More on Lena Dunham

I'm finding the Lena Dunham controversy much more interesting than I would have thought.

The dust is settling and the opinions are forming; the majority are not in Dunham's favor.

Only a small part of the majority echo Williamson's contention that Dunham is more alien than artist. Most are satisfied to say that Dunham's ongoing manipulation and sexual play with her sister was abusive and leave it at that.

Certainly, this is more grist for the culture war mill. It shouldn't be a surprise that the women-of-color faction of feminism were quick to disown Dunham but another rift in the solidarity rose to the surface. Many feminists, it appears, found their ideology because it's the loudest voice against sexual abuse; Dunham's confessions struck a chord with them.

As for myself, I've kept an eye on Dunham over the last few years because I always pay attention when a new "genius" is introduced to the culture. As I've written about many times before, the arts and entertainment field--particularly the journalism covering it--has been dominated by progressives for years. Dunham, in particular, came to us anointed as, at least, a potential "voice of a generation." But what had she done to deserve it?

A Redditor linked this article, "Falling Down the Rabbit Hole of NYC’s Lena Dunham Obsession," published last January, before her book was published. It's a compendium of Dunham mentions in the NYC press.

Here's the thing:  It goes back to 1998. Dunham was born in 1986. Not even a teenager, here she is in Vogue (!):

Laurie Simmons and Carroll Dunham's eleven-year-old daughter, Lena, has a street edge that could leave even Miss Schnabel feeling momentarily inadequate. 'I tried to model this after Helmut Lang,' says Lena, showing off a shift she sewed herself. Her fashion pronouncements are something you'd expect from a woman (at least) three times her age: 'I tend not to go for trends. You can only wear them for two weeks . . . . I really like Jil Sander, but it's so expensive.... I find Calvin Klein really hard to respect because he's everywhere. I view him as a clothesmonger . . . . Manolo is really classy.'

This particular excerpt has stuck with me because it shows a real disconnect between the real world and the insulated NYC elite. Dunham here smacks of the most irritating type of precociousness, the kind in which she affects a sophistication which she couldn't possibly claim. She finds Calvin Klein "really hard to respect" because he's a "clothesmonger?"

Most adults would recognize this as creative mimicry. The child has heard this type of discussion and is more or less pretending to be an adult discussing adult things in an adult way. Kind people will listen with gentle tolerance but take very little stock in what the child is saying.

Apparently, if one is a member of the artistic-literary-publishing NYC elite, one hears a precocious heiress and decides that she must be a brilliant young thing, worthy of quoting in an international publication. Truly we must be a special breed, the thinking seems to be here, otherwise, how else would we have such remarkable children?

At fifteen, the NYT quotes her discussing a hangout that her fellow classmates frequent:  " I have a friend who's 36 who went to St. Ann's, and she used to go to U.T.B." She goes on to wax poetic about the spot, but two things are more important. One, a fifteen-year-old has a friend who is 36? Second, a fifteen-year-old making her second appearance in the international press?

When she was sixteen, the NYT sent a reporter to cover her vegan dinner party. The article points out that only she and a friend are actually vegans, though Dunham proudly decides to enforce her gustatory ideology by making everyone remove their shoes on the premise that they are probably leather. They denounce/listen-ironically to Justin Timberlake and Dunham tells the reporter, "I go to one party every five months. I watch everyone get drunk and I'm really freaked out. I enjoy it, but then I don't want to see it again for five months."

By this time we can see that Dunham's precociousness has not only gone unchallenged but encouraged. We can also see what kind of person she is becoming, using intellectual positioning and "enlightened" self-absorption as a way to assert status.

The beginning of Dunham's public profile as a creator came at 21 in the NYT for a series for Nerve Video (Remember Nerve?) in which she films herself in Spanx, has unappetizing sex and then has her partner insult her. Sound familiar?

From then on, everything Dunham did got attention from the NYC press and, thus, international exposure. She followed the Nerve series with another web series that featured well-known NYC art and fashion figures, then the film Tiny Furniture, followed by full-bloom national status and Girls.

Three things:

First, is there a better example of how the entertainment market is broken? Dunham's talent isn't even an issue here--she could be twice as talented or half as talented and have the exact same career. More importantly, her work could be entertaining, but how can one believe that her tiny and insular experience could give her anything important to say? Looking at her history, it appears that she was groomed to be a media darling.

Second, like I discussed the other day, a serious, disinterested look at Dunham's public persona reveals not depth but narcissism. Her "courage" for displaying her average naked body and her willingness to look pathetic, her inability to create vehicles that don't star herself, all point to a desperate need for attention. She would have taken Paris Hilton's path if she had the looks for it. Since she didn't, she took the role of the smartest person in the room. Since the room was full of the children of editors and artists and fashion designers, they thought she was very smart, indeed--smart enough to better the world.

Finally, Kevin D. Williamson's original intention in his review of Dunham's book was buried under the "molestation or not?" controversy, but I think that he's introduced a valuable technique to our arsenal. The Dunham who comes across, in her own words, is alien. Her priorities, her experience with the difficulties of life and her coddling by the national press are all light-years away from the lives of her audience. We should be doing more of this.

Three Thoughts on Lena Dunham and Kevin D. Williamson

I

To say Kevin D. Williamson's article about Lena Dunham last week was about exposing her as a child molester--which has been the takeaway--is to miss the myriad subtleties in the piece.

I recommend reading it, if only to show how much craft can be put into something so short. Williamson takes Dunham's month-old memoirs and eviscerates her public persona. It's a worthy task because Dunham is well-versed in the Millennial tricks of making her points without having to stand her ground.

For example, he discusses how she has her character on Girls announce to her parents that she is the "voice of her generation," which she qualifies 1) by having her fictional character say it, 2) by having that character be intoxicated as she says it, and 3) by undercutting it with a joke afterwards. Yet Dunham herself is more than happy to allow others to call her that.

Dunham's artistic cowardice isn't as important as what it says about her real-life statements. She's willing to have everyone believe something she's not brave enough to say unequivocally. Williamson takes great offense to her discussion of a "rape" she experienced while at Oberlin College. Thankfully, he doesn't take the bait that the media in general did when the book was published--he doesn't fall into the argument of whether the murky incident was consensual or not.

Instead, he takes issue to Dunham's abuse of her stature in the context of her refusal to take a definable stand. As for the latter, she doesn't call the experience "rape"--she has others say that for her. As for the abuse of prominence, he points out that it took him two minutes to track down a "Barry" who was a campus Republican at Oberlin during her time there. Since Dunham tells us that this Barry also raped a woman so viciously that blood spattered the walls, she paints a very ugly picture of an identifiable man who has no comparable platform to defend himself and who was only accused indirectly.

As for the allegations of Dunham "molesting" her younger sister, framing her as an abuser doesn't seem to be Williamson's intent:

If there is such a thing as actually abusing a child through excessive generosity and overindulgence, then Lena Dunham’s parents are child abusers. Her father, Carroll Dunham, is a painter noted for his primitive brand of highbrow pornography, his canvases anchored by puffy neon-pink labia; her photographer mother filled the family home with nude pictures of herself, “legs spread defiantly.” Self-styled radicals from old money, they were not the sort of people inclined to enforce even the most lax of boundaries.

What Williamson makes a case for is that Dunham's parents, with their post-tradition liberality, created an excessively sexualized environment for their children and that the sexual interaction between Dunham and her sister comes from that. This point has been obscured as the right has pounced on the fact that Dunham's self-reported behavior could be labelled as abusive and her supporters (and Dunham herself) label it childish experimentation. Williamson's article shows that Dunham is a very disordered person, which should force us to question the value of her work.

I wonder if the controversy will have a lasting effect on Dunham's career. Even her supporters have to reckon with the emotional snapshots she's given them. Her sister is six years younger than her--the power dynamics of an older sister bribing her with candy in exchange for long kisses and employing "anything a sexual predator might do to woo a small suburban girl" certainly force one to look at her as something of a manipulative bully. Williamson points out that in an episode of Girls, Dunham's character tells an employer that she will punish him for his harassment by writing an essay about him and using his real name. Rumors about her on-set behavior problems have circulated from the very beginning, mostly centering on her utter self-absorption at the expense of everyone else.

The mystique of irony and ambiguity is difficult to pull off in the long term; eventually most people figure out what is being obscured. She's beginning to come across as a woman who feels she's always justified in doing whatever she's done, no matter what others' feelings may be. Viewers might come to see that, underneath the labels of "irony" and "satire," Dunham's characters are really accurate depictions of their creator.

II

Ace of Spades asks the right question about the Dunham uproar:  "So Did the Media Miss Lena Dunham's Hair-Raising Stories About Her Sister, Or Did They Bury It?"

Ace supports the theory that the press intentionally suppressed Dunham's childhood revelations, rather than the theories that the press either didn't actually read her book or found the stories unremarkable.

Of course, it's probably a bit of all three but Ace doesn't consider that her book was published by a pillar of the media, Random House. If the media thought that what she had to say was something to be suppressed, how did it get published in the first place?

What I think is that this is a matter of Dunham's mystique working in her favor. The artist's reputation precedes her, so any work that's produced is pre-qualified as Art. The problems of the work can be deemed "challenging" and mistakes are examined as if they are intentional.

Dunham came to Girls with a couple of well-received indie works but, more importantly, an of-the-moment personal package. In the incestuous world of New York media, she fit right in as a wealthy scion of a Mayflower-Jewish marriage, educated at progressive schools, with an artistic family. She spoke the same language as the media elite--how hard do you think it was for her to raise funding, cast actors and recruit a talented crew? Consider, as well, that Girls had a great deal of attention even before it premiered, despite Dunham's negligible profile.

Add to this Dunham's apparent narcissism. One trope one reads in critiques of our culture is that narcissism is, to some extent, an advantage. The self-confidence and assertiveness of a narcissist initially seems to be a positive in a competitive environment. In my own life, I've been amazed at how easily people accept others' self-aggrandizement. It's easy to imagine that Dunham's belief in her own exquisite taste convinced her more-submissive colleagues.

Dunham is also of-the-moment in the public sphere:

A great deal has been made of Lena Dunham’s weight, not least by Lena Dunham. She may be Hollywood fat, or Manhattan–below–125th Street fat, but she is in fact an utterly ordinary specimen of American womanhood, and she would not be thought of as fat in Magnolia, Ark., or Craig, Colo., or even in the less rarefied sections of Brooklyn.

Dunham's physical appearance is, in reality, an advantage. She can be pointed at as an example of a "real woman," while still having enough beauty and youth to carry off a layer or two of makeup in a fashion magazine.

For an example of how her unconventionally-conventional body has benefited her, look at last spring's attack on a low-level entertainment reporter. At a panel, he asked her to explain her frequent nudity on the show. Girls producer Judd Apatow immediately berated the man as if he had told her she wasn't attractive enough to be naked on HBO; the think-pieces published for the next week took the same tactic. However, nothing the reporter said indicated that his question was about how unattractive he thought she was; his question was about her artistic choice--specifically, one scene in which she was playing ping-pong topless for no apparent reason. (However, this was dangerous territory. Asking why she was naked on screen for no good reason might make one think that she is a narcissist who wants all the attention, any way she can get it.)

Dunham also gets a lot of mileage out of the current feminist moment. She is the actor/writer/producer of her own show. She's not a Hollywood beauty. She brags about the wide variety of sexual encounters she's had. She's willing to pontificate about whatever the female/progressive issue of the day is and always comes to a vague pro-SJW opinion about it.

All that is to say that Dunham--through inheritance and inclination--has the right package to warrant the attention of the media. She is an Important Artist.

Being an Important Artist, we are to automatically accept her expressions even if they are off-putting to our tiny minds. She is the one with the fine-tuned sensibility, not us, so we can assume that her "cute" stories about sexual shenanigans with her much younger sister are as morally-insignificant as she says they are.

I think that those critics that read her book weren't sure what to make of those confessions. Chances are, they thought their own reactions were "problematic," that they'd internalized society's sex-negativity. Dunham is anointed and no one wanted to look out of step by appearing to be confused by her statements.

There's something even more sad about the lack of coverage. Was there no single journalist in the media who at least thought he could make a name for himself by denouncing her? Is the media now so monolithic that we can't even rely on their self-interest? Say what you want about the viciousness of reporters--at least their lust for exposing people can keep you honest.

III

Finally, when Dunham is occasionally discussed on a right-leaning website, one can play an overdose-inducing drinking game by reading the comments. Take a shot for every comment in which a reader brags about not knowing who Dunham is or asks why the site is covering someone so worthless.

This tiresome pose is the reason why the right has been completely left behind culturally.

In the ongoing politicization of everything, the loss of the culture was the watershed. The right started acting as if arts and entertainment wasn't good enough to pay attention to and lost generations.

Culture, pop and otherwise, is the communal representation of what we value. By turning our backs on this fundamental part of the human experience, conservatives have lost their ability to contribute to this representation.

I've mentioned this before:  One of the struggles of the Catholic Church in modern times is that it answers questions we can no longer articulate. How can it explain the value of suffering in a world that defines people as monkeys hitting dopamine-release buttons? The reason that these questions and answers are lost is because conservatives have given up all interest in the means of understanding--our artistic culture.

Our culture has told us that Dunham is an Important Artist--at the very least, conservatives should be interested in whether she is or not. To think otherwise is to put one's head in the sand.

The Atlantic Report: The Renegade Nurse

I wonder what progressives would say if Kaci Hickox, the quarantine-defying nurse, told the press that she refused to be isolated because:  1) It violated her civil liberties and 2) There were too many Mexicans among her medical staff.

If the progressive reaction to ebola confuses you, it's helpful to think of the differences between where conservatives and liberals believe our threats lie. Conservatives are cautious about external threats while progressives keep their focus on their internal rivalries.

Most zombie movies eventually rely on one trope:  The individual who is less concerned with the ravenous horde outside than sticking it to his compatriots. (One of the reasons Night of the Living Dead is lasting is that it complexifies this trope by making the dissenter's plan the right one.) Even though this character is always depicted as a villain, progressives seem to think he's the hero.

Russell Berman has the report here.

At the heart of [Hickox's] protest is a belief that authorities in the two states were confining her out of fear–both political and irrational–rather than medicine. She has no fever and feels fine, and as public health officials have stressed repeatedly in recent weeks, Ebola can't be transmitted unless a person is symptomatic.

So far, the media has restrained themselves. They haven't come out and said that they support her, but they're willing to keep a spotlight on her.

It appears they're being wise, but I doubt it. The progressive foot soldiers that have been raiding the comments sections all have a similar refrain:  Science has proved that we're safe.

Has it? There's a lot of speculation but surely the powers that be don't have an interest in making it look safer than it is.

Anyway, ebola is a good example of what I call the Nuclear Energy problem. Nuclear fission, as far as I can tell, is our best source of energy. It's even safe--except for one thing:  when it isn't safe it's really, really bad.

You are faced with a big prize wheel. You have a 45% chance of winning $10 a day for the rest of your life and a .5% chance of having your home burn down to nothing with all your family inside. Do you play?

That's what ebola is. What's the latest death rate? 70%? I've heard 90% in the past. It's a horrible way to go, as well. As for how easy it is to catch, well, the information has been so politicized who knows who to trust? Not to mention the fact that diseases can mutate without warning. The wisest decision is control what we can because the alternative is horrifying.

Hickox's defiance toward the quarantines and the progressive support for her are exceptionally short-sighted. Sure, she's within her rights, but what happens if she turns out to have it and transmits it to someone? Those rights will be gone for everyone else because she will have proved their danger. Conspiracy theorists would argue that this is all part of the plan--"prove" how civil liberties endanger the public in order to strip them.

It reminds me of a slogan I use as a manager:  "If everyone acts reasonably, we won't have a lot of stupid rules." While New Jersey's tent in a parking lot was a really dumb move, if Hickox had compromise between the public's concerns and her feeling of imprisonment, a happy medium could have been reached. By insisting that only her happiness was important, she's added more fuel to the prog-con battle.

Why It Took Nearly Two Decades for Hollywood to Succeed with Superheroes

Thanks to Kevin Smith, the legend of a Nic Cage-starring, Tim Burton-directed Superman movie is always at the edges of contemporary Hollywood history. The project, developed in Burton's heyday in the 90s, came very close to being made but eventually fell through.

Smith was not the only screenwriter who worked on the project. Dan Gilroy, whose Nightcrawler just opened, worked on it, too. Here's his synopsis of the project:

So poor little [Superman], when he winds up on earth, he has no freaking idea where he came from. His biggest fear is that he's an alien. Our Superman was in therapy at the beginning of the film. He's in a relationship with Lois Lane and he can't commit. Or he was maybe in couple's therapy. But he can't commit because he doesn't know who he is or what is going on with him. He's hoping that he has some physiological condition that gives him these powers but that he's still human. It becomes very apparent, though, early in the script, when Lex Luthor uncovers the remnants of the spacecraft, he suddenly realizes – "Oh my god, I'm an alien." It was all about the psychological trauma of it.

This is why Hollywood just couldn't make superheroes work for so many years:  the industry's arrogance. Who would want to watch that Superman movie?

Even though there had been hundreds of stories and story arcs for Superman over the years, and time had proven some to be much better than others, Gilroy, Burton and producer Jon Peters thought, Nah, we'll just make some stuff up.

The Atlantic Report: Why Millennials &%#@! Love Science

I keep talking about Walker Percy's concept of the autonomous self because I keep seeing examples of it in modern culture. Alexandra Ossola's examination of Millenials' love of science is yet another good example.

This is how most Millennials feel about science—curious and awestruck. And they can’t get enough of it. They’re reading about science at their jobs and in their free time, in peer-reviewed journals or on Wikipedia. But what makes Millennials’ interests different from the scientific interests of every previous generation?

Well, for one, other generations didn't get cohort-stroking pieces in The Atlantic. But another is that science is the only avenue of truth allowed in the West.

Even a light presence on the Web will prove that Millenials' championing of science is shallow. Sagan and Tyson hero-worship and "Cool beans!" snapshots. And I don't get the impression that they understand the difference between science and technology--they know the difference when they talk about their iPhones, but not when there's a breakthrough in carbon fiber manufacturing or something.

Most importantly, there's a real lack of understanding of the disconnection between reality as the universe outside ourselves and science as our knowledge of that universe and the method of determining that knowledge. It may make atheists roll their eyes when I say this, but the rah-rah science fans make science a faith. (Here is another term I thought I made up before I encountered it on the alt-right:  scientism.)

When historians--and God help them--dig into the piles of chatter the modern era has produces, they'll have to take a Straussian perspective; everything that the mainstream media discusses is not what they're really discussing. This "love for science" is really the cult of the scientist. To really love science, I think, is to love the rigor of it--the strict rules of what is considered proof, the reluctance to promote definite conclusions, the process of eliminating possibilities rather than proving theories. The modern perspective is that the white-coated sage emerges from his laboratory and pronounces, "I bring you Truth!"

I wonder what will be the event that will shatter the Millenials' faith. As I said above, the spiritual perspective is that science is an abstract description of a reality that is separate from that description--a description that strives for accuracy but a description nonetheless. But the broader right wing also sees that science has become politicized.

Millennials have a greater need for things that transcend old boundaries and ideologies. Science has become a universal language, a form of information that is available almost instantly and can be shared among people who have nothing else in common.
...
"Obviously one issue that Millennials will put their talents toward solving is climate change," [Neil] Howe said.

Sadly, the end of Millenials' love of science probably won't be because of any single event. It will be because the excitement will slowly leak out of it. It's nice to be 22 years old and thrilled about the advances in space exploration or nanotechnology--or that Tarantino is coming out with a new movie or your favorite comic writer is taking over your favorite comic character or they've discovered a lost Salinger novel or Hulk Hogan is returning to the WWE. But time will tell you that these things rarely work out the way you think they will and you're left back in your home, wondering how to handle a Wednesday afternoon.

The Atlantic Report: Rise of the Feminist Tinder-Creep-Busting Web Vigilante

Much of the reason that mainstream media reports are so infuriating is not because they are biased--that's obvious--but the condescending journo-speak that writers believe masks their bias.

Case in point, Olga Khazan's "Rise of the Feminist Tinder-Creep-Busting Web Vigilante." The title is representative of another online trend:  the article is about 5% creep-busting vigilantes and 95% examples of boorish behavior.

“We can't win,” [Alexandra] Tweten told me recently. “If we don't respond, they come back and say, ‘you're a whore.’ If we do respond, we get yelled at and called names. I hate that men think they can talk to women like that. They should be publicly shamed.”

It's time to be honest. The proliferation of online dating is about expanding one's potential dating pool with minimal costs. One of those reduced costs is danger; it's much safer to hang one's shingle on the net and entertain offers than it is to, say, wander streets with a sign around one's neck reading, "Looking for Love."

Because that's what an online dating profile is about, isn't it? It's flipping a pink light above one's front door announcing one's willingness to engage in a romantic relationship. One can even specifically describe the type of relationship one is looking for, from sexual preferences to intensity of feeling.

I don't know what's going to be the watershed, but there's no doubt that flogging the "online harassment" horse is going to end. Like Gertrude Stein's Oakland, there's no "there" there. We hear quite a bit (unconfirmed) that the "FBI is investigating" but we never hear any results.

It's typical semantic trickery, just like the nudging of "rape" over to vagaries of "consent." Any random woman online can claim "death threats" and, at the phrase, we are to respond as if a man in a trenchcoat is standing outside her door with a survival knife. What this article is really talking about is men being rude and angry in a medium that not only allows blocking but can be turned off entirely.

The Internet may not be a "civil" place but it's really not a "dangerous" place unless one is sensitive beyond all proportion. As Seanbaby said many years ago, being offended on the Internet is like seeing "Fuck you" written on a bathroom wall and thinking, "Fuck me? How dare they!"

But even that overblown phenomenon is not what is at issue here. Instead, it's the near-criminalization of being a jackass of the male variety.

Bombarded by all these "admirers," many women feel overwhelmed and leave scores of messages unreturned. One blogger recently ran an OkCupid experiment for which he set up five fake male and five fake female profiles. After a week, all of the women had received at least one message, the most attractive women had received hundreds, but several of the men remained un-contacted. This kind of rejection, day after day, can foment a kind of deep resentment among the male daters. 

“They're trying to make us feel bad about making them feel bad,” Tweten said. “They're just trying to strike at whatever our insecurities are. You were just interested a second ago, and now you're saying, ‘you have a fat ugly nose.’” 

The shift from a "marriage market" to a "sexual marketplace" has altered standards for men a great deal and the new standards are much more stringent. Attractiveness, cockiness and suavity are less achievable than loyalty, reliability and virtuousness. It's no wonder that men online would rather play the numbers game with an overt sexual goal--it's easier to be diligent than artful.

The boorishness is also a result of the phenomenon I discussed here:  Red Pill attitudes--being the leading set of rules that "work" in the sexual marketplace--are creating an arms race between the sexes. Men affect that they are not impressed with women. Because the average man is, well, average, he is clumsy at feigning the mystique the Red Pill promotes. The blase, take-no-crap attitude is supposed to be challenging, but that's very near hostility, and hostility is pretty easy to achieve after sending message after message with no response.

The article represents another cycle in the environment that produced the Red Pill. Men are lectured to be "respectful" but being respectful doesn't get the results they want--it only filters out the "nice guys," who, it should be said, are simply listening to what they've been told. One can make an argument that saying one thing but wanting another is feminine coyness but logical males don't see the difference between this and lying. Being lied to makes most people angry.

Let's be honest:  women want the men to whom they are not attracted to disappear. For every man who is shamed on one of the sites the article discusses, there are probably about twenty who sent a simple, "Hi," and were ignored as if they never existed. A man singled out for being especially crude is at least acknowledged.

The Atlantic Report: Young Adult Fiction Doesn't Need to Be a 'Gateway' to the Classics

We're on the last week of my series on The Atlantic and I think I can make one summarizing statement:  It's boring.

Its politics and foreign policy coverage is all Monday morning quarterbacking, which is why I haven't done much with it. Everything else is meandering prog-center gibberish.

But, I soldier on. Our friend Noah Berlatsky dribbles, "Young Adult Fiction Doesn't Need to Be a 'Gateway' to the Classics." Why does he favor his ten-year-old reading the Percy Jackson series over "classics?" The answer, dear reader, may make you yawn:

As just one example, most of the classic children's literature books—Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Narnia, Treasure Island—look very dated today by virtue of their overwhelming whiteness, their time-bound, helpless inability to imagine that people come in more than one skin color.

What a buffoon. Does he not see that the books he listed are all about children entering a strange and fascinating new world? Young readers identify with the perspective of being astonished by their new environments, not because Wendy introduced the Lost Boys to mayonnaise and Wonder Bread. What does "whiteness" have to do with it?

I like to laugh at Berlatsky because he straight-facedly questioned why we don't identify with Skynet's goal of exterminating the human race in the Terminator series, but that argument makes sense, considering his perspective. He's not human--at least, he wishes he wasn't.

He'd rather float over the human world, understanding everything through the power of his amazing mind. No wonder Treasure Island and the others leave him cold--the protagonists are placed within worlds that are bigger than them, worlds that they have to discover and figure out.

Really, though, the article is about the old lament, "If people read junk, then they won't read good stuff!"

That ship has sailed. Anyway, if a kid reads enough, he or she will naturally become more sophisticated. Of course, that doesn't mean that the next stop is The Corrections or Gravity's Rainbow.

However, there is something troubling about modern children's media:

[Ruth] Graham tentatively suggests that the Percy Jackson books are too beholden to their own time, and timelessness or universality is, of course, often used as a measure of quality. But it's not a very convincing measure.

It's not Berlatsky's sneer at timelessness, as if something that resonates across generations is no big deal. The problem is that children's entertainment is such an industry that kids grow up in a bubble unconnected to anything but their present time and culture. Every stage of development, from toddler to teen, has brand-new media focused directly to them and reinforcing what they already know.

Even something as silly as old Tom and Jerry cartoons are snapshots of different eras and attitudes. Being exposed to them opens up the world to children the way Alice in Wonderland opens up their imagination. Portraying Greek gods as wisecracking moderns may be fun, but only in contrast to our understanding of their original incarnations. Berlatsky is fine with amputating the context.

Traditionalist-ism

One of the elements that attracted me to the non-establishment right was that their common terminology consisted of words that I thought I had made up.

Back in the old days, when my reading consisted of The Atlantic, Harpers, with pre-lunacy Slate and Salon, I thought to myself, "These people aren't talking about improving race relations or improving the lives of minorities. They're just...anti-racists."

Likewise, the term traditionalism. I first glommed onto that word when considering Sarah Palin. I liked having a married mom in national politics but her particular personality irked me. I thought, "Yes, she's traditional without being a traditionalist."

However, Henry Dampier's piece, "Is Neoreaction Traditionalist?," makes a plain case that I think of the word differently than others do.

I think my usage is more accurate but what can I do against the mob? Traditionalism seems to mean adherence to the Western/American/Christian (take your pick) traditions of the past. That's just being traditional, isn't it?

That leaves a blank space when I talk about a belief in the efficacy of tradition as a process--the push and pull of a million separate individual interactions that result in the best outcome for the most people.

Believing in tradition is believing that, most of the time, people can work out solutions among themselves, if they are left to do so. Tradition triangulates between human desires, natural obstacles and the worst outcomes. It may be mysterious and slow, but it works like water carving out the Grand Canyon.

The Atlantic Report: The Cheapest Generation

Derek Thompson and Jordan Weissman wonder whether young adults will ever get on board with the American Dream:

What if Millennials’ aversion to car-buying isn’t a temporary side effect of the recession, but part of a permanent generational shift in tastes and spending habits? It’s a question that applies not only to cars, but to several other traditional categories of big spending—most notably, housing. And its answer has large implications for the future shape of the economy—and for the speed of recovery.

The pair discuss the rise of the car-sharing service Zipcar and the increase in renting and living with parents among the under-35 set.

Zipcar is an interesting phenomenon because the technology masks what it really is, an example of the Third-World-ization of America. Since we no longer have close-knit, large extended families, we share cars with strangers.

Thompson and Weissman attempt to put a positive spin on the situation, expecting that the end of the recession (whenever that may be) will open up these big ticket markets.

Maybe so, but I hope not. I hate to sound like a critical theorist, but our flavor of capitalism is hooked on growth, usury and gouging. Logic told us that it was insupportable but the cash was so cheap and easy it was hard to resist.

I hope the transition will be relatively painless. Whether it is or not, the age of cheap credit, expensive housing and disposable goods will have to come to a close eventually. Modern America requires its citizens to have $100,000 in college debt to get a job that pays well enough to buy into the housing and automotive market. Meanwhile, the job market minimizes salaries through outsourcing and centralization. How long could it go on?

Transcending the "Basic" Through Politics--As Usual

In yet another scathing critique of the language the chattering class uses among themselves, Buzzfeed's Anne Helen Petersen tells us "'Basic' Is Just Another Word For Class Anxiety."

According to our current definition of “basic” — a shortening of “basic bitch” — a “basic” is a millennial who is inescapably predictable. She (and it is always a she) cherishes uninspired brands — a mix of Target products, Ugg boots over leggings, and Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Lattes (the ultimate signifier of basicness) — and lives a banal existence, obsessed with Instagramming photos of things that themselves betray their basicness (other basic friends, pumpkin patches, falling leaves), tagging them #blessed and #thankful, and then reposting them to the basic breeding grounds of Facebook and Pinterest.

I recommend reading the whole thing for its exquisite misery. But, before you do that, read this:

[T]he “autonomous self,” who is savvy to all the techniques of society and appropriates them according to his or her discriminating tastes, whether it be learning consciousness-raising, consumer advocacy, political activism liberal or conservative, saving whales, TM, TA, ACLU, New Right, square-dancing, creative cooking, moving out to country, moving back to central city, etc. The self is still problematical to itself, but it solves its predicament of placement vis-à-vis the world either by a passive consumership or by a discriminating transaction with the world and with informed interactions with other selves.

This, of course, is Walker Percy, who I've been referencing quite a bit lately. To paraphrase, again:  lacking a religious and spiritual sense, mankind is unable to form a self-definition. One may either transcend through science or art--make oneself an angel looking down on oneself--or one can sink into immanence--become an animal in an environment. The autonomous self is sort of a "smart" animal, like a bird who chooses only the brightest and most colorful bits of string to decorate its nest.

The misery Petersen describes is entirely of the autonomous self. Percy points out that the problem with this kind of self is that it devours its environment's significance and leaves it empty. Talk to someone who waited in line for a new iPhone six months after he bought it; the ecstasy is gone and he dreams of the next release.

How long ago was it that Ugg boots were all the rage? That Target was the savior of those unhappy with WalMart? That pumpkin-spice coffee was the most delicious thing ever? The joy of those has been sucked dry, and those that continue to pursue them are thought be leading a "banal existence."

Petersen is simply, in her way, an early-adopter of autonomy. But it hurts. Consider this:

[Older "basics"] just consume in feminized (and thus readily dismissible) ways appropriate to their generations: my mom, who lives in northern Idaho, is so basic that she drinks decaf single-shot lattes at Starbucks, shops online at Chico’s, and posts pictures of her heirloom vegetable garden to Facebook. She drinks slightly more expensive white wine and goes to a slightly more erudite book club than the basics half her age, but she too is basic.

Do you hear her pain? Her mother is trying to avoid being basic, by reading better books and drinking better wine, but she's hopeless. Petersen doesn't want to look down on her mother but...Starbucks?

Petersen loves her mother--she might even admire her--but the definition she's chosen autonomously makes her, well, better than her mother.

But she isn't better than her mother and she knows it. So, how does one resolve this situation?

Percy and E.F. Schumacher fans already know--by going up.

“What is the best method of education?” presents, in short, a divergent problem par excellence. The answers tend to diverge, and the more logical and consistent they are, the greater is the divergence. There is “freedom” versus “discipline and obedience.” There is no solution. And yet some educators are better than others. How does this come about? One way to find out is to ask them. If we explained to them our philosophical difficulties, they might show signs of irritation with this intellectual approach. “Look here,” they might say, “all this is far too clever for me. The point is: You must love the little horrors.” Love, empathy, participation mystique, understanding, compassion-these are faculties of a higher order than those required for the implementation of any policy of discipline or of freedom. To mobilize these higher faculties or forces, to have them available not simply as occasional impulses but permanently, requires a high level of self-awareness, and that is what makes a great educator.

By operating from a transcendent remove, one can resolve divergent points.

It should be pointed out that the two authors aren't talking about the same thing. What Schumacher encourages is an operational position--one should be acting out of love. What Percy describes is an intellectual perspective--the human escape from incongruities of the self. But both ways describe going up to resolve crises.

Petersen has to resolve the tension between a definition that she is better than her mother and her knowledge, intellectual and otherwise, that she is equal with her mother, and she resolves this through the only transcendent avenue available to her:  politics.

And like all stereotypes, we fling ["basic"] at others in order to distance ourselves from them. These people are this thing; therefore, I am this other thing. Stereotypes are deployed most fervently — and with the most hostility — when the group wielding them is most anxious to distance itself from another group that, in truth, isn’t so distant after all...By calling someone “white trash,” a certain segment of white consumer person distinguishes themselves from another segment of white consumer, thereby bolstering their position within the capitalist hierarchy.

... 

So what are those who make fun of basics actually frightened of? Of being basic, sure, but that’s just another way of being scared of conformity. And in 2014 America, the way we measure conformity isn’t in how we speak in political beliefs, but in consumer and social media habits. We declare our individuality via our capacity to consume differently — to mix purchases from Target with those from quirky Etsy shops — and to tweet, use Facebook, or pin in a way that separates us from others.

... 

[T]o be excited about the September arrival of the Pumpkin Spice Latte isn’t an indicator that that student has no taste as much as it’s about how there are few other outlets accessible to her.

... 

Unique taste — and the capacity to avoid the basic — is a privilege. A privilege of location (usually urban), of education (exposure to other cultures and locales), and of parentage (who would introduce and exalt other tastes). To summarize the groundbreaking work of theorist Pierre Bourdieu: We don’t choose our tastes so much as the micro-specifics of our class determine them. To consume and perform online in a basic way is thus to reflect a highly American, capitalist upbringing. Basic girls love the things they do because nearly every part of American commercial media has told them that they should. 

Sure, her mom's wine, books, and coffee are all a little embarrassing, but it's not her fault--it's capitalism's fault, it's 2014 America's fault, it's our commercial media's fault! At last we've come to a definition to describe why we're so much better than our moms--privilege.

Petersen seems to believe that the cutting edge of being an autonomous self should be universally available. Does she propose we ship every rural citizen into city centers so that they can enjoy the benefits of bodegas and independent coffee shops? Or should the government begin a hipness subsidy program, allowing trendy individuals to open small-town boutiques?

What Petersen hasn't considered is that maybe these things aren't all that important. Certainly one can derive pleasure from wine and coffee and boots but that's altogether separate from deriving definition from them.

What's tragic about this article is how completely modernity has trapped Petersen. There she is, torn by the demands of the autonomous self, yet she doesn't see that the whole charade can be abandoned. She could reexamine the priorities she's created; she could ask what exactly she gets out of her coffee that she can't get out of Starbucks'. Instead, she turns her attention to politics--a vague politics that buzzes with "capitalism" and "privilege"--not realizing that she's only replaced one tension for another.

---

What's funny is that, in some ways, the better America she seems to want--where everyone has access to cool stuff--is similar to what I think is best. I dislike the proliferation of WalMarts and Starbucks and Ugg boots made in China, not because they're "basic" but because I'm against the domination of our country by centralized corporations.

Most of America looks like "Bank of America's Soviet Russia"--communism with corporate sponsors. Most small towns look like interstate exits, with interchangeable boxes labelled "McDonalds" or "Target." The regional distinctions are being rolled over by sensibilities designed thousands of miles away.

But that's only the cosmetics. More importantly, who can compete with WalMart? Who can compete with the overseas manufacturers who supply WalMart? Opportunity in modern America is the opportunity to be huge--if one isn't interested in dominating the nation, then you'd better get a job working for someone who is.

Some of what contemporary autonomous selves like Petersen are enjoying is living life at a human scale. If she's gratified buying the same coffee from an independent coffee shop instead of Starbucks, it's because everyone in the building is an individual. It's someone's business, not a revenue center. It has employees, not labor costs. She buys their coffee; she isn't purchasing units.

Unfortunately, the autonomous self gets its satisfaction from being the type of person who goes to independent coffee shops, not from what the shop itself offers.

---

It should also be mentioned that there is the typical Buzzfeed #solidarityisforwhitewomen problem:  The term "basic bitch" comes from black slang, an insult between black women which has a slightly different meaning.

Petersen plays social anthropologist in order to justify what is--on Buzzfeed's own terms--clearly appropriation. "Yes, yes, black people used to say this among themselves," she seems to say, "but I want to talk about how white women use it."

This goes over in the comments about as well as one expects.

The Atlantic Report: Should the Poor Be Allowed to Vote?

Peter Beinart, who we last saw criticizing Bill Maher for being anti-Islam as well as being anti-Christianity, asks, "Should the Poor Be Allowed to Vote?:"

If Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protesters succeed in booting C.Y. Leung from power, the city’s unelected chief executive should consider coming to the United States. He might fit in well in the Republican Party.

Beinart is playing the progressive game. He squawks about threats to "democracy" but obviously feels no need to defend it. That is, his assumption that the universal franchise is obviously a positive is left unspoken but yet he wants to posture as if it's under attack. "These Republicans want to steal the vote from poor people!"

It seems clear to me that, if one wants democracy to work, it's necessary to have some restrictions on who gets a say. I've discussed the outward-spiraling nature of democracy before; the nature of the beast is to increase the number of potential voters and the result is to focus on single-issue and, worse, strictly selfish voters.

The Voter ID laws, it appears to me, are about requiring the bare minimum of giving a shit. Beinart tells us about the incredible obstacles that poor people have in the way of getting an ID:

Acquiring that free ID requires showing another form of identification—and those cost money. In the states with voter-ID laws, notes a report by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School, “Birth certificates can cost between $8 and $25. Marriage licenses, required for married women whose birth certificates include a maiden name, can cost between $8 and $20. By comparison, the notorious poll tax—outlawed during the civil rights era—cost $10.64 in current dollars.”

...

To make matters worse, roughly half a million people without access to a car live more than 10 miles from the nearest office that regularly issues IDs. And the states that require IDs, which just happen to be mostly in the south, also just happen to have some of the worst public transportation in the country. 

What the Voter ID laws are about is limiting the Democratic practice of rounding up folks and busing them to the polls, voters who would not have bothered had they not been...persuaded in some way. Since all they have to do is give a name, what's to stop that bus from going on to the next poll?

Voter fraud spans both parties but Democratic machine--especially in Chicago--is legendary. What's to say that there hasn't been an apostolic succession of cheating?

The Atlantic Report: The Gary Hart Renaissance

I don't have the inclination to do it but it would be enlightening to the public to have some sort of weekly report detailing what trends and figures pop up, seemingly randomly, only to become firm Subjects of Discussion.

Case in point, "The Gary Hart Renaissance:"

But less than a month after a new book thrust him back into the news, Hart has a new job, and it comes courtesy of a fellow member of the semi-exclusive club of presidential losers, John Kerry. 

The secretary of state announced Tuesday that he was sending the former Colorado senator to Northern Ireland as his "personal representative" to the new round of talks to resolve political issues and secure a long-term peace deal there.

Apparently, now we are to believe that Hart's reputation has been "reformed." We aren't to think of him as a philanderer who stupidly carried on with bikini models on board the Monkey Business in the middle of his presidential campaign. No, he was a hero--almost certain to become a statesman on the level of our Founding Fathers--who was cut off at the knees by a craven Miami Herald reporter.

It certainly seems to have worked on The Atlantic's commenters. Paul Galvin says this:

[Herald reporter] Mr. Fiedler "monkeyed" with the timeline of The New York Times story to spice up his unprecedented stake-out of a presidential candidate's private residence, wearing hoodies and sunglasses at night in the summer! Yes, good question indeed; what kind of "Monkey Business" is this - for the Herald to act as the decider of what should be the voters' ultimate decision? Now that's some mean "Monkey Business."

bobtube says this:

You can go back and wallow in the mud with snarky remarks about his aborted 1988 presidential campaign if you like; it mainly reflects shallow thinking more appropriate of Entertainment Tonight or some such drivel. In all my reading of American history, I've yet to figure out how marital fidelity or infidelity made any president a better or worse president. There seems to be no connection.

I discussed the NYT article that preceded the book here.

I mentioned there that the assertion underneath the Hart reformation is that a politician's infidelity doesn't matter. bobtube above seems to have gotten that message very clearly.

Does this mean there is some morally-lax Democrat being prepped in the wings for 2016?

 

The Atlantic Report: The Grisly, All-American Appeal of Serial Killers

Julie Beck logs in another of The Atlantic's pointless, meandering articles, this time ostensibly about the American interest in serial killers.

The article is launched by a new book, Scott Bonn's Why We Love Serial Killers, but doesn't draw much from the author. Beck instead believes that her own excellent reporting will carry the day.

So we get the typical left-media tropes--"we" (meaning you, the stupid American, not Beck) classify serial killers "neatly in [our] mind-cabinets" as white males, even as 40% are black. Minority victims of serial killers don't get as much attention. Americans may be fascinated by serial killers because of our high tolerance for violence. Ted Bundy is described as a "Republican operative" and not "suicide hotline counselor." There is a discussion of how we make serial killers an other by labeling them "evil" or "monsters," and we know how much The Atlantic hates to side against an other.

As usual, what's actually interesting is missed. For one:

Many of the serial killers who become cultural legends are white men. Dahmer, Bundy, Gacy, and Berkowitz were all white, as were Gary Ridgeway (the “Green River Killer”), and Dennis Rader (“Bind Torture Kill”). The Zodiac killer, while never caught, was described as a white male.
...
It’s been many years since any new serial killers were added to the canonical group... [N]one of these recent criminals have attained true celebrity status. There is no modern John Wayne Gacy.

One element not pointed out: the "canonical" killers listed in the first sentence were active from the early 70s to the mid-80s. My guess is that this says something about the decline of the middle class, which was cresting during this time. Bundy and Gacy in particular operated in that world, which made their savagery all the more striking.

But more important is that serial killers are most accurately depicted in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer--that is, as scummy, rootless individuals who pick off isolated and vulnerable victims without a lot of planning. Ted Bundy's fake cast and rigged Volkswagen, drawing cute brunettes from public places--all that is not the norm and novelty is what makes "canon."

Probably the best way to think about serial killers is as predators. Not as wolves who pick off the sheep, as serial killers themselves like to think of themselves, but as hyenas who scrounge for the weakest.

And, anyway, the serial killer ship has sailed. Jeffrey Dahmer was the last "famous" killer and the public's interest in the phenomenon peaked in the early 90s. Beck is correct in saying that the archetype has become mainly a trope in fiction.

I think that America's "fascination" with serial killers is hardly different from our interest in other famous criminal cases or disasters. They are horrible, unique and, one hopes, rare.

Spotified in the Cosmos

Dan Brooks tells us that "Streaming Music Has Left Me Adrift:"

To care about obscure bands was to reject the perceived conformity of popular culture, to demand a more nuanced reading of the human experience than Amy Grant’s “Baby Baby” and therefore to assert a certain kind of life. That assertion was central to my identity as a young adult, and I found that people who shared it were more likely to agree with me on seemingly unrelated issues.

For those looking for an insight into the "autonomous self" Walker Percy discusses in Lost in the Cosmos, look no further. Brooks waxes rhapsodic about his taste in music--a little--and how that taste made him feel special--a lot.

Percy discusses how autonomous people--probably the majority of people in America--find their definitions through their choices, be they consumer or lifestyle or otherwise. Thus, a die-hard conservative participates in a Chik-Fil-A day and a hipster grows out his beard.

Brooks spells it out, while discussing the change that streaming music has brought to the music industry:

Consuming music, an act central to my being for as long as I can remember, has changed forever. Who knows how that will change me?

This is probably the most spiritually hollow, narcissistic perspective to take on the subject.

Maybe this is a better one:

My history as a cult movie buff sounds like it was contemporaneous with Brooks'. My friends and I spent a lot of time combing mom and pop video stores for rare movies, often traveling out of town, as well as ordering bootlegs from the back of Psychotronic and other zines.

One of those films was Last House on the Left, Wes Craven's first film. For a long time, it had a reputation as being one of the nastiest films of the 70s. It's still occasionally remembered for its trailer's tagline, "Keep repeating to yourself, 'It's only a movie, it's only a movie.'"

Because its director went on to become one of the most successful horror directors of all time, it is not especially obscure. But, in the early 90s, before Scream and during a real low in Craven's profile, it wasn't easy to find. When I did discover it, I was excited because I had heard about it for years.

A dozen years later but before the Hollywood remake, a much younger woman asked me, "Have you ever heard of Last House on the Left?"

I told her that I had. "I just bought it," she said.

"You bought it? Where?"

"At Target."

At Target? I couldn't believe it. Something that had been only words on a page to me for so long, something I had to keep in mind just in case I might find it, something that I'd only stumbled upon when I did find it--that something was being sold out of a bin at big-box stores across the nation.

Had something been taken from me? Not really. I still had my whole personal history with the film, from the trailer highlighted on late-night television to all the information about it that collected in my mind before seeing it to the moment I found it in the video store, with its crappy VHS box and terrible print.

I still had the experience. All my friend had was the movie, which really isn't very good and looks very dated to younger viewers, if they can get past the amateurishness.

This is what's lost in the digital age, not some aging Gen-Xer's self-image. From an individual's standpoint, the joy of discovery needs to spring from a search. We can call up Last House on the Left anytime we want to--but playing it is no different than playing Hart of Dixie on Netflix. The only experience left around digital media is the surprise of really loving the work or really hating it.

Also, think of how Crispin Glover personally tours with his film What is It? and won't release it for home viewing. Digital media strips the work of its context. Last Year in Marienbad is just a boring foreign movie that can be switched off the moment one is tired of it, while when it was released, critics believed that true cineastes had to come to terms with it. Today, it's as accessible as Turner and Hooch.

I like having so much more at my fingertips. I miss the age of discovery but I don't fool myself about how much energy I wasted in its pursuit. For every Last House on the Left I thought was...okay, there were five that bored me to tears. For every one that I truly loved, twenty that I struggled to watch, hoping in vain for one standout moment.

Then again, I didn't end the movies by finding someone to brag to, either.

The Atlantic Report: Battle of the Prices: Is It Ever Fair to Charge One Sex More?

An incredibly stupid article from Bourree Lam, "Battle of the Prices: Is It Ever Fair to Charge One Sex More?"

Lam's mind boggles at the idea that women are charged more for haircuts and dry cleaning and less to get into clubs. B-but, equality!

She gives some lip service to the fact that maybe--just maybe--businesses might have reasons for setting different prices.

If Lam were to get her way, she would probably be surprised to see all prices go up. That's what prices do.

She's not going to pay less at the salon for her styling--men are going to pay more. Which will probably mean that she should be prepared for more shaven heads, buzz cuts that can be done at home, and shaggy coifs. She quotes her hairdresser's price of $70--I'd rather look like Cousin Itt than spend my money that foolishly.

As far as clubs go, she should really spend some time contemplating this:

The Atlantic Report: Iggy Azalea and Snoop Dogg's Feud Wasn't as Pointless as It Seemed

God knows why Snoop Dogg decided to spend an evening insulting Iggy Azalea, but chances are he didn't reckon with the Progressive Auxiliary which waits in the wings for the slightest whiff of the "problematic." Noah Berlatsky, who we last saw sympathizing with Skynet's plan to eradicate the human race, is one of the members.

The Snoop/Iggy beef, then, restages a long-standing dynamic in which black men and white women confront each other with accusations of racism and sexism—with black women as the displaced, ignored center of the discussion.

Guess which side Berlatsky's on?

Articles like this show how much feminism has taken over "progress." I've written before how, because of embarrassing failures like the Duke rape scandal and the Jena Six, progressives have squeezed as much juice out of the racism berry as possible.

My thought then was that the gay rights movement had become ascendant, but even then I was confused as to how such a tiny minority could swing such large support. It seems clear now that gays and transgenders are just stalking horses for feminists. They are using that grand feminine technique of misdirection--centrists are so busy proving that they aren't homo- or trans-phobic that they don't see that the agenda-setting power has shifted.

Feminism-dominant progressivism is strangely allergic to forming alliances, which will eventually be its downfall. An SJW trope is to bitterly criticize those who call themselves "allies," mainly for privilege offenses and obliviousness. Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs) are no small party online and I've seen more than a few statements that declare that being a gay man is inherently misogynistic.

But this mainstream animosity towards black men is the most foolhardy. It's been most obvious in the NFL, even if the real reason is to destroy something that white men like and that white women don't understand. It's foolhardy because it's not clear what the endgame is. Do feminists think that the black underclass--which is what they're criticizing--is going to respond to their shaming?

It's almost enough to make one nostalgic for the glory days of race-baiting. That era--the chubby Al Sharpton/Jesse Jackson Shakedown days--was at least about money. The new era is about the exultant pride of finding a thought-criminal and denouncing him.

Berlatsky (who, one should point out, is obviously melanin- and vagina-deficient) attempts to square the circle with the trump card reading "What about black women?"

My question:  Is anyone on the left going to get tired of this tedious posturing? Can they not see there is no end to it?

But it's proof that there's still some life in the ol' racial angle. Probably the most heated internal division of feminism is of the #solidarityisforwhitewomen variety. In this, we see that American politics is recursive--every issue can be divided by race.

The Atlantic Report: HBO Go-It-Alone: There Goes the Cable Bundle?

Good news for cord-cutters this week:  HBO announced a platform allowing cable non-subscribers access to the channel.

HBO CEO Richard Plepler announced today that the company will launch a "stand-alone, over-the-top HBO service in the United States" in 2015. That means that you will soon be able to add HBO to the list of television you buy without a cable subscription, including Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime, and NBA League Pass.

Derek Thompson makes a prediction:

It seems that the audience most likely to pick up an HBO "Go-It-Alone" product today are mostly the young, lower-income Internet-savvy viewers who weren't cable customers, anyway. That suggests that HBO Go-It-Alone will restrain cable's growth by preventing new sign-ups, rather than hurt cable by creating more cord-cutters.

That implies that HBO drives cable subscriptions, which I doubt.

Thompson also points out that this is the first year that cable actually lost subscribers, 166,000 and that many more have dropped to basic cable.

It seems clear to me as a consumer that the cable model doesn't work anymore. At least, it can't stay around much longer. The prices have gotten so high--and the "new normal" so anti-luxury--that customers have to examine what exactly they are buying.

But most media companies are in a tough spot with the new paradigm. HBO has a brand. Sony Pictures, for example doesn't. The broadcast networks own only a portion of their programs. Production companies are in the business of selling their rights. The number of media brands--that own their content--is slim, and these are the only type of companies that can interface with the public.

This is the business structure I prefer, I must say. It leaves room for third parties like Netflix to form. Netflix's business is making deals with the content owners for distribution.

However, I don't have a lot of faith for the other part of Netflix's strategy, the one it shares with HBO:  branding itself as a content producer. House of Cards, which I like, gets a lot of eyes on it because Netflix is so huge, but I can't imagine someone signing up just to watch it.

HBO's stature as a producer is big, but its weak spot is, "What have you done for me lately?" The Sopranos was the company's watershed moment and Game of Thrones is a phenomenon, but the rest of their line-up has been buzzworthy shows like Girls and Silicon Valley and failed attempts to buzzworthiness like John from Cincinnati. For all their hype, the back catalog is much shallower than one is led to believe; of those critical favorites not yet mentioned, only Oz and The Larry Sanders Show, had an extended--and complete--run. Otherwise, who's nostalgic for Dream On or The Hitchhiker?

The next step of the media game is to choose either narrowness or broadness. A behemoth like Netflix functions by having something for everyone. A competitor on that scale would have to come into the market with a pile of cash. The alternative is to go deep--where is the Netflix equivalent for indie films? Film history? Cult classics?

The Atlantic Report: The Catholic Church Explains Sexual Mores—With Economics

One of the earliest turning points in my adult life of thought happened because of Harper's. I was deep in my policy magazine days, reading "thought-provoking" articles with an eye a bit less jaundiced than today.

I don't remember the article but I clearly remember thinking that I agreed with the left that all this stuff--celebrity culture, sports, and other media events--were distractions.

But what was it that was important and being obscured?

The left's answer was politics.

It's enough to make one nauseous. In the broad scheme of the world and human life, the most important element is skirmishing over laws and administration?

That's it? Their answer was completely unsatisfying. If that is all there is, then life is a lot less than it's been made out to be.

This is why Emma Green's article, "The Catholic Church Explains Sexual Mores—With Economics," has a large picture of Marx attached to it. In a politicized world, individuals are reduced to economic actors, just the way ol' Karl thought about them.

Green does have some insight:

It's ironic that Vatican is being cheered for softening its stance on homosexuality and premarital sex by advocates of personal sexual freedom, yet this shift has nothing to do with endorsing individualism—it's more of a recognition that sometimes, people don't have the ability to make the sexual choices the Church wants them to.

In true critical theory fashion, Green makes several references to Pope Francis' opposition to the "free market" and "capitalism." "Critical theory" because the assumption is that the opposite of capitalism is Marxism.

Green points out that the mid-synod report differs from the pre-synod agenda only in language:

The pre-synod document relies on the straightforward language of right and wrong, not references to structural market forces that affect people's behavior in ways they can't control; economic logic shifts the responsibility for traditionally "immoral" acts away from people and onto the economic system they live in.

It appears that Green's position is that the Church is cloaking its moral judgments in economic terms in order to appeal to modern progressives. A moral wolf in "objective" sheep's clothing, so to speak.

I'm Catholic because the vision it promotes is more accurate, more positive and all-around better than that provided by kitchen-sink modernism. Responding to the charges of the sexual revolutionaries seems to be the wrong tactic. If they're thinking about branding, a good slogan would be, "A Life with Meaning Starts Here."

The Atlantic Report: Can Sex Be Just a Little Bit Sinful?

Elizabeth Tenety asks, "Is the Catholic Church changing its teaching on sexual sin?"

Speaking about those who live together without being married, one bishop reportedly said, “There are absolutely valid and important elements even of sanctification and of true love that may be present even when one does not fully realize this ideal.”

Within the Church, this idea isn’t new, but some see it as radical: It’s theological concept known as graduality, or gradualism, which suggests that since most people develop in their moral behavior gradually over time, the church should engage individuals where they are, rather than reject them outright for not meeting an ideal.

I'm not too wrapped up in this issue, even though it affects me directly. I prefer to wait to see what happens.

What I think is at issue here is the transition of Christianity being the dominant force of the West to becoming an embattled force. The Church has to reckon with individuals who have built their lives in the modern world before coming to the Truth.

It's the difference between saying, "Don't go off the path," and "Come onto the path." When the path of traditional marriage was the norm, it was easier to address the more difficult aspects of moral life.

I expect that the Church will eventually settle on some kind of "wounded seekers" perspective. Modernity has led us astray and encouraged individuals to--not just reject--ignore moral teaching. What is a forty-five-year-old to do, divorced twice and with children from each marriage, when he or she turns to the Church?

The Christian mission in our century is to reclaim lost ground. It's an overwhelming task; how can the church reintroduce the concepts of the self and the self's place in the universe when most Westerners, even those with a desire for conversion, have no basis for understanding them?

The Atlantic Report: Bill Maher's Dangerous Critique of Islam

I've got to hand it to the loudmouth atheist representatives like Sam Harris and Bill Maher:  at least they have a vision of what they think is best. They have principles, which make them worthy adversaries.

This is not true for the likes of Peter Beinart, who scolds the pair in "Bill Maher's Dangerous Critique of Islam." (The article is mainstream exposure of the New Atheism fractures Radish discussed here.)

The leading lights of New Atheism like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens argue for a civilization based on science and reason. Religion--any religion--obscures Truth. Let's take what we know to be provably true and proceed logically, they say.

This is an argument that Catholics in particular can handle. We believe that there are limits to what science and human reason can tell us. We don't discount them and we don't say they have nothing to teach us, only that they reveal small-t truths that will prove to be in harmony with big-T Truth. So, please--feel free to follow the avenues of materialism. When you reach the dead ends, look up.

On first blush, New Atheism seemed to be congruent with progressivism. New Atheists railed most against their nearest foe, Christianity, just as progressives like to do.

As it turns out, New Atheism and progressivism were doomed to conflict because, unlike Dawkins and the rest, progressivism doesn't have a vision.

Let's pause to define terms. Those outside of the right find the term "progressivism" strange. Progressives would like to believe that it encompasses "everyone we don't agree with," but that's not accurate.

What it describes is the basic assumption that liberals, leftists, socialists, communists and true-believer Democrats share: that the past, in itself and in how it has shaped our present, is hopelessly wrong.

The engine driving it is informal critical theory. Critical theory, while fundamentally Marxist, does not worry itself with a larger vision, as do New Atheists. Instead, it expects that poking holes into the status quo will eventually cause it to sink. Then, the good ship Communism will appear on the horizon. (The ideas of Adorno, Marcuse, et al, are more complex than this description, I should mention.)

It's helpful to reduce critical theory to a personality. That personality would be an individual who complains about everything--the temperature of the room, the arrangement of the furniture, the choices for lunch--even after concessions are made. Finally, exhausted and exasperated, one says, "Okay, you decide," which is what the individual wanted all along (although that won't stop the complaints).

This is progressivism, a constant complaint that things aren't good enough without offering a practical alternative. (It's here that Critical Theory as it was created differs from critical theory as it's practiced--the formal discipline required solutions.)

But most importantly, progressivism is hostile to its own circumstances. It stands outside of its own civilization and pronounces it not good enough without caring about how it got that way and for what reasons.

What this means is that progressives, be they modern liberals, leftists or social justice warriors, consistently take an outsider perspective on their own societies. Walker Percy would describe this as a transcendent perspective. Though a part of Western Civilization, they stand outside of it in judgment.

So do New Atheists and Christians and Illuminati conspiracy theorists. The difference is that they stand outside of civilization without a fixed point of perspective. They define themselves by being against Western Civilization, as it was and as it is, and in favor of [TO BE DETERMINED].

This leads to the erroneous belief that "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." So, when New Atheists criticize Christianity, progressives applaud. When they say, "The same applies to Islam, only even more so," progressives blanch. If New Atheists are not siding with the out-group, they might as well be siding with the in-group.

Last week, Harris and Maher had a dispute with known genius Ben Affleck regarding their positions on Islam (Buzzfeed title: "Ben Affleck Calls Bill Maher’s Views On Islam 'Gross' And 'Racist'"). Affleck protested Maher's quote of Harris calling Islam, "the motherlode of bad ideas." Beinart quotes Maher's response:

“We’re liberals!” Maher declared about himself and Harris. “We’re liberals … we’re trying to stand up for the principles of liberalism! And so, y’know, I think we’re just saying we need to identify illiberalism wherever we find it in the world, and not forgive it because it comes from [a group that] people perceive as a minority.”

Maher and Harris, in this case, represent the "principles of liberalism," namely, the idea that society must start with an affirmation of complete freedom for individuals, with restrictions coming only from proven harms. Nothing is forbidden, unless is demonstrably dangeous. They believe Islam, especially as preached by ISIS and other violent Muslims, stands for the affirmation of complete restriction, except as allowed by religion. Everything is forbidden, unless given an official blessing.

Affleck, on the other hand, stands for the principle of not being gross or racist.

New Atheists are trying to "rescue" Western Civilization from religion and believe that the entire world would be better off without it. They have no reason whatsoever to tolerate Islam, or Hinduism, or Zoroastrianism. They think it's all bad, but Islam's global profile seems to be worse than the rest, what with all the human shields and suicide bombers and beheadings.

The progressive response, as evidenced by Beinart's article, is more critical theory.

Beinart uses the "slippery slope" argument with the "not all [BLANK] are like that" argument. The example he uses, bewilderingly, is left-wing anti-communism.

You see, since the advent of critical theory, it's now okay to denounce Stalin. He was anti-Semitic, for one. For another, Soviet Russia's domination of Eastern Europe smacks of imperialism. Oh, and he was also responsible for the deaths of millions of people.

But for many years, one's opinion on Stalin was a litmus test for thinkers on the left. Beinart parallels Maher's perspective with that of anti-communist progressive Arthur Schlesinger:

In the 1930s and 1940s, some liberals grew so focused on the struggles against fascism and racism—struggles in which communists proved staunch allies—that they refused to acknowledge Joseph Stalin’s crimes. Today, some liberals are so focused on the struggle against American militarism and Islamophobia that they can’t muster much outrage against ISIS. According to Schlesinger, occupying the Vital Center means opposing totalitarianism wherever you find it, regardless of whether it claims the mantle of progressivism, as the Soviet Union did during his time, or anti-imperialism, as jihadists do now.

One can already see the wiggle room that Beinart has created:  communists "proved staunch allies" in the "struggles against fascism and racism." The crimes, then, were Stalin's, not communism's.

At their best, the liberals of the early Cold War trained their fire on Stalin, a particular ruler in a particular country at a particular moment in time. When they began making sweeping generalizations about communism per se—forgetting that communist regimes and movements varied depending on their time and place—they got in trouble.

In other words, the communism of Mao was not the same as the communism of Pol Pot. Sure, both called themselves communists, and both were responsible for massacres but let's not blame the theory. Those guys were just jerks.

Beinart cites only two negative consequences of taking communism for Stalinism:  the war in Vietnam and the outlawing of the Communist Party USA.

The latter is the most inconsequential. Beinart describes it as "using America’s crusade against Soviet repression to massively repress free speech here at home."

Massively? Wikipedia says,

However, the act was largely ineffectual thanks in part to its ambiguous language. In the 1961 case, Communist Party v. Catherwood, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the act did not bar the party from participating in New York's unemployment insurance system. No administration has tried to enforce it since.

So, obviously Maher must be silenced, lest he get an ineffective anti-Islam law passed.

Beinart's reference to Vietnam, on the other hand, at least has some attachment to practical reality. A resistance to global communism was the theme of our involvement in Vietnam, but other factors prolonged and worsened it. JFK and LBJ may have involved us there to avoid appearing "soft on communism," but concerns about American prestige and the conflict's worth as a political tool made it worse.

Nonetheless, is Beinart's argument that Maher and Harris' antipathy towards Islam may involve us in a pointless, protracted war? That ship has sailed, I'm afraid--and the theme then was to liberate Muslims from tyranny, not punish them for their beliefs.

Which begs the question that always comes up when reading an Atlantic article:  What is the writer's point?

Restraining the evil that lurks within our own culture requires facing our own history of, and ongoing capacity for, terrible crimes. It requires trying to see largely Christian America the way we are seen by the Muslims whose cities we have bombed. By contrast, declaring that the essential barbarism in today’s world lies elsewhere—not even just in a foreign regime or movement but in an entire religion—lets us off easy.

Ah, yes, the age-old question:  Who are the real barbarians? The ones who run through months of warnings and equivocation before attacking targets with as few civilians as possible, or the ones who drag journalists and aid workers into the desert and saw off their heads? A real puzzler, that one.

Since Beinart finds having a position less useful than pointing fingers, I'll supply mine:  Most of these countries that are Muslim-majority seem like rotten places to live. Islam does not seem to have lifted them to a more civilized--a more peaceful, less tribal, more community-oriented--level. Is that Islam's fault or Western meddling? Who cares? Islam, as it is generally practiced around the world, does not seem to be in harmony with Western values (as much as are left). The violence committed in the name of Islam these last few decades is repugnant.

That said, I don't see that it's possible to "save" them from themselves. Forcibly converting them to Christianity or atheism or democracy or somehow bombing them into friendliness is a fool's errand. It's best to just stay clear of the Muslim world and, when that is impossible, to come to the table carefully but honestly.

There is no point in denouncing Islam. In fact, to hear an atheist's argument against any specific religion is to waste one's time. Everything after, "There's no God," is just hot air.

The Atlantic Report: TV's Renaissance for Strong Women

Son of Brock Landers at 28 Sherman recently rolled his eyes at this season's exceptionally feminine TV schedule. Kevin O'Keefe gives us a round of cheer-and-fear with "TV's Renaissance for Strong Women Is Happening in a Surprising Place."

"Cheer-and-fear?" That's the static low-grade panic the left has to maintain in the face of triumph. We progress--yay!--but we may still regress at any moment--shiver. I discussed an example here.

The days of female movie stars retreating to cable—HBO, Showtime, FX—to find good work are coming to a close. Now, by the grace of, well, something, actresses can find plenty of exciting leading roles to play on the big four networks. What was once well-worn territory feels fresh again, a place to push boundaries. How did that happen?

It takes several paragraphs before O'Keefe reveals the big secret why women are coming to dominate network television:

But a quick look at numbers offers an obvious explanation: Women viewers dominate broadcast ratings. There are exceptions, of course, and it's hardly a bit of wisdom exclusive to the modern era, but in the past few years it’s become clear that for a majority of American households, women control the remote. They also enthrall advertisers; adults 25-54 remain the most attractive demographic, with special focus on the women that can be hard for advertisers to hit.

Oh, women are the ones watching network TV? That's all?

The Atlantic, I've come to discover, bolsters its intellectual reputation by dotting its clickbait with charts and graphs. Take a look at these, presented in the order given:

Science? You're soaking in it.

O'Keefe rolled up the sleeves of his lab coat to crunch these numbers himself. His choice of the phrase "strong roles" is puzzling--not because it's inaccurate but because he sneers at the term earlier:  "Strong Female Character—the unintentionally humorous title Netflix bestows on any television woman who stands tall at the center of her own show."

Finding that Netflix's description is probably the best one possible, O'Keefe uses it to describe roles "either be the obvious main one or a dominant force even among other leads," as well as " shows with multiple strong characters of the same gender." He does allow that "[t]his is an unscientific analysis," but I think he might have just misspelled "useless."

But numbers don't lie--women are falling behind! From 53% of the strong roles on television in 2011 to a paltry 50% today! By the end of the century, we will surely have returned to Elizabethan times and all female roles will be played by men.

The most insidious, reactionary trend is the growth of strong male roles on cable--a staggering 9% increase! And this, when only a single strong female cable role has been added. It's enough to make one stop making up arbitrary definitions and give up bean-counting in despair.

What O'Keefe finds heartening about the feminine TV landscape is that, at long last, strong female characters are allowed to be flawed. At least, flawed in the exact same way male anti-heroes are; references to emulating Walter White comes up three times.

He quotes associate professor Amanda Lotz, who says, "As a culture, we may still be a little bit squeamish about depicting women in anything less than a positive way."

That's not what Tumblr's been telling me.

The Atlantic Report: Jennifer Lawrence Shames Nude-Photo Thieves

Megan Garber reads Jennifer Lawrence's response to the Fappening in Vanity Fair and, faced with an incongruity, sputters and mouths this fall's mantra, "consent."

The incongruity in question is Lawrence's vehement disgust with the leak of her nude photos in contrast with the cheesecake photos that accompany the article. The writer is confused about how an actress marketed as an object of lust is then subject to unethical lustful objectification. The picture that makes Garber wax philosophical is here.

The picture itself—bird, baubles, breasts, "both"—carries its own telling tension. On the one hand, you have a story in which Lawrence, the smart, sassy celebrity, refers to the spread of images of her body as a "sex crime."
...
But then: There's that image. Which features—really, focuses on—that pair of buoyant breasts. It's another strain of nude photo, the classic kind if not the fully classy kind, the kind that has been running in Vanity Fair and its fellow celebrity magazines for decades now. The crucial difference between this and the leaked images, of course, is that this one isn't fully nude and that, more to the point, Lawrence approved its publication. The power dynamics here—and the moral and legal dynamics, too—come down to consent.

In other words, the stripper defense. Because a stripper, by commodifying her sexuality, claims to control her sexuality, she can be shocked and horrified when the response to her sexuality is outside the boundaries.

Is Lawrence the Barack Obama of Hollywood actresses? It seems there is no superlative quality that can't be affixed to her (generally undefined) image:

[About Lawrence's protest:]This is heady stuff, and good stuff. Lawrence is talking about ethics. She's talking about law. She's talking about, essentially, decency in the age of digital reproduction. And she's also, of course, talking about the tensions that inevitably exist in a world mediated by images.
...
[T]he compound message [of the VF picture] is this: "Do not look at my breasts!" and also "Oh, hey, here are my breasts." Lawrence is, with one image, saying both of those things. But she's saying much more, too—about magazines, about fame, about images themselves, about the tensions everyday women navigate as they both react to, and participate in, a media-driven culture.

Wow! This gal is a regular James Franco!

But I think the most important quote from Lawrence is this:  "It does not mean that it comes with the territory." The second "it," of course, means having one's nude pictures looted.

Unfortunately, it does come with the territory. We are twenty years post-Pam Anderson sex tape, thirty years into the Celebrity Skin era and forty since Hustler published photos of Jackie Onassis sunbathing nude. Before that, Joan Crawford's stag pictures and Tijuana Bibles. Naked female celebrities have been a hot commodity since long before Lawrence was born.

I saw a funny response to the multi-layered hoax in which someone threatened to release naked photos of Emma Watson. Watson, the writer said, probably thought, "But I haven't taken any nude photos."

Victim-blaming? Well, that's someone else's definition. My point is, similar to The Atlantic's discussion of long acting reversible contraception, that traditional morality had already taken care of this problem.

The issue is in this Lawrence quote:  "I can’t believe that we even live in that kind of world." We do, Ms. Lawrence, we do--and it's nobody's fault.

I've discussed it before:  The traditional attitude towards women was that they were to be protected from the ugly, mean world. Early feminism answered that women are just as capable as men at handling the ugly, mean world.

What Lawrence represents is the dominant contemporary thought:  The ugly, mean world must change because it hurts women.

That's not far from what the traditional arrangement said all along. But tradition is realistic; we can't change the world but we can create a haven. To be safe, we must be aware of danger.

The progressive vision is that the borders of the haven are actually prison walls and demands that we go beyond them. When the world outside the borders is found to be hostile, progressives believe that there is some magical switch somewhere that can change it. Only villainy prevents that switch from being flipped.

This is the same attitude that we see often in the world of the chronically sick or, more obviously, the world of fat acceptance. Doctors can cure the ailments, they can operate on obese people, but they refuse to out of prejudice or laziness. Someone is all-powerful and can change reality.

Perhaps this is why Lawrence and the mainstream media are so dense about the way these pictures were unearthed and distributed:

That’s why these Web sites are responsible. Just the fact that somebody can be sexually exploited and violated, and the first thought that crosses somebody’s mind is to make a profit from it.

The pictures were distributed by hosting sites. Reddit's administrators, for example, didn't receive the pictures and then post them to their front page to boost clicks. And, while the "hackers" that leaked the pictures are unknown, it appears that they worked for their own prurient pleasure, not for financial gain.

But such arguments are probably disingenuous. Scolding the public for viewing the pictures is useful for more "rape culture" hot air, but targeting hosting websites is more effective than raging at the wind.

In the long run, harping on the major arteries of web discussion like Reddit can force them to employ more content monitors. Content monitors, having acted as goalies against incoming "illegal" nudes, will inevitably go on to police discussions. "Inevitably" because it's already been happening--nary a day goes by on Reddit without a controversy regarding politicized deletions and shadowbans.

Ultimately, like Gamergate, what we have here is the practice of the old saw, "Never let a good crisis go to waste." Lawrence isn't a legal theorist or a culture jammer or anything but a young woman who took a risk and lost. It's the same story that thousands of young women have experienced in the digital age, only her embarrassment has a global reach.

What's puzzling is that we're not allowed to say that the world will probably always be a rotten place and that it's best to plan for that. Garber, Lawrence and the rest of the chattering class forget that you can't shame the shameless.