Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 316

“This Album Is A Piece Of Contemporary Art”

Wu-Tang Clan will only release one copy of their new album. They claim that, “similar to a Monet or a Degas, the price tag will be a multimillion-dollar figure.” Ilan Mochari ponders the strategy:

To the extent that fans are already discussing the album, the Wu-Tang Clan’s plan has already paid off in terms of marketing. What’s also fascinating–and potentially instructive, for businesses–is that the Wu-Tang Clan are also releasing an album through traditional means later this year. That album, called A Better Tomorrow, is scheduled for release this summer. What this means is that Wu-Tang will potentially be able to run an A/B test of sorts, with a control album (A Better Tomorrow) and a variable one (Once Upon a Time in Shaolin). Which release will generate more revenue? Which will fans like better? The group will find out and learn from it.

Felix Salmon isn’t on board:

[T]he contemporary art market is in the midst of an unprecedented bubble right now.

Different bubbles have different dynamics, but all of them are based, in one way or another, on price spirals. The general public needs to be able to see a given asset — tulips, dot-com stocks, houses, Richters, you name it — going up in price at an impressive clip. In order for any asset, or asset class, to become expensive, it first needs to start cheap, and work its way up. The Wu-Tang Clan not only want to create a whole new asset class; they also want that asset class to be valued at bubblicious levels right off the bat. Sorry, but markets don’t work that way.

Clyde Smith questions the comparison to visual art:

You can’t compare apples and oranges. The visual art market and the market for music are two different things. Both sell art but in different forms and with different histories. Such direct comparisons are meaningless though there’s nothing wrong with taking inspiration from the way one market works and seeing how it applies in another market. That’s sometimes quite profitable.

But if you maintain that the value of music is defined by what it brings in the marketplace then you are the one devaluing music. Music is so deeply a part of human culture and existence, in fact music helps define such concepts, that if you can only state its value in terms of money then you are lost from the deeper realms you claim to represent.

Mike Jakeman thinks the real money will come from concerts:

Allusions to the Renaissance and its patrons suit an outfit like the Wu-Tang Clan, who has always run a neat line in self-mythologizing. But the one-copy concept is not as revolutionary as the group would like. Although the price paid for the album is likely to be in the millions of dollars, it will be dwarfed by what the group will earn from its planned listening events. With tickets priced at a similar point to a major art exhibition, the play-backs will attract hundreds of thousands of fans around the world and will generate many times the value of the single copy. This means that the group’s approach will fit in with the existing pattern of musicians relying on events for an ever-increasing proportion of their earnings.

Face Of The Day

Virginia State Senator Creigh Deeds waits to take the podium to speak about mental health reform at The National Press Club in Washington, DC on March 31, 2014. On November 19, 2013, Deeds was stabbed multiple times in the face at his home in Bath County, Virginia by his 24-year-old son Gus Deeds, who later died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. By Drew Angerer/Getty Images.

Stillborn Justice

Considering the troubling case of Rennie Gibbs, who may face a murder charge for her daughter’s stillbirth, Eve Tushnet criticizes pro-life laws that make criminals out of pregnant women:

In 2006, 15-year-old Rennie Gibbs became pregnant. She tested positive for marijuana and cocaine during her pregnancy. Her daughter Samiya was born a month premature, with the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. An autopsy on the child found traces of a cocaine byproduct, and Rennie was charged with murder—or rather, with what Mississippi calls “depraved heart murder,” signifying an especially callous crime. Gibbs’s case has wound its way through the legal system, and it is still unclear whether she will go on trial this spring; but if she does, Gibbs, now 23, will face the threat of life in prison. …

[T]hese fetal harm laws, however well-meaning, suggest a slippery slope toward precisely Rennie Gibbs’s predicament. Criminal investigations into every miscarriage, heavy sentences for women caught smoking a single joint or struggling to quit cigarettes, legal penalties for failing to follow every jot of the ever-shifting “expert opinion” on pregnancy: The closer this world seems, the less willing abortion-rights supporters will be to even consider the humanity of the unborn. And some women have already slipped to the bottom of the slope.

Nina Martin examines what’s at stake in the Gibbs case:

Prosecutors argue that the state has a responsibility to protect children from the dangerous actions of their parents. Saying Gibbs should not be tried for murder is like saying that “every drug addict who robs or steals to obtain money for drugs should not be held accountable for their actions because of their addiction,” the state attorney general’s office wrote in a brief to the Mississippi Supreme Court.

But some civil libertarians and women’s rights advocates worry that if Gibbs is convicted, the precedent could inspire more prosecutions of Mississippi women and girls for everything from miscarriage to abortion—and that African Americans, who suffer twice as many stillbirths as whites, would be affected the most.

And Tara Culp-Ressler traces the controversy back to the crack baby myth:

In the 1980s, when crack cocaine use became more widespread, the media stoked unfounded fears about cocaine’s damaging effects on unborn children in the womb. According to the national media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), “few media fabrications have been as invidious, persistent or politically devastating as that of the so-called ‘crack baby.’” Eager to demonstrate that they were tough on drugs, prosecutors began going after pregnant women for using drugs because they were an easy target.

But it’s not even clear that cocaine actually harms fetuses in the first place. Several large studies into the subject have found that there’s no difference in long-term health outcomes between children who were exposed to cocaine in the womb and children who were not. Researchers agree that health disparities among children should actually be attributed to poverty, not to drug use.

The View From Your Window

Grand Forks, North Dakota, 2.41 pm

The Melting Pot Of Gold

C.W.  a paper from last year (pdf) showing that “changing from a purely foreign name to a very common American name is associated with a 14% hike in earnings”:

What sorts of people were most likely to Americanise their name? The most boring explanation is one concerning “imperfect information”: only some migrants realised the benefit of Americanisation. But the authors find little evidence for that. Instead, they show that migrants facing the greatest barriers to occupational mobility were most likely to Americanise and reaped the highest returns from doing so. People who came from more “exotic” countries, or who could not migrate to better jobs, benefited more from Americanisation than better-off migrants. These migrants had to jettison their individual identity for labour-market success.

Action Star Of The Day

This should make your day a little brighter:

The title of “Coolest Dad of the Year” might just go to Daniel Hashimoto for his epic home videos of his 3-year-old son, James. Hashimoto, an After Effects artist for DreamWorks Animation, adds spectacular special effects to short videos of his son’s playtime, turning everyday scenes of visiting the toy store or jumping on couches into terrific adventures full of explosions, fire, and action.

James, who is known on YouTube as Action Movie Kid, becomes an action hero with superpowers and fantastic gadgets in the short clips.

More videos of the hero in action here.

Rogers, Over And Out

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee is leaving Congress … for talk radio:

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, plans to retire from Congress after his current term to host a national radio show syndicated by Cumulus Media. … “I have always believed in our founders’ idea of a citizen legislature,” he said in his statement. “I had a career before politics and always planned to have one after. The genius of our institutions is they are not dependent on the individual temporary occupants privileged to serve.” … In joining Cumulus, Rogers will work for a radio network that already syndicates programs from some of the medium’s biggest draws, including Don Imus, Mark Levin, Carson Daly, Michael Savage and Mike Huckabee.

Steven Dennis observes that Rogers “rack[ed] up more Sunday show appearances than any other member of Congress each of the last two years,” making him “in some ways the face of the intelligence community on television”:

The telegenic former FBI agent repeatedly defended the National Security Agency against attacks following the avalanche of leaks by Edward Snowden, often taking a harder line than the White House. Rogers had been a hawk against leaks – at one point suggesting the death penalty should be considered for Chelsea Manning for leaking documents to Wikileaks. Inside the dome, Rogers led a narrowly successful fight against his fellow Michigan Republican, Justin Amash, to end the NSA’s blanket collection of telephone records.

Scott Shackford tells Rogers not to let the door hit him on the way out:

[He] puts pretty much every other political defender of the National Security Agency’s (NSA) surveillance tactics to shame. As chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, he even manages to outdo Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-Calif.) defense of NSA intrusions with his fearmongering and accusations that Edward Snowden is under the influence of the Russians. Rogers was still pushing that story last weekend, with no real evidence. He has introduced his own version of NSA “reform” that experts say is anything but. His “End Bulk Collection Act” doesn’t end bulk collection at all and could actually allow the NSA to analyze even more of our data without oversight (Trevor Timm of the Freedom of the Press Foundation explains more here).

Meanwhile, Ed Morrissey calls Rogers’ timing “problematic”:

Until now, there was little reason to think that Rogers and the GOP wouldn’t hold this seat. It’s nominally a swing district with an R+2 rating from Cook, and Mitt Romney won it by three points over Barack Obama in the 2012 election. With the sudden departure of Rogers, a hold here is less certain, especially given the lateness of the decision. It’s unlikely that any Republicans had seriously organized in the district at this point, but Democrats probably have, and the GOP will be at a disadvantage for at least a while in a close district. If this turns out to be a wave election, the timing may not matter much anyway.

Sean Sullivan reports that Dems are excited:

The decision by popular Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) to retire sparked fresh Democratic optimism Friday about competing for a seat that would otherwise have been out of their reach. But Republicans still have the upper hand there. A crowded field of candidates could scramble to run for Rogers’s seat with less than a month until the filing deadline. Democratic enthusiasm was spurred in part by the lean of the district, which tilts toward Republicans, but not by much. Mitt Romney won 51 percent of the district in the 2012 presidential election, while President Obama carried 48 percent. Obama won 52 percent in that district in 2008.

But as Ed O’Keefe notes, they probably shouldn’t get ahead of themselves:

Republicans are confident they can hold the seat, even without Rogers. They noted that Florida’s 13th district, a more favorable area to Democrats, didn’t slip into that party’s hands in a recent special election. And in a non-presidential year, it will be difficult for Democrats to ramp up turnout and spring an upset in Michigan’s 8th district.

The Best Of The Dish This Weekend

There is something quite remarkable about the desperation of Chris Christie – but also telling about the litmus tests you have to pass in today’s GOP money primary. The price of entry is denying that Palestinians have any right to the country they have lived in their entire lives (and many generations), and thereby ensuring that Greater Israel is the formal policy, for the first time, of the United States. The occupied territories are not “occupied”. They are Israel. Anyone who says otherwise (i.e. the overwhelming majority of the entire world and every U.S. president since the founding of the state of Israel) “either doesn’t understand the issue at all, or he’s hostile to Israel,” as enforcer, Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, insisted. And we know Christie can bully. But watch his talent at groveling:

The source told POLITICO that Christie “clarified in the strongest terms possible that his remarks today were not meant to be a statement of policy.” Instead, the source said, Christie made clear “that he misspoke when he referred to the ‘occupied territories.’ And he conveyed that he is an unwavering friend and committed supporter of Israel, and was sorry for any confusion that came across as a result of the misstatement.”

I slept twelve hours last night. The Dish didn’t. This weekend, we explored the laughter of animals, Oscar Wilde’s view of Christ as a poet, what straight women look for in men on a dance-floor, and the bitter honesty and self-doubt of Flannery O’Connor. Aronofsky’s “Noah” needs to be seen in the same light as Rembrandt’s “The Raising of the Cross.” Malcolm Gladwell unearths the great secular-religious divide that led to the massacre of so many in Waco, Texas. If you want to see something surpassingly beautiful tonight, watch this.

One quote:

For the first time in my life, I felt like there was a creator of the universe, a force greater than myself, and that I should be kind and loving.

How do you achieve such an epiphany? See here.

The most popular post of the weekend was It’s Not Easy Being Grün, followed by The Quintessential American Word: “Hi!”

See you in the morning.

(Photo: SGT Martyn Piggott from Pittstown, New Jersey with the U.S. Army’s 2nd Battalion 87th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division patrols across barren foothills outside of Forward Operating Base (FOB) Shank looking for positions the enemy has used to send rockets onto the FOB on March 30, 2014 near Pul-e Alam, Afghanistan. By Scott Olson/Getty Images.)

The Art Of Climate Change

Scientists are taking cues from painters:

Greek and German researchers have compiled the results of looking at sunsets in 310 works from the Tate and National Gallery in London. The art dates from 1500 to 2000 and covers some 50 volcanic explosions and the stunning skies in their aftermath. The focus is on sunsets because, as atmospheric refractions beaming light through the Earth’s atmosphere in a way we usually can’t see, they can potentially show what the climate was like in the past and help improve climate change models for the future. Called ”Further evidence of important environmental information content in red-to-green ratios as depicted in paintings by great masters,” the study follows and confirms findings from the team’s 2007 exploration of paintings by such artists as Rembrandt, Hogarth, and Rubens. The current study is heavy on J. M. W. Turner, who was drawn to the sunsets just after the [1815 Mount] Tambora eruption.

Becky Oskin provides more details:

By measuring the amount of red and green in the paintings, the researchers were able to figure out past aerosol pollution levels. More aerosols meant redder sunsets, because the tiny particles are small compared to the wavelength of visible light, More long wavelength red light makes it through the aerosols, and shorter wavelength blues and violets get scattered by the aerosol particles. “Regardless of the school and style, all painters provided quite accurate aerosol information when red/green ratios were examined,” lead study author Christos Zerefos, a professor of atmospheric physics at the Academy of Athens in Greece, said in an email interview.

(Image of Chichester Canal by J. M. W. Turner, 1828, via Wikimedia Commons)

The View From Your Window

Omaha, Nebraska, 7 pm