I stopped reading the Times columnists back when the website started charging for that content, and, since I didn’t miss them at all, I haven’t gone back to reading them. So, granted, I haven’t read any of the columnists in quite some time, but based on my recollections of when I read them daily (before Kristol was hired, but then, I’m familiar with him), I mostly agree with this assessment:
Unlike David Brooks, another Times conservative, Kristol gives the reader nothing to chew over. Brooks is smart — and usually wrong. But he makes me think and sometimes he gets it just right much as George Will does. One of Kristol’s problems is that he clearly doesn’t believe half the things he writes. . . . He has to pretend he cares about choice and low taxes because he is playing at being a conservative. All that pretending produces seriously bad columns, inept columns. Krauthammer’s columns are crazy but his writing is fine because all the hate energizes him. He loves hating and it shows! Kristol isn’t even a good hater.
I can enjoy reading people with whom I entirely disagree, if they write well and with conviction. I also adore a good, witty, ranting hater, even if he’s hating on the convictions I hold most dear. (Incidentally, I have next to no patience for conspiracy theories of any kind, but the closest I come to actually holding one is I kind of think the Times hired Maureen Dowd on purpose to make women look stupid. Really, is there any other explanation for her? [And the conspicuous continuing absence of any other women on the Op-Ed page?])
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Speaking of paying for content, I can’t access this New Criterion article without subscribing, but I want to quote the intro:
Sometimes I forget and ask for Tall, Grande, or Venti, but usually I ask, defiantly but with some embarrassment, for small, medium, or large, because I resent being forced into a greater intimacy than I desire with the Starbucks corporate culture. I want to be a customer, not a member of the Starbucks Club who validates his membership along with his entry on the premises by speaking the Starbucks idiolect.
I too resent and avoid the Starbucks pseudo-Italian nomenclature, because using it makes me feel like a tool. I realize that blogging about my refusal to use it makes me even more of a tool, but I can’t help myself. Seriously, I don’t understand the whole ‘foreign words sure are classy’ marketing trend to begin with. Many Americans (including me) only speak English, which is embarrassing enough (especially because they then have the nerve to bitch like all Dickens when somebody else can’t speak it to them), but if that’s the case, we should all just fess up to it. It’s stupid to try to sprinkle foreign terms we don’t understand and can’t pronounce into our commercial transactions, because the unfamiliar sounds expensive (or authentic, which means authentically expensive).
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Vogue Italia has realized black women can objectify themselves and glamorize greed just as well as white women:
Having worked at one time with nearly all the models he chose for the black issue — Iman, [Naomi] Campbell, Tyra Banks, Jourdan Dunn, [Liya] Kebede, [Alek] Wek, Pat Cleveland, Karen Alexander — [photographer Steven] Meisel had his own feelings. “I thought, it’s ridiculous, this discrimination,” said Mr. Meisel, speaking by phone from his home in Los Angeles. “It’s so crazy to live in such a narrow, narrow place. Age, weight, sexuality, race — every kind of prejudice.”
(via Kottke)
Hooray for equality. Meanwhile:
Over at Supreme Dicta there is an amusing, if disturbing, report by a grader for the Advanced Placement exam in US Government of some of the more comical statements made in response to an essay question about the 15th Amendment. . . . such as the statement that: “Strom Thurman [sic] was the first black man in Congress”. . .
Really, I think that’s how Strom ought to be remembered.
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Yesterday President Bush told President Arroyo that her people sure make good kitchen workers:
I want to tell you how proud I am to be the President of a nation that — in which there’s a lot of Philippine-Americans. They love America and they love their heritage. And I reminded the President that I am reminded of the great talent of the — of our Philippine-Americans when I eat dinner at the White House. (Laughter.)
Meanwhile, Jim Comey explains why he wasn’t quite sure warrantless wiretapping wasn’t legal:
Well, I suppose there’s an argument — as I said, I’m not a presidential scholar — that because the head of the executive branch determined that it was appropriate to do, that that meant for purposes of those in the executive branch it was legal.
(both via Firedoglake)
On McCain’s foreign policy credibility, Representative Brad Miller writes that no President truly knows and understands another country, and what we really ought to evaluate is how willing a candidate is to listen to the people who do:
After World War II, governments that we thought were stable, governments headed by leaders we found impressive for their western qualities, repeatedly fell to revolutions or coups. To avoid unpleasant surprises, we developed expertise in the State Department and our intelligence agencies to understand other nations. We employed analysts who have lived in different nations and have friends who live there still, speak the language fluently, read the newspapers, watch the television, respect the religion, eat the food, and listen to the music. Our analysts stay in touch with the Americans at universities and in business who travel frequently in those countries and know people there.
With the exception of environmental scientists, no one in the federal government has had less to say about our government’s policies in the last seven years than those analysts. . . . The Bush Administration had open scorn for the analysts who argued that Iraq was an intensely nationalistic society that would resent a foreign army on their soil, and that it would be difficult to establish a government that Iraqis would accept as legitimate.
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I don’t know why I’m suddenly interested in Amtrak:
The number of passengers traveling by train in the US rose significantly in May. Unfortunately, Amtrak is reaching full capacity with no real way to increase the number of trains or routes at its disposal for several years.
I guess just because I really think the age of the personal car is going to eventually end, and I’m curious about how our lives will change when that happens. I have not had a car since college – I’ve lived in Chicago, and now New York, pretty much the only places in America where you can reasonably live without a vehicle – and honestly, the necessity of getting a car is one huge barrier to my moving elsewhere. I don’t want to buy one, I don’t want to pay to gas and maintain it, and I don’t want the responsibility of driving.
I wonder: if public transport becomes more widespread, will inexpensive storage-locker facilities suddenly spring up in all manner of places? Because that would be good.
