Author Archives: shaun

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If Aaron Sorkin’s “West Wing” represented an idealized Democratic presidency (powerful people doing good things) and inspired a swath of young viewers to enter public service, the latest generation of political television offers a more dystopian vision of the nation’s capital. The distinctly dark “House of Cards,” on Netflix, serves up powerful people doing bad things, while “Scandal,” on ABC, provides powerful people doing bad things in what they believe are in the service of good things.

But “Veep,” which is in the running for four Emmy Awards this Sunday, including one for best comedy, manages to repurpose politics as lowbrow farce, and offers perhaps the most realistic glimpse at the banal tasks, humdrum days and outsize egos that make up the daily lives of the city’s political staff members: largely powerless people doing … things.

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– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/22/fashion/veep-hits-lots-of-nerves.html?ref=todayspaper

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“In 1904, the Cooper Underwear Company ran a magazine ad announcing a new product for bachelors. In the “before” photo, a man averts his eyes from the camera as if embarrassed; he has lost all the buttons on his undershirt and has safety-pinned its flaps together. In the “after” photo, a virile gentleman sports a handlebar mustache, smokes a cigar and wears a “bachelor undershirt” stretchy enough to be pulled over the head. “No safety pins — no buttons — no needle — no thread,” ran the slogan aimed at men with no wives and no sewing skills. Someone in the U.S. Navy must have seen the logic in this, because the following year, the quartermaster’s office specified that sailors should wear undershirts with no buttons under their uniforms; soon thousands of men became acquainted with the comfort of the cotton pullover.”

– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/22/magazine/who-made-that-t-shirt.html?ref=todayspaper

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But the trouble is that if John Boehner and Mitch McConnell could somehow crush the populists (and they can’t), they would also be crushing the best hope for conservative policy reform. That’s because, for now at least, the same incentives that shape the “bad populism” of the defund movement are also shaping the “good populism” that wants to end farm subsidies or reform drug sentencing or break up banks or cut taxes on families.

Their willingness to engage in theatrical confrontations with President Obama, for instance, is part of what lends figures like Paul and Lee and Vitter the credibility to experiment with ideas from outside the Reagan-era box. And their arm’s-length relationship to Wall Street and K Street makes them both more irresponsible on issues like a government shutdown and more open to new ideas on taxes, financial reform, corporate welfare, etc.

Obviously Republicans should be seeking a way to have the good without the bad: the innovation without the risky brinkmanship, the fresh ideas without the staged confrontations.

But for now, they’re stuck dealing with a populism that resembles Homer Simpson’s description of his beloved beer: It’s both the cause of, and the solution to, all of their problems.

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– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/22/opinion/sunday/douthat-good-populism-bad-populism.html?ref=todayspaper

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Before the Internet, my parents were privy to most of my world. They saw whom I interacted with, where I was, what I was doing. Being preadolescent, I spent most of my time with them anyway. I had no desire to befriend four to eight strangers and talk to them daily, for hours, in passive secrecy from my parents.

After the Internet, my parents were privy to much less and would only rarely, and with decreasing frequency, ask about what they no longer knew. “What did you do on the Internet today?” was not a question I remember being asked. If my parents, squinting over my shoulder, saw Esperath Wraithling on the screen, they didn’t see the dark elf wizard I saw, they saw two meaningless words. If they looked at me — whether I was immersed in GemStone III, on a message board, or in a chat room — I appeared to be sitting in a chair, doing almost nothing.

Far from doing almost nothing, I was socializing in and exploring the metaphysical room that had been quietly connected to millions of houses. The shared, boundless room of the Internet seemed normal, even mundane, in the mid-1990s. I didn’t have another childhood for comparison. Only in retrospect — and increasingly, as my memory of a pre-Internet existence became tinier and more conspicuous, like something that glints — does it seem weird and mysterious, almost alien.

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– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/22/opinion/sunday/when-i-moved-online.html?ref=todayspaper

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“Legend has it that Hemingway won a bet that he could write a story in six words by scribbling on a napkin, “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Ms. Mazzie asked her students and fellow faculty members to gin up some of their own “flash fiction,” either about law school or just law. She’s posted a few submissions on the blog.

In the spirit of collegiality, Law Blog jotted down a few about law school.

• For sale: law degree, no promises.

• Three years later, they weren’t ready.

• $200,000, 24 B+’s, first-year associate.

• You’ll get hired. So they claimed.

• ‘But I’m tenured!’ the professor replied.

• The former dean pleaded not guilty.”

– http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2013/09/20/describing-law-school-in-six-words/?mod=WSJBlog

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How did we get here?

Some pundits insist, even now, that this is somehow Mr. Obama’s fault. Why can’t he sit down with Mr. Boehner the way Ronald Reagan used to sit down with Tip O’Neill? But O’Neill didn’t lead a party whose base demanded that he shut down the government unless Reagan revoked his tax cuts, and O’Neill didn’t face a caucus prepared to depose him as speaker at the first hint of compromise.

No, this story is all about the G.O.P. First came the southern strategy, in which the Republican elite cynically exploited racial backlash to promote economic goals, mainly low taxes for rich people and deregulation. Over time, this gradually morphed into what we might call the crazy strategy, in which the elite turned to exploiting the paranoia that has always been a factor in American politics — Hillary killed Vince Foster! Obama was born in Kenya! Death panels! — to promote the same goals.

But now we’re in a third stage, where the elite has lost control of the Frankenstein-like monster it created.

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– http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/20/opinion/krugman-the-crazy-party.html?ref=todayspaper

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