Books, computers, and alcohol

In a much discussed interview, Philip Roth predicts that novel-reading will be a "cultic" activity within 25 years. Ron Charles, of the Washington Post tweeted (how appropriate) in response: "Let me counter Roth's daring prediction by predicting that cars will soon replace horses."

The demise of novels and literature and books has been predicted as often during this past century as the Second Coming--and with about as much accuracy and evidence. In a blog post, JK Evanczuk responds to the gist of Roth's prophecy ("5 Reasons Why the Novel is Not a Dying Medium"), arguing that the digital age provides opportunities for, rather than threats to, the future of literature.

Yet, other than anecdote and projection and an obvious generation gap, is there any truth to what the infamously reclusive Roth is telling us? Does he have his finger on the zeitgeist or does he just need to get out more (or, better yet, do some research about "kids today")?

I do wish someone would undertake a study that attempts to answer these questions. Yes, it's incontrovertible that consumers spend more time on computers (although, on average, the American consumer spends less leisure time than many folks might think: ranging from 45 minutes per day for teens to 30 minutes for retirees--still far less time than is spent watching television.) Has increased computer activity resulted in less book-reading over the last few decades? Or is the leisure time spent on the computer "coming" from somewhere else?

What about (to take one of many possible examples) alcohol consumption and socializing in bars? Let's examine alcohol consumption since 1969, the year "Portnoy's Complaint" was published. In 1969, 9.1 liters were consumed annually per U.S. consumer, rising to a peak of 10.7 in the early 1980s, and falling dramatically to 8.6 in 2003 (the most recent year available). That is, for those keeping tabs, a rather astonishing 20% drop in alcohol consumption since the arrival of the personal computer on the market.

Compare, however, the number of books checked out by the average American library user. The number served per library user has increased from 5.8 in 1969 to 7.0 in 2003, while attendance has nearly doubled. (It should be noted, however, that excluding juveniles, the books-per-user figure has declined somewhat.)

Both the figures for alcohol consumption and for library readership should be taken with some skepticism; reporting such behavior depends on sample sizes, methodologies, and populations trends. But that's the point: it might be true that increasing reliance on computers is resulting in the demise of book-reading, but in the absence of reliable data, it would be just as accurate to say that the increasing reliance on computers is resulting in a decrease in alcohol consumption and barhopping (with its collateral morning-after damage).

And, in the end, who's to say who's better off: the reader or the author who spends 10 hours a week scanning bite-sized word morsels on the Internet, or famous drinkers Hart Crane and Jack Kerouac, who both still, somehow, found time and energy during their abbreviated, inebriated lives to read canonical books--and to write equally canonical works.

Ill-chosen adjectives

In today's New York Times is a long-overdue article by Brian Stelter on the Lou Dobbs menace to CNN's dwindling reputation and the network's continuing (and inexplicable) protection of his anchor status. It's a decent if short article, but contains this curious sentence:

Mr. Dobbs is known to be exploring an exit from CNN, and he is viewed as a potential hire for the Fox Business Network, an upstart channel owned by the News Corporation.

Yet here is the influence wielded by this so-called "upstart" network:

Fox Business averaged 21,000 viewers between 5 a.m. and 9 p.m. in June, according to Nielsen Co.

Now, it's true that the train wreck known as Don Imus has recently given FBN a bump in viewership during the early morning hours. Since the network is available to more than 49 million homes, it must alarm Fox that someone with Imus's name recognition attracted only 177,000 viewers on the show's first day---most of whom are over 65, a poison demographic for advertisers. And viewership for the first week dropped to 149,000 viewers a day, indicating a rather significant decline on subsequent shows.

Finally, how many "business viewers" does FBN expect to watch Imus and Dobbs? As the Daily News article notes, Imus and CNBC "tap different audiences and are not really in direct competition." Fox's strategy seems to be to make FBN an annex for disgraced shock jocks from other networks--hardly a magnet for the personal investor.

Considering that this "business" network is now two years old, perhaps Stelter should have considered a more accurate adjective, along the lines of ailing or wannabe or money-sucking. To call the network an "upstart" at this point is akin to calling the kids' lemonade stand on the corner a threat to Snapple.

Soupy Sales (1926-2009)

I am quite devastated to hear of the death of Soupy Sales (pictured above with our dog Klonoa).

Almost every week for several years now, Klonoa has been making the trip by subway from Brooklyn to the Manhattan neighborhood where we used to live, passing the whole day roaming various apartments in a building on East 35th Street and visiting with Darryl, a former roommate from years past, and with Marlin Swing (a former producer for the late Walter Cronkite's CBS show). Darryl and Marlin would also take care of Klonoa when we left town for any period of time.

During many of those visits Klonoa spent a few hours with Marlin's neighbor and friend Soupy Sales and his wife Trudy Carson. I had the good fortune to meet with Soupy on a few of those occasions; the comedic spark was ever-present, and both he and Trudy genuinely seemed to love having our dog around--sometimes prompting Soupy to recall one of his White Fang routines. [For those too young to remember: The Soupy Sales Show featured "puppets White Fang (the meanest dog in the United States) and Black Tooth (the nicest dog in the United States)." I was never certain whether to be pleased or worried that our dog reminded Soupy of White Fang rather than Black Tooth.]

My thoughts and good wishes are with Trudy and Marlin and all of Soupy's friends, neighbors, and fellow comedians.

2012: We Were Warned

Last night before we saw "Harry Potter and the Half-Drunk Kids*," we were treated to 532 trailers for forthcoming movies, and we yawned through the Emmerich model-kit destruction called "2012" because deep down we New York liberals in the audience harbor a secret: we know that the truly horrific juggernaut in that pivotal year won't be the end of civilization predicted by peyote-popping Mayans but rather the fearsome Unstoppable Candidate herself, Sarah of Palin, the prospect of which sends terror into the meth-raced hearts and LSD-laced minds of hippies everywhere (as TBogg disgracefully confesses, probably after one of his daily waterboarding procedures). Also.

* Favorite line in the insipid New York Times "news" article by Tara Parker-Pope about inebriated wand-wielders: "“in a world where dark wizards are kidnapping or killing people on a regular basis, a little under-age drinking is the least of their problems." (via Atrios) Otherwise, the entire piece must have been written in a bar, on a napkin.

Stuart Little

Shorter Stuart Rothenberg:

Now that Republicans are losing, we need to change political news coverage.

Yes, cable news was so much more objective six years ago.

When Democrats Become Republicans

Today, two New York Senate Democrats, Pedro Espada of the Bronx and Hiram Monserrate of Queens, switched parties kinda sorta, remaining D in name, but voting R for a power-share arrangement that hands over control of the legislative body to the Republicans after five whole months of Democratic rule.

With the Republican Party so, um, popular, what kind of Democrat would do such a thing?

Mr. Espada said he was motivated by the unwillingness of fellow Democrats to reform the rules of the Senate. “We had five months of sheer chaos in these chambers,” he said. But his own record could undermine his positioning as a reformer. Mr. Espada has been fined tens of thousands of dollars over the years for flouting state law requiring disclosure of his campaign contributions.

Mr. Monserrate was indicted in March on charges that he stabbed his companion late last year with a drinking glass, leaving a gash that required 20 stitches to close.

Asked Monday how he would coexist with Republicans, he said, “We’ll figure it out, but I’m a Democrat.”

Plus:

The state attorney general’s office is investigating a health care agency, Soundview HealthCare Network, that Mr. Espada ran until recently. And Mr. Monserrate, who was indicted on felony assault charges in March stemming from an attack on his companion, would automatically be thrown out of office if convicted.

Look, guys, you can have them. Like attracts like, and all that. (And you might want to take the Bronx uber-bigot Ruben Diaz with you while you're at it.)

Next election should be real fun, though. The Bronx isn't exactly GOP territory. (And neither is Queens, for that matter.)

Update: Today's Republican Rebel Yell revolt may have violated parliamentary procedure, and the Dems are still claiming to be in power. This would be exciting if it weren't so boring.

Magnetic Strips, Black Helicopters, and the Right-Wing's Tenuous Grip on Reality

Amidst the horrific revelations surrounding the murder of George Tiller, one truly bizarre tidbit describing the suspect caught my attention:

“He told me about a lot of conspiracy stuff and showed me how to take the magnetic strip out of a five-dollar bill,” Leach said. “He said it was to keep the government from tracking your money.”

Clearly, I need to get out more. I had no idea that this urban legend, which may have got its start in a 1994 episode of the X-Files (apparently the go-to source before 24 came along), had become standard lore among right-wing conspiracy theorists. An article advancing this truly moronic notion even appeared in the May 2000 issue of The American Spectator. (Never mind that the suspect strip is made of polyester--to foil counterfeiters rather than counteract tin-foil hatters.)

Perhaps the inability to distinguish between fiction and fact, between fantasy and satire is endemic. I suppose such stupidity goes a long way to explaining the belief among conservatives that Steven Colbert is really one of their own or that there exists an Obama-Chrysler conspiracy against Republican car dealers.

Jeffrey Rosen, Jonathan Chait, Gossip, and Lies

The writers for The New Republic--fast becoming America's leading magazine for milquetoast politics and tabloid-style hit pieces--is circling the wagons against the widespread censure of Jeffrey Rosen's Sonia Sotomayor hatchet job, which was a hastily written piece based entirely on gossip from anonymous sources. Its most infamous line is almost certainly this one: "I haven't read enough of Sotomayor's opinions to have a confident sense of them." (And yet Rosen is a lawyer; one would think those opinions might have been of interest to his assessment.)

Yesterday, Jonathan Chait weakly defended Rosen against accusations that he is a gossipmonger, and John Cole eviscerates Chait's defense in a must-read post ("The Worst Defense Since the '81 Colts").

Chait's basic premise is this: If I say it isn't gossip, then it isn't--dictionary definitions be damned. But what really irritates me about Chait's post is that, in order to defend Rosen's article, he has to deliberately distort--scratch that, he had to lie about--what it contained: "He [Rosen] spoke first-hand with several of Sotomayor's former clerks, who provided a mixed picture."

Yet here's what appears in Rosen's original piece:

Sotomayor's former clerks sing her praises as a demanding but thoughtful boss whose personal experiences have given her a commitment to legal fairness.

The trash talk against Sotomayor, on the other hand, comes not from "Sotomayor's former clerks" but from other sources:

But despite the praise from some of her former clerks, and warm words from some of her Second Circuit colleagues, there are also many reservations about Sotomayor. Over the past few weeks, I've been talking to a range of people who have worked with her, nearly all of them former law clerks for other judges on the Second Circuit or former federal prosecutors in New York. [emphasis added]

Chait has always struck me as one of few remaining intelligent writers for a magazine I have found increasing loathsome over the years, so it's particularly disappointing to see him engage in these tactics--tactics that assume both the stupidity of his readers and critics and their inability to look things up on the Internet to see whether various claims are true.

If Rosen (and Chait) had any integrity left, they would apologize for an extraordinarily indefensible, gossip-filled piece (parts of which have been proved false) rather than try to excuse themselves by claiming that the article contained things it most certainly did not.

But, unfortunately, that clearly won't happen. In the world according to The New Republic, only politicians should apologize. Journalists are exempt from such indignities.

A Reader's Orgasm

Looking over various publishers' lists of forthcoming titles, I've noticed an overwhelming number of new works by "heavyweight" writers of literary fiction: Margaret Atwood, the late Roberto Bolaño, A. S. Byatt, E. L. Doctorow, John Irving, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jonathan Lethem, a posthumously translated novel by Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, Lorrie Moore, Joyce Carol Oates*, Richard Powers, Thomas Pynchon, Philip Roth, Richard Russo, Anne Tyler, John Updike (and another one -- even dead, the man is prolific), and William Vollmann.

It's quite a feast, and the only way I can see that I'll be able to satisfy the craving is with heavy doses of amphetamines (or, lacking that, coffee). How can I possibly read all these favorites and still sample new writing by new authors? (Although it would help if I stayed off this damned computer.)

I'm also looking forward to Percival Everett's pre-season appetizer, I Am Not Sidney Poitier, which is coming out next week as a paperback original. Everett is one of the most undeservedly neglected writers in America.

* Granted, a season without a new title (or two) from Joyce Carol Oates would almost certainly herald the Death of Publishing. I see there's already one lined up for early next year.

Relaunch: The Maureen Dowd Edition

I've been crazy with work for the last few months--not to mention the fact that I've been so gobsmacked by the GOP's insistence on following the Federalists and Whigs into oblivion that I really haven't had anything truly inspirational to add to the melee. But it has been bizarrely fun watching Dick Cheney come out of "retirement" once again to treat us all to a final Death Tour.

(It does seem we need to revise the old joke about what will left after a nuclear attack: cockroaches, Cher, and Cheney.)

Still, I can say that I was never so desperate for copy as was Maureen Dowd, who wholly lifted, without attribution, another blogger's post--and then basically lied about the cut-and-paste job, claiming that the paragraph was somehow passed along, verbatim, in the Beltway society version of telephone.

This blog started in response to plagiarism and I suppose it's only proper that I relaunch it on the same theme.

Also: One blog I've been reading with increasing regularity in recent months is Balloon Juice. John Coles's frequent reminder to his readers that he's often been wrong is both refreshing and endearing. Move over, David Brock!

Bobby the Page's Neighborhood

Bobby Jindal "will not be easily caricatured or dismissed."--Michael Gerson, staff hagiographer for The Washington Post, 2/24/09

"I'm pretty sure he's going to be SNL's next target."--Amanda Carpenter, Townhall.com, less than 24 hours later (via TBogg)

Cliff Mason's Bogus Bonus Boogie

Justifying the $18.4 billion handed out to Wall Street investment bankers at the end of last year is a tough job. But Cliff Mason apparently feels up to the task of defending the indefensible--because that's what they seem to be paid to do at CNBC:

This isn't a compensation issue, it's a diction issue.

... on Wall Street, and at many law firms as well, a bonus is simply part, often the greater part, of your regular compensation. It may vary from year to year, but when you take one of these jobs, the understanding is that you'll be paid a base-salary and once a year you'll also get a "bonus."

The bonus varies in size from year to year, but it's not actually a "bonus" in the way most people think of the word. It's an expected part of your salary, delivered in a lump- sum near Christmastime.

There are, of course, several problems with Mason's Clintonian word-parsing, and I'll highlight one of them by asking:

Did all the investment bankers who used to work for Lehman Bros. get bonuses around Christmastime? And what is the difference between Lehman Bros. employees and (say) Merrill Lynch employees?

Well, we know what happened to Lehman Bros. and its hapless managers. Other banks, like Merrill Lynch--the banks handing out billions of dollars in bonuses--are (to quote Dean Baker) "bankrupt banks. In other words, they would be shut down and put out of business if we let the market run its course." Bonuses, not to mention the "base salaries" themselves, would be a moot point were it not for government bailouts.

Not content with a mildly stupid argument in semantics, Mason then insists that, by awarding bonuses at 2004 levels, it will convince these souls "to stay at their jobs," that the "base salary is much less than they could be earning elsewhere." Really? If these underemployed bankers don't get their Christmas checks they'll quit and go elsewhere? Is Mason really trying to argue that there is a dearth of investment bankers on Wall Street right now? And does he really think that these bankers--if they manage to remain employed this year at all--will receive similar checks at the end of 2009?

He then sums up by arguing that Wall Street simply needs to adapt a new linguistic strategy: "Call [bonuses] something else. Think of something boring like 'annual performance-adjusted block compensation.' "

As Kagro X (Daily Kos) asks, "Say you're a banker and you flushed $30 million down the toilet, which is the actual scenario we're looking at. When can we expect you to pay a part of that back?"

These banks are still in business and their employees are still employed only because the federal government has handed them hundreds of billions of dollars. And it's a little surreal (but all too predictable) watching these same pseudo-capitalists abandon or contort their Ayn Rand-based principles to justify their newly assumed positions on the government dole.

Mason doesn't need to tax his brain coming up with a "boring" phrase to describe these payments. There's already a word for the compensation given to workers whose underproductive labor is supported by government money:

Workfare.

Wingnut Welfare Becomes Wingnut Warfare; Or, When Conservatives Collide

It's hard to believe it's been two months since my last post--did anything happen while I was away?

Via Tbogg, I notice that some self-proclaimed "free marketers" have learned a horrifying truth: they have been subsisting as wards of charity and may now actually need to find productive employment. I speak, of course, of the allied bloggers associated with Pajamas Media. Says Roger L. Simon, Man of Mystery:

I wrote a letter to the Pajamas Media network bloggers yesterday, some of whom took it a bit more personally than intended. We disbanded the ad network part of our business for a simple reason: it was losing money and we couldn’t see how in the reasonable future that would change.

Actually that part of our business has been losing money from the beginning, so the people getting their quarterly checks from PJM were getting a form of stipend from us in the hopes that advertisers would start to cotton to blogs and we could possibly make a profit. Didn’t happen. No wonder those people are kicking and screaming now that they are off the dole.

Stipend? Dole? Dole? Them's fighting words! The gist of which causes Jeff Goldstein to clutch his pearls of Protein Wisdom:

Here’s the thing, Roger: you never once told us that the blog network you kept insisting was the next great thing “has been losing money from the beginning” — at least, not to our faces, and certainly not in any way that would suggest that you were carrying us like welfare recipients.

Well, you see, Jeff, as those of use who work in the real world of the free market can tell you, the last thing a struggling business wants to do when it's, um, struggling is let all its creditors and affiliates and clients know that it's in danger of collapsing: that pretty much will insure the enterprise will collapse.

I might also point out the lack of "free market" wisdom, protein or otherwise, exhibited by the business model of Jeff's blog, which depended entirely on another firm for its only source of revenue. But, Jeff assures us, evidence to the contrary: "We free marketers aren’t complaining that the business model failed."

The remainder of Jeff's response is a shot across the bow (grab the popcorn!): Jeff's former source of income is now "a vanity site for wannabe journalists"--which marks, I'm afraid, the first time Goldstein and I have ever agreed on anything. Then Jeff really tells us how he feels:

The fact is, Roger, not everyone was given millions of dollars of venture capital to blow through. So before you go comparing people YOU SOLICITED TO JOIN YOUR ORGANIZATION to people taking welfare (you ever try paying a hooker with food stamps?), you might want to think about where it is “your” money is coming from.

Regarding the forms of payment accepted by prostitutes: I'll admit this is beyond my area of expertise and will leave that argument to Rush Limbaugh. But what really seems to gall Jeff is that the "venture capital" (dole) for Pajamas Media will now go to Roger's new enterprise: online conservative video featuring people too ugly even for radio (to enhance a joke from one witty commenter).

Alas for Jeff:

What this means is that as of April 1, I am officially out of work. So save going to a pay model, this site will likely have to shut down.

Equally alas for Jeff, Starbucks isn't hiring--and I doubt his Protein Wisdom is protean enough to get a job in the current administration.

Meanwhile, proving yet again that misery loves company, another nascent conservative war is brewing. Via Instaputz, we see that Erick Erickson (no relation), intending to rally the troops against the skinjobs hiding in the ranks of the Republican Party, has regurgitated the speech he wrote when he ran for (and, we're guessing, lost) senior class secretary at Ridgemont High--a homily that is only slightly short of the world's record for most cliches in a final paragraph:

We must fight and our fight must frequently induce pain on our own side. It is frequently the only way to make headway.

... We will be sometimes defeated. We will be sometimes victorious. But most importantly, we won’t be idly bitching and yelling into the wind — we’ll be working to make a difference. It is no good to complain and not act. It is very good to act without complaint and fight the good fight until the setting of the sun.

Oh, yea--you and what army?

One way to do so is to join the RedState Army.

Oh.

(Above: the reaction from one Dog of War upon reading Erick's post.)

Larry Kudlow's Distant Mirror

I see Larry Kudlow, inexplicably, still has a job at CNBC and, unsurprisingly, is still spewing optimistic nonsense at the Not-So-National Review.

So it's time to look through our way-back machines, to August 2007, and review what Larry wrote, using the neurons lingering after his historic cocaine binge:

It Ain't 1929
[here Kudlow exhibits his remarkable ability to read a calendar]

The way some people in the mainstream media are talking about the stock market and economy these days, you’d think it was 1929 rather than 2007. [...]

As for all the gnashing of teeth over corporate and mortgage loans, capital markets are absorbing the credit backup. Stocks posted strong gains the last two days and the long awaited market correction is currently tallying a 4-5 percent loss—quite mild by historic standards. [...]

So, while the mainstream media peddles its flimsy “sky is falling” narrative, the reality is a 13,400 or so Dow, along with rising wages and a 4.6 unemployment rate, point to a prosperous nation. These are the key barometers. The Bush boom continues. [emphasis added]

No on should buy into this 1929 scenario. It’s not happening.

Okay, Larry. Maybe last year wasn't 1929. But this year is sure looking a lot like 1930.

Why anyone would take seriously anything said or written by Kudlow, or by his lackey Donald Luskin, is beyond me.

Philip Reed (1949-2008)

I first met Phil Reed nearly 20 years ago, when I first became an executive committee member of Manhattan's Gay and Lesbian Independent Democrats. As I recall, his relationship with certain senior GLID members was often prickly; he was a district leader at the time, and his political priorities were often local. Not a few fuzzy-minded dilettantes withered under his blunt and irreverent style. He was more than willing to compromise the luxurious, often abstract principles of middle-class whites from the Village and Chelsea if it meant he could more readily meet the day-to-day needs of the residents of East Harlem, Manhattan Valley, and the "Upper Upper West Side," where he lived, on Central Park West and 103rd Street.

By 1992, the ground had shifted and a rapprochement of sorts existed. GLID honored him at that year's annual dinner; that's me presenting his award "for his commitment to health care issues and for promoting lesbian and gay political power in the Upper West Side." And six years later he returned the favor: he served as presenter when I received the 1998 Howard Schaetzle Award, named in memory of a mutual friend who was an unsung grassroots activist.

As "the first openly gay black member of the City Council," as well openly HIV-positive, Phil chalked up a lot of footnote firsts. But, like any friend, he was more to us than these categories, which he reluctantly resigned himself to for political purposes but resented all the same--"I'm openly male, too," he once said to me under his breath when he endured such descriptions at yet another event. And he was one of the funniest politicians I'd ever met; his caustic, catty, campy wit pretty much insured he would never be elected to a higher post. (Without directly naming him, I mentioned him in an anecdote I recalled last year about the difficulties black men faced simply hailing a cab in Manhattan.)

Since I "retired" from politics a few years ago, I hadn't seen him much, something I'll forever regret. He is and will be missed.