Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 1113

Fred Savage Is a Big Deal

Today in show business: Kevin Arnold is a big grownup success, Robert Redford joins the Marvel family, and American Idol is in trouble.

Fred Savage, little Kevin Arnold from The Wonder Years, is in talks to direct a movie starring Charlie Theron. Yes! He's been an in-demand TV director for a few years, and is now making his transition into feature films. The movie is Ladies Night, a comedy about a woman having one last night on the town with her friends before moving to New York City. Sounds like sort of a strange project for Charlize Theron — does she really have friends? — but hey, what the hell. Fred Savage and Charlize Theron hanging out together! That's quite something. Is he the new Ron Howard? [The Hollywood Reporter]

American Idol's ratings continue to drop. Last night's episode was watched by a measly 11.7 million people for a 2.8 rating in the 18-49 demo. That's down from an all-time high of 6.0. And it's dropping like this every week. So what's the problem? Bad contestants? Well, yes. General fatigue? Also that, too. It's a bad combination and the show is hugely suffering for it. Could this be the last year of American Idol? In some ways that prospect saddens me. In others it absolutely thrills me. I mean, the idea that Idol could go out with more people watching The Voice is an awful one, but no more Idol means I have my Wednesday nights back again. Back to watch other TV, but still back. [Entertainment Weekly]

Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin is going to make a Stephen King-style cameo on the show next season. One hopes, and assumes, he will be an employee in Littlefinger's brothel. [Deadline]

Robert Redford is close to signing a deal to star in Captain America: Winter Soldier, the Marvel sequel. He won't be playing the Captain, no that's still Chris Evans unfortunately, but he'll be a top guy at S.H.I.E.L.D. The movie will apparently focus on Captain America's "relationship with [his] sidekick Bucky," which... what kind of "relationship" are we talking about here? And when they say "sidekick" what do they mean exactly? Suddenly this movie got really intriguing. [The Hollywood Reporter]

Here is a trailer for Turbo, a movie about a snail. Because I guess there hasn't been a movie about a snail yet? The thing is he races, but he's super slow. Because he's a snail. Sure, why not.

Happy Birthday, OK

Tomorrow is a big day. "OK," the expression you use surely quite regularly in some form or another (maybe it's "kk," maybe it's "k," maybe it's "okaaaaaaay, fine") is having a birthday, and it's one that ranks up there with the members of the Cullen family, a triple-digit whammy. OK was born on March 23, 1839, when, as Allan Metcalf writes at Lingua Franca, it appeared "on Page 2 of the four-page Boston Morning Post, in a turgid paragraph of would-be humor." I suggest your first step in celebrating the day be to read that. As luck would have it, here is that paragraph:

The “Chairman of the Committee on Charity Lecture Bells,” is one of the deputation, and perhaps if he should return to Boston, via Providence, he of the Journal, and his train-band, would have the “contribution box,” et ceteras, o. k.—all correct—and cause the corks to fly, like sparks, upward.

The humor part may be hard to comprehend, but, you know, it was 174 years ago. Things have changed but OK has remained. And in the Merriam-Webster entry for the word, there it is, its birthdate and origin: "abbreviation of oll korrect, facetious alteration of all correct. First Known Use: 1839." OK as a noun made its way into the vernacular two years later, in 1841, and as a verb, it came to be in 1888. OK is also be an early example of a phrase going viral, with a related political campaign of its own. Metcalf explains, "Among other things, in 1840 President Martin Van Buren got the nickname “Old Kinderhook” (because his home town was Kinderhook, N.Y.), and OK Clubs were formed to support his reelection. (He lost to William Henry Harrison, who had the best slogan: “Log Cabin and Hard Cider.”)"

So, how are we celebrating? Maybe...

Perusing Metcalf's book,  OK: The Improbable Story of America’s Greatest Word. Saying "OK, OK, OK.... okayyyy already!" whenever anyone tells us to do something. Googling "OK" to see how many results come up. There are a lot. Wondering, in the future, will we still say OK? And what does kk think about her aging cousin? Making a big cake shaped like the phrase out of oatmeal and kibble or, maybe, oranges and Krazy Glue. Whatever's around the house, you know. Reliving fond memories of working at OK! magazine, and, oh yes, remember that something-something OKCupid? Oklahoma: Is it the only state with an abbreviation that's also a functioning phrase? Discuss! Drinking a lot of coffee, which has nothing to do with OK, and probably going to brunch because, you know, it's the weekend. OK? OK.

Another of Obama's Blocked Judicial Nominee Gives Up

In a quiet news statement sent out at 3 p.m. on a Friday, the Obama administration officially withdrew the nomination of Caitlin Halligan to sit on the U.S. Court of Appeals' D.C. Circuit, replacing John Roberts. The withdrawal leaves the court with only seven of its eleven members in place — and reemphasizes the problem of slow or blocked judicial nominations.

Two weeks ago, the Senate voted for the second time on whether or not Halligan should be confirmed to the bench. Except: not really. It actually voted on whether or not to end the filibuster that had blocked Halligan's confirmation for months, a vote that requires 60 votes. Halligan got 51.

The vote prompted a response from the Boston Globe.

Obama has never been able to get a nominee on the court, symbolizing the Senate’s failure to approve nominations to dozens of courts nationwide. As a result, four years after Obama took power in the White House, Republican appointees still hold a 4-to-3 majority over those named to the court by Democratic presidents, and that has resulted in a series of conservative rulings that affect the lives of millions of Americans.

Last weekend, The Times offered the diagram at right, showing how the Senate's inaction on confirmations has left the majority of appeals circuits short of a full bench. It also noted that obstruction of Bush appointees was eventually overcome by a bipartisan agreement avoiding filibusters — an agreement that has since been abandoned.

Jeffrey Toobin of The New Yorker argues there's not a lot Obama can do. Judges that aren't blocked by filibuster are blocked by pokiness.

Because the Senate schedule operates by unanimous consent, Republicans must agree to take votes on judicial nominees, and they have been slow and stingy in doing so, even when they have no plans to filibuster or even to vote no. For example, eighteen district court nominees, all uncontroversial, are currently awaiting votes on the floor. All will be confirmed eventually, but Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, parcels out agreements to take votes just one or two judges at a time. “We are not hearing any opposition to the district court nominees,” Ruemmler said. “The process is just too slow.”

The graph below shows the fate of Obama's nominated judges since 2009 for the Supreme Court, appellate court (like Halligan), and district courts. (It was compiled with data from here and here, and is likely not entirely up-to-date.)

By breaking down the outcome of each nomination, you can see the differences in the two court systems. Appellate court nominees are more likely to be filibustered.

Nominees to both court systems have to wait for the privilege of a vote. The average time between nomination and confirmation for a district court nominee is 187.2 days. For an appellate nominee, 205.9.

Halligan's nomination never had much of a chance. It was a nomination to a hotly-contested position which both parties were willing to fight over. Her timing was bad in another respect: One of the main points of contention was a 2003 speech criticizing gun manufacturers, a topic that would make even a majority vote in the Senate tricky, but not impossible, at this point.

In a statement, Obama lamented the process that prompted Halligan to withdraw her name. "Deeply disappointed," he wrote that the D.C. Circuit vacancies are "unacceptable". But with the Senate operating as it does, he has acceptance is about the only choice he has.

'Phil Spector' Doesn't Do It

David Mamet's new HBO film Phil Spector begins with a disclaimer stressing that what we are about to watch is a work of fiction. Inspired by real people and real events, yes, but not an attempt to depict what actually happened. We are going to see an alternate version of reclusive oddball music legend Phil Spector, a variation on his first trial for the gruesome 2003 murder of Lana Clarkson. So why bother then? More specifically, why call the movie Phil Spector only to quickly tell us it's ultimately not really about Phil Spector? What follows the disclaimer is a weightless film, both a dodge and a halfhearted apologia.

That said, Al Pacino's performance is mesmerizing. Shuffling around in a series of strange wigs, telling long rambling stories that suddenly arrive at a point like an epiphany, his Phil Spector is an oddly lovable old weirdo. It's not a spot-on impressions, but again this movie insists it's not going for veracity. Crucially this is only a Pacino-y performance in a few scattered bits; mostly all that remains of the familiar actor is his unshakeable growl. Otherwise we are presented with a strange, fully realized character — nervous, addled, living in reference to an old world that no longer exists. That he comes across so pitiable is at the root of what is angering people about the film. Once you begin to feel bad for the guy, you kinda start to believe him when he says he didn't do it. Mamet doesn't make a firm declaration either way, but it's not hard to read a note of sympathy into most scenes.

One person who believes in his innocence is his lawyer, Linda Kenney Baden, a tenacious but tender advocate played with lived-in weariness by Helen Mirren. She's at first put-off by Spector, who is said to have kept various women prisoner in his house at gunpoint. But once she cuts through his peculiarities she sees a misunderstood freak, an often self-sabotaging outlier who has been done wrong by the world. Mamet has Baden won to Spector's cause through both evidence and emotion, and I suppose we're supposed to be won over too. To some extent, anyway. Again, Mamet isn't offering any exact declarations of innocence or guilt, but he clearly wants us to think about the way Spector, and by extension other frequently targeted public figures (ahem, ahem), have been treated by the media. While Mamet doesn't quite make his point successfully, the relationship between Linda and Phil is a pleasure to watch develop, Pacino wrestling his flashy role into humanlike proportions, Mirren giving the straightwoman nuance and personality. How I wish these two actors had picked a less dreary and ultimately slight project to work on together.

The film covers Spector's first murder trial, but we don't see much of the courtroom. We instead spend most of our time in Spector's gloomy mansion or the defense team's poorly lit office space. In typical Mamet fashion, there's a lot of rapid-fire dialogue, and I must say it is nice to be back in Mamet's world of sour bluster. He's like Aaron Sorkin's crankier older brother, both interested in the whiz and flow of process, but Mamet decidedly less in awe. He's also written a few elegantly knotty soliloquies for Pacino, all rattling and ghostly, the past the only place of possibility in Spector's life. But his script often feels like it's talking about the wrong things, like there's something more interesting or more pertinent happening in the next room and we're stuck listening to people jaw on about nothing. Phil Spector ends as arbitrarily it begins, the drama feeling static and adrift. I suppose that may be a problem of history — Spector's first trial ended in a hung jury, not a strong way to finish a story. But there is far more to the Phil Spector story than Mamet addresses, giving the film an uncomfortable smallness. The actors, Mirren especially, sometimes seem like they're chafing against the film's limits, as if made to scrunch down and move economically. 

The film's climax is probably the most buzzed-about detail of the movie: Spector sporting an enormous afro wig, looking both silly and creepy as he prepares to testify. The film urges us to see this as an indicator of Spector's tragic self-delusion — he thinks this hair will make the jury think he's less weird, because people back in the day used to have afros and it was fine — but really it mostly serves to highlight the movie's diminutive size. Really? After all that we're just getting the hair? That's it?? It's easy to feel like you're missing something. Really, the film's only tone is atonality. Mamet has created a wall of sound, but the fury is sorely lacking.

Guerrilla Movements in Grammar

People are doing crazy things with grammar!

Did you hear about the "capostrophe" in Britain last week? (Sorry, my portmanteau.) A district council said they were going to "abolish the apostrophe" from signs designating places in the area. As Geoffrey Pullum writes in Lingua Franca, "The signs for Beck’s Square, Blundell’s Avenue, and St. George’s Well would under the new policy say Becks Square, Blundells Avenue, and St Georges Well. Indeed, the council has been using apostrophe-free signs for years, like other districts (the pictured sign for Baker’s View is in neighboring Teignbridge district). The proposal was simply to make the tacit policy official."

People, however, did not like this, not at all, not one teeny bit. One of them, Steve Jenner, a spokesperson for the Plain English Society, demanded in full-outrage mode, “Where’s it going to stop? Are we going to declare war on commas, outlaw full stops?” Pullum writes. Jenner's enthusiastic horror picked up enough rolling outrage from others that the district council changed their minds. The apostrophe would stay. The hilarious twist is that, as Pullum points out, for a guy pretty seemingly concerned about the rules, Jenner (and his ilk) failed to notice that "The apostrophe is not a punctuation mark. It doesn’t punctuate." He explains further, "Punctuation marks are placed between units (sentences, clauses, phrases, words, morphemes) to signal structure, boundaries, or pauses. The apostrophe appears within words. It’s a 27th letter of the alphabet. This issue concerns spelling." Tell that to your companions 'round the old group dinner table tonight.

I'm not going to focus on what the apostrophe is or is not (because Pullum does that on its own and better than I could!) but instead go back to the idea of the grammar outrage machine. On Grammar Day I spoke to several linguists and word appreciators who pointed out that "peevishness" about the rules is often a bit irksome to them, though it's what a lot of us laypeople and hobbyists consider the essence of grammar. We like to point out mistakes and mock people for creating them, and in the linguistic world, well, maybe they do that too, on their own time, but the focus is more about watching language evolve, studying and understanding grammar and the way we use words, and more broadly enjoying that it exists.

As for the rest of us, maybe we can't help it. When we see mistakes, we like to fix them.

This brings me to something that might be considered the opposite side of the Britain Apostrophe Catastrophe, same coin: the graffiti vigilantes that Joe Berkowitz writes at Fast Co.Create. They're The Tutor Crowd, a tutoring service in London that's extracurricularly running around town correcting typos they find in the graffiti they see, as a kind of grassroots marketing campaign (they slap a sticker on their handiwork and move on, and, hopefully, the calls for their service come pouring in). "No misspellings or grammatical errors, no matter how profane, are safe from The Tutor Crowd--the scourge of improper spellers everywhere," writes Berkowitz. And they do it nicely, apparently, no snarking, just helpful. Well, that's pretty awesome (check out more of their work here). One imagines that if the apostrophe edict had not been revoked, these cheery folks would take to the streets under cover of night with a Sharpie to make things right again, our modern-day grammar heroes. 

The Guy Who Wrote the Hottest Women in Tech Slideshow Is 'Bummed'

Don't worry, the writer behind today's offensive-to-women-in-technology-Internet-thing, "The 40 Hottest Women in Tech" slideshow over at Complex, thinks the slideshow is crap, too. "I am just bummed out my content was totally changed," Luke Winkie, a freelancer for Complex told The Atlantic Wire. Winkie said he submitted a somewhat different version of the "hottest"—as in sexy—women in tech professions gallery. Instead of the 40 ladies chosen based primarily for their sex-pot looks, he wrote a story of "really interesting women" who were "far beyond" the list of 40 lookers on the site today, he said reiterating an alibi he made over in this statement on Twitlonger. His version was a compilation of "cool" and "mostly normal looking" women, he claimed in a tweet. "In my world we wouldn't ever have to create lists of women to make money on the internet," he added. "Unfortunately we dont have live in that world yet." Complex has not confirmed Winkie's side of the story or responded to our request for comment. 

Update 5:00 p.m.: He has now apologized, sort of, tweeting: "does not change the fact that that name is going to be a bummer regardless, and for that I am sorry. I fucked up. I shouldn't have tried." That maybe contradicts what he told The Wire, suggesting he did have something to do with the "hottest women" concept. 

When asked who got cut from his original list, Winkie couldn't remember anyone besides a Kenyan woman who had some sort of government watchdog website and video game designer Roberta Williams. "Basically the ones that weren't necessarily the hot ones were cut." All the information is on a Google Spreadsheet that has since been changed with the current women he said. I've asked him to share it with me, which he hasn't done yet. But, he claims that his editor cut out a "bunch" of people and changed a lot of the copy without telling him.

The timing of the slideshow couldn't have come at a more perfect time, given all the discussion about the terrible treatment women in the tech world so often receive, as a result of the recent controversial firing of developer relations "evangelist" Adria Richards. They're either demonized, like Richards, who a lot of angry anonymous Internet people pounced on for tweeting that a "dongle" joke at a conference was "not cool," which got a man fired. Or, in this case, sexualized. (For more on the terrible nature of this slideshow, Branch has a fun discussion that mostly consists of women tech writers offering their bodies for hire. That's all we're good for, right? ) Interestingly, Complex attempts to rise above that with the following dissonant intro:

Technology has been a boy's club for most of its existence. Just another unfortunate repercussion of the patriarchy. But that's been slowly changing, and over the last decade we've seen a number of wonderful, intelligent, and cunning women make inspiring strides in the field of technology

Winkie says that's his original copy, which would make sense since Complex sold the post with the art at the top of this post and the following tweet:

From Winkie's perspective Complex hit the wrong note on this one. "Complex tries to be innocuous more than anything else, but sometimes they cross the line," he said. But looking back they have a long history of "hottest women" slideshows. 

True Fact: People Like to Watch People in Movies Run

Run Forrest ... and Ghostbusters and Breakfast Clubbers and Avatars etc. ... Run!

Russia, despite what you may think, is apparently no place for a snowman: 

You may have heard this week that NBC officials are figuring out a way to let Jay Leno down easy, in part because they don't think his humor can keep up with the younger generation. Essentially, Jay Leno is being kicked out because he isn't as funny as making people think celebrities are saying dirty things: 

And finally, here's a clip of animals who have learned how to smile like humans: 

 

Timothy Noah Is Out at The New Republic and Twitter Wants to Know What Happened

Timothy Noah, formerly a senior editor at the newly-relaunched New Republic, sent the political sector of Twitter into a confused frenzy Friday afternoon when he tweeted the magazine had unexpectedly fired him:

I just got fired from @tnr. Don't have a clue why. Anybody got a job?

— Timothy Noah (@TimothyNoah1) March 22, 2013

He later confirmed that he wasn't joking:

@jaredbkeller @tnr yes

— Timothy Noah (@TimothyNoah1) March 22, 2013

A spokeswoman at the magazine's D.C. office declined to comment on Noah's tweet, nor would she confirm whether Noah had been fired. But subsequently editor Franklin Foer released this statement: "Tim Noah has been a strong voice for liberalism and a rigorous columnist for The New Republic. We’ve appreciated his passion and contribution to the magazine over the past two years and wish him the very best." 

Meanwhile, Twitter reacted to the sudden dismissal:

!!!! RT @timothynoah1I just got fired from @tnr. Don't have a clue why. Anybody got a job?

— AdamSerwer (@AdamSerwer) March 22, 2013

What? RT @timothynoah1 I just got fired from @tnr. Don't have a clue why. Anybody got a job?

— Justin Green (@JGreenDC) March 22, 2013

! RT @timothynoah1: I just got fired from @tnr. Don't have a clue why. Anybody got a job?

— gwen ifill (@pbsgwen) March 22, 2013

What the fuck? RT @timothynoah1: I just got fired from @tnr. Don't have a clue why. Anybody got a job?

— daveweigel (@daveweigel) March 22, 2013

The timing of Noah's firing, as his tweet suggests, is quite abrupt: the magazine relaunched in January, and Noah has been contributing columns to both the print magazine and TNR's revamped website as he has done since he was hired in September 2011, shortly after he was laid off from Slate. (Indeed, his latest column, on federal funding of political science programs, was published hours before he tweeted that he was fired.) Two months ago he published a well-received book about income inequality, The Great Divergence.

Since tweeting, Noah hasn't revealed any significant details of his firing. He told Michael Calderone at The Huffington Post that editor Franklin Foer, installed by owner Chris Hughes in May 2012, implied that his version of the magazine's longstanding TRB column "isn't a good fit for the direction the magazine is going in." Noah took over TRB from Jonathan Chait after Chait left for New York magazine in September 2011 when Richard Just was editor of The New Republic and Martin Peretz still owned it. Hughes purchased the magazine six months later and named Franklin Foer editor last May.

Marine Kills 2, Then Himself at Quantico Base

Authorities in Quantico, Virginia, have lifted a area-wide lockdown after a Marine who shot and killed two co-workers was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot. The suspect, who was not yet identified, shot two people at around 11:00 p.m. on Thursday night, before barricading himself in a barracks room at Marine Corps Base Quantico. After a standoff that lasted several hours, fellow soliders entered the barracks and found the shooter had committed suicide.

The Quantico base, which is about 27 miles south of Washington, DC, is famously known as the primary training ground for both the Marine Corps and the FBI. It's referred to as the "Crossroads of the Marine Corps," since most officers and soliders who receive advanced training pass through there at some point during their careers. 

The two victims were also Marines, but their connection to the shooter has not yet been revealed. The only other information given about the shooter is that he was a staff member at the officer candidate training school on the base.

NRA Sues New York, Says New Gun Laws Only Make Criminals Stronger

Raise your hand if this news surprises you: The New York affiliate of the National Rifle Association sued the state on Thursday over a new set of gun control measures that it says puts citizens' in harms way. The lawsuit specifically targets provisions in the legislation champtioned by Governor Andrew Cuomo in the days after the Sandy Hook school shootings that lowers the maximum capacity of magazines and adds a few new models of assault rifle to the list of banned weapons. According to the NRA, these restrictions violate citizens' Second Amendment rights.

So who's surprised? Hands? Anyone? Everybody should've seen this coming. But even if you didn't, this marks an escalation in the fierce tug of war between the gun industry and proponents of tightening gun control laws in the wake of several terribly deadly mass shootings. Now that the NRA is aggressively going after legislation on a state level the national conversation about gun violence only stands to get more convoluted. That conversation, after all, is no stranger to misinformation — or misleading information.

Take the NRA's protest to the New York law. "Criminals have and use magazines without any limitation in capacity," the NRA's lawsuit reads. "The act's provisions on magazines put law-abiding citizens at a grave disadvantage to criminals, who will not comply with the seven-round limit" So New York citizens are at risk because criminals can buy illegal gear? But without the ban, it would be even easier for criminals to get ahold of these things. Criminals can also presumably get even more illegal guns, say fully automatic assault rifles. Should we make those legal too so that the American public can compete in some insane arms race?

Those are all honest questions. The truth is, nobody knows the secret to solving gun violence. The 1994 ban on assault rifles and high-capacity magazines is correlated with a drop in gun violence, but experts say that's largely due to other factors. It's equally as difficult to know what the effect of a new ban would be. One study from Johns Hopkins says that 80 percent of the handguns used in violent crimes came from unlicensed dealers, black market or otherwise. The honest truth of it all is that criminals who really want guns can get guns. And citizens can do the same. These days, criminals and citizens alike can even print illegal gun parts from the safety of their own homes.