THOSE SEEM TO BE ACCUMULATING: Another Devastating Review of “Democracy in Chains.” “As readers may recall, Democracy in Chains by Duke History Professor Nancy MacLean is a very badly-flawed account of the life, career, and influence of the late Nobel Prize winning economist, James Buchanan. Despite the fact that the book has been shown to be replete with errors, exaggerations, and misinterpretations, it was a finalist for a National Book Award and more recently received honors from the Los Angeles Times. Most disturbingly, despite serious allegations of academic malfeaseance, MacLean is the plenary speaker at the AAUP’s annual conference this Fall. MacLean has refused to respond to any of the substantive critiques of the book, beyond to claim that her critics are almost all somehow associated with the Charles Koch Foundation, and thus somehow tainted.”
Archive for 2018
May 30, 2018
GOOD LORD: Study Finds Puerto Rico Hurricane Death Toll 70 Times Higher Than Government Figure. “The Harvard study, published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that the new Maria death toll of 4,645 is still ‘likely to be conservative’.”
There are lies, damned lies, statistics, and damned government statistics.
ROGER KIMBALL: The Long March: Reckoning With 1968’s ‘Cultural Revolution,’ 50 Years On.
It seems so long ago, shrouded in a Day-Glo glaze of grateful recollection. But when it comes to the Sixties, and especially the fulcrum year of 1968, Time magazine is right: “50 Years After 1968, We Are Still Living In Its Shadow.” Indeed, paroxysms of the 1960s, which trembled with gathering force through North America and Western Europe from the mid-1950s through the early 1970s, continue to reverberate throughout our culture. The Age of Aquarius did not end when the last electric guitar was unplugged at Woodstock. It lives on in our values and habits, in our tastes, pleasures, and aspirations. It lives on especially in our educational and cultural institutions, and in the degraded pop culture that permeates our lives like a corrosive fog.
As even David Brooks has noticed. And this is a good column.
FACULTY-STUDENT DATING IN THE AGE OF #METOO. When I visited at UVA law in the ’90s there was a move to ban faculty-student dating, and the students rose up and blocked it. Hard to imagine that happening now.
Weirdly, despite all the things we’ve done to “protect” students since the free-and-easy 1970s, students seem a lot less happy.
May 29, 2018
NOW OUT FROM MICHAEL WALSH: The Fiery Angel: Art, Culture, Sex, Politics, and the Struggle for the Soul of the West.
ROGER SIMON REPORTS FIRSTHAND ON TRUMP IN NASHVILLE TONIGHT.
A mere nine hours after Roseanne Barr posted an astonishingly racist tweet about Obama intimate Valerie Jarrett, the American Broadcasting Company did something that has never happened before in the history of broadcasting: It canceled TV’s #1 show.
The show was heralded as the first program to try and make sense of the Trump era, and it generated an enormous audience that dissipated some over the course of three months but was still in powerhouse territory. Networks like ABC build entire weekly schedules around giant hits like Roseanne, so its departure from the airwaves isn’t just a matter of replacing it with another half-hour. This was a decision that had to sting and sting hard.
Barr is likely to be airbrushed out of Hollywood entirely for some time. “Following the cancellation of her hit ABC comedy series, Barr has been dropped by her agency, ICM Partners,” Deadline reports.
Big Hollywood’s John Nolte is likely right when he tweets that unlike Fox rebooting Tim Allen’s conservative-friendly sitcom Last Man Standing, there’s no way that Barr’s series “ends up at another network. She is toxic now and the cast will not follow her. Barr is going to have to do a Mel Gibson. Disappear for a few years.”
FLASHBACK: Occupy Wall Street-era Roseanne Barr in 2011: ‘Guilty’ Wall Street Bankers Should Be Sent to Reeducation Camps or Beheaded.
OPEN THREAD: Go for it.
CALIFORNIA SCHOOLS ARE SHORT OF TEACHERS. ONE REASON? THEY’RE GOING TO TEXAS.
Given the leftwing ideology of many teachers, this would be a particularly good time for wealthy conservatives to implement Glenn’s Welcome Wagon idea.
HMM: Protein and Heart Failure. The headline says “Atkins Diet,” but the study seems more broadly focused.
ON THIS DAY IN 1787: Five days into the Constitutional Convention, Virginia Governor Edmund Randolph offered the “Virginia Plan” to the delegates. The plan, which was primarily the work of James Madison, was no mere tinkering around at the edges of the Articles of Confederation. It called for a wholly new structure of government (which … uh … isn’t what the state legislatures that sent the delegates thought they were going to be getting).
The Constitution ultimately produced by the Convention differed in significant ways from Madison’s scheme. But the Virginia Plan nevertheless set the tone for the gathering: The Articles of Confederation are fatally flawed. Start from scratch.
BECAUSE LIGHT BEER: Why You Should Never Drink Light Beer.
ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Have we reached “Peak Prosecco?”
YOU DON’T ALWAYS GET THE TYCOONS YOU WANT, BUT SOMETIMES YOU GET THE TYCOONS YOU NEED: My USA Today column: Be thankful tycoons like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are focused on space and moon bases.
GOOD THING NOTHING LIKE THAT COULD EVER HAPPEN HERE: A Silent Coup in Italy. A counterrevolution.
THIS IS A GOOD COLUMN BY DAVID BROOKS: The Strange Failure of the Educated Elite.
Once upon a time, white male Protestants ruled the roost. You got into a fancy school if your father had gone to the fancy school. You got a job at a white-shoe law firm or climbed the corporate ladder if you golfed at the right club.
Then we smashed all that. We replaced a system based on birth with a fairer system based on talent. We opened up the universities and the workplace to Jews, women and minorities. University attendance surged, creating the most educated generation in history. We created a new boomer ethos, which was egalitarian (bluejeans everywhere!), socially conscious (recycling!) and deeply committed to ending bigotry.
You’d think all this would have made the U.S. the best governed nation in history. Instead, inequality rose. Faith in institutions plummeted. Social trust declined. The federal government became dysfunctional and society bitterly divided.
How about that.
#COFFEEWOKE – I was reminded today that I can make a better cup of coffee at home than Starbucks can make for me. Cheaper too.
IT BEATS TRYING TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE ACID ATTACKS AND IMMIGRANT RAPE GANGS: London cyclists too white, male and middle class, says capital’s cycling chief in vow to tackle diversity ‘problem.’
I THINK THE TERM “FUR CHILDREN” ANSWERS THAT: Are Americans Too Attached To Their Pets? Young adults in particular may be bonding with animals at the expense of vital human relationships.
Related: University holds graduation ceremony for students’ pets.
FLYOVER SPOILERS: Those Ignorant Hicks Ruin Everything.
The truth is that the people who actually do know from childhood how meat is produced are the least likely to have qualms about it. It’s the people who grow up thinking meat comes from the meat factory on a styrofoam tray, already wrapped in cling film, who never thought about the connection between steer on the hoof and steak on the table.
Now, if one of these city kids then decides they’re against meat and want to be vegetarian — or vegan, even — it’s no problem for me. I was a vegan for some months (and yes, a woman was involved) and a vegetarian for about six years for various reasons, and was perfectly happy as an ovo-lacto vegetarian. Your body, your choice, as they say.
What annoyed me was the subtext, the underlying apparent motivation of the speaker, which pretty clearly could be summed up as “If those ignorant hicks only knew, they’d agree with me.”
Charlie Martin, so read the whole thing.