Shorter Chris Lacaria

Another Great Awakening, 11/10/2008:

• Politics shouldn't take the place of religion in the minds of callow, atheistic youth like Kameron Collins' 90-year-old great-grandmother.

...Words fail me.

Shorter Lucy Caldwell

Speaking Truth to Test Scores, 10/7/08:

• Evidence clearly tells us that poor people are stupid. This means our meritocracy is working.

Above: Meritocracy.

I hate Harvard so much.

...Lucy Caldwell has written some egregious shit in her career, but this shit is among the most egregious of all. Go read it and you'll see what I mean. Her reasoning is just wrong -- anyone with any sense could tell Lucy Caldwell that poorer people get lower SAT scores because they have less access to quality education (not just test prep) and live in less intellectually hospitable environments. It is not, in fact, because they's just dumb. The level of innate elitism and perversity it must take for Caldwell to reach that conclusion -- the mind reels.

Why does the Crimson think it's acceptable to continually publish this tripe?

BONUS CRIMSON TRIPE: Read David Golding arguing, I am not making this up, that Democrats aren't going to win Virginia¹ because it's full of "inbred yokels," even though -- this is a direct quote -- "I've never actually met any Appalachian Virginians." And then Golding pronounces that the way to win these mythical yokels' votes is lunatic-libertarian "radically reduced federalism." Do these people listen to themselves when they talk?

1. Contra Golding, Pollster.com's estimate has Obama leading in Virginia by 2. But God forbid the Crimson should print, you know, facts.

The world's most obvious straw-man argument

Crimson columnist Brian Bolduc, 4/16/08:

Many Democrats insist that... if Senator Barack Obama wins the nomination, racism will recede from the inner city. If Senator Hillary Clinton wins, sexism will exit the boardroom. According to these ideologues, economic success is tied to political success, and one must occur for the other to follow.

Dear Brian Bolduc,

NOBODY THINKS THAT.

Love,
Everyone. :)

That explains it then

Crimson:

Last week’s resignation of Mark J. Penn ’76 could have dealt a blow to Harvard’s presence in the political world—that is, if Hillary Clinton’s lead campaign advisor hadn’t been replaced by a fellow former resident of Matthews Hall.

Penn resigned his spot as chief campaign strategist on Sunday after revelations that he had advised the Colombian government on a trade treaty that his long-time client opposed. Early the next week, Penn was replaced by another former Crimson writer and prominent pollster, Geoffrey D. Garin ’75...

No wonder she's losing.

Clinton carries primaries??

After spending last night glued to an CNN internet feed and watching Obama and Clinton nearly evenly split the delegates, I was surprised to find the title "Clinton, McCain Carry Primaries: less than 'super' night for Obama and Romney in nomination contests" at the front of today's Harvard Crimson. While McCain certainly did carry the day and Romney is in a lot of trouble, I was shocked to see the note about Obama. Had they been reading the same 5 websites that I had open on my computer last night?

While rampant optimism had been running through the Obama camp in the last few weeks, realists were aware that it was unlikely that Obama would win a majority of states. His practical hope lay with the possibility of coming close enough to Clinton in terms of delegates that he could continue to compete in the following weeks. While Clinton may have had some surprisingly strong showings (Especially considering all the talk of the "Obama Surge") , Obama's victory in a majority of super Tuesday states was all that he could have pragmatically hoped for. As an Obama supporter, I was certainly satisfied.

However, whoever came up with the Crimson front page article apparently felt that Obama hadn't performed up to expectations. The title was clearly picked by either A) an overly optimistic Obama supporter or B) a Hillary supporter seeking to stress her candidate's achievements. While I'm not suggesting that the title was maliciously unfair, it clearly was a mis-characterization of the night's occurrences, and apparently the Crimson Staff agreed (or at least got enough complaints from Obama supporters that it decided to change the article). The article's title now reads (on the crimson website) "McCain Carries Primaries, Clinton and Obama Trade Victories", which I believe that Obama and Hillary supporters can agree is a fairer description of the night.

The Crimson clarification reads as follows:

The Feb. 6 story "McCain, Clinton Carry Primaries," was put to press before full results became known from California. As a result, it said that Senator Hillary Clinton of New York had outperformed Senator Barack Obama of Illinois in yesterday's "Super Tuesday" contests. In fact, while Clinton won the major states of New York and California, the complex manner in which delegates are awarded means that the Clinton now has only a narrow lead in the total number of delegates. Additionally, Obama won 13 states yesterday, while Clinton won just nine.

I don't know at what hour the Crimson goes to press, but I still feel that even before the California results came in that it was clear that the delegate difference would not be so big. However, considering my bias, there's a limit to how much as I can argue. Either way, I'm glad that they decided to insert that clarification, and I hope that Harvard students will pay attention. The quest for the nomination still continues.

Garrett Smacks the IOP in Today's Crimson

Read read read read read:

On its face, the IOP purports to support exactly what the misty-eyed memoirists of the activist Sixties want Harvard students to be doing. In the style of the civic-minded academy, it implores Harvard students to “examine critically and think creatively about politics and public issues.” The entire circus operates under the spiritual aegis of President John F. Kennedy ’40, who, one imagines, looks down with rolled-up sleeves and a winning smile upon the IOP’s noble young activists.

Marketing, however, can’t gloss over the truth forever. What transpires down at the end of JFK Street is not the catalysis of idealism but rather a sort of cotillion for political nerds. It absorbs every freshman looking to exercise their obligations as a citizen and churns out a mixture of political technicians, professional hand-shakers, and disillusioned burnouts.

[...] the IOP inculcates a worrisome catechism of centrism in its followers. The maxim of political involvement IOP-style is to mold yourself into just the right mixture of sensible sentiments and professional suavity. Of the nineteen members of the IOP’s Student Advisory Council, for example, only four choose to identify as “liberal” or “conservative” on their Facebook profiles. Nine, apparently, have no political views whatsoever.

And having a corral for the political set on JFK street means Harvard mirrors a problem endemic to the nation: the consigning of civic duties to a self-contained class of “political people.” This flies in the face of the very notion of democratic society: that we are all political people. Political mobility is a sentiment which needs to boil through everyone who comes to Harvard College, a trade school of citizenship.

Absolutely right. Plus Garrett is much more intellectual and pragmatic about it than I can ever bring myself to be -- my solution to this problem has never grown much past "burn the motherfucker down", which for the record is also how I feel about the Crimson, the final clubs, and the GODDAMN NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS -- so you should really just go read his piece.

Though I would add that the IOP is ultimately not a cause of our political inertia so much as a symptom; there is a whole social and economic order that demands just those centrist sycophants the IOP churns out. (Let's not pretend the Dems are innocent on that front either.) After all, the all-inclusive "democratic society" Garrett proposes does not coexist well with a capitalistic one...

...For a palate cleanser, make sure also to read Jarret's fun column comparing the GOP presidential race to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory -- though I do think Jarret seriously underestimates the impact of Ron Paul. He has a blimp, people! A BLIMP! HOW CAN HE LOSE??!?

Whoa, what?

Buried at the very end of a same ol' same ol' article about Israel ...

Above: Ruth R. Wisse, faculty advisor for the Harvard Salient, dares you to speak a con word about Israel

... is this tidbit that the first class to graduate under Gen Ed will be 2013.

In other business, Professor Jay M. Harris—chair of the committee in charge of transitioning away from the Core Curriculum—said at the meeting that the present estimate is that the class of 2013 will be the first to graduate solely under the new General Education system.

Two observations:

1. Since when did the Crimson start breaking important stories according to the "by-the-way ..." method?

2. Will Gen Ed included courses on Soylent Green and nuclear-powered vacuum cleaners?

More groundbreaking journalism from the Crimson

Yesterday morning's Crimson offered this very enlightening headline: "Council VP Likely to Run for President." Which is to say, Matt Sundquist, our favorite UC vice-president, is likely to run for the UC presidency this year.

Really? The vice-president runs for president? Fancy that.

Sometimes you open up the Harvard Crimson--

--and a smile comes to your face, because you have glimpsed something so incredibly asinine that the blogpost practically writes itself. Read:

The parade that wound its way down JFK Street in celebration of Oktoberbest last weekend was an altogether standard procession, featuring energetic marching bands, costumed dancers, awkward stilt-walkers, and left-leaning political dissent. Nothing unusual or controversial—just jovial calls for the impeachment of the President, signs to the effect of “Honk if You Think Iraq is the Greatest Travesty in the History of the World,” and other meaningful jabs at our evil Commander-in-Chief.

[...]Unfortunately, this attitude points to a troubling dilution of political protest and a lack of serious dialogue in Cambridge and in many parts of this country today. There is a fine line between amusing political satire and impassioned political statements, a line which is frequently and haphazardly crossed.[...]

The parade participants last Sunday were not informed and serious political dissenters—or if they were their discourse gave no indication of it. But their approach was problematic and narrow-minded: “We Are All The Same,” one banner proclaimed, implying that no one could possibly disagree with them. As long as we are all the same in our opinions, the expression of them amounts not to protest but to a shameless venting of sentiment.

Those bastards.

[...]The protesters clearly viewed themselves as innocuous jesters, and certainly many of the spectators viewed them the same way. But, intended or not, this message was an aggressive political protest, and a completely inappropriate abuse of the public arena.

If we have learned anything from the shocking images of brutality in Burma it is that our right to publicly disagree with our leadership is an extremely precious one, a privilege that we too often take for granted. We must exercise it responsibly lest it lose its power.

I will leave aside for the time being the question of how something is simultaneously a "right" and a "privilege"...

...it's kind of stunning how easily this piece falls right into blogosphere stereotypes about mainstream media attitudes. It is actually -- not even obliquely, but literally -- an argument that, while we presumably do face an irresponsible president causing continued deaths of innocents in an unjustified war of choice, what's most offensive is that protesters are having too much fun. "Shameless venting of sentiment". "Abuse of the public arena." Dude even uses the word "serious" without a trace of irony (paging Joe Klein!). This reads like something from, I don't know, Harper's circa 1967 -- "we might have concerns about President Johnson and the war in Vietnam, but nobody wants to be one of those rude unwashed radicals with their long hair and their 'rock' music." And it's of course the same reasoning that led all such "sensible" people to support the Iraq War in the first place, because all those No Blood For Oil types were clearly just protesting for kicks. Silly hippies!

Plus, check out the aversion that's on display here toward the intersection of humor and politics. "There is a fine line between amusing political satire and impassioned political statements" -- huh? Satire is political argument, in one of its most refined and powerful forms. Besides, who declared that protests weren't allowed to be any fun? How is that possibly a good idea? If modern protests (especially student protests) were really as pompous and ponderous as this op-ed seems to demand, maybe they'd attract more Crimson writers, but they'd be insufferable and they'd accomplish nothing. Real change requires you to motivate people, which in today's world requires you to be entertaining and (yes) a little bit radical. But instead from the Crimson we get an attitude that, all too typically, confuses the appearance of gravitas for actual intellectual value and promotes reflexive moderation over real productive thought. Sound familiar?

Yes, what we have here is Harvard pseudointellectual elitism in its purest form, I-Banker Journalism in the flesh. No matter what the topic, these people must keep up appearances; they cannot possibly associate with the mob, and uncomfortable things like irony simply cannot be permitted. In this rather extreme case, even public protest is apparently reserved only for the qualified, educated elite; and if the rabble continues to misuse it, then -- presumably by the sovereign authority of the Harvard Crimson -- it will somehow "lose its meaning" and have to be taken away. No ice cream until you eat your vegetables!

...I feel bad for this writer, and for the sake of Google I won't reprint his name; he's just a comper, and for all I know this op-ed might just be some crap you have to do to please the Crimson's overlords. But it's just such a perfect example of the toxic establishmentarian culture that pervades this place, and the extent of our journalists' disconnect with the real world; these are the Pundits of Tomorrow, friends, better learn to deal with them.

I-Banker Journalism

Coming to this a bit late, but Tyler Cowen has an interesting post responding to Henry Farrell on economic biases among journalists. Farrell mentions (in the context of a larger discussion) that the media tends to swing right on economics, citing some Jon Chait work; Cowen, a libertarian, responds with some cogent points as to why journalists would swing more left on the issue. As follows:

2. Journalists are more likely to be suspicious of corporations and indeed more likely to be suspicious in general. People lie to them every day, repeatedly and often without shame.

[...]4. If anything, it is the odd mix between cynicism and idealism that defines the journalistic political point of view.

5. Most journalists work in a declining sector -- newspapers or TV -- and this does not augur well for their belief in progress and the virtues of economic growth. They are not well-positioned to enjoy "creative destruction."

6. Not many top journalists are "far left Democrats." But most are Democrats. I also do not think many journalists would endorse the economic proposals of the rational wing of the Republican Party, say Greg Mankiw or Martin Feldstein. Journalists are likely to think those proposals do not show enough concern for the poor.

[...]In sum, the left-right spectrum is not the best way to understand the economic views of journalists. But, when it comes to economic issues, it is hard for me to put journalists on the right side of that line.

Fair enough. But there's a distinction to be made, that I don't see Farrell or Cowen picking up on: between journalists as individuals, and the people who shape opinions and reporting in media organizations (that is, owners, editors, and commentators). Journalists may have these characteristics that make them more skeptical of free-market economics, but I certainly don't think the opinionmakers do.

At Harvard we are privileged to observe these people in their larval stage, where their thought processes can be easily analyzed. They are the people who hang around the Crimson and the IOP, and who enjoy things like "networking"; they will on graduation almost immediately aquire jobs at prestigious publications or think-tanks. You know exactly the type of person I'm talking about. (In my experience, they have a sizable but shrinking representation in the Dems; and they are almost completely absent from the Harvard Republican Club, which is greatly to the HRC's credit.) If they were less intellectual they'd be future consultants hanging out in final clubs; if they were more intellectual they'd be those annoying people in section who never stop talking. As it is they're able to interact quite well with the rest of us, but their motivations are the same: they want prestige and they want attention, and that -- though of course they'll tell you otherwise -- is what drives their politics.

These people -- let's call them I-Banker Journalists -- are often brilliant and tremendously fun to argue with, but their thinking (especially on economics) is establishmentarian and elitist, as befits someone who's trying to to get ahead. And this kind of status-quo triumphalism is it's a natural fit for Harvard College, where everyone is either already fabulously wealthy or assumed to be on the way towards it; the IOP, where calm, placid centrism has been elevated to an art form; and the Crimson, which reads less like a student paper than a wannabe Washington Post. It is a whole self-reinforcing world that is convinced of its own power and infinite wisdom, Harvard uber alles. Things like the Stand for Security campaign -- which called all those precious assumptions into question -- frightened and confused these people, which is why they all (including so many Dems, look at the mailing list archives if you don't believe me) reacted violently against it. We are talking about people who are unfailingly SERIOUS, as Atrios would say, and they feel obligated to look "sensible" by distancing themselves from radicals in their own parties. They simply know better, after all. Here is their platonic ideal:

You see what I'm saying. This is a class of people who pursue a certain kind of un-provocative intelligence, one that can be found only in the Ivy League and our elite media. (Anywhere else, of course, these people would be immediately recognized and beaten up by unwashed Middle American hoodlums, or at least that's what I assume they're afraid of. No other reason to stay in those godawful places like Manhattan and Georgetown all the time.) Unlike regular journalists, I-Banker Journalists carry none of the traits Tyler Cowen writes about; addicted to power and prestige, they naturally lack any kind skepticism or cynicism. They are certainly not "suspicious" of corporations or the elite, since they ARE that elite, and they have no reason to worry about economic fairness ("creative destruction" to them only means a generous severance package from whatever conglomerate they're currently at). They take the free market as absolute gospel, prompted by -- just as Cowen mentions -- Marty Feldstein and Greg Mankiw. (After all, how could two such SERIOUS Harvard professors possibly be wrong?) We are not talking about Woodward and Bernstein here; we are talking more about Chris Matthews.

And the end result is a tangible bias toward establishment economics in our media -- cloaked in limousine liberalism sometimes, of course, but still ultimately in the mode of Ec10. Think about it; how many pundits can you think of that really question economic orthodoxy? Other than populist bomb-throwers like David Sirota (who now has a column, incidentally, not yet widely syndicated), you're pretty much out of luck. The closest mainstream pundit I can think of is the excellent Paul Krugman, and even he still works largely within a free-market mindset. Real economic dissent is pretty much confined these days to places like the World Socialist Web Site, which (while often insightful and valuable) is not really something you want to be citing in a argument.

Garrett wrote a while ago about Harvard's "liberal" mentality, and he's quite right, but I submit that there are specific people who drive this mentality -- through Harvard and right out into our media, dominating the discourse no matter how tiny a minority they may be. Whether this can be stopped, and whether it's a problem of the people or the environment, are questions for another post, but the trend is worth noting and worth observing if you want to really understand our college and our media climate.

(Feeling bad about Harvard economics? Remember, we may be stuck with Mankiw, but we also have Dani Rodrik. Read his blog.)

(h/t Reihan Salam pretending to be Ross Douthat)

Shorter Crimson Editorial Board

• We think that respectable, fair-minded media outlets like Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal will always be popular and successful, and though we will not tell you why we believe this, it certainly has nothing to do with how badly we want jobs at these papers after we graduate.

...Advice for our freshman readers: don't comp the Crimson. It is a sad place.

Sunday Thought

RE the recent Crimson article about a British noodle chain moving into the Square--

Wagamama—which specializes in ramen-style noodle dishes, udon bowls, and other various stir-fried concoctions—picked the two Massachusetts locations both because of their East Coast proximity to company headquarters in London and because they had found a receptive audience.

Ryan G. Orley ’10 has been counting down the days until the new attraction opens it doors.

“I’ve always enjoyed noodles, and I have been fortunate enough to be in Europe and try it,” Orley said. “It’s just delicious.”

But even with a loyal following and moderate prices—the average meal costs about $11 at the Boston location, according to the restaurant’s Web site—Orley said it would be hard to predict Wagamama’s success.

“I feel like every restaurant that opens in the square is successful initially because its’s new and exciting,” Orley said. “But once you get past that initial ‘wow’ factor, it’s hard to say.”

--my question:

In what bizarro-parallel-universe is $11 a "moderate price" for a goddamn bowl of ramen??

This has been your Sunday Thought.

Rape? What Rape?

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=518304

WHAT?

So, basically, being raped is as bad as being accused of rape?

"Preventing sexual violence hinges on sexual responsibility." It is the rape victims responsibility to prevent themselves from being raped?!? Is there any other crime in which the victims are responsible for preventing the crime from happening to them?

And, finally, is she seriously arguing that we are all being silly and "overstating the prevalence of the rape problem"?

Speechless...

Ending CORPORATE Music Piracy

There was an opinion piece in the Crimson today by the President of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It bemoans the imminent destruction of music in this country due to piracy.

While we all may have our own opinions on music piracy, the idea that anyone should shed a tear over piracy is beyond me, given the obviously larger problems that afflict the recording industry.

The fact is, the music recording industry is monopolistic (or oligopolistic, if you prefer). 85% of all music released is done through only 5 labels/corporations. In comparison, the rest of the media industry in this nation is similarly monopolistic (which has even more corrosive effects on our democracy) but the level is significantly less bad with 8 companies controlling over 50%, a much smaller ratio (though still horrible and terribly unfair).

While the monopoly represented by the RIAA (the RIAA is mostly these 5 corporations) may not actually be engaging in price-fixing, as some accuse, its consolidation of the market leaves it open to those allegations. Furthermore, such consolidation is bad for competition, which is bad for consumers and for artists. It means we get worse products for higher prices and artists get treated worse for less money. If the RIAA actually cared about artists' wellbeing, they would pay them a fair amount of money for their music (and I am talking about the majority of artists that are on the major labels who have little job security and little compensation for their work, not the big, flashy pop stars).

The solution to the crisis in the music industry is not focusing on stopping downloading piracy but on stopping corporate piracy.

The Value of Front-Loaded Primaries

The Crimson has an editorial today that, typically, decries the Death of Democracy and Decline of Civilization, oh woe is us, etc.; this week's villain is the front-loaded 2008 primary schedule. Seems that the preponderance of large-population big-money states leaping into the early primary season (CA, FL, etc.) is "disenfranchis[ing] the smaller states" and ruining "the time-honored practice of retail politics" by forcing candidates to play financial and political hardball right away.

To be fair to Plympton St., this is not just a boring argument, it's also an unoriginal one. Stephen Dewey made this point seven months ago on RedIvy after Dems brought NV and SC into the inner circle, and I argued with him at length about it then. (As usual, we all wound up slinging personal insults. Good times.) And this discussion has turned up constantly on blogs and editorial pages across the nation.

So rather than rehash the argument at length, let me make it concisely: the death of retail politics, while sad, is inevitable and we'd be stupid to resist it. Why put a candidate through the Iowa/New Hampshire slog, glad-handing in cafés, when the real skills they'll need to win elections are -- honestly -- fundraising and mass-media prowess, and when the battlefields we need to win are not "small-town" but very much suburban and urban? I think it's fairly obvious. This is of course a pragmatic perspective, though (it amounts to "do what you have to to win"); since the Crimson seems more interested in a dreamy-eyed normative approach, let's take a moment to address their perspective.

The Crimson makes two points. First they wistfully reflect that voters in these small states can make a more informed decision after intimately experiencing the presidential candidates on a personal level; to which I reply, it's not necessarily desirable to have a candidate that just appeals to that sector of voter or that style of politics, particularly when the majority of Americans are tuned in to the nation entirely through TV and the Internet, and when the majority of Americans neither expect nor need personal contact from their political leaders. (Not to mention, in today's technological and media climate, the idea that you can do anything "intimate" to begin with is laughable on its face. Case in point: Macaca.)

Second, the Crimson suggests that this primary system makes money the determining factor and forces out financial-underdog candidates; while they describe a real problem here, the solution to this is comprehensive campaign finance reform, not a regression to old-style politics. Their approach would only delay the onset of the big-money game, not end it.

Logically their points are without merit. So what this attitude essentially flows from, ultimately, is irrational: a romanticization of the small primary states. Political observers have always had this cute idea that New England town meetings and Iowa union halls contain some kind of magical democratic spark, that alights upon Good People to Lead Our Nation and then brings them to the front of the primary process. Bullshit. These are elections like any other, fought on the ground by gritty organizers, and often decided by luck or dirty tricks; Bill Clinton did not become the Comeback Kid just by being pleasant and likeable, folks, he came back by playing the game well. He could just as easily have applied his political genius to New York and California if that had been necessary.

Thus, why should we focus political energy on these small, irrelevant, primarily rural states -- which are ludicrously non-representative of the nation in any demographic sense -- when we could focus on states which do reflect the country and the politics it employs? Such as, say, FLORIDA, which in the past has kind of been important in determining presidential elections? It is obvious from every perspective that a primary system more focused on large states serves us better.

Yes, the financial hurdles are a problem. But on that issue, and on the question of front-loading as a whole, the Crimson's attitude is completely wrong-headed. We should not be swayed by calls for a traditionalist primary system; the Party and the country are moving in the right direction.