Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 948

The E.U. Will Wait for the U.N. Before Acting in Syria

The European Union backed the U.S. plan to strike Syria in response to the chemical weapons attack that killed over 1,400 people on Saturday morning, but opted to play the long game and wait for the results from the team of U.N. inspectors before acting. 

All 28 countries that make up the E.U. released a joint statement Saturday condemning the Assad regime and supporting a potential military strike against Syria. "We were unanimous in condemning in the strongest terms this horrific attack. Information from a wide variety of sources confirms the existence of such an attack and seems to indicate strong evidence that the Syrian regime is responsible for this attack," E.U. foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said in the statement. "In the face of this cynical use of chemical weapons, the international community cannot remain idle. A clear and strong response is crucial to make clear that such crimes are unacceptable and that there will be no impunity." The statement came after a meeting Saturday morning with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, of course. 

There's "more and more evidence that the Assad regime is behind all these crimes. We can’t just ignore this," Lithuanian foreign minister Linas Linkevicius told reporters after the meeting.

The endorsement is a big one, though, considering many countries were initially reluctant to support a military strike. Germany declined to sign the joint statement released Friday from 11 G20 countries calling for an international response. (Reuters has a great page set up keeping track of where every G20 country stands on a military strike.) France was one of the U.S.'s first supporters, but on Friday president Francois Hollande announced he would wait for the U.N. inspector's reports before taking any action. That move likely played a great influence on the rest of the E.U.'s decision. The U.N. reports won't be out for another week, at least. 

Obama continued his push domestically to sell U.S. citizens on his "limited" military strike in Syria on Saturday during his weekly video address. "This would not be another Iraq or Afghanistan," Obama said. "Any action we take would be limited, both in time and scope - designed to deter the Syrian government from gassing its own people again and degrade its ability to do so." An Israeli diplomat told The Economist the plan for an American strike is to "open the Southern road," so to speak, so rebels who control much of the Southern part of the country can take Damascus. 

That would be in line with what Obama has been promising all along, but it's worth paying special attention ahead of the President's big speech on Tuesday. Obama will lay out his case for a military strike again -- on top of contributions from Secretary of State John Kerry and U.N. ambassador Samantha Power. 

       

Michael Bloomberg Calls Bill de Blasio's Campaign 'Racist'

According to outgoing New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, the campaign to replace him from Bill de Blasio is racist because the Democratic candidate keeps yakking on and on about his family, who happen to be black. 

If your reaction to that stunning bit of logic was "wait, what," then you're in line with those who were astounded after reading New York's interview with the mayor released Saturday morning. As time ticks down on Bloomberg's career at City Hall, every major media publication in New York is getting a crack at an exit interview with mayor, and they all mention the countdown clock in his office right off the bat. New York's Chris Smith spoke with Bloomberg about New York, class divide, Bloomberg's biggest problems in office, his legacy, and what he thinks of those hoping to succeed him as the Big Apple's mayor.

And that's where Bloomberg made some news this morning, because -- surprise, surprise -- the mayor who thinks the number one solution to poverty is courting new, rich Russian citizens doesn't like the campaign from the guy running a campaign actually supporting the lower classes. Smith mentioned that Bill de Blasio, the current mayoral front runner, was running a "class-warfare" campaign, and was about to connect that as a refutation on Bloomberg's tenure in office when Bloomberg cut him off. The mayor had to correct him: "Class-warfare and racist," he said. "Racist?" Smith asked. The mayor explained his feelings: 

I mean he’s making an appeal using his family to gain support. I think it’s pretty obvious to anyone watching what he’s been doing. I do not think he himself is racist. It’s comparable to me pointing out I’m Jewish in attracting the Jewish vote. You tailor messages to your audiences and address issues you think your audience cares about.

But his whole campaign is that there are two different cities here. And I’ve never liked that kind of division. The way to help those who are less fortunate is, number one, to attract more very fortunate people. They are the ones that pay the bills. The people that would get very badly hurt here if you drive out the very wealthy are the people he professes to try to help. Tearing people apart with this “two cities” thing doesn’t make any sense to me. It’s a destructive strategy for those you want to help the most. He’s a very populist, very left-wing guy, but this city is not two groups, and if to some extent it is, it’s one group paying for services for the other.

It’s a shame, because I’ve always thought he was a very smart guy.

[image error]So because de Blasio campaign with his family, who happen to be black, he is running a racist campaign. At right is de Blasio campaigning with his son, Dante, who has become something of a local celebrity during the campaign. Bill de Blasio is not a racist, but his campaign is, because his family is black. Right. Got it. That makes perfect sense, Bloomberg, somewhere -- maybe in Candyland. People are now trying to wrap their heads around how Bloomberg could possibly think de Blasio's campaign is racist: 

I don't think Mayor Bloomberg understands what the word "racist" means.

— Anna Holmes (@AnnaHolmes) September 7, 2013

Racist: Letting people know you have a personal connection to stop and frisk. Not racist: Stopping black people 2.3 million times since 2004

— AdamSerwer (@AdamSerwer) September 7, 2013

This Bloomberg “racist” charge is hard to figure. Also, splitting the black vote was key to his 05 reelect. http://t.co/VpPxPQSSGh

— Ben Smith (@BuzzFeedBen) September 7, 2013

Racist: Letting people know you have a personal connection to stop and frisk. Not racist: Stopping black people 2.3 million times since 2004

— AdamSerwer (@AdamSerwer) September 7, 2013

Just so I'm clear, Mayor Bloomberg: is it racist for a white dude to marry a black woman, or only if he tells us about it?

— delrayser (@delrayser) September 7, 2013

Did Bloomberg just call @BilldeBlasio racist for campaigning with his mixed race family? For real? http://t.co/rTVfgEVGLR

— Glenn Thrush (@GlennThrush) September 7, 2013

I wonder if Bloomberg would draw any distinction between "appealing to African American voters" and "racist."

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) September 7, 2013

If you want to know who Bloomberg would like to see succeed him, well, he's sort of staying mum on that front. In a way. Sort of. Bloomberg endorsed The New York Times' endorsements of Democrat Christine Quinn, his old pal, and Republican Joe Lhota, the former MTA chief. "I thought the Times was right in their editorials on Lhota and Quinn. I’m very pleased about that," he said prior to his criticizing de Blasio. 

Bloomberg's comments on de Blasio's "class-warfare" campaign are less shocking when you read everything that preceded them. Smith and Bloomberg discussed class divide in New York, the mayor's cozy relationship with Wall Street, and how he chose to help the middle class while in office. Bloomberg explained his strategy was always to court the rich so they can pay more taxes and help the poor, and how that's how his predecessor should operate, too. Bring the rich to the city so they can subsidize programs that help lower classes. "Who’s paying our taxes? We pay the highest school costs in the country. It comes from the wealthy!," Bloomberg said at one point, before offering this defense (emphasis added):

We have an $8.5 billion budget for our Police Department. We’re the safest big city in the country—stop me when you get bored with this! Life expectancy is higher here than in the rest of the country—who’s paying for that? We want these people to come here, and it’s not our job to say that they’re over- or underpaid. I might not pay them the same thing if it was my company—maybe I’d pay them more, I don’t know. All I know is from the city’s point of view, we want these people, and why criticize them? Wouldn’t it be great if we could get all the Russian billionaires to move here?

So does this mean Bloomberg is secretly a Brooklyn Nets fan?

The whole interview is worth the read. Bloomberg defends the controversial Stop and Frisk policy, says the judge who ruled it unconstitutional was "just wrong," talks about the 2016 presidential race, gives his thoughts on Obama's presidency, and talks about "legacy media" and what he would do with the New York Post. "I would try and upscale it, and that's what would destroy it," he says. At least he's right about one thing. 

       

Sorry, Dennis Rodman Doesn't Care About Kenneth Bae

Dennis Rodman is very good at basketball and being friends with a repressive dictator. But don't ask him to, like, rescue a fellow American being held captive by his best repressive dictator friend, because that's not his job. That's for "assholes" like Obama and Hillary Clinton, according to the former NBA player. 

Rodman somehow made it back alive from his most recent trip to North Korea, where he was somehow not thrown into a gulag by his "friend for life," the reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Rodman flew into Beijing, China on Saturday. Rodman spent five days in Pyongyang during his second trip to North Korea this year. This one came together after the State Department's planned trip to North Korea -- their first in two years -- fell apart at the last minute.

While Rodman's last trip came when North Korea was threatening to nuke literally everyone else in the world, this trip came while American citizen Kenneth Bae, 45, has been imprisoned since November. He was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in a North Korean prison camp for "hostile acts" in April. Bae was an evangelical missionary and tour operator prior to his arrest. North Korea accused him of distributing material that they believe was going to help fuel a Christian takeover of the country. 

So did Rodman use his sway with Jong-un, who he
    

The Very Worst Syria Analogies

It's hard to get Americans interested in another country's civil war, and this has held true for Syria. To compensate, some people have tried to get creative with their arguments. Too creative. 

Some arguments are stronger than others. And some seem a little half-hearted — at The National Review, Larry Kudlow argues that while it would be bad for America to look weak by not bombing Syria, it would have the perk of derailing Obama's domestic policy agenda. But the weakest are the ones that try to punch up the Syrian conflict by throwing in an analogy to a topical story people are more likely to click on, something that involves child rape, or teen murder, or leftists paranoia about agricultural chemicals. Here are the worst topical analogies for Syria:

[image error]If Obama doesn't bomb Syria ...

... then America is like a bystander to Penn State child rapist Jerry Sandusky

If McQueary had intervened, he could not be sure what he was getting himself into. So he concluded he should not enter the shower area alone. I’d guess he would have acted differently in the boy being molested was his son. But he wasn’t. So McQueary left.

That logic is similar to those who say we shouldn’t intervene in Syria.

President Obama and other politicians argue that we should not stand by while a bully picks on innocent people, even if those people are not Americans.

Comparing your ideological opponents to the villains of the Jerry Sandusky story, a la EJ Montini of AZCentral, might be an effective image, but little else. For one thing, the analogy relies on the idea of stopping an ongoing, specific atrocity, while the U.S.'s intent and capability for military action is this point is more or less a retaliation for something that's already happened. But, painting all non-interventionists as indirectly complicit in child molestation (which, by the way, is not even a fair use of McQueary) is a pretty sure-fire way to stop any cocktail conversation on Obama's proposal. 

[image error]If Obama bombs Syria...

... then America is like George Zimmerman

"Where Syria Is Concerned Let’s Not Become a Global George Zimmerman," Hrafnkell Haraldsson writes at Politics USA, comparing us to a self-appointed neighborhood watchman who shot an unarmed teenager. Haraldsson suggests an interesting thought experiment:

Ask yourself this: if the U.S. government used chemical weapons on American citizens, would we want Russian or Chinese troops to step in and overthrow our government?

Well, probably yes, right? British troops at least? 

In the end, just as one man’s good is another man’s evil, one man’s hero is another man’s bully, and by intervening in Syria we run the risk of being a George Zimmerman — who saw something he didn’t like in HIS neighborhood and eradicated it — writ large, a George Zimmerman on a global scale.

We might note that unlike Trayvon Martin, Syrian President Bashar al Assad is armed with more than Skittles.

[image error]If Obama doesn't bomb Syria ...

... then Syria is just like Kitty Genovese

A historical parallel for the Syrian Civil War is the Spanish Civil War, Boulder Weekly's Paul Danish writes. "There is also a good moral parallel for how the Western world has reacted to the Syrian civil war: Kitty Genovese’s neighbors." Who? Danish explains the famous story:

Kitty Genovese was a 28-year-old woman who lived in Queens, New York. In the wee hours of March 13, 1964, she was attacked by a street thug while walking from her car to her apartment. He repeatedly stabbed her. As she lay dying, he raped and robbed her. Her neighbors, dozens of them, ignored her screams. No one came to her assistance or even called the cops for more than half an hour.

This is a frequently told story, however it is a myth. Police did not find dozens of witnesses, but about six. People did try to help. Setting that aside...

Obama’s problem is that for the past two and a half years he’s been telling the country that the morality of Kitty Genovese’s neighbors should be the moral foundation of American foreign policy toward Syria: It’s none of our business.

The problem with this parallel — even if the Genovese myth were true — is that Obama has very much made it our business by arming and training Syrian rebels. What is being debated now is whether an airstrike on Syria will save Syrian Kitty Genoveses or cause the deaths of thousands more.

If Obama bombs Syria ...

… then Obama should bomb abortion clinics.

Hard to take lectures on morality re Syria by people OK with infanticide via abortion.

— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) September 3, 2013

America's most pro- #abortion president ever wants to bomb #Syria for using chemical warfare. Surely he knows how chemical abortions work.

— Lila Rose (@LilaGraceRose) September 4, 2013

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Or as one of our right-wing email forwarders who wrote at the top of an Erick Erickson column:

Obama and his lapdogs would like us to believe it's patriotic for Obama to attack Assad for allegedly funding and authorizing the use of chemical weapons on 2,000 of his own people. Wouldn't it then be acceptable for Assad or any other Country to attack Obama for actually funding and authorizing the abortions of 4,500,000 of his own people?

OK. This one's more about drawing attention to abortion by inserting a popular conservative meme into the conversation: asking about abortion any time a liberal finds something morally objectionable. LifeNews went a bit deeper with this comparison, applied to DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz: 

It is an unimaginable tragedy and utter injustice that hundreds of Syrian children appear to have died at the hands of the man who is designated to look out for their welfare. Wasserman Shultz overlooked fundamental flaw in her argument when she observed America’s moral responsibility to respond: Wasserman Shultz has spent her career ensuring that chemical and other forms of death continue to be protected by law and carried out on the babies in her own country.

[image error]If Obama bombs Syria ...

… then Obama should bomb Monsanto.

Rodale CEO Maria Rodale made the common case that Obama should turn his attention to bigger problems at home. What made Rodale's argument unusual was that she claimed forcing people to eat non-organic food is exactly the same as being gassed to death. She wrote for The Huffington Post on Wednesday:

Yes, Syria has undoubtedly used chemical weapons on its own people. Maybe it was the government; maybe it was the opposition; maybe you know for sure. But here's what I know for sure: We are no better. We have been using chemical weapons on our own children -- and ourselves -- for decades, the chemical weapons we use in agriculture to win the war on pests, weeds, and the false need for ever greater yields.

She demands action — against pesticide producers:

We've been trying to tell you for years that chemical companies like Monsanto, Syngenta, Dow, DuPont, Bayer Crops Sciences, and others are poisoning our children and our environment with your support and even, it seems, your encouragement. Just because their bodies aren't lined up wrapped in sheets on the front pages of the newspapers around the world doesn't mean it's not true.

As with the abortion argument, this is more about drawing attention to a pet cause than advocating for or against intervention in Syria. 

If Obama doesn't bomb Syria ...

… then we haven't learned the lessons from Munich in 1938. 

This one comes from John Kerry, who told a conference call of House Democrats that the decision to intervene in Syria was a "Munich moment," referencing the accord between Adolf Hitler and Britain's Prime Minister Neville Chamberlin. Kerry has also repeatedly listed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein as the three big users of chemical weapons against their own people. 

As the Atlantic previously explained, the analogy doesn't work for all sorts of reasons — in part, because the standard set by the analogy would lead us into many, many more wars. 

       

The Recent History of Oval Office Speeches Making the Case for War

Next Tuesday, President Obama will make the case for a military attack on Syria from the White House. Every president since Reagan has made an Oval Office pitch for military action — with varying results.

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A poll released by Gallup on Friday suggests that the conflict in Syria is more unpopular than any other similar conflict since the airstrikes on Kosovo and the Balkans under President Clinton. The comparison isn't precise; Gallup took the numbers closest to the start of other conflicts and compared them to Syria today — almost certainly not the polling closest to the strikes.

Tuesday's address stems from the fact that Obama's hopes for congressional approval for any action lies primarily in persuading the American people that action is necessary. Below, we've collected four examples of similar speeches, making the case for military action, along with the polling before and after the conflict began, according to Gallup. This is not before and after the speech, mind you — but serves as an interesting proxy.

Libya

Speech date: April 14, 1986
Before poll: None
After poll: April 18, 1986

President Ronald Reagan's speech announced strikes on Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi. Gallup didn't have polling from shortly before the conflict began, but, as you can see, the strikes were broadly popular after the fact. Reagan himself had a job approval of about 62 percent, but support may also be in part due to the broad success of the vaguely-defined mission. One American fighter was shot down and its crew killed.

Iraq I

Speech date: January 17, 1991
Before poll: January 13, 1991
After poll: January 16, 1991

President George H. W. Bush's speech announcing strikes on Iraqi forces at the start of Desert Storm came after the conflict began. It also came after several months of American military presence in Saudi Arabia focused on Saddam Hussein's occupation of Kuwait. Among the goals Bush mentions: knocking out Hussein's nuclear weapons program and destroying his chemical weapons facilities.

Kosovo

Speech date: March 24, 1999
Before poll: February 21, 1999
After poll: May 2, 1999

President Bill Clinton made his case for "diffus[ing] a powder keg at the heart of Europe that has exploded twice before in this century." The action was nearly as unpopular shortly before it began as action in Syria is today; after the strikes had begun, public opinion didn't change much.

Iraq II

Speech date: March 19, 2003
Before poll: February 26, 2003
After poll: March 20, 2003

President George W. Bush's announcement of the start of strikes came on the tail end of a big uptick in popular support. In February, prior to the first poll Gallup lists, Colin Powell made his presentation to the UN arguing for support from the body for an invasion. Gallup notes that, while that wasn't successful, Bush had successfully lobbied Congress for authority. The most popular actions on its list all had some sort of external approval: "[The] conflicts, in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Persian Gulf, were authorized by Congress and/or the United Nations at the time of the polling."

Syria [image error]

Speech date: September 10, 2013
Before poll: September 4, 2013
After poll: None

How Obama's pitch for action fares in the aftermath of his speech next week remains to be determined. He's in something of an inverse position from Bush in 2003 — needing the public to sway the Congress, not relying on Congressional sign-off to move the public. As Gallup notes, his position is far more similar to Clinton's than any other recent president. He can only hope any action goes similarly smoothly.

       

The New Yorker Turns Against Football

The day after the opening game of the NFL season, The New Yorker published two separate articles lamenting the problems caused by football. This, of course, comes from the magazine that employs Malcolm Gladwell, the best-selling author who once compared football to dogfighting and has been a vocal opponent of football's violence. In other words, it feels like The New Yorker is exercising some unnecessary roughness.

The NFL and college football seasons open in earnest this week, in time for which occasion The New Yorker ratcheted up its criticisms of the sport today, essentially blaming football for the death of author Jack Kerouac and the problems of American education.

In the former story, for the Sporting Scene blog, Ian Scheffler details the potential impacts of football on author Jack Kerouac's angry alcoholism and early death at age 47. Kerouac himself blamed those mental issues on other events, including a drunken street fight during which his head was slammed into the curb. "I just noticed today it all began last April right after that bum pounded my brain ... Maybe I got brain damage," Kerouac wrote in a letter. "[M]aybe once I was kind drunk, but now am brain-clogged drunk with the kindness valve clogged by injury." In addition, Kerouac noted in his journal the problems could have been caused by a violent car accident that sent him to the hospital. For Kerouac, the case was one of those two.

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Conspicuously not mentioned in Kerouac's explanation was his football-playing childhood during a time before sideline doctors, before knowledge that repeated hits could cause chronic tramautic encephalopathy (CTE), even before helmets were used.

In his autobiography, Kerouac wrote about one play that sounds an awful lot like a football-caused concussion. As Scheffler writes:

About to score, he feels a pull at the back of his neck—one of his opponents grabbing him by the shoulder pads and yanking him to the muddy turf. He loses consciousness. Once he wakes up, his coaches deem him fit to return to the game. Standing in the huddle, he asks himself, “What are we doing on this rainy field that tilts over in the earth, the earth is crooked, where am I? Who am I? What’s all that?”

Was Jack Kerouac's early death caused by football concussions? It's an intriguing question and one that certainly plays into many of the criticisms of football today. It's also entirely conjecture and speculation, though that doesn't stop Scheffler from trying to answer it:

“Kerouac had all of the symptoms of C.T.E.,” Robert Cantu, a neurosurgeon and co-director of Boston University’s Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy, told me. “I don’t think it’s possible, especially since you cannot be certain about the presence of C.T.E. without examining somebody’s brain, to other than speculate about whether he may have had some of his issues as a result of brain trauma. My gut feeling is he did.”

Scheffler talks to other doctors and spokespeople that repeat a similar story — Kerouac's many head injuries could have expedited his alcoholism and led to his death. Football being foremost among those injuries.

But football's biggest problem isn't just concussions, as The New Yorker points out in a highly opinionated post titled, "Have Sports Teams Brought Down America's Schools?" The answer is to be expected. Places with better math and reading programs than America — countries ranging from Poland to South Korea to Singapore — also don't have football (or many sports programs at all, for that matter).

Coincidence? Elizabeth Kolbert says probably not. Citing a recent book by Amanda Ripley, The Smartest Kids in the World, Kolbert notes that American parents and students preferred the emphasis on sports in schools and teamwork that the culture emphasizes. “Even wealthy American parents didn’t care about math as much as football,” Ripley concluded.

The issues football must deal with continue to grow, from concussions to its friction with education. Those are fair points for The New Yorker to bring up. But one could also wonder if — especially given Gladwell's incendiary statements about the sport — some of its writers harbor an unfounded bias against the sort.

       

One Direction's New Album Revealed

Today in showbiz news: The world's biggest boy band is releasing another record, Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Hiddleston switch places, and big news for The Fault In Our Stars fans.

If you noticed a pack of middle school girls running down your street, mouths frothing, eyes wide and crazed, screaming like banshees as they tore across the land, don't worry. It's not zombie time. We're safe for another day. All it is is that One Direction has announced their new album. It is called Midnight Memories, a very funny title for an album by a bunch of small children, and they it will be coming out on November 25. Band member Liam Payne says this new album goes in a "very rock direction," which should be silly. The whole thing will be silly. Midnight Memories. Right. OK. Said the 4-year-old. All those midnight memories these boys, all of 12, have. Very funny, fellas. Very funny indeed. But they should be careful. This is their third album. 'N Sync only got three albums before they went bye bye bye. And Backstreet Boys got four. The end could be near, lads. [Entertainment Weekly]

Haha, this is funny. Benedict Cumberbatch had to drop out of Guillermo del Toro's next movie, the haunted house movie Crimson Peak, so who'd they get to replace him? Tom Hiddleston. Ha! "Cumberbatch can't do it? All right, get the other one. Y'know, the other one. Who isn't Cumberbatch but basically is. See if he's free." And they did and he was and now Tom Hiddleston is in the movie. Very funny. And they're friends in real life! It's all perfect. Very good, movies. Very good indeed. [
    

Why We Lie About Reading Great Books

More than 60 percent of people pretend to have read books they haven't, according to a recent survey. And based on what we've learned in the past, we all lie about reading the same books over and over, for a number of reasons.

For instance, 26 percent of the Brits polled in this most recent survey fibbed about reading George Orwell's 1984. And last year, when a few New York Times staffers wrote up a confessional post, two more people admitted to never having read Orwell's most famous work. “Actually, I’m sort of convinced that most people who reference this book have never actually read it," wrote one anonymous staffer. A 2009 survey to mark World Book Day found that 42 percent of people have lied about reading 1984, and it also ranked 6th on Book Riot's poll of books people say they've read but haven't. 

Besides hinting that, more often than not, you shouldn't trust anyone who claims to have read Orwell cover to cover, we seem to be preoccupied with lying about having read the same sort of works. Pride & Prejudice, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights appear on several lists; then there are the impossibly long (often Russian) tomes like War and Peace, Crime and Punishment and Infinite Jest (aka Infinite Struggle); as for highly esoteric works like JR, Finnegans Wake and Molloy, frankly, it's pretty safe to assume the person is lying about finishing, especially if they claim to have enjoyed the darn thing.

These same books appear over and over in the polls mentioned above, but what the polls don't answer is reason for all this literary dishonesty. Why do we lie about reading books?

The most recent poll, released to promote The Big Bang Theory's season 6 DVD, would have us believe it's as simple as people wanting to appear intelligent. "The most popular ruse [to seem more intellectual is] pretending to have read classic novels, with 42 per cent of people relying on film and TV adaptations, or summaries found online, to feign knowledge of the novels," the study reports. That's all well and good, but if you're trying to impress people by lying about reading books assigned in most high school English classes — 15 percent of those surveyed lied about reading Catcher in the Rye, for goodness sake — you should really, really rethink that. 

Another theory is that people lie because other people lie. Shalom Auslander, author of Hope: a Tragedy, argues in The Telegraph that there are certain books no one has read ever. He writes: 

The great thing about these books is that not only does everyone agree they’re great, but nobody has ever read them. James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (1939) is perhaps the best example. Nobody, I don’t care what they say, has ever read this book; I don’t even think Joyce read it. David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (1996) is another one. Dead giveaway: “I liked Infinite Jest, but I liked (insert other DFW book here hoping to change the subject) better.” Have you read Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves (2000)? Bulls---. You’ve read of it, sure, but you haven’t read it. Dead giveaway: everyone who says they read it says the same thing: “It’s this multilayered narrative about this manuscript, and this documentary; you really should read it.” Tolstoy’s War and Peace (1869) isn’t a difficult read – there are no swirling lines of type or footnotes on footnotes. It’s just that it’s 1,300 pages, and no you didn’t. 

Again, there are elements of truth here, but it's a little extreme. Someone somewhere out there swears he or she got through The Recognition — and means it. We are sure at least seven such people exist in the United States.

Elizabeth Menkel, writing for The New Yorker's Page Turner blog in 2011, has a different theory. Reading big books, and lying about reading those books, is all part of some mental competition. As she puts it: 

On one hand, we have big, painful books we feel compelled to see through to the end. On the other, the books we’ve sort of read and glibly lie about having finished. Both of these seem tied to some sort of reading scorecard, one in which the readers are measured and judged by—perhaps even more than—the books that they’ve read.

Menkel goes on to write that, "good books, no matter what their length, should suck you in and change the way you read, momentarily or, in the very best cases, permanently."

In other words, read what you love and love what you read. As for pretending that you just couldn't put down Finnegans Wake, best not to even try.

(Image via Shutterstock/
    

Harper Lee Drops Suit Against Literary Agent

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Harper Lee, the octogenarian  author of To Kill a Mockingbird, has decided to no longer pursue litigation against Samuel Pinkus, her erstwhile agent, whom she accused of trying to steal the copyright of her celebrated coming-of-age tale.

"We have reached a mutually satisfactory resolution," Pinkus's lawyer told the New York Daily News. 

Lee had filed a suit  — now dropped — against former agent Pinkus and his associates earlier this year. She accused Pinkus of essentially forcing an ailing Lee to transfer the copyright to him while she was in an assisted living facility. Lee, who's 87, was recovering from a stroke in 2007, when the events described in the suit supposedly took place.

The suit claims that the author had "no recollection of having discussed" transferring the copyright to Pinkus. "Pinkus knew that Harper Lee was an elderly woman with physical infirmities that made it difficult for her to read and see."

Once Pinkus got the copyright, he is alleged to have "moved the copyright around through various companies he created, making it hard for Lee to track," according to a description of the suit in the News. (Lee won back the copyright in a different legal action last year.) 

Carolyn Kellogg at the Los Angeles Times points out how well Mockingbird continues to sell — almost 750,000 copies a year, fifty years after it was published. It was the only novel Lee ever wrote. As such, the battle over its legacy — described at length in this excellent Vanity Fair article — represents what looks to have been a crass attempt to divert proceeds from one of the great creations of American literature.

"All the concerns have been addressed," Pinkus's lawyer told the News. We certainly hope so.

Photo via Associated Press.

       

What Obama Will Say When He Addresses the Nation on Tuesday

As a growing number of lawmakers speak out against military action in Syria, President Obama will address the nation on Tuesday to lay out his arguments for striking the Assad regime over its chemical-weapons use.

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While Secretary of State John Kerry and other administration officials have attempted to convince members of Congress in the last week that the appropriate course of action is to give the president the authority to use limited airstrikes. But Obama has faced criticism not only from Republicans but also from members of his own Democratic Party who face a war-weary public back home.

Now, Obama is taking his case straight to those constituents. Speaking to reporters on Friday, the president hinted at the arguments he will make in his address from the White House next week.

"The kind of world we live in and our ability to deter this kind of outrageous behavior is going to depend on the decisions that we make in the days ahead," Obama said in a press conference at the G-20 summit in St. Petersburg.

What are those arguments?

This is not just about Syria. It's about international norms.

The Assad's regime brazen use of chemical weapons isn't just a Syrian tragedy. It's a threat to global peace and security.

The chemical-weapons attack was so horrific it deserves a strong response.

You know, over 1,400 people were gassed. Over 400 of them were children. This is not something we have fabricated. This is not something we are looking or using as an excuse for military action.

Obama has spent his presidency trying to end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but military action is needed sometimes.

I was elected to end wars, not start them. I've spent the last four and a half years doing everything I can to reduce our reliance on military power as a means of meeting our international obligations and protecting the American people. But what I also know, there are times where we have to make hard choices if we are going to stand up for the things we care about, and I believe that this is one of those times.

We cannot go through a broken United Nations.

It is my view, and a view that was shared by a number of people in the room, that given Security Council paralysis on this issue, if we are serious about upholding a ban on chemical-weapons use, then an international response is required and that will not come through Security Council action.

Some argue that a response would be too little, too late. He disagrees.

We may not solve the whole problem, but this particular problem of using chemical weapons on children, this one we might have an impact on and that is worth acting on. That is important to us.

Military intervention in other nations has been unpopular throughout history, but it was the right thing to do.

When London was getting bombed, it was profoundly unpopular, both in Congress and around the country, to help the British. It doesn't mean it wasn't the right thing to do. It just means people are struggling with jobs and bills to pay and they don't want their sons or daughters put in entanglements far away are dangerous and different. To bring the analogy closer to home, the intervention in Kosovo, very unpopular, but, ultimately I think it was the right thing to do and the international community should be glad that it came together to do it. When people say that it is a terrible stain on all of us, that hundreds of thousands of people were slaughtered in Rwanda, imagine if Rwanda was going on right now and we asked should we intervene in Rwanda? I think it's fair to say it probably wouldn't hold real well.