesn't mean women are equally represented behind the camera in the world of TV—far from it, in fact. But it does mean that in the past few years, women have become more visible at the helm of more of the best programming on television than ever before.

Why Xi Jinping's 'Anti-Corruption Campaign' Is Hollow, Unserious, and Ultimately Doomed Posted: 18 Jul 2013 01:17 PM PDT Jason Lee/Reuters China really ought to have more people like Xu Zhiyong. A law professor, legislator, and civil activist, Xu has worked tirelessly over the past decade in ensuring that China lives up to its constitutional ideals. Writing in The New Yorker in 2009, Evan Osnos described Xu as someone "as close to China gets to a public-interest icon." He even received recognition in the Chinese press for his efforts. But in May, things took a dark turn for Xu. He sent an open letter to authorities calling for the release of 10 people who had been arrested for publicly demonstrating against corruption. Like the activists, and several others who had been similarly detained, Xu advocated that public officials disclose their financial assets in an effort to improve government transparency. On Tuesday, Chinese officials arrested Xu in his Beijing apartment, seizing his computers and cell phone in the process. His current whereabouts are unknown. In the past several months, the Chinese government has  carried out a crackdown against anti-corruption activists in the country, arresting at least 15 since January. This process has ensnared not only well-known activists like Xu Zhiyong but also those like Liu Ping, Li Sihua, and Wei Zhongping, three men quietly detained in Jiangxi Province in April. "Corruption might destroy the Party, but fighting corruption will definitely destroy the Party." In the context of Chinese history, the crackdown is hardly news: The People's Republic has never cared for agitators. But what's different about Xu's case is this: Rooting out government corruption happens to be of President Xi Jinping's stated policy goals. Upon becoming China's president last November, Xi vowed to eliminate the "tigers and flies" who had enriched themselves through bribery and patronage.  Why, then, is the Chinese president going after the very people who, in theory, could most help him achieve his goal of rooting out corruption in China?  The answer is simple. Xi Jinping doesn't actually want to end corruption. According to Minxin Pei, a professor of Political Science at Claremont McKenna University, there is an old Chinese saying: "Corruption might destroy the Party, but fighting corruption will definitely destroy the Party." Corruption is the lifeblood of the Chinese government, as Pei says: "The Communist Party is a patronage machine and patronage by definition is corruption. Fighting corruption would require Chinese government officials to live like monks, and nobody joins the Chinese government in order to live like a monk." Xi Jinping couldn't do much about corruption, even if he wanted to. But what Xi can do is this: crack down on the appearance of corruption. And that's exactly what he's done. Since becoming president, Xi has, among other things, famously asked Party cadres to carpool and cut back on the boozy, lavish dinner banquets that so typified Chinese official privilege. Cutting back on these ostentatious displays of corruption won't actually taking care of the problem -- but, as Andrew Widener of Georgie State University says, it "works well as a PR campaign." And that, there, is the issue: Corruption itself isn't bad. It's the public relations nightmare that accompanies corruption that, for the Communist Party, is the real problem.  That's where Xu Zhiyong comes in. The particular cause he advocated in this case -- the unwillingness of Party officials to disclose their assets -- is indeed sensitive in China: Both the New York Times and Bloomberg are firewalled in the country after reporting on the wealth amassed by former Premier Wen Jiabao and Xi Jinping, respectively. But discussing the issue of wealth disclosure itself isn't necessarily taboo in China: Current Vice Premier Wang Yang said last year that he expected officials to comply by this request eventually, and last year a local cadre in Hunan Province published his personal financial information on Chinese social media. Furthermore, the Chinese government isn't afraid of general vigilance against corruption: There's even established a hot line for people who see something that doesn't look right. But Xu's problem this: as a well-known, experienced activist, he has the potential to cause widespread public recognition of a corruption problem. Unlike earlier generations of activists, Xu can utilize social media in order to promote a cause, and that, more than anything else, is what the Chinese government fears: losing control of the public narrative. What starts as a campaign to force officials to disclose their assets might, as Pei says, then turn into a campaign for greater press freedom. "It doesn't take a political genius to see the risks Xi Jinping faces," he said.  But unfortunately for Xi Jinping and his colleagues, there's only so much you can crack down on the Internet; and corruption isn't just going to go away on its own.

The Taming of Samantha Power Posted: 18 Jul 2013 01:17 PM PDT U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. nominee Samantha Power testifies at her confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday. (Cliff Owen/AP) It certainly sounded like the old Samantha Power. At her confirmation hearing Wednesday, President Obama's nominee to be ambassador to the United Nations called the U.N.'s failure to act in Syria "a disgrace that history will judge harshly." But Power knows as well as anyone, having written the definitive book on the subject, that the U.N. acts effectively only when the United States leads. And the United States has not done so under the leader she serves, especially on Syria. Power's statement only served to remind people how quiet she's really been these last few years, a former firebrand who once passionately championed humanitarian intervention--and Obama as its savior--but who in reality hitched her wagon to perhaps the most conservative president on foreign policy since Dwight Eisenhower. More from National Journal In a Global Popularity Contest, U.S. Beats China Incoming Iranian Reformers Could Face Veto Threat Obama's Helping Hand Surprises Hill Democrats The lack of U.S. action in Syria, while somewhat understandable given the radical Islamist aims of many of the rebels fighting Bashar Assad, is the best evidence that Power has changed from a buzz saw into a bureaucrat. And perhaps not a very effective one. One reason Power has been publicly quiet is that for the last few years, she's been working hard at the White House setting up a pet project: Obama's new Atrocities Prevention Board, of which she was the first chair. The idea was to set up bureaucratic interagency lines of communication to pass on information about humanitarian horrors and how to stop them. "Preventing mass atrocities and genocide is a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States of America," Obama said a year ago in a speech partly drafted by Power, as he announced the new board. While both the president and Power have been careful to say that intervention doesn't necessarily mean military action, the unmistakable fact is that whatever they had in mind hasn't worked in Syria. Some 100,000 people have already died and Assad's army is regaining the initiative with critical military help from Iran, Russia, and Hezbollah, while Obama continues to temporize over his own promise of military aid. Obama administration officials point to some $250 million they've given in civilian aid, but that has done almost nothing to stop the slaughter. To be fair to Power, she is right that U.N. action on Syria has been blocked by Assad's ally, Russian President Vladimir Putin. And she herself was acutely aware at the beginning of the Obama administration that the kinds of humanitarian intervention we saw in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s were no longer as feasible. As Power told me in an interview in 2007, while teaching at Harvard, the mistakes of George W. Bush in invading Iraq on specious grounds changed all that. Bush had so sullied the idea of intervention in the Muslim world that to send U.S. forces even into Sudan would be disastrous, she said. "Now we're neither the shining example, nor even competent meddlers. It's going to take a generation or so to reclaim American exceptionalism," she said. Power described herself then as being in a state of "despondency" about the lost opportunity for American leadership, especially after John Kerry lost the 2004 election to Bush--until she met Obama, that is. "He had seemed like only hope in that grim November morning, somebody who could inject hope into my generation," she said. Power was delighted when Obama asked to meet her after reading her Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "A Problem From Hell ": America and the Age of Genocide, which was filled with rage and anguish over America's failures to stop slaughters in Rwanda and Bosnia, expressed Power's belief that under U.S. leadership the international system was advancing to the point where it would no longer tolerate such terrible human-rights abuses. In an interview last summer, Power still insisted that Obama has been at least as passionate as she has about these issues. "No other senator called me in 2005 to talk about genocide, or the problems and modalities of expanding the toolbox," she said. "That has been Obama for a very, very long time." And yet now, in the face of the worst human-rights crisis of the decade, the administration has fallen short to the point where even Kerry, now Obama's secretary of State, publicly admitted that Washington had been "late" in getting involved. And a senior administration official recently told me that U.S. foreign policy should no longer be "based on doing what makes us feel good." Unlike on Libya, where Power was one of several voices urging the NATO-led intervention, she has said very little about Syria. At least until her confirmation hearing this week, when she declared it "one of the most devastating cases of mass atrocities that I have ever seen." With her new calibrated approach, and careful tending of Obama's message of restraint, it's probably unlikely to expect the return of Sam Power the firebrand. Still, Power made a brilliant study of the inner workings of the U.N., and of the relationship between Washington and Turtle Bay (U.N. headquarters) in her 2008 book, Chasing the Flame: One Man's Fight to Save the World, which was about the tragic Sergio de Mello, the legendary U.N. official who died needlessly in Iraq as the incompetence of the U.S. occupation began to reveal itself. She told me then that one of the objects of the book was to "rescue the institutional memory" of successful international intervention efforts. One of the best things about Chasing the Flame was the way Power traced de Mello's transformation from a young, left-wing idealist into a hard-edged realist about the limits of the possible. "He started out as a humanitarian, but by 2003 he had become a diplomat and politician, comfortable weighing lesser evils," she wrote. It is, perhaps, the same transformation Power is now undergoing.

Jay-Z Joins To-Day and Ice-Cream in the Hyphen Graveyard Posted: 18 Jul 2013 01:14 PM PDT Jay Z, formerly Jay-Z, has dropped the hyphen from his name. Presumably he did this because he felt like it. But maybe there's another reason. The Internet is killing hyphens, at least according to this 2007 Reuters article about an update of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (flagged today by former Atlantic editor Justin Miller). That edition of the reference guide took 16,000 formerly hyphenated phrases and either fused their two components together--a la "bumblebee," "chickpea," "crybaby," "leapfrog," and "logjam"--or split them apart: "fig leaf," "hobby horse," "ice cream," "pot belly." Dehyphenization predates the Internet, of course. "Today" was written as two words until around the 16th century, when it became "to-day" until the early 20th century, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary. But the phenomneon has apparently ramped up recently. "Printed writing is very much design-led these days in adverts and Web sites, and people feel that hyphens mess up the look of a nice bit of typography. ... The hyphen is seen as messy looking and old-fashioned." "People are not confident about using hyphens anymore, they're not really sure what they are for," Shorter OED editor Angus Stevenson told Reuters at the time. But judging from his "fuck hashtags and retweets" and "Internet / I aint even into that" old-man-isms off Magna Carta Holy Grail, Hov might not like the idea of being seen as an online-trends chaser. Luckily, Stevenson served up an aesthetic rationale for ditching hyphens as well: "Printed writing is very much design-led these days in adverts and Web sites, and people feel that hyphens mess up the look of a nice bit of typography. ... The hyphen is seen as messy looking and old-fashioned." "Messy"--very not Tom Ford, very not Jay Z. It all makes sense. I'm just surprised he didn't pull this move before. He's been into delinking words for a while now: "I'm a business, man, not a businessman."

On Voting Rights, Discouraging Signs From the Hill Posted: 18 Jul 2013 01:12 PM PDT The scene outside the Supreme Court on June 25, 2013, after the ruling that invalidated a section of the Voting Rights Act. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters) The story of voting rights in the year 2013 -- how the five conservative justices of the United States Supreme Court undercut them last month and what Congress must do to restore them now -- is really the story of America itself. There has been much premature self-congratulation mixed in with a great deal of denial and dissonance. There has been a widening gulf between promise and reality. Patriotic words of bipartisanship have flowed, promises of cooperation have oozed, but there are few rational reasons to believe that the nation's representatives will quickly rally together to do what needs to be done. The premature self-congratulation came from the Court itself. Less than one year after Sections 4 and 5 of the Voting Rights Act stymied voter suppression efforts in the 2012 election in Florida, Texas and South Carolina, Chief Justice John Roberts in his opinion in Shelby County v. Holder heralded the "great strides" the nation has made in combating such suppression and the fact that "blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare." Not so rare. Before the sun set that day, June 25th, officials in Texas and North Carolina had moved forward with restrictive voting measures that had been blocked by the federal law. The denial and dissonance come from Congress. Federal lawmakers are in denial if they believe they can enact a new "coverage formula" for Section 4 with the same bipartisan fervor with which they endorsed the old formula in 2006. The clearest evidence of the ugliness of the coming fight was the appearance Thursday, at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on the Voting Rights Act, of Hans von Spakovsky, the nation's foremost tribune of the voter fraud myth. Chairing that hearing? Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.), one of only a few dozen federal lawmakers who voted against the Act's re-authorization in 2006. In a perfect world, Congress would acknowledge what we all see -- that the current generation of voter suppression efforts is not limited to the South. The distraction was evident Wednesday, also on Capitol Hill, when the Senate Judiciary held a brief hearing on the Voting Rights Act. Ranking Member Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) stayed just long enough to praise voter identification laws (which are being employed nationwide to suppress largely Democratic votes). Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) extolled the virtues of same-day voter registration. And one of the witnesses, conservative attorney Michael Carvin, went so far as to suggest in comments and answers that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which was left untouched by the Shelby County ruling, also is unconstitutional. So long as lawmakers focus upon protecting against voter fraud that doesn't exist, there will be no quick remedy for the federal law. So long as lawmakers downplay the disastrous impact of restrictive voter identification laws upon the poor, the elderly, and the ill, there will be no urgency to restore what the Court has eliminated. So long as officials undercut the premise of the Voting Rights Act by contending that federal law should be "color-blind," and that the Fifteenth Amendment must bow to the Tenth Amendment, we are in for an ugly fight if Section 4 is to be revised. In a perfect world, Congress would acknowledge what we all see -- that the current generation of voter suppression efforts is not limited to the South. The new "coverage formula" under Section 4 of the law would thus expand, not restrict, federal oversight over such practices. It would still block racially discriminatory voting practices now occurring in those jurisdictions long covered by the voting law. But it would also block partisan ruses occurring in states that aren't -- like Ohio and Pennsylvania. Indeed, this very week a trial is underway over the fate of Pennsylvania's restrictive new photo identification law. Our federal voting law should be clear: no state anywhere can get away with the suppression attempted before the 2012 election.  A nationwide Section 4, or something akin to it, not only would "update" the coverage formula as the Chief Justice wants, it also would vitiate one of the Court's main arguments in Shelby County -- that it is constitutionally unfair to treat states differently from one another when implementing civil rights legislation under the 15th Amendment. The bad news is that any such expansion of federal oversight over state and local voting practices would likely trigger all of the same federalism arguments we've just litigated (and litigated and litigated) in the fight over the Affordable Care Act (and the Defense of Marriage Act). In this political atmosphere, with this House of Representatives, nothing is guaranteed. Why am I so gloomy? As this week's hearings remind us, the Supreme Court is not the vanguard of the conservative movement to neuter civil rights legislation by declaring victory over racial discrimination in voting. There are those to the right of even the Chief Justice and, to them, Shelby County is just the biggest victory (yet) for a movement that has been working for decades, even before Roberts was a young Reagan Administration lawyer arguing against Section 4 of the act, to accomplish the demise of this section of the law. Now, with Shelby County in their pocket, with a Supreme Court skeptical of the need for even the most basic voter protections, and with the House in nihilism mode there is no reason to believe this movement is in a mood to compromise over voting legislation. The Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) gets credit for trying. As the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said to his audience Wednesday, he rushed to hold a hearing on voting rights act before Congress' August recess to set the stage for more personal and private conversations among lawmakers and their constituents (and among lawmakers) when the session recesses. The idea is for members of Congress to gauge the temperature of voters and then return to Washington in September ready to introduce, debate and enact legislation that answers Shelby County. The limited goal of the hearing explains why it generated so few insights. First, Rep. John Lewis (D-Georgia), the civil rights icon, told his fellow lawmakers what they should already know about today's voter suppression laws. "It is the same face with a different mask," Rep. Lewis said, "and we cannot rest until every variation of the seed has been destroyed, and the will no longer exists." And then, directly repudiating the Court in Shelby County, he said this: "Simply said, we are not there yet, and we have seen the clock turn back before." The next witness Wednesday was Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Ohio), representing the pre-Tea Party wing of the Republican Party. Long an enabler of the Voting Rights Act, Rep. Sensenbrenner also warned against the Court's premature declaration of victory. "Voter discrimination still exists," he told his colleagues, "and our progress toward equality should not be mistaken for a final victory." Next to testify came Luz Urbaez Weingberg, an Hispanic office-holder in Florida who could represent the future of the Republican Party (if the party doesn't continue to alienate her with its attitude towards voting rights).  What Weinberg told the Committee is the core of the political battle to come: "The surviving Sections of the VRA will not be fully effective in protecting me and many communities in Florida," she said. "Many of the election laws and policies I have discussed today are highly likely to continue in force or to reappear on the state legislature's agenda, particularly now that the state is free to immediately implement any and every policy it adopts." A Hispanic Republican woman wants Section 4 fixed. Seems to me that should guarantee that it will be so. But in this political atmosphere, with this House of Representatives, nothing is guaranteed. The House Judiciary Committee Hearing Predictably, there was a much different vibe today at the House Judiciary Committee hearing. There was complete balance among the witnesses -- two conservatives and two progressives -- but as they began to speak the gulf described above became clear. The two progressives told panel members that Section 4 can and should be updated. The two conservative witnesses, however, did not. And so the hearing on the House side focused as much upon whether the federal law ought to be revised as it did upon how to revise it in the most effective and lawful fashion. That dichotomy, I fear, is going to linger throughout this political fight over the future of the law. The Committee's choice of witnesses surely was intentional -- no Hispanic Republican woman talking up Section 4 on this panel! -- but in many ways the selection is a gift to the nation because it shows us more clearly what the coming fight will look like. Advocates like von Spakovsky and J. Christian Adams aren't interested in fixing Section 4, in coming up with a new "coverage formula," or in restoring protections to minority voters. We know this is so because they have said so, over and over again, and because they said so again on Thursday. Their appearance reveals the outer fringe of the debate and guarantees that there will be legislative support for no meaningful Congressional response to Shelby County. The first witness Thursday was Adams, a longtime conservative critic of many facets of the Voting Rights Act, whose claim to fame as a federal lawyer seems to be his penchant for accusing black people of discriminating against whites. Precisely how he is going to help Congress productively respond to Shelby County is unclear. On the day that case was decided, Adams apparently wrote this: "Now, federal preclearance of state election procedures seems to be forever dead and buried. While some Congressional Republicans had vowed to enact new legislation to "fix" any coverage formula deemed unconstitutional, the Court opinion today offers almost no room to do so. They would have to decide what's more important: the Republican Party, or the Constitution?" The second conservative witness was von Spakovsky, whose credibility in the area of "voter fraud" was largely destroyed last fall by Jane Mayer in a brilliant piece in The New Yorker. Von Spakovsky thankfully didn't focus much on that during his testimony but still had the gumption to tell lawmakers that he believes there is no need to fix the Voting Rights Act in the wake of Shelby County. I don't know precisely who Congress ought to listen to fix Section 4. But if enough members of Congress listen to von Spakovsy and Adams there is no chance the provision will be updated. And you could argue that's precisely what this movement, including the Chief Justice, had in mind all along.

The Unsurprising, Unjust Conviction of Russia's Opposition Leader Posted: 18 Jul 2013 11:23 AM PDT Aleksei Navalny (Wikimedia Commons) Aleksei Navalny woke up this morning knowing that he'd be found guilty of the crime of embezzlement. What he wasn't absolutely sure of, though probably heavily suspected, was that he'd be given a lengthy jail sentence -- five years, as it turns out, which is just one fewer than the prosecutor had asked for, along with a $15,400 fine. In one the last email exchange I had with him, a little over a week ago, he'd written back: "Will it happen before the 18th?" in response to a note alerting him something forthcoming that I knew would be of interest to him. He was under no illusions as to how little time he had left.There are four other "charges" pending against the Russian opposition leader and anti-corruption campaigner, and possibly more to come. Navalny had said recently that he'd lost count of the number of indictments being handed down by Vladimir Putin's legal Thermidor, which is overseen by the Investigative Committee's Alexander Bastrykin. Bastrykin is man who once threatened to to behead a journalist in a forest; he ordered his investigators, who initially turned up nothing, to turn up something implicating Navalny's theft. It was a dull and lazy farce, right up until the dull and lazy end. As for the defendants in the "Kirovles case," Navalny and his one-time partner Petr Ofitzerov (who got four years and the same fine) are two of modern history's convicted thieves who plainly did not steal anything. Their "trial," presided over by a judge who has never acquitted a defendant, in a country with a higher conviction rate that the Soviet Union during the Great Terror, wasn't just a farce, it was a dull and lazy farce, right up until the dull and lazy end. The entire verdict was 100 pages long and took three hours for Judge Blinov (Blinov means "pancake") to read. "Guilty" came quickly and was anticlimactic for all. But then, perhaps fearing that a population already treated with contempt by its courts, its television channels and most of its newspapers had not been sufficiently stultified into submission, Blinov carried on and on, boring even Navalny, who cheerfully, mockingly live-tweeted his own sentencing. The entire courtroom seemed focused on social media; at one point, the mass distraction prompted Blinov to instruct everyone to please switch off their smart phones. Michael McFaul, the U.S. ambassador to Russia, tweeted at Navalny, "Hi, I'm watching." George Kennan should have been so hip. Here's what Blinov did not say in those three hours. Thirty-three of the 34 prosecutorial witnesses actually briefed on Navalny's behalf. The defense was not allowed to call any witnesses of its own. V.N. Opalev, the one man upon whose testimony Blinov claims to have hung his prefabricated judgment, often forgot his lines and contradicted himself. At one point, as the BuzzFeed's Max Seddon reminds us, Opalev offered the "wrong" evidence and so the "right" kind was simply read aloud for him, to which he replied that, yes, "it was like that." Historical comparisons ought not be stretched too far, but observers aren't wrong to detect a whiff of the 1930s creeping into 2010s. In 1936, as Stalin began liquidating the Bolshevik opposition blocs to his dictatorship, a low-ranking Trotskyist called Holtzman was put on trial, accused of "terrorism" and attempted assassinations of the Soviet leadership. Among the invented targets was Stalin himself, who then helped invent Holtzman's verdict. The state claimed that the defendant had met up with Trotsky's son Sedov in Copenhagen's Hotel Bristol. There was one minor error, however. The Hotel Bristol had burned down in 1917. So Soviet propagandists had to come up with a new location without overtaxing their imaginations; thus the Café Bristol became the furtive rendezvous spot for plotting to dismantle the people's first socialist democracy. No one ever accused Navalny of being furtive; up until today, he was running a long-shot campaign to get elected mayor of Moscow and he's openly stated his intention of one day running for president, two contingencies now foreclosed by a criminal conviction. (There is still some wriggle room for the mayoral race, apparently, related to the timing of an appeal, but Navalny withdrew his candidacy a few hours ago, promising only to continue if he's released from jail.) His activity has been out in the open, published on LiveJournal and on Twitter. That was the point, after all, to awaken everybody to what's been happening around them for over a decade. He wants to dismantle Putin's "managed democracy," which he has cleverly and charismatically exposed as a racket of gargantuan proportion, where oligarchs have been given government titles and KGB agents from "St. Pete" have been given chairmanships on the boards of oil and gas giants -- what Navalny called a "repulsive feudal order that sits like a spider in that Kremlin." Anyone standing in the way of this order, or telling the truth about the criminality that sustains it, is hereby deemed dispensable either through murder, public vilification in the state-controlled organs, or imprisonment. A martyr can do only so much from a labor camp. Ask Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oligarch sentenced for fraud, or Pussy Riot's Mary Alekhine, who was beaten in prison today. Nevertheless, in a sense, defeat has furnished a kind of victory because what Navalny has helped to teach cannot be unlearned. Here he is in his final blog post, "Before the Sentence": All these years, along with you, I learned to organize under the conditions of state propaganda, intimidation and lack of money. We've learned a thing or two. We now know how to raise money. I'm sure you'll help collect contributions to our Foundation, in the event of a negative turn of events. By my estimate, the annual potential for raising funds from citizens for political projects is at least 300 million rubles. You just have to go and collect them, but now only our Foundation is doing this and a few other organizations. We're finding only a small portion. We know how to conduct investigations better than other organizations which are supposed to be conducting investigations [the dacha of Yakunin, president of Russian Railways]. We know how to find the real estate [Vladimir Pekhtin's land in Florida] and assets of crooks, and their residence permits [Bastrykin's papers in Czech Republic]. We know how to decentralize funding and put out newspapers [list of cities where Navalny's paper is published]. The first issue of a million copies ran out, which means we could do 5-10 million every three months if we try. We know how to run large rallies. We know how to create parties . Parties that are so real and so frightening to the government that they don't want to register them, despite "the liberalization and notification procedure." We know how to gather 100,000 real signatures to petitions [i.e. on limiting cost of cars for officials]. We know how to conduct honest elections on the Internet and we know now how to make strong electoral lists on the basis of preliminary elections for any electoral campaign. But there's much more work to be done, Navalny continued, and the real struggle isn't even against the Kremlin, it's against apathy and disaffection: There are no people on whom the unhappy, frightened, and duped millions of residents of Russia can rely. They are less lucky in life than you, and you are their hope. There isn't a secret underground whose leaflets you will be surprised to discover tomorrow in your doorway. There is no person who will come and silently put everything right - people are thinking of you as such a person. No one is in a position to resist stronger than you. It is your duty to the rest, if you realize it; it is the sort of thing that it is impossible to delegate to someone else. There is no one else, except you. If you are reading this, then you are in fact the resistance. After the sentence was read, Navalny hugged his wife goodbye, was put in handcuffs, and hauled out of court. The Kirov Prosecutor's office has objected to this immediate incarceration because the sentence has technically not yet gone into effect and, really, what is Russia without the rule of law? Today, in the midst of a swarm of riot police, there are thousands of people protesting in Moscow. Some are now at the Kremlin gates.

'The Royal Body Exists to Be Looked At' Posted: 18 Jul 2013 10:51 AM PDT Olivia Harris/Reuters I just returned from the UK, where reporters and Union Jack-draped monarchists are camped out in front of St. Mary's Hospital awaiting the royal baby, which seems to be coming fashionably late. Poor Kate. Giving birth for the first time is terrifying enough without a cadre of helicopters flying past your window. Hilary Mantel famously described Duchess Kate as "a jointed doll on which certain rags are hung," earning the ire of the tabloids and citizenry alike for her "sexist" remarks (the fat ugly crone must be jealous, they concluded, totally un-sexistly). Substitute "rags" for "women's interest trend stories," I say. Ever since she came onto the scene a decade ago, Kate, a flesh-and-blood woman, has served as a human mannequin upon which to pin narratives about modern love, marriage, domesticity, and childrearing. By looking at the media's treatment of her, you can get a pretty good look at contemporary gender-related cultural fixations. Only they're not very contemporary at all. When Kate first appeared as William's college girlfriend, people wondered, with the whispered faux concern of a high school frenemy, whether she was too thin. Also, what was the secret to her shiny hair? Later, when she and William were dating but not yet engaged, the press speculated frantically about whether and when Wills would put a ring on it, dubbing Kate "Waity Katie" and spawning 1,001 stories about long courtships and ultimatums and whether modern women should expect diamonds or not. At the same time, her rather short work history and her career ambition were scrutinized. Was she lazy? Traditional? If she didn't work, would she be setting women back? Would she describe herself as a feminist? When the couple finally became engaged, we could discuss the benefits and drawbacks of waiting until your late 20s to marry. It was also a good opportunity to chirp about the cost of planning a wedding (so expensive!) and unroll the full catalog of pre-wedding diets (SoulCycle! Quicktrim! Caveman!). Related Story If It Wasn't the Pregnancy Tests, Why *Did* Baby Catalogs Start Arriving at Our House? When Kate and William had been married for a month, tabloids began humming with faux concern about fertility issues. Was Kate eating Brussels sprouts on her honeymoon because the folic acid helped increase pregnancy changes? Was she--here we go again--too thin to get pregnant? Had the couple been seen outside a fertility clinic? Would she consent to IVF? Should we consent to IVF? There was the parsing of her domestic habits, which, according to Vanity Fair, ran to "cooking William's favorite supper, roast chicken" and making jam for Christmas presents. She even refused to hire a housekeeper, reportedly planning to do the chores herself (or "share" them with Prince William, as is the modern way), and was taking cooking lessons. When the royal pregnancy was finally announced, a torrent of "is it OK to ____ while pregnant" stories flooded onto the scene. Play field hockey while pregnant? Drink tea while pregnant? Get a new puppy while pregnant? Was waiting until your 30s to have babies becoming trendy? But was it also dangerous? Autism! Down Syndrome! Hyperemesis gravidarum, AKA "constant morning sickness," from which Kate suffered, is more common in older mothers, don't you know? Was Kate's baby bump too small? Would she have a natural birth? Hypnobirth? If the baby is a boy, would she and Wills decide to circumcise (if they do, will it be, as a Telegraph opinion piece suggests, "an affront to decent human behavior"?). But, most importantly, how long will it take her to get her "pre-baby body" back? "The royal body exists to be looked at," wrote Mantel. But the same is true about the female body in general. The scrutiny Kate undergoes on a large scale is the same scrutiny nearly all women experience on a smaller one. Are we too fat or too thin? Is our hair shiny enough? Are we marrying too young, or not young enough? Should we Botox, condition, Clomid, circumcise, vaccinate, exfoliate, co-sleep, Dukan diet, Lean In or Lean Out? "Ordinary girls and women feel all too keenly the constant scrutiny we're put under and the impossibility of measuring up," writes Susan J. Douglas in Enlightened Sexism, her analysis of gender in contemporary media. In her book How to Be a Woman, Caitlin Moran summarized the sentiments of British women toward the princess's lot: Poor cow. Jesus Christ, does she know what she's let herself in for? A lifetime of scrutiny, bitching, pap-shots of her thighs, and speculation on her state of mind. Rather you than me, darling. But it's not her rather than me. Sure, she may be the one in the tabloids. But the questions the press asks of her are meant for all women.

An Emmys Mystery: Why Nominate the Worst Part of <i>Arrested Development</i>? Posted: 18 Jul 2013 10:21 AM PDT Netflix This year's Emmys nominations are historic, as a lot of headlines on the matter will tell you, because they signal that Internet TV has "arrived." Two Netflix original series, House of Cards and Arrested Development, received major nods from voters, with Cards getting nine nominations and Arrested getting three. More on Arrested Development Is Arrested Development Homophobic? Have You Called Anyone 'Anustart' Today? How Arrested on Netflix Broke My Brain This is a good thing. You may have your quarrels with these two shows--I do, especially with the ponderous yet somehow captivating Cards--but it's hard to argue that they're not in the same quality bracket as many of the long-feted shows on networks and cable. It's right for the Emmys to recognize this. But otherwise, the Emmys remain old-school. They fetishize recognizable stars, like Game of Thrones' award-winner Peter Dinklage, who was nominated in a season where he had relatively little to do while Charles Dance owned every scene he was in and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau pulled off an astonishing character transformation. And they latch on to particular shows for years on end: Modern Family, as always, dominates this year's comedy categories. This holds for the Netflix nominations. Cards' already-famous leads Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright are up for acting awards; the sensitive, hilarious, heartbreaking work by supporting actor Corey Stoll, who plays Congressman Peter Russo, remains unrecognized. More frustrating is the case of Arrested Development. Its fourth season, the first for Netflix, was bizarre, sprawling, and inconsistent, yet often uproarious. As The Atlantic's Chris Orr wrote, it's "something that doesn't really have a name, or a meaningful precedent: not a series, or a movie, or even a mini-series, but rather a single, eight-hour work of dada televisual art." So it makes some sense that it's not up for Best Comedy. But why is its sole nomination in a non-technical category for a role that a lot of people thought was among the weaker points of the new season--Jason Bateman as Michael Bluth? Bateman is an excellent actor, and his character is the ostensible protagonist of Arrested Development. Since the start of the series, he's played the straight man to his kooky relatives, the guy impressed by how normal he is compared with his hook-having, Magicians' Alliance-betraying family members. One of the show's many ironies, of course, is that Michael really isn't that different, that he shares his kin's congenital self-centeredness. But in the original Fox seasons, a sense decency and love of family--especially love of son--kept him relatable. In Season Four, he's even more central to the show. Famously, showrunner Mitchell Hurwitz struggled to reassemble the old cast for this new run of episodes, and schedules conflicted so much that he ended up having to use green screens and write-around techniques to bring the old ensemble together. Each installment therefore revolves around one particular character in the Bluth family. But Michael always makes an appearance, usually as part of his quest for signatures to obtain the rights to make a movie based on his family's life. The most jarring aspect of this season, though, was how show creator Mitchell Hurwitz and his writers seemed to flip a switch on Bateman's character, turning him into a full-fledged sociopathic weirdo with no explanation of why. Well, there's a "why" in the sense that you can sort of understand why they did it: to enable the season-long exploration of how he screws up his relationship with his son George Michael, ensuring that the Bluth clans' dysfunction lives on for another generation. But the show never offers a motivation for his transformation. He's separated from the rest of his family, yes, but that doesn't mean he'd be blind to the fact that he's cramping George Michael's life by taking up residence in his room. It doesn't really explain his OCD-like obsession with parliamentary procedures over dorm evictions. Most crucially, it doesn't mean he'd feel OK about sleeping with the woman he believes to be his boss's mistress and he knows to be his son's girlfriend. The writers really should take most of the blame. But one way or another, Michael Bluth ended up being the least memorable, most frustrating ensemble member this season. Old Michael might have initially traveled down these paths and then realized his mistake and turned back. New Michael, though, isn't just self-righteous and oblivious--he's recklessly, cruelly obstinate. Bateman's charms work well enough in individual scenes. He's mastered the art of the comically thoughtful pause and can affect a tone of knowing bullshit like few others. But he never switches up his performance to reflect what's changed in Michael 2.0. To be fair, I'm not really sure what that change might have looked like; the writers really should take most of the blame here. But one way or another, his character ended up being the least memorable, most frustrating ensemble member this season. There were more deserving cast members, even if they weren't leads. Will Arnett as GOB was never funnier or sadder than as "Feral Jesus" or when bromancing Tony Wonder. Michael Cera convincingly pulled off George Michael's descent into Bluth-style duplicity. Tony Hale's minute-long turn as Lucille Bluth's smoke receptacle alone deserves a prize. Of course, it's not worth getting all that worked up about: At their best, industry awards merely offer an excuse to chatter about the works of entertainment we love. And there's some poetry to this particular year's slate of nods. One of the central, recurring scenes of the new Arrested season is set at a hotel that's simultaneously hosting three galas in one night, including two awards ceremonies. Explosions, expletive-laden tirades, and prostitution solicitations ensue. Arrested Development, it's pretty clear, recognizes the ridiculousness of events like the Emmys; misplaced nomination aside, it's nice to see the Emmys, in turn, recognize it.

You Can Do Better Than 'Sent from My iPhone' Posted: 18 Jul 2013 09:08 AM PDT My gloriously damaged iPhone screen with the magic words on it (Alexis Madrigal). "Sent from my iPhone" It began as a humblebrag and an excuse. It meant, "I am using an expensive mobile device to send this email, so please don't judge my spelling errors, lack of punctuation, or clipped sentences." These signatures, automatically generated, would not have been an auspicious place to look for creativity or wry humor. And yet, it seems like every other day I come across someone who has crafted a little message that says and does a lot more than beg forgiveness and flaunt status. My sister's always cracks me up: "Sent from a phone. Regularly foiled by autocorrect. But duck it." I've seen it hundreds of times and I love it each time. (I read it in my sister's voice in my head -- "But duck it." -- and I laugh.) Our friend Alissa Walker, who advocates for alternative transportation in LA, signs her messages, "Sent from the streets." VentureBeat's Dylan Tweney's just says, "Sent from my brain." My wife's used to say, "Sent from space." A chef, Samin Nosrat: "Sent from my pasta machine." One of our contacts at Microsoft uses, "Sent telepathically." A friend of a friend makes things explicit and ironic simultaneously: "Short and to the point...this email was sent from my mobile device." Another friend of the channel shows as well as tells, "Sent by my idDevices. May be rife with typos or poor judgment." And it goes on and on. Jokey: "Sent from my telco slingshot" Deadpan: "Sent from Mobile Device" Half-true: "Sent from a telephone Calm: "Sent from the road." Mysterious: "Sent from my illustrated primer." Clever: "Sent from my camera." Retro: "Sent from my steam-powered printing press" Implausible: "Sent from the future." The fact that one *can* change the signature text means that some people will, and when they do, it becomes a decision for everyone. Doing it says something, and not doing it says something. And once it's a choice, rather than a default, creativity and identity signaling will creep in through that crevice. And it got me thinking: there should be a Hall of Fame for these lines, a gallery of all the permutations that humans can generate playing off a single line of default text. I'm going to take your submissions here and post a top 10 tomorrow. Behold the form. It's got three pieces: The line itself, any backstory, and your information. If you *don't* want me to use your name, let me know in the backstory bit.  P.S. I'll give you a hint on how to find the good ones searching your Gmail: Search exactly this string: "sent from" is:important -phone -ipad -iphone.

The 3 Most Exciting Words in Science Right Now: 'The Pitch Dropped' Posted: 18 Jul 2013 09:01 AM PDT Aaaaaaaaaaand ... DROP! (Trinity College/Chris Heller) In 1944, a colleague of Ernest Walton, the first person in history to successfully smash an atom, began an experiment of a decidedly larger and lengthier variety. In a physics lab at Trinity College, Dublin, the experimenter took several lumps of tar pitch -- a hard, carbonic material thought to become viscous under certain conditions -- heated them, and placed them in a funnel. And then placed that funnel into a jar. And then placed that jar into a cupboard. And then -- after another move of the jar, to a campus lecture hall -- left the thing alone. Not for minutes or days, but for years. And then decades. The point of this project was to prove that pitch -- which, if you hammer it, shatters like glass -- actually has some liquid properties. It is solid stuff that is, over a looooooooong period of time, capable of flowing. The work (the experimenter who set it up has been, alas, lost to history) examined this phenomenon in a lab setting. And it wasn't the first to do this: the pitch-and-jar setup was a replication of a similar experiment being conducted at the University of Queensland in Australia -- one that, to this day, remains the longest-running laboratory experiment in the world. Both experiments were simple and, in that, wonderfully elegant: their primary component, aside from the pitch and the jar, was time. They required little more than waiting and watching.  What made them challenging, however, was this second aspect. Watching, after all, is separate from seeing. And the data the scientists were looking for, for the most part, came in the form of a momentary, yet momentous, happening: the pitch, rendered elastic, succumbing to gravity and leaking through the funnel, dropping to the bottom of the jar. The scientists were waiting-watching for a single, split-second occurrence. It came to be known as the Pitch Drop.  Aaaaaaaaalmost there: In 1990, University of Queensland's John Mainstone posed with a kind-of-almost-ready-to-drop bit of pitch. (Wikimedia Commons) And those drops came very, very rarely. The Queensland Pitch Drop experiment was set up in 1927; since then, the pitch it contains has dropped eight times -- so, an average rate of one drop per decade. In the world beyond the tar's sealed jar, wars have broken out; peace has been restored; the Internet has been invented and commercialized; the moon has played host to the tread of human feet. And there the pitch has remained, slow and slick and taking its sweet time. Which has made the pitch something of a human drama as well as a scientific one. Not only was the pitch drop a literally blink-and-you-miss-it occurrence ... but the experiments seeking to see it also found themselves, in some sense, on the wrong side of technological history. Even in 1944, when the Trinity version came along, video technology was not something that could easily be put to the task of endless monitoring. The data desired -- the breakaway moment -- required human eyes, watching as patiently (and, ideally, as unblinkingly) as possible. And human eyes, of course, are notoriously unreliable. This fantastic episode of Radiolab recounts the series of Alanis Morissette-song-worthy near-misses that prevented people from observing the Queensland pitch in the act of dropping. One time, John Mainstone -- a Queensland professor who curates the Pitch Drop experiment and has made it his mission to observe its fall -- stepped out to get tea. During the 15 minutes he was away, because of course, the pitch dropped. Another time, later on, Mainstone and his colleagues put video-monitoring technology to use to record the moment even if no humans were nearby to see it. The equipment malfunctioned. The pitch dropped, unobserved. A DIY pitch drop experiment (Science Gone Wild) All this has given these little lumps of resin something of a cult following -- one that has been empowered by an Internet that is always on, and always around, and always watching. The black pitch has become its own kind of white whale. And now, thanks to a livecam trained on Queensland's jar of pitch, you yourself can watch for the moment of Pitch Drop. You, yourself, can nerd out about it with friends. You, yourself, can do what nobody had done before: catch the viscous pitch, the unicorn of the scientific world, in the act of dropping. Which brings us to today -- or, more specifically, to last Thursday. It had been about a decade since the Trinity pitch's last drop, and researchers there had seen that a drop had begun to form in the pitch. The time was nigh. So they did what anyone with the means would do: they trained their own webcam on the jar. And, on Thursday: you guys, THE PITCH DROPPED. And this time, the equipment didn't malfunction. This time, there were people around to observe the act as it happened. This time, for the first time, the liquified solid, falling from its source, was observed by human eyes. That's the moment, at the top, GIFed for your pleasure. So is this the most important scientific happening of the day? No, probably not. But it is, for my money, the most exciting. Science, in the public imagination, is ... scientific. It is data-driven and analytic and divorced, by design, from human emotion. But this split-second falling of a lump of liquid-y tar is a nice reminder of the excitement that can be embedded in even the dullest of experiments. The drop of pitch may simply have proved what we already knew. But it was a drop of pitch that was 69 years in the making. It was the drop of pitch we had been waiting for.

American Politicians Should Stop Worrying About Chinese Pork Posted: 18 Jul 2013 09:00 AM PDT (From L) Sentors Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Thad Cochran (R-MS) and Pat Roberts (R-KS) listen to Larry Pope, president and chief executive officer of Smithfield Foods Inc. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters) Last week the U.S. Senate held hearings to question the CEO of meat-producer Smithfield Farms, about the proposed $4.7 billion sale of the Virginia-based company to Shuanghui International, China's largest pork producer. The sale is under review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States or CFIUS, an interagency panel headed by the U.S. Treasury that reviews foreign investments for national security threats. Samuel Kleiner, a student at Yale Law School, argues in his Viewpoint on the subject that, "the Smithfield Farms deal threatens to undo a lot of good will between the U.S. and China on Foreign Direct Investment issues precisely because there is no plausible national security issue in the deal." More From ChinaFile China At The Tipping Point? Jackie Chan--The Young Master Comes of Age How the Snowden Affair Might End Up Helping U.S.-China Relations "At stake is the largest-ever Chinese investment in an American corporation and the future China's perception that it has fair access to the U.S. market," writes Kleiner. We asked contributors to the ChinaFile Conversation to comment on the deal, the CFIUS review, the involvement of Congress and what deal augurs for the future of U.S-China trade. Arthur R. Kroeber: The Senate Agriculture Committee's decision to hold high-profile public hearings on what ought to be a simple pork industry takeover deal is a nice illustration of my "odd-year" rule of U.S.-China relations. This rule holds that in odd-numbered years -- that is to say, non-election years -- legislators loudly beat the gong of the China Threat. Because China is big and can be vaguely scary, it's an easy way to score publicity points, with absolutely no downside. Then in even-numbered years, when elections draw nigh, the politicians put away their gongs and change the subject. That's because elections are won on the issues that American voters actually care about, which turn out not to include China. I first noticed this pattern in 2005 and 2007, when Congressional screeching about the harm that China's cheap currency was doing to U.S. industry reached its highest pitch, only to dissipate almost entirely in the mid-term and presidential elections of 2006 and 2008. Worries about the currency revived briefly in 2011, and former Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman launched a presidential campaign based largely on a promise to be tough on China. That campaign went nowhere, and after some bellicose rhetoric early in the Republican primary season Mitt Romney pretty much shelved the China issue. There are a few localized exceptions to this rule -- Sherrod Brown won his Ohio senate seat partly on an anti-China platform -- but on the whole we can be pretty sure that senatorial Sinophobia in 2013 will be forgotten by 2014, especially if the underlying issue is a silly one. And as China threats go, the pork problem is surely one of the silliest. And as China threats go, the pork problem is surely one of the silliest. Shuanghui International, an arm of China's biggest and best pork producer, wants to take over Smithfield Foods, America's biggest pork company. Smithfield is happy to sell, and Shuanghui's most likely motive is that it wants to learn from Smithfield how to improve the notoriously unreliable Chinese pork supply chain and meet international quality standards so that it can consolidate its domestic market position and increase exports. It's hard to see how a Chinese company's effort to clean up its own country's food safety system, and perhaps increase the globally traded pork supply, could be construed as a threat to U.S. national security. Nonetheless, some committee members and their chosen experts gave it their best shot. Three reasons were given why the Treasury Department's Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) should block the deal. Two are utterly specious and one points to a real problem -- but not one that would be solved by preventing the takeover. Utterly Specious Reason #1: U.S. food security is threatened, either because we would become dependent on imports of Chinese pork or because Smithfield would start selling all its products to China, rather than American consumers. Fortunately, no one really seems to take this idea seriously. Utterly Specious Reason #2: U.S. consumers could be harmed by a surge in imports of unsafe Chinese pork. There's a simple solution to this worry: simply enforce, and if necessary improve, the U.S.D.A.'s and F.D.A.'s food safety standards. If Chinese-origin pork is consistently found to fall short, trade rules would allow the U.S. to restrict or ban imports until the standards are met. Shuanghui owning Smithfield, or Smithfield owning Shuanghui, is irrelevant to the question of whether the U.S. government upholds its own food safety rules. The more serious concern is that China's government doesn't practice reciprocity in international mergers. Beijing is perfectly happy for Shuanghui to take over Smithfield, but if the deal went the other way, it's almost certain Chinese regulators would block it. This is a legitimate issue, one of a host of market-access problems that U.S. trade negotiators need to keep pressing China on. But blocking Chinese takeovers of U.S. firms is a terrible solution. First of all, it would reinforce the already widespread belief among Chinese that the U.S. is engaged in a conspiracy to prevent China's rise. Moreover, when China blocks innocuous mergers it mainly hurts itself, because it thwarts the efficiency improvements that occur when capital gets re-allocated. One of the big reasons China's economy is stumbling now, while America's is slowly but surely recovering, is that China doesn't allow the free buying and selling of companies, thereby allowing wasteful and mismanaged firms to stay in business far longer than is healthy. This is not an example to emulate. Steve Dickinson: It is unlikely that the Senate hearing on the Smithfield ham deal will convince The Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) to reject the Shuanggui purchase bid. It has been the consistent policy of the U.S. that CFIUS review is confined to military security. Economic security is never a factor in CFIUS review. Senator Stabenow has openly argued that CFIUS should overturn this longstanding policy and expand security review to include economic security and food safety. What could be more American than convincing a naïve foreign company to pay an inflated price for a failing U.S. company? It is highly unlikely that a majority of Senator Stabenow's colleagues in the Senate share her position. It is more likely that Senator Stabenow's colleagues are eager to encourage foreign direct investment (F.D.I.) in the United States. What could be more American than convincing a naïve foreign company to pay an inflated price for a failing U.S. company? Maintaining the restricted scope of CFIUS review is a key to maintaining the open flow of foreign investment in such projects. As is typical, the Senate hearing is all for show, with no other purpose than to express the minority view of Stabenow and her anti-China trade supporters. What would happen if the Senate were actually able to convince CFIUS to abandon its longstanding policy by rejecting the Shuanggui bid on economic security grounds? This would clearly have a negative impact in general on foreign F.D.I. in the U.S. by making the review process excessively cumbersome. However, the impact on U.S. China economic relations would be negligible. There are four areas to consider, none of which will be substantially affected by a CFIUS rejection of the Shuanggui bid: 1) F.D.I. from China to the U.S. It is true that a negative decision on Shuanggui could convince other Chinese companies that M&A in the U.S. is more trouble that it is worth. While many in the U.S. hope for or fear a flood of Chinese investment into the U.S., these hopes/fears are not based on reality, for two reasons. First, the notion that the Chinese companies are sitting on a mountain of money is simply false. Investment capital is limited and the Chinese are very careful where they use their limited investment capital. Second, in this tight market for investment, Chinese companies are reluctant to invest in the U.S. because of the fear that they will be forced to obey too many laws. 2) F.D.I. from the U.S. to China. There is a concern that an adverse decision on Shuanggui will cause Chinese regulators to retaliate by refusing to permit U.S. companies to engage in similar M&A deals in China. The fact is that the Chinese government already effectively prohibits U.S. and other foreign companies from purchasing strong and successful Chinese companies. Any response to an adverse decision on Shuanggui would do nothing to change that longstanding Chinese policy. 3) Exports to China. There is a concern that the Chinese government will retaliate by limiting or prohibiting U.S. food exports to China, particularly in the area of pork and other meat products. The fact is that China already limits U.S. the export of U.S. meat to China. Nothing about the Shuanggui decision will change the Chinese position, since the Chinese position is based entirely on the domestic political need to protect Chinese pork farmers without regard to international trade concerns. It is certain that the day the Chinese government decides that it needs U.S. meat products to feed its people, the door to exports from the U.S. will be opened wide, as is currently the case for soybean, corn and wheat exports. 4) Imports from China. China is addicted to dealing with its manufacturing surplus by exporting cheap goods and the U.S. is addicted to the import of those cheap goods. Rejection of the Shuanggui bid may result in some sabre rattling by the Chinese government, but such antics will have no impact on the fundamentals of this co-dependent relationship. James Fallows: Arthur Kroeber and Steve Dickinson make convincing, logically sound, and systematic arguments on why the U.S. government should not try to block the takeover of Smithfield by Shuanghui International. All of us should be grateful to them for doing the serious work of showing why the "controversy" over this sale is insane.  What, have we really become a nation of morons? Now that they've done the serious work, I think there is only one real question that remains. It is: What, have we really become a nation of morons? Can it really be true that politicians or policy experts are urging us to fret about the sale of a meat-packing chain? Even in (as Arthur Kroeber points out) an odd-numbered year? There are lots of things to worry about in the U.S.-China relationship and China's emerging role in the world. Those range from the environment; to cyber issues; to military-civilian relations within China and their consequences for China's dealings with the the U.S. and other countries; to the consequences pro and con of China's economic "rebalancing"; and back to the environment again. We can all imagine Chinese takeovers of U.S. firms that would raise questions -- for instance, if Huawei wanted to buy Intel, or Baidu bought Google, or the China Daily purchased the New York Times. But by any sane analysis, a meat-packing deal comes nowhere on this list. Again, as our two previous analyses point out, what would keep Shuanghui from selling Chinese-style suspicious food to U.S. customers after the deal is the same thing that keeps them from doing so now: U.S. food-safety laws that apply within the U.S. (at least until The Sequester takes full effect). It's far more likely that this deal will have a "leveling-up" effect, of Shuanghui using it as a way to promote a safer-brand image in China, than the dreaded race-to-the-bottom leveling-down effect. Is there any good side to this controversy? I would say yes: the very fact that it seems to be fizzling out. For all the reasons my two colleagues explain. Damien Ma: I saw the entire live Congressional hearing on the Shuanghui/Smithfield deal, and most of questions were, let's say, less than enlightened. Since I fully agree with Arthur's and Samuel's takes on the political and legal dimensions of this deal, I won't add much beyond the smart things already said. But a few quick additional points for thought. 1. It strikes me that food trade and investment is an area of natural complementarity between the United States and China. America has developed one of the most efficient agriculture sectors in the world -- with just about 2 percent of the labor force, we can waste a lot of food, feed 300 million people, often a little too well, and still export tons of surplus into global markets. The United States has been a food exporter for decades, and this is clearly not the case for China. To understand the opportunities in this sector better, the Paulson Institute recently published an investment paper from Dermot Hayes at Iowa State University that explores several investment ideas in agrobusiness to attract Chinese capital. Those who worry Chinese buying up food companies will lead to the same result as moving production to China, job losses a la the last decade of manufacturing (itself a debatable point), fundamentally misunderstand China's comparative advantages. China could become a manufacturing powerhouse so quickly because it has (or had) a surplus of inputs critical to that sector: abundant labor. The rise of the Chinese labor force over the last 15 years arguably had a broadly deflationary effect on wages. This is not the case at all on food. China sits on just 7-8 percent of world's arable land, and faces water scarcity that go back centuries. Chinese policymakers spend much of their time worrying about how to keep food cheap enough (the true cost of the inputs would be quite high without generous subsidies from the government), since China still has half a billion relatively poor who spend a disproportionate amount of disposable income on just feeding themselves. Unlike the United States, China is a victim of its resource fate, which means it simply does not have the comparative advantage in food production and agro-business that the United States has. If you talk to the average Chinese, they look at the United States as this people-less fecund land of vast soils: "there are no people in the middle of the country!" 2. Chinese food demand is shifting rapidly. A rising middle class is increasingly choosing a meat-rich and protein-rich diet, and we all know that the Chinese are major pork eaters. Chinese meat consumption has already far outstripped that of the United States. The Chinese now consume more meat than the entire world produced in 1950. As Smithfield's CEO testified, pork consumption is apparently declining in the United States for a variety of reasons, but in places like Mexico and China, that's not the case. If you're a pork company trying to prosper and increase market share, China is it. India is a big consumer market, but they're not pork eaters. 3. As for China, importing food has long been a sensitive subject. Unlike other commodities, say oil, food is an absolute necessity. And because of cultural and historical dimensions unique to China, food sits in a exalted position in the Chinese psyche. So it isn't a surprise that the Chinese government still officially maintains a "95% self sufficiency" policy on food. But in reality, China relies just as much on the global market for soybeans and corn (particularly from the U.S. and Brazil) as it does for its crude oil and natural gas. This is an intellectual issue that will need to be untangled for China to more fully "trust" global markets as a reliable provider of its foodstuffs. If recent trends and demand patterns are any indication, China may have little choice but to shift its stance on food security, if not formally, then through de facto action. A version of this post appears at ChinaFile, an Atlantic partner site.

How Watching 'Unbundled' ESPN and AMC Could Cost More Than Your Whole Cable Bill Posted: 18 Jul 2013 08:57 AM PDT ESPN would cost as much as $30 a month if you yanked it out of the cable bundle and made it a standalone service, according to new analysis from Needham Insights. I asked a friend from the cable industry to forward the entire 34-page report to me, and here's the money chart (click to enlarge). Lots going on here, so I'll direct your attention to two places: (1) First column on the right: Subscription fees skimmed off your cable bill account for between 71 percent and 91 percent of sports channels' revenue mix. The best business model in entertainment is one that most TV-watching families don't even know exists. (2) First row, fourth column: ESPN makes as much as $7.2 billion each year before counting a cent of advertising. Before counting a cent of advertising. Needham's estimate is the highest I've ever seen, but not totally out of whack with others. Starting to make up that $7.2 billion among a smaller cohort of pay-TV households would require each household to pay much more for today's ESPN. "We believe that only 20 million super-fan homes would pay $30/month for ESPN's group of channels," the authors write, which is "equivalent to 100 million households paying $6/month today." A similar experiment with AMC would produce even more striking results. If AMC receives $0.27 from 90 million households each month, that's $24 million a month. Let's make a generous assumption that every person who watches "Mad Men" live (or a third of households that watch "The Walking Dead") agreed to subscribe to the standalone network and had to replace its full cost. That's 2 to 3 million household paying about $10 a month. Today, the typical household pays a little under $40 a month in total subscription fees to all of the networks. So, $30 for standalone-ESPN plus $10 for standalone-AMC is already equal to or more than the total programming costs in your cable bill right now. In simpler English: TV just got more expensive with just two a la carte channels. You could respond to this by saying that, in an unbundled world, ESPN and AMC would probably downsize to meet the economic realities of their audience. And fine. But the big point is that a la carte seems to many people to be technologically inevitable, economically efficient, and unquestionably good for consumers. The best I can say is: I almost agree with the first part.

What Would the 'Exercise Pill' Mean? Posted: 18 Jul 2013 08:54 AM PDT e-magic/Flickr What if we could enjoy the benefits of exercise simply by swallowing a pill? Earlier this week in the journal Nature Medicine researchers at the Scripps Institute in Florida suggested that we are closer than ever to attaining this goal. They found that mice injected with a protein called REV-ERB underwent physiological changes usually associated with exercise, including increased metabolic rates and weight loss. Even obese, inactive mice experienced these changes. The implications of this line of research could be huge. According to the U.S. Census Bureau's American Time Use Survey, Americans are exercising far more than we did 40 years ago - in fact, almost three times more. The average American now spends about two hours per week exercising -- or at least that's what we tell surveyors. Yet this is still only half the four hours per week recommended by many experts. And of course, we remain the second most obese nation in the world. The exercise pill would help on multiple fronts. First, just think what we could do with an extra two hours per week. We would finally have the time to sit down and phone an old friend, take another shot at those scrapbooks, or get that bathroom repainted. Time really is money, and getting those two hours back would count for a lot. Moreover, we would not need to shoulder the burden of guilt that many of us experience due to insufficient exercise levels. No longer would we feel compelled to avoid looking in the mirror in the morning or avert our eyes as we drive past a health club teeming with fit and trim exercise enthusiasts. Such guilt cannot be good for us, likely elevating the levels of stress hormones in our bloodstreams and undermining the self-confidence we depend on in so many other spheres of life. Of course, we would recoup even more time than the two hours we actually spend on exercising. Think how many minutes we spend every week just talking ourselves into it, getting dressed for it, and driving to it. And what about all the after-exercise time - driving back home, showering, getting dressed again, and then sitting in the easy chair contemplating how tired and sore we feel or congratulating ourselves on what good care we take of ourselves. Pill-taking could easily be made into a group activity. This is especially true for schools. Despite No Child Left Behind and other federal legislation that sought to focus school curricula on reading, writing, and arithmetic, school children all over the country are still spending precious hours exercising during recess and gym, instead of hunkered down over their textbooks augmenting their vocabularies. Thanks to the exercise pill, our children will be able to devote all their time and attention to the part of the body that matters most, above the shoulders. And what of the millions of exercise-related injuries that occur each year in the U.S.? According to the Centers for Disease Control, over 700,000 children are injured each year during exercise at school, while over 1.5 million Americans visit emergency departments for injuries suffered playing sports such as basketball, baseball, and football. Far fewer people choke on pills. Of course, not everyone would see the exercise pill as good news. Consider the vast fitness industry. Health clubs alone generate nearly $25 billion per year in annual U.S. revenues. Likewise, companies that manufacture exercise equipment and apparel would also suffer. Nike alone, which generates another $25 billion in annual revenue, would need to develop new product lines beyond physical fitness and sports. And even where such industries survived, they might be compelled to do a good bit of retooling. Over the past few decades, many clothing manufacturers have allowed their sizing criteria to expand with the US waistline, so that what was once an extra-large is now a large, and what was once a large is now a medium. With what would undoubtedly be widespread and immediate adoption of the exercise pill, the market for larger sizes would likely evaporate virtually overnight. There might be additional collateral damage. For example, would the dramatic decline in personal engagement in exercise cause interest in professional sports to decline? Would fans who no longer played basketball, baseball, or football -- and especially potential fans who had never done so -- take as much interest in the exploits of once-favorite players and teams in the NBA, MLB, and NFL? Some naysayers would resist the exercise pill for still other reasons. Some might argue that exercise has benefits that extend beyond mere slimmer waistlines, lower blood pressures, and improved serum lipid profiles. They might point, for example, to the self-discipline required to exercise on a regular basis and lament the fact that Americans need no longer make such a concerted and sustained effort to remain trim. Moralists among the naysayers might go even farther, attempting to portray the able-bodied among those of us who rely on the exercise pill as somehow lazy or undedicated. The most extreme might even argue that working hard at working out is good not just for the body but for the character, helping us to develop habits of short-term self-denial for the sake of longer-term benefits that they regard as an important feature of the most virtuous among us. They might also lament the loss of other ancillary benefits. For one, many American rely on team sports for much of our exercise. We elevate our heart rates on the basketball court or the soccer field. Others gather in groups for classes in yoga or aerobics. While we are together, we not only exercise but socialize. In some cases, we conduct business, in others we compare notes on personal and family life, and in still others we meet new people and form new friendships. But many of these concerns can be readily addressed through the judicious application of a little good old American innovation. For example, sports stars can simply hawk their favorite brand of exercise pill, creating another basis for fan affinity. Americans who once developed self-discipline through exercise can start working crossword and Sudoku puzzles. We can make other sacrifices in life, such as getting to know our in-laws better. Pill-taking could easily be made into a group activity. The idea plays to all of our strengths: our love of efficiency, spirit of entrepreneurship, and deep longing to install physicians and scientists as the new priests of the age.

Meet the Underdog Who Could Beat Mitch McConnell Posted: 18 Jul 2013 08:30 AM PDT Daniel R. Patmore/Associated Press To understand why 34-year-old Alison Lundergan Grimes would choose to vault into a nationally watched U.S. Senate race against the most powerful, well-funded Republican in the country, it's instructive to start with her father. Though Grimes has been Kentucky secretary of state for only 18 months and remains largely a blank slate to voters, Jerry Lundergan is one of the most influential Bluegrass State Democrats of the past three decades. If they're able to buck the odds and dethrone Mitch McConnell next year, it will be in no small part due to the combination of Grimes' untarnished profile and her father's deeply forged relationships. "Her dad clearly is a huge asset. He will be a strong adviser," said a Grimes political aide. Lundergan runs a lucrative Lexington catering business -- "If you've ever been to the Democratic National Convention, you've eaten his food," quipped one longtime Kentucky journalist -- but he earned his political stripes as a long-time legislator, state party chairman and FOB (Friend of Bill ... Clinton, that is). Lundergan helped plan Chelsea Clinton's wedding, and when Clinton comes to Kentucky, he stays at Jerry's house -- so political observers say the former president's private pledge of support and resources weighed heavily on Grimes' ultimate decision. A Clinton spokesperson declined to comment further. "I think it's a very winnable race for her. I don't say this as a fan of hers, I'm just being honest. She's an aggressive campaigner ... she's going to try to have it both ways." But the true test of Lundergan's political muscle came in 2011 when his daughter chose to wade into electoral politics for the first time with a challenge to a sitting secretary of state from her own party. Democratic Secretary of State Elaine Walker, appointed by Governor Steve Beshear to fill the position after Republican Trey Grayson resigned, knew what she was up against when she was greeted by Grimes banners and signs in the farthest flung corners of the state. "I think probably the biggest asset that she had is that tremendous grassroots support that her father built and she built upon," Walker recalled in an interview. "She had a very strong political background, had grown up in the political arena and was very knowledgable about the people involved." Despite holding the office and being boosted by Beshear robocalls, Walker was outspent 3-to-1 and trounced on primary day by 10 points. "When Jerry Lundergan sets his mind to a task, he is relentless," wrote Al Cross in The Louisville Courier-Journal at the time. "He and his daughter have run rings around Walker and Beshear, organizationally and financially." (Beshear is on board this go-round, but clearly wounds are still raw from the feud: He told reporters he wasn't given a heads-up on Grimes' entry into the contest.) In the general election, Grimes' campaign was largely based on a single issue: opposition to requiring a photo ID to vote. She also placed her two grandmothers in a highly effective television spot where they promoted her ideas to ease the business-licensing process. "What rhymes with Alison Lundergan Grimes?" asked one. "Oh, such a long name," quipped the other. The result: She more than doubled her margin against Republican Bill Johnson -- thumping him by 22 points. Johnson, who predicted afterward Grimes would run against McConnell, said he now thinks she can beat him. "I think it's a very winnable race for her. I don't say this as a fan of hers, I'm just being honest," he said in an interview. "She's an aggressive campaigner, she's going to be smart on how she speaks on issues, she's going to try to have it both ways. And frankly there's no record to run against. I think it will be very difficult for McConnell to run a negative campaign against her on any kind of issues. It'll have to be personal. And it's very hard to run against a woman and be negative. Other women don't like that." Still, under the harsh gleam of a nationally tracked Senate race, Grimes will be pelted with tough questions on immigration, energy policy, and taxes, and be forced to navigate thorny cultural minefields like abortion and gay marriage -- issues she was clearly not prepared to address during her shaky July 1 announcement. "She's clearly untested," said Billy Piper, a former chief of staff to McConnell. "There's not a lot of there there." But her lack of a lengthy record is exactly what could throw a kink in the well-oiled McConnell machine known for surgically picking apart opponents. Portraying Grimes as Barack Obama's Siamese twin could be trickier than imagined. "I'm sure it's driving Mitch McConnell a little bit zingy," said Dale Emmons, a longtime Democratic consultant and Lundergan Grimes family friend. Besides her staunch opposition to requiring a voting ID and an unsuccessful legislative push this year for online balloting for overseas military, Grimes is bereft of public-policy positions. "She doesn't like to deal with the press. They keep her in a pretty tight cocoon. You tend to run into a wall unless the issue is on her terms, which is odd for a secretary of state," observed one longtime political reporter in the state who requested anonymity to speak without restraint. But the generational and demographic contrast with the dour, characterless 71-year-old McConnell couldn't be brighter. In her first campaign email to supporters, she began to outline her frame of McConnell as a stick-in-the-mud, promising to "build a Kentucky that we can all be proud of. One that isn't dead-set on obstructionism." The frame Grimes hopes to construct: She's for what works for Kentucky; he's Senator Gridlock. "While McConnell's certainly a formidable opponent, people are tired of the same old thing. They're going to associate McConnell with some of the problems. That's baggage he has," said Johnson. "I think the energy's going to be on her side. She's an up-and-comer in the party. I don't think the Tea Party's going to come out energized for McConnell. I think she can win it." History says otherwise, given McConnell's massive war chest, the midterm election dynamic and the state's GOP tilt on the federal level. This wasn't the race Grimes was originally eyeing, according to state political observers. Attorney general looked like a promising spot, or perhaps even governor in 2015, when Beshear is term-limited. But sometimes the best laid long-term plans are disrupted by the volatile high-pressure politics of the moment. After other Democrats, including actress Ashley Judd, passed on the race, Grimes opted to jump in. "She was born premature and been a fighter ever since," said Emmons. Whatever the result of the campaign, if Grimes' political profile is lacking now, it will be filled in by the end of the next 16 months.

Late-Night Comedy Roundup: How to Keep Illegal Floridians Out of America Posted: 18 Jul 2013 08:26 AM PDT Candidate Liz Cheney's father was an important national political figure in the previous decade, so her announcement that she's running for one of Wyoming's Senate seats in 2014 was noted by late-night hosts Wednesday night. The Tonight Show's Jay Leno joked about her relative conservatism to her father, while Conan O'Brien outlined the main plank in her platform. National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden is still stuck in the Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport, waiting for somewhere to accept his request for asylum. David Letterman pulled out some airport jokes, including mentioning that Snowden is keeping fit by using the baggage carousel as a treadmill. Jimmy Fallon mentioned Snowden in connection to a new Google research product, ending the joke by making fun of Snowden's glasses. On The Colbert Report, host Stephen Colbert mocked the House of Representatives for relative inactivity on immigration reform. Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., in particular, was in the crosshairs for wanting more immigration enforcement within the United States, which prompted Colbert to joke about "internal border security." Fast forward to 3:20 to see Leno talk about the effects of a recent heat wave in DC that has temperatures above 100. Read more from Government Executive.

How Wyoming Democrats Feel About Liz Cheney Posted: 18 Jul 2013 08:09 AM PDT Cliff Owen/Associated Press Liz Cheney, the firebrand conservative pundit and daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, has announced she's running for Senate, taking on a popular Republican incumbent, Mike Enzi, in what promises to be a bruising primary. Former Senator Alan Simpson has called it "a divisive, ugly situation -- and all it does is open the door for the Democrats for 20 years." But nobody in Washington really believes that. This is Wyoming, after all -- "a tiny state consisting entirely of Republicans," as Jonathan Chait put it. "There is no way a Liz Cheney race will cause the party to lose the Senate seat, or any Senate seat." The Cook Political Report rates the race "Solid R," a rating that has not changed in light of the Cheney news, and the New York Times article on Cheney's announcement does not even mention the general election. You might think this would be a bit galling for Wyoming's Democrats. But they are under no illusions about their minority status. Of 100 members of the Wyoming state legislature, just 12 are Democrats, the party's executive director, Robin Van Ausdall, told me when I called. "There was one time in Wyoming's history where it was down to only one Democrat, in the early 1900s," she noted. "But Republican policies got out of hand, and we turned it around." President Obama got 28 percent of Wyoming's votes in 2012, making it the second-least Democratic state, after Utah. Democrats make up about 21 percent of the state's registered voters; no Democrat has been elected to federal office since the 1970s. (Until recently, there was a popular two-term Democratic governor, Dave Freudenthal; he left office in 2011 with an approval rating above 70 percent.) The Cheney news brought levity and an influx of phone calls to Wyoming Democratic headquarters in Cheyenne, where Van Ausdall, a native of the state and former regional political director for the Democratic National Committee, is one of two paid staffers. They have dubbed Cheney "The Virginian," a reference to her roots on the East Coast. And though Democrats don't have a candidate for the Senate race, they cherish some hope that the bloody spectacle of the GOP primary will offend Wyomingites' polite sensibilities and provide an opening for the down-and-out opposition. "The Republican Party is fractured and eating their own. Whether that hastens people being willing to consider Democrats, I don't know. I mean, hopefully?" In fact, Wyoming Republicans were in the midst of an acrimonious feud long before Liz Cheney announced her intentions. Legislators, who meet for 60 days a year, have historically been collegial, but the past session saw the rise of a far-right faction that pursued a more partisan tack. They killed Democratic bills without a hearing and proposed bills such as one that would allow Wyoming to "implement a draft" and "raise a standing army" if the nation collapsed. (As Tim Murphy reported, a provision allowing the landlocked state to acquire an aircraft carrier was scrapped.) GOP legislators feuded over a set of failed bills that would have loosened the state's gun laws, including one that would have barred the federal government from enforcing gun restrictions. Lawmakers who decried the bills as potentially unconstitutional political posturing were labeled "gun grabbers" by an aggressive firearm lobby and its allies. The party was further split over the state's superintendent of education, who is accused of mismanaging her agency, threatening employees with a knife, and inappropriately touching male workers. When legislators stripped her of her powers, the GOP Central Committee drafted a resolution demanding that three conservative legislators, including the speaker of the House, leave the GOP. According to the Casper Star-Tribune, the resolution, which was debated but not passed, accused the trio of "disgracing the Republican Party." Like voters in neighboring Colorado and Montana, Wyomingites have an independent, libertarian streak, allergic to extreme ideologies and content to be mostly left alone. This sort of partisan feuding alienates them. But Van Ausdall admits Democrats lack the infrastructure and bench of candidates to fully capitalize on the GOP chaos. "The Republican Party is fractured and eating their own," she told me. "Whether that hastens people being willing to consider Democrats, I don't know. I mean, hopefully?" Freudenthal, 62, who would be the party's top recruit, has shown no interest in running for Senate. Van Ausdall said Democrats are working to recruit a strong candidate and notes that it doesn't take a lot of money -- usually under $1 million -- to run a competitive Senate race in Wyoming. "If the right Democrat spends time talking to voters while Enzi and Cheney are beating each other up in the press, with a little help from [national Democrats], I do think they could be a contender," she said. For now, though, to say the race is not on the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee's radar would be an understatement. The national committee views the Enzi-Cheney primary primarily as an opportunity to make Republicans look bad in other, more liberal parts of the country: "This Republican primary, like many others next year, will demonstrate just how extreme the Republican Party has become," the committee's deputy executive director, Matt Canter, told me. As for their own potential candidate, he said, national Democrats "plan to monitor the race closely."

The Mad Scientist of Sound Posted: 18 Jul 2013 08:00 AM PDT Gary Arnold has heard it all. He has worked post-production for feature-length films, Pepsi commercials, and broadcast television. But after 23 years and two Emmy awards for sound design, Arnold decided it was time to be his own boss. In 2006, he opened Gary's Chop Shop, a high end audio facility in New York City. For Arnold, sound design is all about immersing the viewer in the environment of the film. Arguably, one of the most important components of post production, audio mixing remains a thankless job. "We're the last man on the food chain," says Arnold, "you only hear it if it's bad." In this documentary from the New Yorkers series, Moonshot Productions takes us inside Arnold's sound laboratory and gives us a glimpse into post-production magic. For more work by Moonshot Productions, visit http://moonshot-productions.com

What Happens to Places That Were 'the Center of the World for Two Weeks'? Posted: 18 Jul 2013 08:00 AM PDT Diving pool and the Olympic Sporting Center, Moscow Olympic villages are architectural ruins in waiting: state-of-the-art displays of national pride and international unity that quickly become either ghost towns or new towns, depending on urban and design planning or the lack of it. The new, limited-edition photography book (just 1,000 copies) The Olympic City by Jon Pack and Gary Hustwit, featuring 200 photos taken between 2008 and 2013 in 13 cities, chronicles abandoned and repurposed Olympic structures--and the displaced and replaced lives in areas affected them. Flipping through its pages provides a visual collection both of stark, cautionary tales and encouraging, fascinating stories of reinvention. Olimpic Wall, Sarajevo "It all comes down to whether or not these cities needed these structures in the first place," Hustwit says. "I've never been a big fan of the Olympics, so this project hasn't been one of personal nostalgia for me," Jon Pack told me in a recent email. But that's not to say he denies making nostalgic images: "I think the nature of the project--traveling to places that were the center of the world for a brief two weeks and documenting what remains from that time--is in itself a bit nostalgic. In certain cities so much has changed since the Games--places like Athens and Sarajevo--and it was important to me to try to photograph the effects of time on these places. On the other hand, there are certain cities where not much has changed--Lake Placid was a charming, sleepy little spot before the Games, and it still is today--and that fascinated me as well." Oval, zamboni, and town hall, Lake Placid Pack started this project in 2008 after watching the Beijing Olympics. At the time, he wondered what happened to all the billions of dollars in stadiums designed and constructed for those events. Gary Hustwit, a filmmaker known for the design documentary trilogy, Helvetica, Objectified, and Urbanized, saw Pack's first series of photos of Olympic sites in Montreal (2008) and Lake Placid (2009). "I thought they were incredible and that it would be a great project to work on," Hustwit also wrote in the same email. He was making Urbanized at the time, had become "city-obsessed," and this seemed like an interesting way to look at cities. "I was also attracted to it because of what it wasn't: a film," he says. "It's really inspiring to just walk through a city with a small camera by yourself for a week as opposed to having a documentary crew and interviewing people." Olympic Port, Barcelona Pack says that his reactions to the Olympic remains varied widely from city to city. "I had a very emotional response to what I saw in Sarajevo," he says, "but that was in part because my guide Emir became a friend as we worked together, and hearing his deeply personal stories about the war definitely affected what and how I shot." Pack viewed Barcelona at more of a remove, because there was a rational decision to incorporate the Olympic city into the urban environment in a lasting, beneficial way. In London he saw the immediate aftermath of the Games, shooting there only six months after the Summer Olympics. "There was still a feeling of jubilation, and of possibilities," he says, "unlike in a place like Athens, where the community is depressed, the economy is depressed, and the former venues are depressed as well." Olympic bobsleigh and luge track, Trebević Mountain, Sarajevo Hustwit's Urbanized showed how some city planning works wonders for all strata and how others suffer from institutional neglect. Similarly, this book is a microcosm of how good and bad planning has changed environments. "It all comes down to whether or not these cities needed these structures in the first place," Hustwit says. "Mexico City was growing rapidly in the 1960s and didn't have large stadiums or arenas, so building these things for the Olympics made sense in terms of the city's growth. Almost all the '68 Olympics facilities there are still in use for their original purpose; the Olympic Village was converted to housing, the training center is now a community sports facility, and the boxing arena is the headquarters for Lucha Libre masked wrestling events. In Moscow most of what was built for the '80 Olympics is still in use as well. So for every example you see of poor planning and waste, there's another example that had a positive effect on the city." 1980 Olympic Village, Moscow Pack and Hustwit photographed in 13 cities: Athens, Barcelona, Beijing, Berlin, Helsinki, Mexico City, Moscow, London, Los Angeles, Montreal, Lake Placid, Rome, and Sarajevo. Paul Sahre, the designer, produced a restrained yet vivid book that allows the images to speak volumes. And the New York Times' Michael Kimmelman wrote the engaging foreword. The entire package is meant to convey an intimate sense of place to the audience. "I want them to see what hosting the Olympics does to a city," Pack says. "Both the good and the bad: how it instills a sense of national pride, how it can help a city find incredible new ways to use its own space, how it can be completely overshadowed by events like war or economic collapse, and how it can create modern day ruins in the midst of places that are otherwise bustling." PIE-IX Metro station, Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, Montreal

Gay and Transgender Migrants Face Staggering Violence in Mexico Posted: 18 Jul 2013 07:35 AM PDT Julio Campo, a gay migrant from El Salvador, at the restaurant where he now works in Tapachula. (Amy Lieberman) Tapachula, Mexico -- Julio Campo kept to himself during his three-night stay last month in a resting house for migrants, but a few cold, lingering stares made him uneasy. "I felt like a joke, like I was immediately disliked," explained Campo, 30, a migrant from El Salvador who is gay. "It was just very uncomfortable and I wanted to get out quickly." The fear that Campo felt in the migrant shelter is manifesting into a unique challenge for church officials who run Mexico's scattered, free stopovers for migrants. Faced with increasingly higher numbers of arriving gay male and transgender female migrants, some shelters are starting to separately house people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT). "We're seeing more and more transgender migrants and it's difficult for the migrant houses because they don't know where to place them," said Leticia Gutierrez Valderrama, executive secretary of the Pastoral de Movilidad Humana, a humanitarian branch of the Catholic Church that runs 66 migrant shelters. "The women say 'No, he is a man, I don't want him here,' and the men say, 'We don't want to be staying with a woman.'" But the risks for transgender migrants, in particular, are greater than just the discrimination they face. Nearly 36 percent of transgender people who stayed in a migrant shelter in Mexico reported experiencing some form of violence, according to a 2013 study of 862 migrants conducted by the Mexican National Institute of Public Health. Meanwhile, 57 percent of transgender migrants who did not stay in a shelter reported violence. The prevalence of violence among this particular group - which accounted for roughly 3 percent of all migrants - surpassed that of women, another vulnerable population. About 27 percent of female migrants who stayed in a shelter reported experiencing violence, but the rate rose to 35 percent for those who did not stop in shelters. The rates were much lower for men -- in that group, 20 percent who stayed in shelters, and 21.3 who did not, reported violence. The capacity to protect transgender - as well as gay - migrants in shelters appears limited, despite the fledgling efforts to create safe zones. "The shelters and the state are not prepared to accommodate trans and gay migrants," said Rosember Lopez Samayoa, the director of an HIV-prevention nonprofit organization, Una Mano Amiga en la Lucha Contra SIDA, or A Friendly Hand in the Fight Against AIDS, based in Tapachula, a small city just north of the porous Guatemala border. "If a man arrives dressed like a woman, it can become a huge scandal for them and they really won't know how to register them or treat them." Lopez's organization is the only known group along the border that works directly with gay and transgender migrants, who often use Tapachula as a launching pad to stop and work until they have enough money to continue on to the U.S., or, more often these days, to a larger city in Mexico. The persecution that many of these migrants fled from in Honduras and Guatemala trails them to the conservative streets of Tapachula, which Lopez says has seen eight reported murders of gay and trans people from January through May 2013. Rafael Zavala, the head of the UN Refugee Agency office in Tapachula, said that the organization is planning to document the trend of arriving Central American LGBT migrants, driven by the perception of higher numbers of arriving gay and transgender migrants, and violence against these migrants in Tapachula. Not all migrants actually come out as gay or transgender, well aware of the danger this revelation could bring, says Lopez. That could explain why in San Luis Potosí, a year-old LGBT-friendly room in a migrant shelter has not been in use for more than two months. More than 60 other shelters plan to replicate the model of this church-run shelter, but according to Geraldine Estrada, an official there, she has not seen gay or trans migrants for months, and the segregated room is now occupied by other people. In Tapachula, Father Flor María Rigoni designated a row of beds just for gay men and transgender women in a corner of the men's dormitory about four years ago, when he began to notice groups of up to nine or 10 transgender migrants arriving together. But the room is not divided, he says, and the two-story house has limited space: he delegates the shelter's handful of private rooms to families, pregnant women and girls who have been trafficked. "We can put transgender, transsexual, transvestite or gay people in a separate area, but it is an open space and if you want to, you can go over there and then it can be hard to avoid problems, because there are problems," said Rigoni. "We do not patrol the rooms at nighttime." Campo was not aware of the option to sleep in the LGBT-friendly area at Rigioni's shelter, and says that he would not have considered the option, anyway. "It's wrong to classify people. The best thing to do would be to educate people," he said. Campo left the shelter without incident, but he made it only to downtown Tapachula. The former stylist lost all his money in robbery along the Mexico-Guatemala border and is now working to save enough to reach his final destination of Mexico City, a city he believes is big enough and far enough to distance himself from his abusive ex-boyfriend. He is also applying for refugee status in Mexico. Campo says he isn't happy in Tapachula, where he thinks he could get killed for walking down the street holding hands with another man. Still, it's better than El Salvador, where he says the police denied him protection from his threatening ex-boyfriend, who he learned had ties with an organized crime group. "I am very afraid of him and I don't want anything to happen to me," said Campo, briefly taking a break from the casual roadside restaurant where he now works. "I will never go back there."

Young Chinese People May Just Not Be That Into Western-Style Democracy Posted: 18 Jul 2013 07:34 AM PDT Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters Chinese economic surveys and data are everywhere. Their quarterly or annual release regularly generate excitement, fretting, and plenty of interpretation. And this last round was no exception, leading the Wall Street Journal to wryly quip that China's second quarter data release was "As eagerly awaited as the first sight of Kim Kardashian's baby, but probably less attractive..." Far fewer surveys and data are available on Chinese politics, however, or at least in the English-speaking world. Although such studies tend to be rather obscure, they do exist, and even explore seemingly "third rail" subjects like democracy and political governance. In fact, in the mid-2000s, an official in the Translation Bureau of the Central Committee, Yu Keping, made a splash with his essay "Democracy is a Good Thing".  In my occasional search for contemporary Chinese political studies, I stumbled upon an interesting new study. Titled "What Kind of Democracy do Chinese Want?", it's a study from the leading state think tank in China, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Zhang Mingshu, the study's author, apparently hopes to distinguish between different types of "democracies". He explains thusly:  Generally speaking, one type is Western democracy. It originated from Greece ... and through the catalyst of the Renaissance and Enlightenment, produced the type of democracy we see today in the United States and England. But another type is China's democracy today, which we call "socialist democracy with Chinese characteristics." At this point, groans are emanating from astute China analysts about how such arguments typify Chinese political discourse today. What's more, Zhang goes on to say that his exploration of the kind of democracy Chinese want is largely determined by the existing political and civic culture, citing the work of American political scientist Gabriel Almond on how specific civic cultures can shape the type of political system. This, of course, sounds awfully close to the longstanding debate over the lack of suzhi -- loosely translated as civic values -- that make Chinese society unprepared for major systemic changes.  But putting aside these issues for now, some of Zhang's key findings nonetheless may offer some insight into the current state of political attitudes among Chinese, particularly of a younger generation of Chinese. [I can't vouch for the soundness of the methodology, but the author claims that he conducted a survey with 1,750 random samples across four different regions in China. Each of the participants was given a 40-question survey to fill out.]  Table 1.1: Is democracy a good thing?   Number of respondents % of respondents Good 961 54.9 Not good 47 2.7 Can't generalize, has to be in context of whether it is appropriate for China's current conditions 703 40.2 Other 0 0 Don't know 39 2.2 Table 1.2: Is democracy a good thing? (age breakdown) Age cohort Good Not good Can't generalize, has to be in context of whether it is appropriate for China's current conditions Don't know Total respondents 18-21 44.1% 3.6% 50.5% 1.8% 111 22-31 48.3% 2.1% 47% 2.6% 387 32-41 50.6% 1.9% 46% 1.5% 411 42-51 63.6% 2.7% 31% 2.7% 365 52-61 58.3% 3.1% 36.2% 2.4% 290 62-71 61.4% 5.5% 31% 2.1% 145 >72 65.9% 0 31.7% 2.4% 41 Total 54.9% 2.7% 40.2% 2.2% 1,750 Table 2.1: Is China better or America better? (meaning models)   Number of respondents % China is better than America 666 38.1% America is better than China 140 8% They have different national conditions, can't be simply compared 901 51.5% Don't know 43 2.5%    Table 2.2: Is China better or America better? (meaning models) Age cohort China better America better They have different national conditions, can't be simply compared Don't know 18-21 22.5% 18% 55.9% 3.6% 22-31 25.1% 12.1% 60.7% 2.1% 32-41 35.3% 7.5% 55% 2.2% 42-51 41.4% 6% 49.6% 3% 52-61 48.3% 4.5% 43.8% 3.4% 62-71 55.9% 4.8% 39.3% 0% >72 65.9% 0% 31.7% 2.4% There is plenty more data from the study (including breakdowns based on educational attainment), but a couple things stand out here. One, there is a clear generational difference, particularly between the post-1980s generation (the so-called balinghou) and those who are older and lived through a more tumultuous era in Chinese modern history. Two, there appears to be a shift to a centrist attitude, also more pronounced among the younger cohorts ("left" in China traditionally meant more hardcore communist/socialist or neo-Maoists and "right" typically meant more pro-West and pro-market). Overall, more than half of the respondents hold a more nuanced view that the Chinese political system cannot simply be compared to that of the United States, presumably implying that each has its own strengths and weaknesses.      In an interview with the liberal Guangdong paper Southern Weekend, the author further explains his findings (select translation below): SW: For similar questions, what was the biggest difference in results this time (Zhang had conducted a virtually identical survey in the 1980s) Zhang: There was a new focus this time, particularly in terms of the delineation between "left, right, and center." The survey results show that the percentage on the "right" is lower, on the "left" higher, and the majority of the public seems to be moving in conjunction with the mainstream media. These three findings were contrary to my expectations. When I did the survey in 1988, there was clearly a much higher proportion of pro-West views among the respondents. That was the early reform era, and society was embracing all things Western ... ... According to these findings, 38.1 percent of the respondents are considered "left", 51.5 percent "centrist," and 8 percent "right." I was not anticipating these results. But if you calmly and rationally think about the people around you, not just those in intellectual circles, but those from your hometown or those you encounter on the street, these percentages aren't too far off.  SW: In your view, will there be some kind of collision among the three groups you identified above? Zhang: The study shows that whether your political attitude leans toward liberalism/libertarianism (or "right") is somewhat positively correlated with the level of educational attainment. But at the same time, the higher the level of education, the higher the tendency of taking a more moderate and pragmatic political view. So we can roughly generalize that the more "cosmopolitan" the respondent, the more likely he or she will lean toward centrist or to the right ... ... The mainstream intellectual classes in China today all basically have their own vested interests. If they deviate from the mainstream path even a little bit, they will see their interests damaged. So they can only act in moderation and accommodate the current institutional arrangements.  Will the intellectual elites collide with other social classes over different political views and values? I think a lot of this is still dependent on the decision-makers in taking the initiative, in proactively understanding and incorporating both from the elites and other social classes and examining the issues comprehensively.  SW: In your findings, a large proportion is considered "political centrists." You believe that this has a strong relationship with the growth of the middle class. But in China, scholars continue to heatedly debate what kind of people are considered middle class, how many are actually in the middle class, and are the middle class' political views more radical or more conservative. In other words, can we then say that China's "political centrists" are also a highly variable group?  Zhang: Yes. For the sake of this study, we basically equated those who shared the view "They have different national conditions, can't be simply compared" to political centrists ... ... In reality, decision-makers are by and large centrists. On some issues they may take a position slightly to the "right" and on others, they take a more "left" approach. This often amounts to murky and fuzzy policy adjustments, and that's intentional too, to prevent Chinese society from falling into the extreme conflicts of the past.  Now what to make of all this? Many will likely dismiss these findings as simply a study meant to provide some intellectual heft for perpetuating the current status quo. Or perhaps the official narrative and media are simply driving these attitudes. At a minimum, surveys like these bolster emerging Chinese public intellectuals who are championing Chinese exceptionalism, like Eric X. Li, contending that China needs an indigenous model, excavated from Chinese soil, not something borrowed and repackaged from the West.  Whatever the reasons or causes, I'll contend that they are somewhat irrelevant. What is more important is to further determine whether these findings are in fact representative of the prevailing political reality in China today. If this shift is indeed happening on a large, generational scale and will endure, then foreign observers may need to adjust their expectations about what kind of China we may see when the post-80s generation rise into positions of power.  Of course, nothing is preordained, and I have few answers. But I do know that grasping this political reality is as, if not more, important than whether GDP grows at 7 percent or 7.5 percent.

The False Equivalence Chronicles: 'NYT' Follow-Up Posted: 18 Jul 2013 07:33 AM PDT Last week I mentioned an NYT story about Congressional dysfunction that likened the minority-party's plight in the House to the (actually very different) situation of a filibuster-empowered minority in the Senate: In both the Senate, controlled by Democrats, and the House, under the rule of Republicans, the minority is largely powerless to do anything but protest. I called this "false equivalence," since it was flatly false: a Senate minority can be very powerful, because of Senate rules in general and the filibuster in specific. Happily, as I noted in an update, this passage had been changed, to mention the importance of the filibuster, by the time the "official" version of the article appeared in the printed paper the next day. Margaret Sullivan, who has been making good use of her stint as the Times's Public Editor, put up a column last night about the larger phenomenon of "false balance" reportage. It covers Jenny McCarthy, Michele Bachmann, and the Congressional gridlock story. I recommend it overall, but I also should acknowledge a passage that involves me. Sullivan asks the author of the "minority is largely powerless" story, Jennifer Steinhauer (whom I don't know, and did not name), to explain why she wrote what she did. As you'll see, she says she had in mind a narrower meaning -- ie, that a minority was powerless to stop a change in Senate rules if the majority decided to push it through.  Fine. We all write things that come across differently from what we had in mind -- and fortunately it was changed before official publication. Then she said, according to Sullivan, Ms. Steinhauer added that she would have appreciated the opportunity to explain what happened to Mr. Fallows. "Unlike Mr. Fallows, I have to actually call the people I am reporting on," she said. Fine, too. I certainly could have saved some time over the years if I'd realized before now that I didn't have to call, travel with, listen to, live among, or otherwise learn about the people and places I was reporting on! I mention this to draw a distinction. Most of the time it is fair to judge writers on what they write. Anyone reading my magazine articles or web posts judges me that way; we all judge book writers or columnists that way; we judge TV and radio programs by what they broadcast; and we judge newspapers by what they present, online and in print. That's one of the bargains of the writing life: people judge us on our writing. I didn't call the Times reporter before noting what she had written in a story -- just as I wouldn't imagine she would have called me before noting or complaining about something I had written, as she has done now.  In any case, it's a good Public Editor column and worth reading. (Illustration is the famous Escher 'Drawing Hands.')

Literature Is Dead (According to Straight, White Guys, At Least) Posted: 18 Jul 2013 07:19 AM PDT Jonathan Franzen; Mark Edmundson; David Foster Wallace (Wikimedia; Mark Edmundson) Every few months, a new "Literature is Dead/Dying" think piece crops up in high-profile media. Perhaps you've noticed. As a book nerd, I certainly have, though they've begun to bleed together: Their diagnoses of literature's ills tend to be eerily similar. I've suspected for a while that these essays, as a category, might somehow be rooted in declining privilege: Literature has never been a majority interest in America, so I've wondered if these writers might be projecting some kind of status insecurity onto literature. Still, until recently I'd never thought to look at the identities of the authors before. And I certainly never thought I'd discover that every last author whose work I had read on the subject would be a white male—or that all but one was straight. Take The New York Times' Verlyn Klinkenborg, who recently wrote that a "technical narrowness" is responsible for the "decline and fall of the English major." A few months prior, J. Robert Lennon derided contemporary literary fiction as "fucking boring" in Salon. Before that, Lee Siegel informed us that today's fiction is "irrelevant" because it's too professionalized, and because nonfiction got quite good. Before him, former up-and-coming author Ted Genoways warned against the "death of literary fiction" in Mother Jones a year before he was accused in national media (perhaps unfairly) of having bullied a former employee at the Virginia Quarterly Review into committing suicide. No less a luminary than Philip Roth made a splash when he said in 2009 that it was "optimistic" to think that anybody would be left reading novels in 25 years; in 2003, David Foster Wallace claimed that "every year the culture gets more and more hostile . . . it gets more and more difficult to ask people to read," which he blamed on the speed of Internet culture, lagging educational standards, and weak demand for "serious books" relative to Europe. Before all of these it was Jonathan Franzen, a novelist known for riffing on the theme of literature's failings—its inability to change anything, its over-intellectualization, and its experimentalism. Then there are creative optimists like David Shields, who expressed the belief in Reality Hunger that novelistic fiction was dead or dying and could usefully be abandoned for new frontiers. John Barth felt similarly about literary realism in 1967 when he wrote "The Literature of Exhaustion." Related Story What Poetry Teaches Us About the Power of Persuasion There is, as well, a history of academics and critics declaring literary deaths: George Steiner proclaimed "The Death of Tragedy" in 1961, Frank Kermode claimed that the paradoxical "fate of the novel, considered as a genre, is to be always dying" in 1965, and Alvin Kernan acted as the mortician at "The Death of Literature" in 1992. For a yet-further expanded scope, see Caleb Crain, who wrote in the New Yorker that not just literature but literacy itself might be endangered. Without exception, the writers listed above are white men. They are also at least putatively straight, having married women. (Crain, who is gay, is the single exception.) Surely there are a decent number of straight white men in the world of literature who aren't doom-and-gloom pessimists about its future. But despite wracking my brain and looking through online media and academic archives, I could find no female or non-white writers who have made comparable statements, none who have similarly contributed to this literary despair. Why? For a possible answer, we can turn to the latest entry in the literature-is-dead genre: Mark Edmundson's "Poetry Slam," which appears in the most recent issue of Harper's magazine. It declaims modern poetry as "weak," written by "courtiers" lacking "ambition" or "fire"; poets today, Edmundson writes, "struggle" to not be "Thinkers." They are not ambitious enough: too "[reticent] about speaking in large terms, swinging for the fence," too timid "to attempt an Essay on Humanity" or to ever dare to hope, like Shelley, that their words could "change the world." At the heart of this claim is Edmundson's belief that poets are currently shackled by a political correctness that prevents them from writing as though they could speak for all humanity—and thus, keeps their poetry from becoming truly universal. I won't add to the pile of defenses of poetry Edmundson has prompted, which are plentiful, hostile, smart, and devastating. But the undercurrent of chauvinism is troubling and worthy of comment. When Edmundson claims poetry is now "mannered," "soft," and "lovely" when it should strive for "conviction, risk, [and] power," the dichotomy is obviously gendered, with 'female' traits understood to be lacking. Edmundson makes it seem impossible that poetry could be simultaneously lovely and risky, careful and full of conviction, soft and powerful. He's convinced that poets today are sissy, girly wimps; that poets need to get buff. Edmundson makes it seem impossible that poetry could be simultaneously lovely and risky, careful and full of conviction, soft and powerful. He's convinced that poets today are sissy, girly wimps; that poets need to get buff. (This subtext is hardly unique to Edmundson, it's worth noting: Genoways expressed a desire that writers "[s]top being so damned dainty and polite"; Franzen once wrote that Alice Munro's "almost pathological empathy for her characters" had the "costly effect of obscuring her authorial ego." David Foster Wallace once defended the practice of writing of long books against feminism, of all things, offering this weird non-sequitur on Charlie Rose: "Feminists are always saying this. Feminists are saying white males say, 'Okay, I'm going to sit down and write this enormous book and impose my phallus on the consciousness of the world.'") The single concrete, quantifiable complaint Edmundson lodges regarding poetry is that it no longer uses the pronoun "we" or the possessive "our." This, he writes, is evidence that poetry no longer deals in universal truths. A poet that doesn't speak as everyone must not have anything big to say about the human condition. Edmundson believes poets are reluctant to write as "we" due to a "theory-induced anxiety," an academy-instilled voice in poets' heads that says: How dare a white female poet say "we" and so presume to speak for her black and brown contemporaries? How dare a white male poet speak for anyone but himself? And even then, given the crimes and misdemeanors his sort have visited, how can he raise his voice above a self-subverting whisper? Edmundson's point is factually untrue. Poets of all kinds still use 'we' and 'our' and 'us.' But if they do so from the perspective of a gay man, a woman, a black woman, a Hispanic man, their attempts to look at big themes are often overlooked or dismissed rather than championed. Take Richard Blanco's inaugural poem, the only poem millions of Americans will encounter over a four year-span. It's full of "we," "us," and "our." Does Blanco, who is gay and Latino, even count for Edmundson? Edmundson also dismisses Frank Bidart, a poet who writes in the plural and from other perspectives besides his own—including that of an anorexic woman in "Ellen West." Bidart, too, is gay, and Edmundson reduces "Ellen West" to an "isolated droplet" in which the poet "quivers at the sight of one lover at a restaurant feeding another." The actual poem contains many scenes, none of which, as far as I can tell, feature any kind of "quivering." It is also extremely relevant to a broad range of people living in a society where physical aesthetic and health are engaged in a costly, perpetual war. Edmundson dismisses Anne Carson, too, as "opaque" and "inscrutable"—the same Anne Carson who became a hit when her compulsively readable, gay coming-of-age "novel in verse" Autobiography of Red was name-dropped on Sex and the City. When Edmundson asserts that "no well-known poet" writes about big subjects like sex, he ignores the entirety of Carson's work. Take just one example from her collection Plainwater: "Men know almost nothing about desire / they think it has to do with sexual activity / or can be discharged that way. / But sex is a substitute, like money or language." As a woman, though, does Carson count? Do her broad statements on gender and sex not matter for Edmundson's thesis? The argument that poets need to tackle larger subjects may appear patently fallacious, but it's frequently repeated among writers. Edmundson's claim was explicitly endorsed by poet David Bespiel at the Rumpus, and Genoways, like Edmundson, claimed that the timidity and insularity of American writers was evidenced by a (perceived) reluctance to write about the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan is. (The idea that literary fiction writers are not all that engaged with the world is propounded by Siegel and Lennon, as well.) Even if poets did need to tackle larger subjects—and I'm far from convinced, since my favorite contemporary poets address themes as big as sex, death, identity, history, and time—the idea that poets should solve that problem by speaking as though they had access to everyone else's experience elides an important fact. Women and minorities don't have a proportionally fair number of opportunities to speak for themselves in the literary world. (In fact, women's industry-wide low publication rates were documented to much discussion last year by VIDA, an organization for women in the literary arts.) Literature would hardly seem in decline to the women or ethnic or sexual minorities just now getting access to its hallowed halls. That's why Edmundson's silliest assertion is that nobody finds themselves represented by poetry anymore. "No one," he writes, "will say what Emerson hoped to say when he encountered a poet who mattered: 'This is my music, this is myself.'" But if Edmundson only recognizes himself in older, white, male poets, it may just be because he's older, white, and male. The irony of Edmundson's essay is that it was published three months after Tony Hoagland wrote that poetry could literally save America—also in Harper's. According to Hoagland, poetry—contemporary poetry—could be used to "build our capacity for imaginative thinking, create a tolerance for ambiguity, and foster an appreciation for the role of the unknown in human life." Worthy goals, one would think. We can all do better than writing (or publishing) tired essays about how poetry or fiction or literature is dying because it's no longer virile and manly. These writers reveal more about their own anxieties than about literature—reminiscent of Nathaniel Hawthorne's dismissal of the female writers who outsold him as a "damned mob of scribbling women." Let's acknowledge that straight, white males' stranglehold on American culture really is loosening. They are no longer expected to speak for everyone else. That's a good thing—but you can't expect them not to complain about it.

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