TNC, U.S. Grant, and love.

In TNC’s words:

As was predicted, I’m really enjoying Grant’s memoir. Having spent much of the last year looking at primary 19th century sources, I still can’t shake the feeling that these guys were much better writers. It may just be that writing meant so much more then. For me personally, there’s a lot to be learned from Grant’s prose. His description of falling in love with his wife is rather remarkable, because it evokes romance without a hint of flowery language. He never even uses the word “love.” He just matter of factly explains that when he was called off to fight in Mexico, he suddenly began to feel that he was missing something:

Before I returned I mustered up courage to make known, in the most awkward manner imaginable, the discovery I had made on learning that the 4th infantry had been ordered away from Jefferson Barracks. The young lady afterwards admitted that she too, although until then she had never looked upon me other than as a visitor whose company was agreeable to her, had experienced a depression of spirits she could not account for when the regiment left. Before separating it was definitely understood that at a convenient time we would join our fortunes, and not let the removal of a regiment trouble us.

Indirect way of expressing emotions, a bit? I feel vindicated 🙂

Mots croisés.

We did a simple crossword in class today, and nothing struck me as unusal.

Just now, dining on my soup, I read a post by New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg on David Frum‘s ouster on TNC’s blog:

The Politburo has dealt appropriately with David Frum, the notorious left devationist antisocial element. Frum has been frog-marched from his Kremlin office and exiled to a minor position in Nobuxograd.

Good laugh. Then I thought, “It’d be cool if David Frum was a crossword answer ten years hence.” Then it STRUCK me: I haven’t done a crossword puzzle since February 16!

Proper response to Citizens United v. FEC.

Naturally, as I posted in February:

But there might be a problem. Quoting a commenter, eigenperson, from TNC’s Open Thread At Noon:

Alas, they are ineligible. Murray Hill says on its website that it was founded in 2005, and you have to be 25 to serve in the House.

When they get removed from the ballot, extra points to the official who does so if he/she gives this as the official reason.

From Oyez: Citizens United v. FEC.

On Harry Reid.

And via TNC –> Ezra Klein –> NYTimes –> Adam Nagourney on Harry Reid (this is before the Scott Brown thing). Interesting read. He’s 70 years old, jeez, no wonder he gets tired by the President’s agenda. On a side note: here, when they talk about Sarkozy, it’s always ‘Monsieur Sarkozy’. No Sarkozy this, Sarkozy that.

Bits from the article:

“I don’t like to read stuff about me, but I’ve become accustomed to it: you know, ‘Reid misspeaks.’ I’d rather people were saying, ‘Oh, that guy is a golden-tongued devil.’ ” He paused. “I have no regret over calling Greenspan a political hack. Because he was. The things you heard me say about George Bush? You never heard me apologize about any of them. Because he was. What was I supposed to say? I called him a liar twice. Because he lied to me twice.”

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He said he had been shocked by the behavior of Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, since returning from his failed bid for the presidency. “My disappointment — no, that’s the wrong word; I’ll try to find a better word. My amazement has been John McCain. I thought he’d turn out to be a statesman, work for things. He’s against everything. He’s against everything! He didn’t used to be against everything.”

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He said he thought the White House erred in trying to win the support of Olympia Snowe, the Republican senator from Maine, for a health care compromise. “As I look back it was a waste of time dealing with her,” he said, “because she had no intention of ever working anything out.” And while making clear that he was not complaining, he said Obama may have been asking for too much in his first year. “I personally wish that Obama had a smaller agenda,” he said. “It would be less work.”

TNC on fake “objectivity”, Rahm, and majorities worth keeping.

From TNC, on Rahm Emmanuel as Chief of Staff and on media bias masquerading as objectivity. I especially liked his comparison to sports commentary. Hate the team, love the team, the job is to talk about what’s going on.

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Ezra nailed it a few months back when he noted, and I’m paraphrasing here, that a majority is meant to be used and eventually lost. There is, in the press, a profane bias toward political success, a sense that success is strictly defined by elections won. Left uninterrogated is the ends to which those elections serve.

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What we’re really talking about is the fake “objectivity” which the press worships. Serious policy reporting necessitates making calls, and making calls open you up to the charge of political bias. A good one to avoid that charge is to cover elections, in the way you cover sports. Ron Jaworski may love the Eagles, but if they’re sucking it up, he has to say as much. Likewise, a reporter can be a socialist in his private life, but by covering the horse-race he’s magically become objective.

Plug for The Atlantic.

I no longer watch TV news, unless it’s C-SPAN (I’m serious), I rarely use Facebook, almost never on Youtube, AIM, or (visible) on GoogleTalk. I find those things very time-consuming, and terribly unproductive. But that’s not to say that I’m productive at all. No, I just let my time get sucked away by The Atlantic’s bloggers.

Blogger #1: James Fallows. He’s the reason I really started reading the Atlantic and its blogs. Writes on a wide range of topics, including on China, because he was there for a few years. When in Beijing, he was the only Western journalist I found palatable. NYTimes made me so angry that, as a result, since Beijing I’ve found myself reading it much less. And I almost never read their international news analyses.

JF articles leading up to and on the day of Tiananmen (六四) were fantastic, very balanced. I don’t completely share the opinion, but I like that he shows the different sides of the argument. While I’m at it, there’s also a good series by PBS on Tiananmen that’s really worth watching.

A series on the 高考, climate change and China’s investment in renewable energy, US and the Shanghai Expo, random things like cross-cultural exchange, good writing (I ended up buying the book, haven’t read it though), calling out Paul Krugman. Don’t have time to link to everything. Much more. Boiling frogs, God Bless America, presidential speeches, security theatre. Actually I’ll look for some security theatre stuff later.

Blogger #2: Ta-Nehisi Coates (pronounced ta-na-ha-zee, I think, not like tennessee, haha). It’s actually a bit strange that I read TNC because so much of what he talks about is stuff I either don’t understand, or in which I have no interest. That said, I learned about watermelons + fried chicken (more here), Magical Negro (with a great comments thread), Cosby conservatism, among many other things from his blog. And the BIGGEST draw of his blog is the open comments section. It’s really phenomenal, which is almost clichéd thing to say because all of his readers say the same thing about his comments section. It’s true, though. I spend more time on his comments than on his posts, especially the ones on football, the Civil War, or music because I don’t much understand/care about the topics themselves. A quick comparison of TNC’s comments section and that of, say, David Brooks at the NYTimes reveals just how incredible is the overall tone of TNC’s comments section.

It’s even harder to sum TNC up. On the Atlantic redesign, they labeled him ‘Culture’. Yeah, no. Culture makes me think of Maureen Dowd, which is NOT AT ALL a correct comparison. Here’s a random selection, with blog post titles:

Listening to Gangsta Rap With Your Kids

Not Sexy Asian, Math Asian

I Just Remembered Chris Matthews Was White

One of the best recent series on parenting and punishment, more, more, and more.

Recently they redesigned the website, and people were really irked. But within a day or two, the Atlantic people modified the redesigned site in response to what readers wanted. The response was incredibly fast and very much respected their readers. And of course the bloggers kept people posted about what was going on. In fact, yesterday I emailed Fallows about the redesign and mentioned the disappearance of topic tags. He promptly replied and said that that would be part of the next round of tweaks. I also emailed TNC about a comment being blocked, and was unblocked by him within 30 minutes. Like I said, responsive.

It’s the only magazine that I’ve ever subscribed to, with the exception of a brief (pretentious, imho) Economist stint during which I read almost none of the magazines that piled up in the mail. I hope The Atlantic does very well for a very long time.

On history.

I have very little (and nothing new) to say about history. But I do appreciate it more and more. I’ve always loved studying history because it was fun and really not that difficult. The unique elation one feels from getting a superb grade for a paper submitted with three minutes to spare is fantastic! Clearly I’m pleased, but at the same time, I’ve lately wondered why the humanities are important. I suspect that part of the difficulty rests with a society that focuses on making profits and measurable progress. But I’ll save my views on capitalism for another time. And each time I return home and meet the med school friends (congrats!), bme people, engineers, even architects, I wonder whether I’m wasting time and talent on fluff. Yes, fluff. The less-gifted study history and art, the more-gifted take on the STEM fields, right? At least that’s the mindset of many Asians.

But back to history. I’m reading The Embarrassment of Riches by Simon Schama. Schama discusses the founding myth of the Netherlands as a land and people set apart; sounds familiar, yeah? Also, I read an article the other day in the Atlantic about the Mugwumps and the state of politics in the 1880s. David Frum puts the current political discourse in perspective thusly:

You think Rush Limbaugh or Keith Olbermann talks harshly? Listen to this campaign speech from 1880:

Every man that tried to destroy the Government, every man that shot at the holy flag in heaven, every man that starved our soldiers, every keeper of Libby, Andersonville and Salisbury, every man that wanted to burn the negro, every one that wanted to scatter yellow fever in the North, every man that opposed human liberty, that regarded the auction-block as an altar and the howling of the bloodhound as the music of the Union, every man who wept over the corpse of slavery, that thought lashes on the back were a legal tender for labor performed, every one willing to rob a mother of her child—every solitary one was a Democrat.

That was Robert Ingersoll, one of the most famous orators of his day, stumping for the Republicans. Think of him when people tell you that today’s political discourse has sunk below the standards of the hallowed past.

The point itself has been made again and again. We all probably knew at some point that Charles Sumner (Ma) was rather severely beaten by Preston Brooks (Sc) in 1856 (yay Wikipedia for names/dates). And the Brooks-Sumner affair was recently resurrected courtesy of Congressman Joe Wilson (thanks to TNC for the point), also of South Carolina.

So that’s what history does, I think. Again, the point has been pounded to near-oblivion, but still, I find it true. History, in a big sense, gives context and keeps us level-headed.

But there’s also the personal side of history. Again, I must reference TNC. Two things. First, in December (?) there was an article about hair cuts for black men and one on history, white guilt, civil rights, and racism. I was pretty lost in both conversations (I spent more time reading the comments section than the article itself. Unlike most comments sections, TNC’s commenters are insightful and well-written. No trolls.) I have never in my life thought about where black men (and women) get their hair cut. I have also never felt justified in saying anything about civil rights/slavery in the US because I feel so disconnected from that history. History is emotional. That’s willy-nilly, touchy-feely, but I’m not sure how best to describe it. I cannot study Mao Zedong’s policies, listen to Joan Baez sing about Tiananmen Square (though I disagree with her to some extent), read about the Cultural Revolution objectively or passively. I hold strong opinions about these issues. I imagine that it’s the same for Americans and civil rights/slavery. Knowing little to nothing, I cannot jump into this issue, though many people who seem to know little to nothing about China throw out their ideas on highly-public forums, which is terribly irritating to me. Thank goodness for level-headed observers like James Fallows (also of the Atlantic :)).

Be it history, general, or history, personal, people must be aware of it for it to have any import. Yet humanities departments continue to atrophy.