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July 6, 2007
Steven Walker, co-founder of the Abigail Alliance for Better Access to Developmental Drugs, writes in to emphasize that his group doesn't take a stand on some of the more provocative claims made by the UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh, who believes there is an implicit and broad constitutional right to "medical self-defense" (the subject of my column last Sunday).
Walker writes: "You correctly noted that we do not claim a right to sell or purchase organs. Although less explicit in your article, we also do not enter the stem cell debate, nor do we take any position on abortion. Neither disease, nor the lethal denials of our regulatory system, discriminates based on politics or positions on hot button issues. Our constituents span the universe of political thought."
Volokh told me that if he were the Abigail Alliance's lawyer, he would play down those other claims -- casting the case narrowly, to appeal to as many judges on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals as possible. As an academic, however, he said it was his "duty" to probe the implications of the right-to-drugs argument -- to see how far embracing it would carry one. I imagine he also wanted a juicier law-review article.
Alan J. Weisbard, a professor of bioethics and medical history at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, writes on his blog The Wise Bard that he can imagine the current Supreme Court mostly endorsing Volokh's argument, which makes him a bit queasy:
[Medical m]arijuana aside, I can imagine this argument appealing to members of the current Court majority. Rich and poor alike have the right to purchase (or sell) organs, just as they do to sleep under bridges.
I have my reservations, which increasingly feels like a kiss of death.
I think he means that whatever his own preferences are, you can count on the Supreme Court to go the other way.
Meanwhile, this Washington Post story today shows just how heated the fight over experimental drugs can be. In this case the battle is over Provenge, which may (or may not) extend the life of men with prostate cancer and which has so far been blocked by the FDA. Frank Burroughs of the Abigail Alliance is quoted.
According to the Post, some doctors skeptical of Provenge actually fear bodily harm when presenting their data at conferences -- whether at the hands of drug-company goons or irate patient-activists is left somewhat unclear. If the former, it's shades of "The Fugitive."
A kidney model
Posted by Christopher Shea at 03:59 PM
July 6, 2007
Having read the recent Brainiac item on France's jogging president, Belgium-born writer and critic Luc Sante offered his own analysis. As always, he is right on the money:
The French care obsessively about semiotics. The actions undertaken by public figures are immediately subject to parsing by observers of every station, so nothing is innocent about a politician's gestures. And Sarkozy has been going out of his way to goad the electorate by proclaiming "I am an American president" at every turn. I wish I'd saved the link I got a few months back to
somebody's analysis of his official portrait. They showed his
predecessors: De Gaulle and Pompidou posed in the library of the
Elysee Palace, Mitterand and Giscard posed before the tricolor. Alone,
Sarkozy posed with a flag in the Elysee library. Then they showed you
the official portraits of the last five or six American presidents,
every one of them posed with a flag in front of bookshelves. Sarkozy also had his hair spotlit so that he looked bizarrely blond, and you could swear he was wearing some kind of padded butt extension. The effect was bananas, and not French. The jogging thing is similar: he's not getting healthful exercise -- he's saying "I am Bill Clinton."
Sarkozy "footing" (jogging) in a NYPD t-shirt
As for the question posed by the left-wing newspaper Liberation, "Is jogging right-wing," I tried to steer clear of that too-easy binary formulation. As I pointed out parenthetically, just because Nerval and Baudelaire were horrified by the effect of economic liberalization on foot traffic doesn't mean they were leftists. Sante had a few enlightening things to say on this topic, as well:
Consider also that "jogging" is one of those words that is en anglais dans le texte, and I'm not sure the Academie has even bothered to formulate an alternative. You go to provincial towns and see banners proclaiming "Le grand jogging" and know the event was designed by and for people who spend their time watching American TV shows. It's neither a leftist thing nor (in French terms) a rightist thing, but "liberal" -- which there refers to someone for whom amassing personal wealth takes precedence over any ideal. Even the right wing -- still preoccupied with blood and soil -- spits on that.
Thanks very much, M. Sante. And have a good weekend, everybody.
Posted by Joshua Glenn at 11:09 AM
July 6, 2007
Missed all the excitement on the 4th? Well, Brainiac ran a Flickr search for you -- just click here for nearly 1,000 photos of Boston's fireworks.
Here are a couple of samples:
Photo by Flickr member DJ Durutti
Photo by Flickr member Marboston
Photo by Flickr member Technicolorcavalry
Brainiac was hoping to include a shot of Brainiac drinking a bottle of ketchup on the 4th of July. But Brainiac's favorite Flickr member did not come through with the goods.
Posted by Joshua Glenn at 10:48 AM
July 5, 2007
The mannequin-like handsomeness of Mitt Romney -- indeed of his whole family -- has been much-commented on this campaign season. It's sort of an X-factor in the run-up to next year's election: How much does the classic firm-jawed, "Presidential" look matter, anyhow?
Reading Garry Wills's classic "Nixon Agonistes" for the first time, I learned that the handsomeness of Romney's father, Gov. George Romney of Michigan, was a factor in the 1968 Republican primary (in which the elder Romney was a contender). Or so it seemed to Wills ... and, in Wills's version, to Richard Nixon:
It is unfair to judge Nixon as the least pretty of the candidates. But, as he talked ... it seemed that the face doesmatter, because it affects the man behind it. Perhaps a Rockefeller, or Romney, or Reagan, or Percy, or Lindsay does not live entirely on the surface; still, each one could do so if he wanted -- it is a very pleasant surface. And if none of them lives entirely there, it pays each to do a good deal of commuting to that pleasant locale. It would not pay Nixon at all. He must be aware that people vote for him despite his appearance; he speaks, always, across a barrier.
Nixon, Wills proposes, ended up viewing his untraditional looks as a positive trait, something that filtered out frivolousness. "While he is being tested as a candidate," Wills writes of Nixon, "he feels he is a test of others' seriousness."
So if Romney, the younger, is the Romney of 2008, who is our Nixon, in this superficial (yet important!) sense?
From the Mitt Romney Web site. Or to follow its lead, "Web site."
Posted by Christopher Shea at 09:38 PM
July 5, 2007
French thinkers and writers love to stroll -- to ambulate, that is to say, in a manner that is purposeful but not rushed, neither speeded up nor slowed down. An unfortunate side effect of the liberalization of the economic sphere in the early 19th century, of course, was the spirit-of-capitalism-powered acceleration of foot traffic in Paris. The hurried pace of modern city life so disgusted self-invented aristocrats like Nerval and the teenage Baudelaire that they practiced flanerie -- conspicuous dawdling, ostentatious loitering. When Nerval led a lobster on a pale blue leash through the gardens of the Palais-Royal, it wasn't because he was on the brink of madness, as legend has it; it was a form of anticapitalist (though not necessarily left-wing) street theater, an insult to all the hustlers and bustlers. And when Baudelaire fled to Belgium, near the end of his life, to escape his creditors, he complained bitterly that "strolling, so cherished by peoples endowed with imagination, is impossible in Brussels."
So you can imagine how French intellectuals and critics feel about jogging. In his philosophical travelogue "America," published in English translation in 1988, Baudrillard was caustic:
You stop a horse that is bolting. You do not stop a jogger who is jogging. Foaming at the mouth, his mind riveted on the inner countdown to the moment when he will achieve a higher plane of consciousness, he is not to be stopped. If you stopped him to ask the time, he would bite your head off.... Decidedly, joggers are the true Latter Day Saints and the protagonists of an easy-does-it Apocalypse. Nothing evokes the end of the world more than a man running straight ahead on a beach, swathed in the sounds of his Walkman, cocooned in the solitary sacrifice of his energy.... Do not stop him. He will either hit you or simply carry on dancing around in front of you like a man possessed.
The latest victim of French stroll-mindedness is that country's recently elected president, Nicolas Sarkozy, an economic liberalizer who not only bashes the welfare state like a good American go-getter but ambulates like one, too. That is to say: he jogs.
An hour after he took office in May, "Speedy Sarko" and his prime minister were driven off for a jog in the Bois de Boulogne. Sarko returned to work an hour later, running up the steps of the Elysee presidential palace. In shorts. Soon after that, Sarkozy went on holiday, where his first order of business was jogging on a small island off the Malta coast.
Sarko's 1st day on the job
Naturally, this sort of thing has caused paroxysms among France's remaining intellectuals, according to a Times of London story published yesterday:
"Is jogging right wing?" wondered Liberation, the left-wing newspaper. Alain Finkelkraut, a celebrated philosopher, begged Mr Sarkozy on France 2, the main state television channel, to abandon his "undignified" pursuit.... "Western civilization, in its best sense, was born with the promenade," [claimed Finkelkraut]. "Walking is a sensitive, spiritual act. Jogging is management of the body. The jogger says, 'I am in control.' It has nothing to do with meditation."
Perhaps Sarko's Socialist opponents should look into lobster-walking...
Posted by Joshua Glenn at 06:27 PM
July 5, 2007
Former Ideas deputy editor John Swansburg has a great article at Slate, this week, about why the original Transformers movie (1986) was better than the one in theaters now.
Here's a sample of Swansburg's argument:
Hasbro's profit motive had the unintended consequence of forcing the movie to tell a much more sophisticated story than might otherwise have been possible. With Prime off to the great scrapheap in the sky by the end of the first act, the movie becomes one about finding a leader who can take on Prime's mantle and defeat not just Megatron, but also Orson Welles' Unicron, eating his way through the galaxy.
Doesn't that sound like a movie worth watching?
Via Movie Nation.
Posted by Joshua Glenn at 01:09 PM
July 5, 2007
Seems like just yesterday that Vice President Dick Cheney asserted that he does not have to comply with an executive order on safeguarding classified information because his office is not actually part of the executive branch.
But America's cartoonists are quick on the draw. In today's Globe there was a fine "Doonesbury" strip satirizing Cheney:
CLICK HERE FOR LARGER VERSION
Right below "Doonesbury," there was an even better "Zippy the Pinhead" strip on the same topic!
Who could top Trudeau and Griffith? Ruben Bolling, with his latest "Tom the Dancing Bug" strip:
CLICK HERE FOR LARGER IMAGE
Posted by Joshua Glenn at 08:53 AM
July 3, 2007
Last week, I advanced a provocative hypothesis: "It seems to me that Americans are so worried about Islamofascist terrorists that we're slowly turning ourselves into conservative Muslims." I illustrated this theory with images of models from American women's magazines draped in burqa-like garments. The item was reverse-published in the Ideas section this past Sunday.
Here's an enthusiastic response from Dave F., an Ideas reader who grew up in the '60s and says he's seen this phenomenon many times before:
I really enjoyed your Fashion article on "Burqas vs. Bikinis" in yesterday's Globe. Your comment about non-Muslim American women looking to avoid another 9/11 is right on the money. I have spent my entire adult life in the fashion business and have developed a number of theories about why we dress as we do. My background includes long stints as a retailer (senior buyer at Filene's, etc) and as a wholesaler (on-air personality on QVC) so I have been able to look at fashion from many different sides.
1) Fashion is a reflection of socio-economic trends. Ever wonder why designers from very disparate countries and backgrounds arrive at exactly the same place in fashion and have similar looks, treatments, colors and fabrications? Designers have a "sixth sense" about socio-economic trends that enable them to "feel" the population's moods and their concerns. It is this perception of popular concern that influences fashion. (Just a note of definition: I use the capitalized Trend to mean 3-10 year movements in culture as used by John Naisbitt and Faith Popcorn.)
2) Fashion trends are usually the result of major events that leave a deep impression on the masses. When the event or the source of our concern becomes omnipresent we react by assimilating the culture or event as a means to managing the fear. Assimilation of cultures takes place in a very ordered set of stages: a) we eat like "them," b) we decorate our houses like "them," c) we dress like "them."
Some historical examples:
* 1960s: The Vietnam War and the Kennedy assassination gave birth to the well-known anti-establishment movement where we rejected everything our parents stood for. We adopted organic farming, communal living and hippie clothing as our reaction to existing values. (We will re-visit Hegelian philosophy later).
* '70s: Nixon engaged the Great Dragon, China. How would we ever deal with this Evil Communist Monolith whose population dwarfed and threatened ours? By eating a "new" Chinese food -- real Sichuan! (Prior to this all of us grew up eating Spare Ribs and Pu Pu Platters and thinking this was Chinese/Polynesian.) Then we decorated our houses like "them." Chinese influenced furniture designs became "understandable." (Please look up Century Furniture's Chin Hua collection of the '70s. One of the most influential of the period). Finally, we co-opted their clothing influences with the Mao jacket, unstructured clothing and the beginning of the unisex look as a reflection of the "proletariat."
Chin Hua table by Century Furniture
* '80s: We dreaded the all-powerful Japan, Inc. They were going to make all of our manufacturing obsolete and would overtake and overwhelm us financially! How did we respond? We discovered a new exotic taste and a Sushi Bar opened on every street corner. We discarded our parents' aversion to anything Japanese and Maki-ed our way to culinary heaven. Then came the minimalist influence in home decor and in came the Feng Shui Master. Zen became our mantra in home design as we eventually gave in to the sexless, shapeless fashion ideas of Japanese designers. (Was Eileen Fisher born of Japanese parents???)
* '90s: Garish opulence became the key driver as Corporate Titans became the Rock Stars of the day. The stock market exploded and so did our wine bills. The more expensive and elaborate the meal the more we wanted it. We also went the other way and discovered Urban Life, Culture, and Music (Soul Food and Rap became hip). We built McMansions everywhere and had to have the biggest pool, the "entertainment room" and a wine cellar. If we were adults we embraced each new designer from Italy and Spain as sexy clothes became cool again and we rejected Japanese minimalism. (Thank God again for Hegel!) If we were "Juniors" we wore baggy clothes and cussed and demonized The Man as we lusted after the material goods that we thought defined him.
* the '00s: So now we come to the current decade and what is influencing us? Well we have a) an unpopular war in an exotic, unfamiliar country b) a war that is the point of a larger conflict of Western vs. Eastern Ideology c) a polarizing President who is associated with HIS war d) a bifurcated economy where the wealthy are doing great and the masses are struggling and e) a sexual revolution with gay rights as the main issues. If we think back, these 5 major socio-economic Trends are exactly the same as the '60s (the sexual revolution of the '60s was women's rights). Therefore, if our theory holds, we should be experiencing the same fashion trends as the '60s. With the 9/11 events the defining event of our time the world of fashion has assimilated America as its guiding light.
We began the decade with the HUGE resurgence of Steak Houses as our go-to meal and created Atkins as our defense. Wasn't this where Mom and Dad took us when we were kids for a special event? We began to downsize our McMansions and started to look for homes rather than houses; sort of like we grew up in back in the '60s. Kitchens became our center again and not the bathroom/spa of the '90s. And what about fashion? I digress to give Hegel his due. The philosopher Hegel taught that society progresses by having a thesis and then a violent revolution or anti-thesis which would then come together to form a synthesis. This is very relevant in fashion. During the '90s the fashion icons were first Madonna and then Britney Spears, each one exposing more and leaving little to the imagination. In a perfect Hegelian move in the '00s we rejected the "trashy" look and our new icon has become Jackie Kennedy. We have had the "preppy" look, the BOHO look (really just a new, more inclusive name for the hippie look), the Southwestern influence and now the military inspiration (the short Eisenhower influenced jacket, double breasted silhouettes, epaulets, the dominance of blues, greens, greys and camo).
BOHO
The most important footwear looks have been loafers, ballet flats and riding boots, all reflective of the '60s. So where does this long meandering soliloquy take us? We are already seeing a resurgence of Middle Eastern spices and Tangine cooking everywhere for the foodie. Now Burqas as a fashion accessory. The clothing used in the picture in your article is very reminiscent of the clothing worn by the Sufi Whirling Dervishes. Can more Islamic cultural images in a positive light be far behind?
Thanks, Dave!
Posted by Joshua Glenn at 10:08 PM
July 3, 2007
The war in Iraq has clearly entered a new phase, to judge from the playing cards the Pentagon has been handing out to U.S. soldiers in the field. Early in the conflict, the Pentagon famously distributed 52-card decks featuring photographs of "high-value targets" -- that is, top Iraqi military and political leaders. But now, reports Archaeology magazine, the Department of Defense is handing out 40,000 decks on which are printed (in addition to the stuff you need in order to play poker and solitaire) photographs of many of Iraq's architectural and archaeological treasures. The cards offer information about the buildings and sites as well as hortatory messages about cultural preservation -- not just for its own sake, but as part of a broader hearts-and-minds, counterinsurgency project.
The cards have also been used during cultural-awareness training sessions at Fort Drum, New York, for soldiers about to deploy, the magazine reports.
Laurie Rush, an archaeologist at Fort Drum, told Archaeology: "Most troops are honorable people who want to do the right thing. But we're not naive. Damage to sites in this conflict is enormous."
The cards offer such tips and tidbits as: "Drive around -- not over -- archaeological sites." And: "This site has survived for seventeen centuries. Will it -- and others -- survive you?"
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Here's a larger, more legible image, featuring more cards.
Posted by Christopher Shea at 01:58 PM
July 3, 2007
So President Bush has commuted the prison sentence of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, who was found guilty of lying to prosecutors who were trying to determine if top Bush administration officials leaked the identity of former CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson. In light of this event, two "Examined Life" items I've written for Ideas are worth revisiting, I think:
* "The pardoner's tale" quoted a Swedish anthropologist who argued that presidential pardons -- even of Thanksgiving turkeys -- serve to establish a leader's undemocratic power to decide when and where "normality and legality are suspended."
* "Naming names" was an October 2003 item about Barbara Bush's fierce words ("traitorous") for those who'd reveal the name of a CIA agent. Alas, like so many "Examined Life" items, it does not appear to be online. So I've posted it here.
Also well worth checking out: A recent post by Scott Eric Kaufman, the prolific intellectual blogger (at Acephalous and The Valve), who has culled through the '98 and '99 record (i.e., during Monicagate) for the best quotes, from conservatives, about the importance of prosecuting perjurors to the fullest extent of the law.
Here are some delicious examples:
* Robert Bork and James Rosen, writing in the National Review: "Lying under oath strikes at the heart of our system of justice and the rule of law. It does not matter in the least what the perjury is about."
* Representative Henry Hyde of Illinois, who from 1985 until 1991 was the ranking Republican on the House Select Committee on Intelligence: "If citizens are allowed to lie with impunity -- or encourage others to tell false stories or hide evidence -- judges and juries cannot reach just results."
* Roger Kimball, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled "Leftists Sacrifice Truth on the Altar of Friendship": "In the culture wars that have been transforming American society since the 1960s, truth has been a conspicuous casualty: not only particular truths but also allegiance to the very ideal of truth as an indispensable component of any just and moral life. The competing, countercultural ideal holds that loyalty to the personal trumps loyalty to the truth...."
Click here for the rest.
"Some people 'vent,'" explains Kaufman, a UC Irvine English grad student, via email. "I 'vent' by researching."
Posted by Joshua Glenn at 09:20 AM
July 2, 2007
Last week, Phoenix media critic Adam Reilly did a spit-take over a particular passage from the Globe's serialized biography of Republican presidential nominee hopeful Mitt Romney. Here it is, with Reilly's emphases added:
As the oldest son, Tagg Romney commandeered the way-back of the wagon, keeping his eyes fixed out the rear window, where he glimpsed the first sign of trouble. ''Dad!'' he yelled. ''Gross!'' A brown liquid was dripping down the back window, payback from an Irish setter who'd been riding on the roof in the wind for hours.
As the rest of the boys joined in the howls of disgust, Romney coolly pulled off the highway and into a service station. There, he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, then hopped back onto the highway. It was a tiny preview of a trait he would grow famous for in business: emotion-free crisis management.
Tom Nealon, of Roslindale's Pazzo Books, wasn't merely amazed by this anecdote (and the Globe's take on it); he was inspired. In the spirit of anarchist art critic Felix Feneon, who in 1906 worked for six months writing the faits-divers column for a Paris morning paper -- New York Review Books will publish Luc Sante's incisive translation of Feneon's 1,220 short-short news items next month -- Nealon's Pazzo Blog offers us the following:
Mitt Romney was not unmoved by his wind-weary Irish Setter's befouling of his rear windshield in 1983. He acted swiftly to cleanse the animal, the glass, and restore order.
Fine stuff.
Posted by Joshua Glenn at 07:59 PM
July 2, 2007
from the Boston Athenaeum, here: http://www.bostonathenaeum.org/staffrec.html
Posted by Joshua Glenn at 01:23 PM
July 2, 2007
Scott McLemee, a fellow toiler in intellectual journalism (actually he's on record, tongue buried in cheek, as preferring the title feuilletonist), was clearly feeling cranky when he wrote this. It's a complaint, based on his experiences at last month's BookExpo, in New York, about university-press editors and publicists who have never heard of the publication he works for, Inside Higher Ed, which, Scott writes, is read by some 350,000 academics "distinct readers" monthly.
Cranky or not, he has a point: With newspapers eliminating or shrinking book reviews left and right, with professors and intellectuals everywhere complaining that they are shut out of public discourse, shouldn't people who publish serious nonfiction books (and interesting academic articles) be reaching out to the few people in the press who still do pay attention to such things? Such journalists are not P.R. people themselves (see this separate McLemee rant), but they're grateful, hungry -- did someone say desperate? -- for good story ideas.
On an entirely unrelated subject, the email addresses of several Globe Ideas staffers can be accessed on the left rail of this blog.
Posted by Christopher Shea at 11:44 AM
July 2, 2007
An environmentalist's pipedream: Products and services can and should be rated according to how much greenhouse gas (GHG) is emitted in the course of their creation and distribution.
The quantity of GHGs required to manufacture, and supply to the point of use, a product, material or service, is termed that product's, material's, or service's "embodied GHGs." Measuring embodied GHGs -- a process also known as "carbon footprint labeling" -- is fairly easy to calculate when it comes to actually burning fuel. This is why some rock bands now purchase renewable energy credits to compensate for the power they use in concerts and the bus fuel they burn.
Greenwashing is rampant already, though, so this kind of thing is easy to mock, as the Globe's Alex Beam has done a couple of times.
But if there actually were a standard way to measure embodied GHGs -- so that a consumer could compare and contrast the embodied GHGs of 10 different tourism packages or boxes of cereal or pairs of sneakers -- millions of us around the world would consume differently. Greenwashing would remain a problem, and -- as Drake Bennett has pointed out in Ideas -- buying green is by no means the only or best way to protect the environment... but this would still be huge. It would affect production. And imports and exports. It's a pipedream.
That's why I was amazed to read the following, today, in a Dutch design newsletter to which I subscribe:
Carbon Trust and the UK's Environment Ministry, Defra, have joined with the British Standards Institution (BSI) to develop a standard method for measuring the embodied green house gas (GHG) emissions in products and services. Once completed, a "Publicly Available Specification" (PAS) will ensure a consistent and comparable approach to supply chain measurement of embodied GHGs across markets.... PAS creates an important part of the architecture for a global system that will enable people to make a meaningful comparison between whole-system environmental performance of competing products and services.
Pipedream realized? Not quite, but we're closer than ever seemed possible. On, then, to another pipedream: Extended Producer Responsibility! EPR is a strategy, one reads, designed to promote "the integration of environmental costs associated with products throughout their life cycles into the market price of the products." Farewell to all those cheap plastic doohickies we Americans love to buy. And if you think that $3 is too much to pay for a gallon of gas, just wait...
Posted by Joshua Glenn at 11:05 AM
July 1, 2007
[Updated 7/03: Staples, whose catalog is the source of this ad, has changed the wording on its website: The refractory table ("stubborn, uncooperative") is now a refectory table (one meant for meals or refreshments -- though traditional refectory tables are large, heavy-legged dining-hall furniture, not modest tea table like this.)]
Posted by Jan Freeman at 10:13 PM
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