Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 250

Soviet Union 2.0?

The Eurasian Economic Union was officially founded last week with a treaty signed by Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. Casey Michel doubts the new institution will do much to shake up the world order:

Modeled on the European Union’s economic constructs, the new union will represent a market of 170 million, and will boast a total GDP of nearly $3 trillion. The EEU will serve as the maturation of the current customs union shared by the three nations, and will allow further economic integration — increased free movement of goods, streamlined trade regulation, unified macroeconomic policy — between member states. And the EEU has potential to keep growing. If Putin somehow manages to woo the remaining post-Soviet (non-Baltic) nations, the EEU’s market could jump to some 300 million members and just under $4 trillion in combined GDP.

But that swell is far from plausible. Even before the EEU became official, members had many doubts about its benefits. Kazakhstan, Central Asia’s most dynamic economy, has failed to procure the expected benefit from membership in the customs union, and the EEU looks to continue the trend. Involvement with the current customs union has continued to delay Kazakhstan’s accession to the World Trade Organization, with the WTO citing “discrepancies” surrounding the external tariffs that will continue under the EEU. Meanwhile, Russia joined the WTO on its own, rather than as the bloc originally proposed.

Beauchamp is also skeptical, calling the union “weak and doomed”:

[I]f this is really Putin’s big plan, Brussels can probably breathe easy. The Eurasian Union is weak. It’s not much more threatening than Russia on its own is — which is to say, far less threatening than people seem to think.

Let’s start with wealth, the simplest point. Even including the two countries who haven’t joined yet but plan to — Armenia and Kyrgyzstan — the Eurasian Union mounts about a sixth of the European Union’s GDP. The vast majority of that wealth comes from Russia, so it’s not like Putin is getting access to huge new markets by signing this deal.

What’s more, Russia’s economy is suffering mightily in the wake of its Ukraine adventure: Western sanctions have sent its stock exchange and the value of its currency against the dollar in free fall. There’s just no way an expanded economic relationship with a series of much smaller countries could help Russia weather more economic punishment if it decides to expand its expansionist ambitions in Ukraine or outside of it.

Today’s Online Journalism Update, Ctd

A reader writes:

Regarding your brief reference to Copyranter’s piece on native ads, I’m more than a little shocked you didn’t focus on the other parts of his piece that seem to perfectly validate many of the accusations you’ve made against sponsored content and Buzzfeed’s business model. Here is how Copyranter characterizes the company’s ad strategy (and let’s not forget this is coming from a bonafide ad expert who wrote copy for 20 years):

… BuzzFeed’s native advertising runs directly against what makes a great ad great—an execution that memorably presents a product benefit (or the brand’s image). A great ad stands out and grabs you and entertains and informs you while delivering a message you remember, branding the brand’s name into your brain.

But more and more big brands are robotically onboard the BuzzFeed buzz saw, because they get to attach their commercials at the end of listicle posts that have nothing to do with their product’s benefit and, often, have nothing to do with their product at all (click the Kia ad). But lost-at-sea marketing managers get to show off an online thingamajig to their bosses with their brand name on it that has tens, and sometimes hundreds, of thousands of views. “Look at that viral lift, baby, massive eyeballs!”

And your readers should check out this completely damning personal account regarding Buzzfeed’s professed separation of their editorial and business departments:

But really: How “seriously” does BuzzFeed take the “separation of church and state?” During my 18 months working in their editorial department as an ad critic —what I was hired to be—I (the “state”) was emailed three times by three different staff account reps (the “church”) to “do anything I could” to help promote a new video ad by a then current BuzzFeed client. I was even emailed by Peretti (the “Pope”) to post about a Pepsi ad, where he helpfully included a suggested (positive) editorial direction.

As I was still fairly new at BuzzFeed, I figured I had to do the Pepsi post, right? I didn’t like the ad, I didn’t hate the ad, I would not have reviewed the ad, but the fucking CEO sent it to me! I wrote about it, positively, and posted it.

Later that same day, my post went to the front page, and there it sat, right below a “yellow” “featured partner” ad post about the same Pepsi video—written by a BuzzFeed in-house creative—with the same exact take on the ad. The headlines were even almost identical. Did Peretti know about the in-house ad? I don’t know. Ask him.

Sorry, I didn’t save a screen shot of this rather egregious church/state violation, or the email from Peretti, because I don’t think like a scumbag lawyer when I’m working for somebody. But I did delete my Pepsi post, immediately. It seemed the Mad Men thing to do.

The View From Your Window

Newport, Rhode Island, 4.22 pm

18 19 20

Oregon, Pennsylvania …

VICTORY IN WISCONSIN! Marriage ban has been STRUCK DOWN!

— JoeMyGod (@JoeMyGod) June 6, 2014

And DC makes 21. But:

No same-sex couples marrying immediately in Wisconsin, as I detail here: http://t.co/MDMZeCD8Gr

— Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner) June 6, 2014

Once again RT @ryanjreilly: There are 12 (!) Scalia references in Wisconsin gay marriage decision http://t.co/UsCaZnvwut

— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) June 6, 2014

Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) actually gets three references in Wisconsin gay marriage decision. http://t.co/xx0P2bEy2x

— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) June 6, 2014

Federal judge in #Wisconsin rules for the @freedomtomarry. 15th federal judge in a row.

— Evan Wolfson (@evanwolfson) June 6, 2014

“Traditional Masculinity Has To Die” Ctd

Douthat belatedly pushes back against DeBoer’s declaration that the “association of male value with aggression, dominance, and power is one of the most destructive forces in the world, and so it has to be destroyed”:

[H]e’s making an argument about “traditional masculinity” as something distinct from “sexism,” as a cultural problem unto itself — an unworkable model for male aspiration, a life-ruining ideal, that straitjackets today’s young men with its toxic, sex-and-violence-saturated demands.

And I just don’t quite know what he’s talking about, because in our culture — Western, English-speaking, American — the traditional iconography of masculine heroism doesn’t really resemble this “Grand Theft Auto”/”Scarface” description at all. I mean, yes, if the “tradition” you have in mind is Pashtun honor killings, then I agree, traditional masculinity would be better off extinct. But where American society is concerned, when I look at the sewers of misogyny or the back alleys of “bro” culture, I mostly see men in revolt against both feminism and our culture’s older images of masculine strength and self-possession, not men struggling to inhabit the latter tradition, or live up to its impossible/immoral demands.

I’m with Ross on this one, and largely because I’m convinced that many of the traits that Freddie wants to eliminate are integral to any creature, male or female, with high levels of testosterone. Now perhaps it’s worth elaborating on that a bit. The thing about testosterone is that it is affected by environment and can diminish in certain contexts. One of those contexts is fatherhood:

Among all of the fathers [studied], testosterone levels fell right after birth, and men who showed greater concern for and responsiveness to baby stimuli or had couvade symptoms [morning sickness] had larger drops in testosterone and larger increases in cortisol and prolactin. Men’s hormone levels correlated with their partners’; that is, in a man, testosterone and fellow travelers respond to the biosocial context—in this case the partner’s hormonal state.

There’s also evidence that marriage also lowers testosterone. In other words, it is possible to use culture to shift underlying biology to some extent. The disciplines of fatherhood, responsibility, marriage, domestication: all these help mitigate the ordeal of maleness. At the same time, the huge gap in testosterone levels between men and women means that the core reality will never go away: aggression, risk-taking, egotism are just part of the male package, to be mitigated but never erased.

And that’s why I have a core objection to the attempt to abolish what makes men different. In many ways, it’s an attack on our nature, a position of extreme prejudice against the essence of maleness. Yes, it’s sexist, demonizing an entire group of people for something over which they have no ultimate control. And I’m kinda tired of it, to be honest. Yes, it’s vital that male impulses be channeled and disciplined and educated in ways they tragically are not. But it’s also possible, even necessary, to celebrate male identity, to see in much of it the dynamism that fuels our societies and families and lives. Testosterone exists as the sole real distinction between men and women. And we would be far worse off without it.

Earlier Dish on the Freddie’s post here and here.

Mental Health Break

Lil cats get crunk to Lil Jon:

Pulverizing Peaks

China is leveling hundreds of inconveniently placed mountains:

Entire mountaintops are being razed to fill in valleys, paving the way for future cities. The problem is that no one really knows what they’re doing. “[E]arth-moving on this scale without scientific support is folly,” warn three Chinese engineering professors in Nature.

As China plans to move 100 million rural people into cities, quick and dirty construction has become the norm. You see buildings that are barely finished fall apart. These mountain-moving projects are similarly hasty, but they’re being carried out on an even more massive scale by engineers with little experience in flattening mountains. What if, for example, a city built on unstable soil collapses in the rain? That’s a legitimate fear in Yan’an, just one of several cities being created on flattened land.

More on the phenomenon:

Mountaintop moving has been done before in strip mining, especially in the eastern United States. But it has never been carried out on this scale. In China, dozens of hills 100 to 150 meters in height are being flattened over hundreds of kilometers. Such infill has never been used for urban construction. There are no guidelines for creating land in the complex geological and hydrogeological conditions that are typical of mountainous zones.

A Villain With A Heart Of Gold

Bilge Ebiri isn’t sold on Disney’s multi-dimensional villains, epitomized by Angelina Jolie’s performance in Maleficent:

Disney’s recent move away from classic villains is, on some level, a good thing, in that it allows them to delve into some heretofore unexplored types of relationships, and to find psychological complexity where once there was none. But I can’t help but feel like something has been lost as well. The Evil Queen, Maleficent, the Coachman, Shere-Khan. We didn’t spend a lot of time getting to know them. They were mysterious, elemental, totemic. And so, we could fill them with our own fears. They were charismatic enough that we brought our own complexity to them. These bad guys also put our heroes into sharper focus: Try to imagine Snow White without the Evil Queen, Peter Pan without Captain Hook.

Devon Maloney also has misgivings about Maleficent:

Role reversals in fairy tale retellings like these, when wielded well, are tools of rehabilitation. They provide an alternative to boorish archetypes and flat concepts of “good and evil,” and they prompt children (and adults as well) to consider the nuances of morality. But rather than restructuring the stories, these new retellings simply swap the characters around. (In a great criticism of Frozen writer Kip Manley calls that structure “the Rules.”) Villains wind up with the exact same traits as their “good” nemeses; no discomfiting outlier behavior for them. Evil—actual, absolute evil—is always obliterated. Good women remain feminine and kind, and always morally understandable, as they should be, and the villainess almost always regrets the qualities that made her an outcast. By the end, she’s been absorbed into the very “happily ever after” template the retelling purported to subvert.

The Palinite Tendency And Bowe Bergdahl, Ctd

Gawker discovers some background for the Twitter outrage:

That’s only a year between indicting Obama for not bringing the guy home and indicting him for rescuing him! And there’s way more where that came from. And Michael Hastings, of course, predicted the political circus a year ago:

According to White House sources, Marc Grossman, who replaced Richard Holbrooke as special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, was given a direct warning by the president’s opponents in Congress about trading Bowe for five Taliban prisoners during an election year. “They keep telling me it’s going to be Obama’s Willie Horton moment,” Grossman warned the White House. The threat was as ugly as it was clear: The president’s political enemies were prepared to use the release of violent prisoners to paint Obama as a Dukakis-­like appeaser, just as Republicans did to the former Massachusetts governor during the 1988 campaign. In response, a White House official advised Grossman that he should ignore the politics of the swap and concentrate solely on the policy.

“Frankly, we don’t give a shit why he left,” says one White House official. “He’s an American soldier. We want to bring him home.”

And they did. And this is the Willie Horton moment we’ve all been waiting for. Stay classy, GOP.

How Many Obamacare Subsidies Are Wrong?

Data discrepancies afflict around 2 million Obamacare enrollments:

The biggest concern is that some people may have received too high a subsidy, meaning they’d be asked to repay the excess or lose their coverage.

Obama administration officials said they believed most of the inconsistencies will be cleared up over the summer, but said they’d developed a system to “turn off” benefits for people who aren’t eligible. “The fact that a consumer has an inconsistency on their application does not mean there is a problem on their enrollment,” Julie Bataille, the Department of Health and Human Services’ spokeswoman said. “Most of the time what that means is that there is more up-to-date information that they need to provide to us.”

Philip Klein is alarmed:

2.1 million represents a lot of sign-ups. Even if a “vast majority” of instances are easily resolved, that could still leave hundreds of thousands of cases in which individuals received incorrect subsidy determinations. If individuals received extra subsidy money, it would mean that they would have to pay it back in the following tax year. A higher-than-expected tax liability could become a mess for lower-income Americans who budgeted for the year based on certain assumptions.

Cohn is less concerned:

The idea is to verify applicant information, in real-time. And mostly that’s what happened during open enrollment, at least once all of the consumer websites were working. But because the process is so complicated—and because people’s life circumstances sometimes change—the information that people supplied didn’t always match up with federal records. That was particularly true for income, since the data hub checked applications against (two-year-old) tax returns and (one-year-old) payroll stubs. Somebody who recently lost a job or got a new one, or went through a major life change like a divorce, or whose income simply varies a lot from year to year, could easily supply income information that was totally accurate but simultaneously at odds with the government’s latest data.

The Affordable Care Act anticipates situations like these and addresses them. Rather than hold up those applications, creating a huge backlog and potentially scaring away people seeking insurance, Section 1411 of the law allows applicants to complete the enrollment process even if the information they submit doesn’t match up properly. In such cases, people may “attest” to the accuracy of the information they provided. If the data mismatch is about citizenship or residency—or if it is about income and of greater value than 10 percent—these people receive official notices, requiring them to provide new information or show that the original, submitted information is correct.