This'll be a short one: I still have to finish packing and finish my ID paper.
Kathy G. beats up on Megan McArdle over early childhood education. Imblogio at its finest.
Over at Bubblegum Aesthetics, there's an excellent--and interesting--post about the lifecycles of TV shows and, in particular, The Office. He writes:
A brilliant first half of the season continued to mine the rich entanglement of relationships and power plays set up in seasons two and three (including the Pam-Jim relationship, the Dwight-Angela lust, the oily manipulations of Ryan and the ongoing trainwreck of Jan and Michael) while taking those threads to intriguing new places (Ryan's drug addiction, Jan's emotional collapse, using Dunder-Mifflin's inevitable obsolescence as an ongoing metacommentary about network TV in the digital age). When the show returned for six post-strike episodes, they were often less consistent and felt a bit rushed.
I couldn't agree more. I would add, if I might be so bold, that the finale did add a certain something to The Office's cultivated reverence for "the old ways". Jim gets a sale based on face-to-face perserverence, and Ryan's new model website lands Ryan in jail for fraud. This little dichotomy has been one of the more poignant themes through the show. My personal favorite moment was when, on take you daughter to work day, all the children immediately get Dunder-Mifflin's obsolescence, calling them middlemen and incredulous toward its chances of survival.
Glenn Greenwald and Hilzoy (from Obsidian Wings) both took note of syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker's last few columns. She has appeared, recently, in The Washington Post. Her columns--equal parts repellent and frightening--demonstrate a level of jingoistic chauvinism and xenophobia comparable to that of the heyday of manifest destiny. She's a textbook example of an adherent to that scurrilous narrative: American Exceptionalism. A sampling of her work from The Post:
Well, at least they didn't kiss.
I was bracing myself for the lip lock Wednesday when John Edwards endorsed Barack Obama.
The column, already idiotic, tours the rest of conservative talking points, Obama is weak on Defense, Edwards is a hypocrite, and, of course, an obligatory, but inexplicable mention of the Berlin Wall.
My particular favorite was Parker's reality-efficient claim that pointing out the divide between "the haves and the have nots" amounts to creating the divide. She writes:
But their message of unity gets lost in a din of cognitive dissonance. To succeed, they must first create a divide of resentment the size of Montana among the have-not-enoughs toward those perceived as having too much. No one has tried this more brazenly than Edwards with his "two Americas" campaign, which failed twice, by the way.
The question -- should this duo have its way -- isn't "When will the poor be wealthy enough?" but "When will the wealthy be poor enough?"
Ah, but where to begin? It is fact that income inequality is skyrocketing, and with the onset of this latest economic downturn (read: recession), that is only bound to get worse. The notion that pointing this is out is some kind of class warfare--and make no mistake; at the end of the day, that is what Parker is hinting at--is as ludicrous as it is dishonest.
I suppose from Parker's point of view--her head firmly in the sand--their message would be perceived as one of disunity. But the fingers-in-the-ears, la-la-la-la-la politics pushed by Parker and her ilk have failed. There's a reason having an R after your name is a political death in this election cycle.
Finally, Parker can't help but pull out the old, conservative stand-by: the HE'S A COMMIE card. What else, after all, could Parker's iteration: "When will the wealthy be poor enough?" mean?
I won't get too in depth with some of the more--frankly--racist columns Parker's written. If you want to read about her Slytherin-like (yeah, I went there) obsession with blood purity, go over to Greenwald and Hilzoy.
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