Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 2626

Endless Bummer

by Zoe Pollock

Rebecca Traister insists this might be the worst summer ever. Balk counters with a nugget of hope and nostalgia for an increasingly apocalyptic future:

I see anarmy of young people out there having a good time. They retain all theoptimism of youth. Their prospects may be just as grim as everyoneelse's, but they don't let that affect them. They use their relativepoverty to their advantage, creating fun through thrift. They arebuilding the very memories that they will look back on...

Money Hanging Out The Anus

by Zoe Pollock

Buzzfeed using Forbes' list of the 20 richest rappers to highlight their "so bad they're good" lyrics = amazing.

Forbes - Hip hop - Music - Arts - Arts and Entertainment

In Defense Of Libraries

by Zoe Pollock

At the Edinburgh international book festival, novelist Jeanette Winterson opined on the importance of libraries:

What worries me is that a load of shite has been talked about digitisation as being the new Gutenberg, but the fact is that Gutenberg led to books being put in shelves, and digitisation is taking books off shelves. If you start taking books off shelves then you are only going to find what you are looking for, which does not help those who do not know what they are...

The Quiet Alternative

by Zoe Pollock

Jonathan Franzen's new novel, Freedom, is getting a lot of deserved buzz (I've read it – it's fantastic). He recently (and reluctantly) recorded an author video where he disparaged having to make an author video. He explained:

This might be a good place for me to register my profound discomfort at having to make videos like this. To me, the point of a novel is to take you to a still place. You can multitask with a lot of things, but you can't really multitask reading a book...

An Era of Immaturity?

by Conor Friedersdorf

That's what worries James Poulos, who says maturity is the real dividing line between the two Americas. He's reacting to that New York Times piece that begins by asking, "Why are so many people in their twenties taking so long to grow up?" My guess is that changing social mores -- that is to say, fear of divorce, higher rates of college attendance, and an ability to have sex before marriage sans stigma -- are causing people to get married later. As a result, they're...

Face Of The Day

A Maori haka is performed at the coronation ceremony for the fourth year of rule of Maori King Tuheitia Paki at the Turangawaewae Marae on August 20, 2010 in Ngaruawahia, New Zealand. Paki succeeded his mother, Dame Te Atairangikaahu, following her death in August 2006, and was crowned and made successor the same day as his mother's funeral. By Hannah Johnston/Getty Images.

New Zealand - Māori - Ngaruawahia - Oceania - Māori King Movement

A Neutron Bomb In Reverse

by Patrick Appel

Daniyual Mueenuddin's article on the flooding in Pakistan in yesterday's NYT is well worth a read:

This disaster is not like an earthquake or a tsunami. In the 2005 earthquake in northern Pakistan, 80,000 people died more or less at one blow; whereas the immediate death toll from this flood is likely to be in the low thousands. The loss of property, however, is catastrophic. It is as if a neutron bomb exploded overhead, but instead of killing the people and leaving their...

Map Of The Day

by Zoe Pollock

The Economist reports China is now the world's biggest beer market, grossly surpassing the United States. Let the international power hour begin. 
















United States - China - Beer - Food - Recreation

How Is Nobody Upper Class? Ctd

by Patrick Appel

A reader writes:

This reader seems to confuse the terms bourgeoisie and middle class. Regardless of the origins of middle class, it's not used in a modern sense as a synonym for bourgeois. Even in a strictly Marxist use, the equivalent would be petite bourgeoisie, not the ruling capitalist class. And it wasn't often that even the haute bourgeoisie out-earned the aristocracy, but rather a trend from the rise of mercantilism and the industrial revolution that eventually toppled...

Gary Johnson, Ctd

by Patrick Appel

Bernstein weighs in on the Friedersdorf-Ambinder exchange:

The point is that Gary Johnson isn't a hopeless case because he's notgood on TV; he's a hopeless case because his issue positions make himunacceptable to the most important groups within the Republican Party,and he doesn't bring anything to compensate for that.  Which no doubtstinks if you want a different GOP than the one that actually exists in2010.  Now, it may be that Johnson can mobilize new groups to enter...