ON PJTV, I talk with Michelle Fields about education and The New School.
Archive for 2014
January 16, 2014
SO THE UNITED NATIONS IS LECTURING THE VATICAN ON SEX ABUSE? Given U.N. personnel’s record of child rape in multiple settings, that’s pretty pathetic.
ED MORRISSEY: We Finally Know Where the Buck Stops in Benghazi. “For the most part, though, the conclusions are both bipartisan and damning. The committee found that a string of terrorist attacks in Benghazi against Western targets, especially one three months before the final attack on the US facility itself, should have alerted State to the danger it faced. Furthermore, the committee questioned how State could have ignored its own security standards to approve the use of the building, a decision reapplied in July when State renewed the lease – just weeks after the previous attack. . . . State signed a lease on the Benghazi facility with a waiver on security requirements. Who signed that waiver? We still don’t have an answer to that question – it’s not answered in the bipartisan portion of the report – but Republicans raise the question in their response. ‘Although certain waivers of the standards could have been approved at a lower level, other departures, such as the co-location requirement, could only be approved by the Secretary of State.’ Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) raises a more direct accusation at Clinton aide Patrick Kennedy.”
JAMES TARANTO: In Defense of Boys: When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a male.
As this column has often noted, feminists and conservative moralists alike tend to scapegoat males for social problems rather than, if we may borrow the phrase, “focus more on complex areas of causation.”
Blow’s way of expressing this sentiment, however, strikes us as particularly ugly. To characterize men as “incapable of valuing their own humanity” is the kind of invidious stereotype that would never be permitted on the pages of a respectable publication if one were referring to a racial or ethnic minority–or, for that matter, to women. And the masculine drive for conquest–also known as ambition–is very much a part of the human experience. It sometimes takes pathological or destructive forms, but then so do empathy and “emotional depth.”
Further, Blow’s stereotype is no more accurate than it is charitable. . . . These women are making coldly rational decisions about their own well-being and that of their children. It would be callous to fault them for not “fully valuing the humanity of a love interest.” Yet today’s elite culture, as represented by the New York Times, thinks nothing of propagating such crude and cruel characterizations of men and boys. The problem of family breakdown may or may not be tractable at all, but it certainly won’t be conquered by antimale prejudice.
No, but the Times’ readership seems to eat it up.
#WARONMEN: The De-Tom Sawyering of American Boys.
DAVID RIVKIN AND ELIZABETH PRICE FOLEY: Can Obama’s Legal End-Run Around Congress Be Stopped? Yes.
ROLL CALL: Senate GOP More Optimistic About Midterms. “At the dawn of the election year, Senate Republicans feel a renewed sense of optimism in their fight to net the six seats necessary to win the majority in 2014. The stumbling rollout of Obamacare has given the GOP hope it can loosen the Democrats’ grip on the majority by ousting its four most vulnerable incumbents. Still, several factors could influence how things appear in the final months of President Barack Obama’s second midterm cycle. And Democrats have proved in recent years they know how to win tough Senate races.” Yes, a GOP win has to be beyond the margin of fraud or votes will be found, as with Al Franken.
VOTE-REPELLENT: Obama visits North Carolina — without Sen. Kay Hagan. “When President Obama traveled to North Carolina on Wednesday to speak about manufacturing, one notable Democrat was absent: Sen. Kay Hagan, who opted instead to stay in Washington, where the Senate was in session but not voting. There might have been more at play than Hagan’s work schedule. The first-term senator also faces a tough re-election bid this fall in a state that has become less welcoming to Democrats, and where campaign appearances with the president are of diminishing value.”
THE HILL: Senate Dems press Obama on agenda. “Senate Democratic aides say closer coordination with the White House will be important to keeping their majority, even though Republicans will try to tie vulnerable Democratic incumbents to Obama in states such as Arkansas and North Carolina.”
PUNCHING BACK TWICE AS HARD: Wisconsin ‘John Doe’ target demands prosecutors end retaliatory probe or face federal civil rights lawsuit.
IN THE TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION SUPPLEMENT, Northern Kentucky more inspirational than the Ivy Leaguers.
Eat your heart out, Harvard. You’re not as good as Northern Kentucky University.
It may seem like an embarrassing admission to make in a magazine that produces the world’s most influential international university rankings, but I mistrust academic league tables: I can never convince myself that there are suitable criteria for comparisons of value. I cannot bear to read the listings because rich, old and prestigious institutions exert routine, predictable preponderance. Of course, Harvard University is insuperable for wealth, recruiting power, research funding, social cachet, networking opportunities, quality of plant and for the size of the library. But if we shift focus and ask how much difference an undergraduate education at Harvard (or Yale or Princeton or Stanford or Oxford or Cambridge or any of their elite lookalikes) makes to most of their students’ lives, we have to acknowledge that it probably doesn’t amount to very much. . . .
A few years ago in this column I mentioned Northern Kentucky as one of a number of like-minded places that I visited on a lecture tour of the US. I reported that the history department was outstanding and inspiring, although I have never heard of any international league table that reflects its merits. Two Northern Kentucky undergraduates have now stepped forward to demonstrate the excellence of the place. Andrew Boehringer and Shane Winslow are both joint majors in history and anthropology. They like exploring Cincinnati, Ohio, the city on the university’s doorstep. Their studies made them see it with an academic eye. One of Cincinnati’s charms is precipitate, higgledy-piggledy topography, connected by some 400 old public stairways, up and down which many generations of pedestrians have tramped in defiance of the cult of the automobile. . . .
They were already working their way through college, but they provided all the funding they needed themselves by undertaking even more paid jobs, including a lot of menial work. When asked why they made the sacrifice, they appeal to love of the subject. They have taken their project into comparative terrain, looking at other cases around the world of cities set on hills with staircase frameworks. Now, as they approach graduation, they are turning their results into a book that will be a remarkable contribution to urban history, which they tentatively but cunningly entitle Descent: A History of the Cincinnati Steps. I wish I had known about it when I was at work on my chapter on the colonial history of Latin American cities in the Oxford Handbook of Cities in World History, because some of the places I wrote about have similar topographical challenges to those that shaped Cincinnati; yet I never even thought of focusing on stairways. I’m sure readers will know many other cases of similarly inspired, groundbreaking work by undergraduates. Some of those cases will have unfolded at Harvard and other privileged places. But I doubt whether any elite university exceeds or even equals Northern Kentucky’s history department in transformative power.
Well, Northern Kentucky has an amazing faculty . . . .
GREENSHIRTS: Emails Show Extensive Collaboration Between EPA, Environmentalist Orgs: Top officials coordinate messaging, help groups gather petitions. “Emails show EPA used official events to help environmentalist groups gather signatures for petitions on agency rulemaking, incorporated advance copies of letters drafted by those groups into official statements, and worked with environmentalists to publicly pressure executives of at least one energy company.” Names should be named, and lawsuits should be filed. Even a flatworm is smart enough to turn away from pain, but you have to bring the pain.
THE DE-TOM-SAWYERING of American boys.
#WARONMEN: All December Job Gains Went to Women.
January 15, 2014
ANTI-CCW INTERSTATE HARASSMENT IN MARYLAND: The police have apologized, but why is the offending officer’s name not in the story? It should be.