Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 2586
September 2, 2010
Protesting Too Much, Ctd
by Chris Bodenner
This footage of a razor-sharp Tea Party protester confronting Congressman Grayson over the healthcare bill is another must see:
She also brings out the best I've ever seen of Grayson, who usually comes across as a smug blowhard. You rarely see such exchanges on cable news, of course. A reader writes:
I'm not quite sure that I understand your reader's point in the Dissent of the Day. Apart from the fact that the interviewees are articulating their beliefs and opinions...
September 20th, "Everybody Pray for Hitchens Day"
by Patrick Appel
Christopher Hitchens has a new dispatch on his cancer. He seems to be in good humor. Hitchens tears to shreds a religous blogger who writes that "Hitchens getting terminal throat cancer [sic:] was God's revenge for him using his voice to blaspheme him." Hitch:
Almost all men get cancer of the prostate if they live long enough: it's an undignified thing but quite evenly distributed among saints and sinners, believers and unbelievers. If you maintain that god awards the...
Still Talking
by Patrick Appel
Steinglass hope alive:
[S:]omething happened yesterday that, to my recollection, has never happened before, at least not with such clarity: in the midst of direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, a deadly attack took place, and rather than call off the talks, both sides resolved to keep going. In fact, they both explicitly characterised the attack as an attempt to sabotage the talks, and insisted they wouldn't be sidetracked.
FP's Middle East...
Face Of The Day
by Chris Bodenner
A Dish reader sends a portrait he painted of Dina. Playwright Craig Lucas once said of her:
Once in a great long while, the planets align and all of nature conspires to come up with the previously unimaginable, the wondrous and newly beautiful, the awe inspiring. And some people are lucky enough to live in a time when such a creative vision appears in their midst. Now is such a time, we are the lucky ones, and Dina Martina is it.
Playwright - Craig Lucas - Dina...
The Tactical Fallacy
by Patrick Appel
Brendan Nyhan argues that the media often incorrectly "concludes that candidates won or lost because of their tactical choices."
The problem is that any reasonable political tactic chosen by professionals will tend to resonate in favorable political environments and fall flat in unfavorable political environments (compare Bush in '02 to Bush '06, or Obama in '08 to Obama in '09-'10). But that doesn't mean the candidates are succeeding or failing because of the tactics they are...
About My Job: The Indologist
A reader writes:
My field is Indology, the reconstruction and analysis of ancient and medieval India through the reconstruction and analysis of her texts. The first thing most people don't understand is what the discipline even is. Many think I mean etymology, the study of bugs, and some think me to perform some kind of surgery (on humans, presumably, though for all I know on bugs, too!). For awhile, I tried the gloss "Indian philology", but people heard "phlebotomy" or...
Yglesias Award Nominee
by Chris Bodenner
Chris Matthews loses that loving feeling:
Does he really use a teleprompter in meetings? Ed Morrissey partially defends the president.
Barack Obama - Chris Matthews - United States - President - History
Eyeing Iowa, Ctd
by Chris Bodenner
Gabriel Sherman suggests that Palin's upcoming Des Moines speech is a head fake:
For Palin, running for president is partly a kind of profit center. "It's an industry to write about Sarah and put her on TV," John Coale, the prominent Democratic lawyer and husband of Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren, told me. "We're two years into this and people are still fascinated by her. But, if she doesn't run, does she maintain this interest?"
In fact, in conversations in recent days...
Brief Thoughts on Teacher Pay
by Conor Friedersdorf
In the "teacher wars" here's where I stand: I think America's teachers should be paid more in money and prestige, that the discretion of principals is a better way to determine relative compensation than test scores, seniority, or masters degrees, that programs like Teach for America demonstrate the need for reform in the credentialing process, and that a necessary tradeoff as teachers are paid more in a merit based system is less job security.
I understand why teachers...
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