Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 298

John Roberts And White Supremacy

A potent read from Tom Levenson, in the wake of Ta-Nehisi’s powerful writing on the subject. Money quote:

Political money and hence influence at the top levels is disproportionately white, male, and with almost no social context that includes significant numbers of African Americans and other people of color.

This is why money isn’t speech. Freedom of speech as a functional element in democratic life assumes that such freedom can be meaningfully deployed. But the unleashing of yet more money into politics allows a very limited class of people to drown out the money “speech” of everyone else—but especially those with a deep, overwhelmingly well documented history of being denied voice and presence in American political life.

Embrace The Boredom, Ctd

A few readers complement this post with some class writings:

I’m heavily invested in the notion that idleness, laziness, and procrastination are vital to the full flowering of human life. (If they aren’t, I’m fucked.) I’m reminded of this passage from Emerson’s Experience:

We do not know today whether we are busy or idle. In times when we thought ourselves indolent, we have afterwards discovered, that much was accomplished, and much was begun in us. All our days are so unprofitable while they pass, that ‘tis wonderful where or when we ever got anything of this which we call wisdom, poetry, virtue. We never got it on any dated calendar day. Some heavenly days must have been intercalated somewhere, like those that Hermes won with dice of the Moon, that Osiris might be born. It is said, all martyrdoms looked mean when they were suffered. Every ship is a romantic object, except that we sail in.

Another:

I saw your post on idleness and I wanted to share what I think is the best piece ever on the virtues of idleness – Chesterton’s essay on lying in bed. The gist of it:

The tone now commonly taken toward the practice of lying in bed is hypocritical and unhealthy. Of all the marks of modernity that seem to mean a kind of decadence, there is none more menacing and dangerous than the exultation of very small and secondary matters of conduct at the expense of very great and primary ones, at the expense of eternal ties and tragic human morality. If there is one thing worse than the modern weakening of major morals, it is the modern strengthening of minor morals. Thus it is considered more withering to accuse a man of bad taste than of bad ethics. …

Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before. It is the great peril of our society that all its mechanisms may grow more fixed while its spirit grows more fickle. A man’s minor actions and arrangements ought to be free, flexible, creative; the things that should be unchangeable are his principles, his ideals. …

For those who study the great art of lying in bed there is one emphatic caution to be added. … The caution is this: if you do lie in bed, be sure you do it without any reason or justification at all.

As someone who struggles with discipline and time management, I find it refreshing to be told that this is not a moral failing.

The View From Your Window

Bedford Hills, New York, 8.20 am.  “WTF? I thought we were done with this crap.”

Hyperactive Prescribing? Ctd

A reader writes, “I figured I’d chime in on the ADHD thread, since there’s still apparently one voice missing: someone who was diagnosed as a child”:

That’d be me. At the age of six, in my second marking period in first grade, I was diagnosed with ADHD. Though my memory is hazy of that time, what I recall is being inattentive in class and extremely disruptive. I remember one time being at a hospital for something unrelated, and they put me in a straitjacket to calm me down.

I can’t emphasize enough how hyper I acted as a child, and how quickly that changed when I began to take Ritalin.

Quarterly report cards in my school district would give you a checkmark for everything you weren’t doing well in (ability to work with others, self-control, etc.), and after one full marking period with the help of Ritalin, I went from having every box checked to only two. I will never forget the pride I felt then.

My adolescence, life, and identity were very much entwined with ADHD. But my academic and social life settled down significantly when I started taking meds. I was a very good student, usually in the advanced classes. The pills gave me the ability to focus on the school work, and I know I could not have calmed down without them. Everything else, from Little League to karate, was easier with the pill. Days I forgot it were long and tedious.

As I began dating my now-wife, we talked about going off the drug. Those conversations were driven by my primary care doctor suggesting it (fearing the effects of 20 years of daily amphetamine intake at a level of anywhere from 10 milligrams to 54 milligrams!), as well as my wife getting her master’s degree in education, where she gained academic insight into ADHD. (She was shocked, for example, that I was merely prescribed medication but never forced to have therapy or visit a psychologist, something she claimed is mandatory for people diagnosed nowadays, though your thread seems to imply otherwise).

While my energy level initially fell, I have found that coffee does a pretty good job of compensating for the lack of stimulant in me. I now realize the pill also was the deciding factor in my day-to-day life. On days I felt sick in the morning, I could take the pill and feel better. I could eat shit food that should have knocked me out and brought down my energy (so many carbs!), but the pill overruled it. Since then, I have a much better diet, and when I get sick, I actually need to take a day off to rest before I feel better. These things are new to me in my life as of my mid-20s.

The ADHD is still certainly there. Little things still manifest. When I write a song with my band, I’ll write most of the song, but eventually I trail off. It’s mentally finished for me before I actually finish. I’ve noticed this my entire life. Still, being off the pill, I’m more even-mannered than ever before. Though the ADHD seems to act up a little late at night, I’m mostly pretty-even throughout the day. Being well-fed certainly helps, and I can definitely concentrate best right after some food or caffeine. But maybe that’s the same for everyone, not just those of us with ADHD.

I’m very happy being off the pill now, for sure, and this thread has been a great read.

The Best Of The Dish Today

I often disagree with Andrew Sullivan, but he is 100% right about this travesty of gay history. Read him: dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/04/16/jo-…

—
Frank Rich (@frankrichny) April 16, 2014

On another topic, sometimes, you’ve just got to face the music:

As any biologist will tell you, beards are indeed sexy. The question is, does the sexiness of beards depend on the hairiness of the rest of the males in the population? Or is the allure of a beard the same no matter what? To find out, the researchers recruited 36 men who were willing to grow beards. … When facial hair was rare among faces, beards and heavy stubble were rated about 20% more attractive. And when beards were common, clean-shaven faces enjoyed a similar bump, the team reports online today in Biology Letters. The effect on judgment was the same for men and women.

Yes, it was cooler/hotter to have a beard a few years ago. But I think I’ll stick with mine until I hit the Santa look. And Aaron’s is non-negotiable.

Today, I tackled the growing support for the ACA, including my own personal experience. We’ve already received a bunch of emails detailing your experiences – and we’re going to start a new reader thread, “The View From Your Obamacare.” Stay tuned – and email us your stories. I also took on the appalling new book by Jo Becker which purports to describe the marriage equality movement, which began, according to Becker, in 2008 with one Chad Griffin as our Rosa Parks (yes, she actually wrote that and someone actually published it!). Many readers are also piling on. One writes:

I just put the book down. What a useless history and distortion.

I’ve been involved in that battle as a foot soldier for 20 years, but my first memory of marriage equality battle was as a teenager in 1977 when a clerk in Colorado issued a license to a gay couple. What about the intellectual history as you mentioned, and a huge part of? Hawaii was nothing? What, Massachusetts wasn’t a watershed moment? All the anti-gay marriage amendments I fought hard against in 2004 , and galvanized so many, meant nothing? I remember all these very clearly.

We got ‘married’ on February 15th, 2004 during Gavin Newsom’s San Francisco marriages. The same marriages that led to the California supreme court decision, which led to Prop 8, which led to the US Supreme Court decision. How can that be minimized?

It can only be minimized by an author who knows nothing of the history of the movement except the self-serving account of those who jumped on the bandwagon at the last minute and to whom she was given complete access. And an excerpt from this travesty will appear in next Sunday’s New York Times Magazine! I know it can seem self-serving to point out the book’s contempt for those who actually built this movement. But to read Evan Wolfson dismissed as less integral to the struggle than Tom Daley’s boyfriend is simply a disgrace. The book should be withdrawn.

The most popular post of the day was indeed “Jo Becker’s Troubling Travesty Of Gay History,” followed by “The Neocons Lose Their Shit Over Rand Paul.“

See you in the morning.

A Poem For Wednesday

Dish poetry editor Alice Quinn writes:

r. erica doyle is the winner of this year’s Norma Farber Award from the Poetry Society of America for a first book of original poetry written by an American and published in a standard edition in 2012. Doyle’s book entitled proxy is powerful and has inspired powerful praise, including the following from Marilyn Nelson, who judged the contest, “Every surprising, beautiful, take-no-prisoners sentence of proxy reminds me how inventive language might expand our experience of our flesh, make it new, deepen our connection to it. . . .” Below is a prose poem from this award-winning book.

An untitled poem from proxy:

If she were any closer, you’d eat her for dinner. As it is, you’re starving. And not. You weather this all with seeming good humor. Write notes to amuse yourself. You have become too earnest, trying so hard to mean something important. Watch the drain and hear your stomach growl. Negroes make me hungry, too, she says. You need an explanation but say nothing to this boastful non sequitur. You want to amuse her with your bones.

(From proxy © 2013 by r. erica doyle. Used by kind permission of Belladonna Press. Photo by Flickr user Greg)

Face Of The Day

A Catholic worshipper holds Virgin Mary picture as he prepare for Holy Week celebrations, known as ‘Semana Santa’ on April 16, 2014 in Larantuka, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia. Easter celebrations in Larantuka started in the 16th century, when Portuguese missionaries entered and acculturated the local people. The ritual appeals to the pilgrims and people from various regions in Indonesia, who come to follow the procession. Holy Week marks the last week of Lent and the beginning of Easter celebrations. Catholics make up approximately 3% per cent of the population of the predominantly Muslim country. By Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images.

When Do Scandals Actually Sink A Politician?

Seth Masket reviews many studies on the question:

Your allies may be quick to abandon you during a scandal if you’re expendable (think John Edwards), but if you’re, say, the president, they may be more likely to rally to your side. Scandals may also be more damaging for black candidates (PDF) than for white ones.

Additionally, scandals may be more likely to emerge when the opposition party has a lower opinion of the incumbent and when it’s a slow news week (PDF). Voters think worse of scandals involving financial problems than they do of sex scandals, especially when abuse of power is involved. They are also quicker to forgive (or forget) sex scandals than financial ones (PDF).

The studies all seem to confirm the idea that scandals are serious and do exact a price from politician’s careers. Yet a lot of this research remains plagued by selection bias. That is, scandals may be more likely to emerge among the better candidates or more powerful officeholders. This isn’t because better politicians are more likely to cheat on their spouses (although that would be interesting!), but because no one’s going to bother to research and dig up scandals against a politician whose career isn’t going anywhere.

3D Printing Is Building Itself Up

Reason checks in on the growing 3D printing industry:

The latest breakthrough:

For the first time ever, scientists have 3D printed a cancer tumor in order to study how to kill it.

Growing cancer cells in a laboratory is nothing new—it’s often how new drugs are tested before they hit clinical trials. But those cultures are grown on petri dishes, where they’re unable to become actual “tumors” and are instead simply sheets of 2D cells. That means that a drug might work on cancer cells in a lab, but once it’s tested on an actual tumor, the three dimensional structure of it can throw in some added kinks that makes it ineffective. Wei Sun of Drexel University saw that the 3D printing of living cells has improved enough to make printing of actual tumors a viable possibility.

In other 3D printing news, Staples is hoping to bring the technology to the general public:

The office supply retailer began offering 3D printing services in two stores on Thursday, one in New York and another in Los Angeles. Anyone can walk in and have Staples crank out a tchotchke—or 1,000 of them—while reveling in the glory of the 3D printing revolution without spending thousands on an actual printer. If the pilot takes off, Staples (SPLS) says it will expand 3D printing services to more stores.

Sex, Lies, and Text Messages

A new study reveals that people often lie while exchanging sexy texts with their significant others:

“Deception during sexting with committed relationship partners appears to be fairly common,” writes a research team led by Michelle Drouin of Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne. Its study is published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior.

Of the 155 participants (average age just under 22), 109 reported they had sent a sexually explicit text message. Among that group, 48 percent admitted lying during sexting with a committed partner. Specifically, 20 percent said they had lied about either what they were wearing or what they were doing, while 28 percent had lied about both. Women were the more frequent liars, texting untruths far more often than men.

Katy Waldman compares these findings to our deceptions in real sex:

Of course, we all lie in person too—is a fake sext any different from a fake orgasm?

As a medium, sexting feels peculiarly suited to a more benign type of fabrication (also known as storytelling): It aims to construct a shared fantasy of togetherness with someone who is not physically present. “Wildly imaginative leaps are possible,” writes Maureen O’Connor in her excellent deep dive into the genre. The simulated “self of sexting can be markedly different from the self who actually has sex,” and isn’t that kind of the point.

O’Connor also notes that “55 percent of women and 48 percent of men have engaged in ‘consensual but unwanted sexting,’ i.e., sexting when they’re not that into it.” These could be the bored people who lie. However, at least for women, the statistics on ‘consensual but unwanted’ regular sex look the same: 55 percent of women have done it (compared to 26 percent of men). Since rote erotic acts seem pretty frequent, perhaps our lies do hint at disengagement from the person at the other end of the line, or on the other side of the bed. But in this case, as in so many others, the technology seems to be abetting a natural human impulse, not rewiring our brains.

The Dish has covered the sexting phenomenon extensively, most recently here and here.