Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 1109

Now That Oral Arguments Are Over, What's the Point of That Red Avatar?

At this point, everybody's seen the pink equals sign on the red background show up in her Facebook or Twitter feed. Not everyone's convinced that it's useful, though. The now ubiquitous symbol comes from a Human Rights Campaign effort to spread awareness about marriage equality. And much like the green avatar filters that took over Twitter during the 2009 Iranian Revolution, it's is an almost effortless way to show support for marriage equality, so much so that some wonder if it actually does any good, especially now that everyone has to play the waiting game until the Supreme Court's decision on the two marriage equality cases in June. Well, that all depends on how you define doing good.

Few can debate the popularity of the red and pink avatar. It's been less than 72 hours since the Human Rights Campaign unveiled the image, but you'd have a hard time visiting any social media site without seeing it. As The Wall Street Journal's Neal Mann pointed out, some the organization's calls for people to use the symbol as their avatar were winning upwards of 70,000 shares, not to mention adoption by Hollywood stars and big brands. It's a little tough to see the image adorned with Bud Light cans to form an equals sign and not feel a little put-off, though. There are, however, pretty fun manipulations of the image like the Burt and Ernie cameo (above) or the Grumpy Cat tribute. The Human Rights Campaign is even building a collage of all the variations:

But even with all the viral success, does the low commitment show of support actually do any good? Some have their doubts. After all, it's not like the Supreme Court Justices will make their decision based on counting the red avatars on Facebook. Brian Moylan made this argument in his column at VICE on Tuesday. He wrote:

Now you're just sitting there at your desk thinking that something you did on social media is freeing the oppressed. It might, in some small way, but if you really want to make progress, you have to work hard. If visibility is what you're aiming for, why not write a letter (hell, even an email) to your senator and let him or her know that you want marriage rights for everyone.

Strong point. What Moylan really hammers home is the fact that if you're joining the battle for marriage equality this week, you're basically too late. It's now up to the nine men and women in that white marble building on Capitol Hill to decide what comes next for the gay rights movement. It's been a whirlwind week so far, though — hard to believe it's only Wednesday and even harder to believe that we now have to wait months to know the fate of the pivotal cases.

So the question remains: Do you keep the avatar up until summer? What good could it do? And won't your friends get annoyed with the sea of red in their News Feeds and Twitter streams. It's starting to get really hard to tell people apart. The important thing to remember, though, is that the challenge of marriage equality probably won't be solved this summer or this year. It might not even get solved this decade.

Matt Buchanan ruminates on the issue in a new blog post at The New Yorker and visibly struggles with the efficacy of avatar activism. He quotes Malcom Gladwell who wrote about the issue during the Iranian Revolution, doubting that the passive gesture of doing something like changing a profile pic compares to "high risk" activism like taking to the streets. But Buchanan arrives at a poignant point that feels almost instructive:

The odds that the H.R.C.’s campaign, as wildly successful as it has been, will directly influence the decision of the Justices are nil, which speaks quite loudly to the limits of online activism: twenty million avatars are not twenty million people in the street. However, as Jeffrey Toobin wrote, as people and politics change, so does the Court. And online activism has shown, most notably through its role in the defeat of the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act last year, that maybe it can change people.

So go forth avatar activists. Annoy your friends with the uniformity of that red and pink square in their streams. Customize it if you want. Send that custom version to your senator. Get it tattooed on your face. Do what you can to get involved in what's shaping up to be the civil rights battle of a young American generation. When you look back at this moment from old age, you might think, "I wish I'd done more." It's highly unlikely you'll wish you'd done less.

CNN Debunks CNN's Debunker of Esquire's Bin Laden Shooter Story

Remember 24-hours ago, when we told you that the official story of who shot Bin Laden had given way to a stupid media feud? We underestimated the situation. It's downright ridiculous at this point. A day after CNN slapped Esquire in the face with a questionably sourced story denying several details in the magazine's widely read cover story about "The Shooter," the Navy SEAL Team 6 member who pulled the trigger and killed the world's most wanted terrorist, Esquire is hitting back with brass knuckles. Though Esquire's editor-in-chief David Granger had defended the magazine's account of that fateful evening, executive editor Mark Warren followed up on Wednesday with a pretty awkward finding: CNN had actually debunked its own story over six months ago.

In September 2012, CNN's Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr published a fairly scathing report showing how the play-by-play account of the Bin Laden raid written by Matt Bissonette under the pen name Mark Owen "differs from what U.S. officials have said publicly since the raid." This is awkward, because the somewhat sensational story by Peter Bergen that CNN published on Tuesday regards Bissonette's account as the most credible. More specifically, Bergen attempts to debunk Esquire's story with one told by an anonymous SEAL Team Six member who was not on the raid, one that, in Bergen's words, "is essentially the same as … Bissonnette's." Esquire's Warren is careful to point out that CNN's original story as well as a review "conducted by the head of US Special Operations Command" is consistent with the Esquire cover story that CNN attempted to debunk this week.

Confused yet? It's confusing. In plain English, the holes that CNN poked in Esquire's 15,000-word piece with a story that CNN had poked holes in last summer. That's still sort of confusing, isn't it? You know why? Because the media organizations grasping at anonymous sources to tell the story of America's most triumphant military victory in recent memory are reaching. We don't say that to discount the reporting. It's a story so shrouded in secrecy and myth that it requires some reaching. And sometimes when we reach, we miss, slip and fall right off the ledge of reason.

Malala's Life Story Is Worth $3 Million

The 15-year-old Pakistani girl who survived an assassination attempt from the Taliban last year just secured a $3 million book deal for her memoir, I Am Malala. The book is due out in the fall, and in typical fashion, Malala pivoted off the book announcement to make a point about children's right to education, her primary cause. "I hope this book will reach people around the world, so they realise how difficult it is for some children to get access to education," she said. "I want to tell my story, but it will also be the story of 61 million children who can't get education. I want it to be part of the campaign to give every boy and girl the right to go to school. It is their basic right."

If $3 million sounds like a lot of money that's because it is. But Malala's also been to hell in back. It was less than six months ago that Taliban gunmen boarded her school bus in Pakistan's Swat Valley and shot her in the head. She was targeted for her persistent activism for educating women and promoting equal rights. In an excerpt from the book she describes that day in heart-wrenching detail:

I come from a country that was created at midnight. When I almost died it was just after midday. It was Tuesday, October 9, 2012, not the best of days as it was the middle of school exams, though as a bookish girl I don't mind them as much as my friends do. We'd finished for the day and I was squashed between my friends and teachers on the benches of the open-back truck we use as a school bus. There were no windows, just thick plastic sheeting that flapped at the sides and was too yellowed and dusty to see out of, and a postage stamp of open sky at the back through which I caught a glimpse of a kite wheeling up and down. It was pink, my favorite color.

Although she'd already won international acclaim for a secret blog she kept after the Taliban took control of her village, the shooting made Malala a household name, if not a hero. She survived the shooting and now attends school in Birmingham, England. Malala is also on the short list for this year's Nobel Peace Prize. That brings with it a heft sum of money, but few people doubt that Malala will use it for good. She's already put her life on the line in the name of her cause, and the teenager didn't hesitate for a second to pick up where she left off after she'd recovered. The money is inevitably secondary.

Nobody Likes a Copycat (Chef)

Remember the old aphorism that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery? It's not so pleasant when it happens to you! Or at least that seems to be the thinking of a lot of New York City chefs who've found themselves "ripped off," cuisine-wise. Hailey Eber's piece in the New York Post sheds light on this nasty little food trend, which may have gotten its most recent high-profile acknowledgement when writer Jay McInerney tweeted that West Village restaurant the Marrow's use of uni and bone marrow was "strictly a rip-off of the great @ericripert." (Ripert, who always seems quite charming, tweeted in return that thing your mom always told you: Being copied is a compliment.) 

Still, in my mind this leads to a few existential-type cooking questions: Can a combination of two existing ingredients really count as a rip-off? Are we all stealing blatantly from the first person to mix tuna and mayo and slap it on some bread, or the brilliant citizen who mixed peanut butter and jelly? What about peanut butter and honey? What about the hamburger? When it comes to food, we're all copycats, and we can't help it—right? Of course, we're not all professional chefs, with restaurants to run, with investments to protect. Harold Dieterle, the Marrow's chef, defended himself to the Post thusly: "When I create a dish, I naturally think of it as my own," but "I'm well-aware that pairing combinations, even wildly creative ones, are rarely without culinary precedent."

In this creation-happy world, whether the product is food or art or music or literature or technology, it is a rare thing that is not derivative in some way, somehow. I am not sure I've ever met something so pure as to have come into being without the inspiration of anything else already existing on this planet. Still, chefs are crying foul and getting litigious, because their art is their money: "Chefs all over the city are claiming that their ideas are being stolen, and they're taking action," writes Eber—by patenting and trademarking their fare, which David Burke did with his method for dry-aging beef, or by requiring contracts to be signed by employees designating who owns what, in hopes of avoiding any legal problems, or by copyrighting the look of their restaurant (though one can't copyright a recipe itself). When things go awry, there have been lawsuits, like between Pearl Oyster Bar's Rebecca Charles and her former sous chef, Ed MacFarland, who started Ed's Lobster Bar, which she said was just like hers. That case was settled and both restaurants continue to operate.

With legal precedent and, Eber writes, the help of everyone Instagramming and sharing their food and restaurant experiences, there will likely be more such infractions and allegations, and more lawsuits. With copycat chefs come copycat lawsuits. 

Still, hearing a chef complain that they were the first to make an uni panini—and therefore, anyone who does it after them has stolen it—may leave a bad taste in the mouth of a customer who only wants food to taste delicious. And can anyone truly be sure they did it first, first in the whole, wide world of everyone cooking throughout history? 

Time might be better spent not on the insistence not that one has been first, but on the effort to make one's dish the absolute best. 

Image via Shutterstock by Wavebreakmedia.

All Congress Needs to Do to Get People to Like It: Its Job

There are a few lessons for Washington in the new ABC/Washington Post poll released today. One is that (non-Republican) people still like Obama. The second is that one option for Congress to turn its horrible ratings around would be for it to actually do something.

First, the overall tally. The president's net approval rating is 16 percent — the same as the Supreme Court's, but more people have no opinion on the Court. (Though that may change.) Congress continues to be rated poorly, with a net approval of -35 percent. If Congress were running for reelection as a group, it would almost certainly lose. Happily for Congress, it doesn't.

Opinion runs much stronger on Congress and the president, unsurprisingly. Much of the president's more-than-50-percent of approval strongly approves of his performance — and likewise with those who view him unfavorably. Those who like Congress do so tepidly; those who oppose it do so with a lot of energy.

There's a lot of detail in ABC and the Post's poll — the most interesting of which lies with Congress.

Congress

Alone among the three branches of government, there's not much partisan divide on Congress. Democrats are slightly more appreciative of the body, as are those with a lower income status. But, as ABC notes, there's a stark racial gap. The only group with higher than 50 percent favorable rating for Congress is Latinos. And that figure has jumped dramatically since 2011.

ABC speculates that the increase is due to the body's focus on immigration reform efforts, which certainly makes sense.

Supreme Court

The most interesting part of the breakdown on the Supreme Court is the group which is least likely to approve of its performance: conservatives. There's a split among those who identify themselves as conservatives, as well. Those who identify themselves as "somewhat conservative" have a positive opinion of the body. Those who identify as "very conservative" have a much more negative view — a difference of 33 net percentage points. That's a big swing for a small stretch of the political spectrum.

Obama

Nearly five months after his reelection, the numbers on Obama are perhaps the least interesting, mostly because they're the least surprising. Democrats love him; Republicans don't. Young people do; older people don't. It is a by-now familiar tale.

Let's recap those lessons from the morning. One: If you're elected to represent people, they appreciate it when you represent them.Two: If you don't want anyone to care a lot about what you do, don't let your job be subject to election.

Half of All U.S. Rivers Are Too Polluted for Our Health

A new report by the Environmental Protection Agency found that the majority of rivers and streams in this country can't support healthy aquatic life and the trend is going in the wrong direction. The report labels 55 percent of the nation's water ways as being in "poor" conidtion and another 23 precent as just "fair." Only 21 percent of rivers are considered "good" and "healthy biological communities." Even worse, the number of rivers and streams that qualify as "good" went down seven precent between 2004 and 2009.

The reason for these failing grades is, of course, pollution; specifically, phosphorus and nitrogen pollution that comes from fertilizer and wastewater run-off. Those chemicals, which come from farms and industrial sites, choke off healthy plant growth, which turn leads to more soil erosion, more flooding, and unhealthy fish and wildlife.

The pollution filters down to humans too, since that's the water we drink and the animals we eat. The study also found increased bacteria that in some areas "exceeds thresholds protective of human health" and another 13,000 miles of the rivers that have fish with unhealthy amounts of mercury in them. The worst areas for river pollution are the Northeast and deep South, where a shocking 71 percent of rivers rated "poor."

One of the major indicators of the decline of healthy aquatic life is the decline in water-borne insects. By measuring the declining health of the insect populations, environmentalists take that as warning sign that other wildlife will soon follow.

Anderson Cooper Mentioned as a Matt Lauer Replacement at 'Today'

Anderson Cooper, Vanderbilt scion and part-time Michael Phelps swim buddy, is being approached by NBC to replace Matt Lauer by the end of this year, reports Deadline's Nellie Andreeva: "I hear NBC toppers recently reached out to CNN’s Anderson Cooper to replace Lauer on the show before the end of the year." 

This, of course would be sorta great—we know Cooper can do the smile, giggle (oh man can he giggle), and facetious banter morning thing when he wants—he filled in for Regis on more than one occasion.

BUT ... there's a catch. Lauer, like villains in horror movies, won't go away that easily. On Today, if a host won't go away on their own terms, you have to burn the bones or make a goat sacrifice to Deborah Norville ... or so we heard. Lauer, like anyone who gets paid $25 million to smile and talk about salmon work four days a week, is trying to save his job, Andreeva adds:

I hear NBC reached out to Lauer to get his blessing about the changeover. But I heard they got pushback from the Today veteran, who contacted Cooper to express his disapproval. I also hear that call caught Cooper by surprise, as he had assumed Lauer had been brought on board before NBC began making overtures.

So, if you dream of waking up to Anderson's giggles, you might just have to wait until 2015 when Lauer's contract expires. At this point, Cooper has essentially become the Cady Heron to Lauer's Regina George— Cooper is also on the short-list for with Lauer for the next host of Jeopardy, and is the apple of Lauer's bosses' eyes.

Cooper also has his own thing going at CNN, where he's umm... apparently making a show with his New Year's Eve buddy Kathy Griffin.  "I hear the duo filmed a pilot today at the CNN studios in the Time Warner Center in New York. Details about the hourlong project are sketchy, but I’ve learned that it had a lot of humor in it and filmed in front of a live audience — which I hear included new CNN topper Jeff Zucker," Andreeva, who's owning the Cooper beat, wrote in a separate report.

And that's sort of fun, right? People seem enjoy their antics on New Year's. Though, a lot of that magic revolved around Griffin playfully setting Anderson's closet on fire (he wasn't out-out back in the special's heyday), making blatant penis jokes and him suppressing his blushing and acknowledgment of said penis jokes. It's not exactly a format for a regular show.

Cooper, no doubt is a very busy man and has more projects than he can count. And who knows if this will cut into Cooper's other job of being a superhero journalist who saves kids in Haiti and swims with crocodiles in the Nile River.  

Friends and Foes at the Supreme Court, Spam Battles, and a Yoga Sex Scandal

Behind the New York Times pay wall, you only get 10 free clicks a month. For those worried about hitting their limit, we're taking a look through the paper each morning to find the stories that can make your clicks count.

Top Stories: Theodore B. Olson and Charles J. Cooper—friends and conservatives—argued on opposite sides before the Supreme Court on the question of marriage equality.

World: John Kerry met with a group of Afghan women "who have managed to make their way in male-dominated Afghan society" in a meeting that highlighted progress and concerns. 

National: A lawsuit brought by a young woman in California accuses the founder of bikram yoga "of sexual harassment, discrimination and defamation."

New York: Renters are staying away from the still battered Jersey Shore even as summer approaches. 

Technology: A fight between a spam-fighting group and a Dutch company that hosts sites that are said to send spam is "causing widespread congestion and jamming crucial infrastructure around the world." 

Sports: Twins Markieff and Marcus Morris play for the Phoenix Suns, which has "served as a kind of sneakered laboratory over the years for the study of brotherly dynamics."

Opinion: Leila Schneps and Coralie Colmez on the "bad math" of the Amanda Knox case. 

Books: Publishers are putting out a number of books for all age ranges on bullying. 

Dining & Wine: Pete Wells on Red Hook, which "offers an impressive variety of tastes." 

Disabled Man Trapped on Disney's 'It's a Small World' Ride Awarded $8,000

An attorney representing Jose Martinez says Disneyland has agreed to pay him $8,000 in damages after he was stuck on the famous "It's a Small World" ride for about 30 minutes in 2009.

Martinez was stuck in the ride's "Goodbye Room" after it broke down. While all the other passengers were evacuated, Martinez, who is paralyzed, remained stuck on the ride for what must have seemed like an eternity; the irritatingly catchy "It's a Small World" was playing on a loop the whole time. In addition to being wheelchair-bound, Martinez also suffers from panic attacks and high blood pressure.

“He was half in the cave of the ride and half out,” Martinez's attorney David Geffen (a different David Geffen than the man who brought us Donna Summer) said. “The music was blaring. They couldn’t get it to go off.”

Rather than calling firefighters to evacuate Martinez, Disneyland staffers waited for the ride to be fixed. It took three hours to medically stabilize Martinez at a Disneyland first aid station once he was rescued.

Suzi Brown, a Disnleyland spokeswoman, said the theme park believes it provided "appropriate assistance" to Martinez while the ride was shut down.

And in case his ordeal wasn't already enough, Martinez had to urinate the entire time he was trapped on the ride.

This is not the first time someone has been trapped on a ride at one of Disney's theme parks worldwide. In 2011, passengers on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney World were stuck for two hours as the pirates continued yo-ho-hoing. And in 2003, one person was killed when several trains on Disneyland's Big Thunder Mountain ride derailed. There is in fact a message board dedicated to disgruntled guests sharing their nightmare stories about being stuck aboard Disney's world of dreams.

Martinez's $8,000 reward is for pain and suffering, as well as disability law violations. Disneyland claims those violations have since been fixed.

North Korea: 'War May Break Out Any Moment'

We didn't think it was possible, but the North Koreans found a completely new way to threaten the South—but this one might actually affect the lives of some people who live below the DMZ. The North shut down its last military hotline to South Korea on Wednesday. It's a move they've pulled before, like when they shut down a Red Cross communication line earlier this month. But the difference this time is that this hotline actually helps South Korean workers on a daily basis and loss of communication may strand some of them north of the border.

The two nations jointly operate a large industrial park in the Northern city of Kaesong, just on the other side of the line of demarcation between the two nations. The park is financed by Southern money and employs mostly Northern workers, but around 900 South Koreans cross the border everyday to go to work there. The phone lines they turned off today are used to control the border traffic and avoid flares that might involve the military. The last time the North cut this particular hotline, in 2009, 80 South Korean workers were left stranded above the border for a more than a day. The Kaesong factories are the last serious form of cooperation between the two countries.

Tuesday also marked the three anniversary of a torpedo attack by the North that killed 46 South Korean sailors.

South Korean officials report that cross-border traffic appeared to be moving normally for now, suggesting that the North isn't actively blocking the traffic yet. But since the North's stated excuse for turning off the hotline is that "war may break out any moment, [so] there is no need to keep North-South military communications," then things could change at, well ... any moment. Pyongyang has spent the last month finding new and creative ways to threaten the world—they even threw in a warning today for the South's president, Park Geun-hye, to "watch her tongue"—but so far have shown no signs of actually firing the first shot. We eagerly await a fresh new threat of fiery doom tomorrow.