Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 322

Map Of The Day

Lane Florsheim details the evolution of executions in the US:

In 1790, Thomas Bird became the first person to be executed under the United States Constitution. Bird was convicted of murder and piracy, and the total cost of his hanging was five dollars and fifty cents (for the construction of a gallows and a coffin). Since then, the U.S. state and federal governments have executed thousands of people by hanging, firing squad, electric chair, lethal gas, and lethal injection. The map [seen above] illustrates the progression of death penalty execution methods by state since the beginning in the late nineteenth century.

The Supreme Court effectively put executions on hiatus in its 1972 Furman v. Georgia decision, but states immediately began working around the ruling and the Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976’s Gregg v. Georgia decision. By 2009, all death-penalty states had made lethal injection the sole or primary execution method for death row inmates, despite problems with the method that have been evident since the 1950s. Now, the death penalty is transforming once again, due to a shortage in the drug used in the three-drug protocol to paralyze the inmate during his execution. As a result, states have resorted to hunting for a replacement in unusual places, such as domestic compounding pharmacies. Some have changed their protocols to use just one drug, or tried to replace the missing drug with new drugs. Others have put executions on hold. In states such as Louisiana, Tennessee, and Wyoming, there’s even been talk of reintroducing the electric chair. This has led to a spate of ethical problems and legal challenges.

Previous Dish on the shortage of lethal-injection drugs here.

Cold Reading

In an interview with Prospero, Olga Sobolev explains how global military conflicts shaped the literature of the US and the Soviet Union:

The response to the first world war was great literature like T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, but after the second world war the response was mostly pulp fiction, thrillers and spy novels. The novel is very much based on an individual view of the world, but, because there was such strong propaganda against Communism, there was a group-consciousness response based on stereotypes that fitted into this genre of formula fiction of spy novels and thrillers.

She goes on to provide context for the birth of James Bond:

So readers on both sides of the Iron Curtain were consuming these ideological patterns and stereotypes?

Yes, but in slightly different ways.

In the Soviet Union it came from the top down, but in the West the propaganda was regulated by economic means. Left-wing writers were removed from the shelves (Howard Fast, Dalton Trumbo and even Frank Baum, author of “The Wizard of Oz”) though never actually censored. They were not in demand because of media propaganda, so what was in demand was the thrillers and spy fiction. Interestingly, apart from Richard Condon’s “The Manchurian Candidate” (1953), which was American, the novels were mostly British. There was Ian Fleming’s Bond, of course, and then, later, John Le Carré, a more literary writer than Fleming. [Le Carré's character George] Smiley is human where Bond is not. “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold” (1963) was a huge success because Kim Philby defected in 1963, and 1961 had seen the Maclean and Burgess defections, so Le Carré was on the wave of these huge political incidents. Then there was “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” (1974), and “Smiley’s People” (1979) when the Anthony Blunt affair was in the headlines.

A Conversation With Richard Rodriguez: Will The World End With A Prayer? Ctd

A reader recently listened to my Deep Dish conversation with Richard Rodriguez, author of Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography:

I first read Rodriguez 10 years ago when I was but a precocious Latino Californian high school student in AP English. Weeks before you put this podcast up, I got Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Mexican Father for a grad school buddy’s birthday. He’s also a sensitive Latino writer, so when I learned he wasn’t familiar with Rodriguez, I knew I had to change that. As a thinking Hispanic person and a Dish fan, this latest “Andrew Asks Anything” podcast was a delight. Dish team, you keep pushing my expectations for enjoying this blog and the Dish project in general.

The reader elaborates on the podcast, introduced on the Dish here:

The discussion of the desert was amazing. Rodriguez’ essays have interesting metaphors about California, America, Mexico and the way they relate to each other. The discussion here really gets to the heart of what makes those comparisons and metaphors interesting. I think it was Rodriguez, who got to this idea that the desert necessitated faith because we would need to cling on to God to get us through such a barren, brutal landscape. Given that the desert is where Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all originate, one suspects he is onto something.

Relatedly, I found myself fascinated at Rodriguez’ idea that the desert is to winter and death as greenery is to spring and life. It got even more interesting and led to some great exchanges when Rodriguez elaborated that he felt that the desert and death get short shrift in our society compared to greenery and life. As a So Cal guy, it was awesome to hear the desert discussed in this way, for it to be considered so deeply.

I’ve mainly read Rodriguez as a student throughout my academic life, and very few of the essays I’ve been assigned even mention his homosexuality. So for me this was a great fleshing out of a writer whose work I mainly know as commentary on first generation/second generation Hispanic American issues.

Both you and Rodriguez’s assessments of faith in America really resonated, even though there is some daylight between you two. Rodriguez, like you, has this balance of religious humility and friendly extroversion. I particularly appreciated the moment where he says he is astounded by your public piety and then you discuss what that takes and what causes it. I am used to seeing you be sweet and open to people like that, and it was lovely to hear you appreciate each other that way. It’s moments like that that make this podcast intimate, personal, and a “conversation”, as opposed to an interview. It really feels like I’m a fly in the wall over the dinner table or something.

It was actually recorded in my old West Village apartment, sitting on the couch. To get a sense of the conversation, check out the two audio samples embedded below. In the first one, Richard insists on a connection between Islam and Christianity, perhaps most vividly in the Arabic-rooted Spanish words of his own Catholic grandmother, and the intimacy of inter-religious conflict:

We went on to talk about martyrdom in both Islam and Christianity, and the distinction, important to me, between fundamentalism and faith:

For the full conversation on Deep Dish, click here. If you aren’t a subscriber, click here to sign up for total access to all things Dish. Previous coverage of Richard’s work here.

What Is Kindness Like?

Casey Cep shares a story about her father, who, having a heart attack early one morning, requested the ambulance not use its siren so as not to wake his three sleeping daughters. What it taught her about kindness:

I have called it an act of kindness, which I think it was. It was considerate in a way I cannot begin to understand; generous in a way no one would expect, much less demand. Years later I still do not comprehend how in what very well might have been the final moments of his life, my father thought to ask for quiet so that his daughters might continue sleeping.

Kindness is like an ice cube in your hands. It stings, but then the cold dissolves; what at first you could barely hold becomes something you cannot let go. My father’s request for a quiet ambulance came from a man so familiar with kindness that the sting was completely gone: the ice was no longer cold, but one with the flesh.

She goes on to riff on being kind in the Internet age:

[K]indness is not always as heavy as action: it can be as light as speech or as invisible as inaction. Sometimes the kindest thing we can do is to exercise self-restraint: not posting a nasty comment on an article, leaving a mean-spirited tweet in the draft folder, keeping quiet to listen to whatever unfamiliar or opposing opinion is being offered.

The Internet has offered us many facile ways of expressing approval (like, favorite, share) but few ways of being kind. It might be that the greatest act of kindness on the Internet is to be quiet. Not to be forever silent, but at least listen and learn before expressing outrage or anger, and to realize that kindness will not always take the form of approval. My father’s quiet ambulance was one act of kindness, but so too was rebuking me not long after when I fought with one of his hospital nurses about visiting hours.

Read the Dish round-ups on George Saunders’s commencement speech about kindness here and here.

A Hard Read

Alexis Madrigal praises Porn Studies, a new academic publication:

Porn is always two clicks away, and, hovers at the edge of so many conversations from analyses of Girls to sending messages on phones to the NSA. The problem, however, is that there are costs to even talking about pornography. This is true even in our supposed bastions of intellectual freedom, as several of the articles make clear. “I have been told ‘You don’t want to be ‘the porn guy’” and ‘you will have to deal with the content issue of your work,’” writes Nathaniel Burke in his essay Positionality and Pornography. I’d heard similar things from journalists, male and female alike. Very few people want to be “the porn guy.” And so researchers and critics choose to do work on less fraught, less important topics. Perhaps having a publication that serves as a gathering place will create some strength in academic numbers.

Lauren Davis was impressed by the first issue:

[T]he topics are quite intriguing: “Porn and sex education, porn as sex education,” “Revisiting Dirty Looks” (an interview with Pamela Church Gibson about her collection of feminist essays about pornography), a study of emerging niches in US pornography consumption, and one on the nature and implications of sexual fantasies. On the other hand, many of the papers are about the challenges of actually researching pornography and the role of the pornography researcher, though even those can be entertaining; one involves a visit to the Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas.

(Graphic from “Deep Tags: Toward a Quantitative Analysis of Online Pornography,” by Antoine Mazièresad, Mathieu Trachmanb, Jean-Philippe Cointeta, Baptiste Coulmontc, and Christophe Prieur)

Faces Of The Day

A woman views the Sutton Hoo Helmet on display in the new gallery “Sutton Hoo and Europe AD 300-1100″ in the British Museum in London on March 25, 2014. The exhibition in the museum’s early medieval collections marks 75 years since the discovery of the Sutton Hoo treasure, one of Britain’s most spectacular and important discoveries. The exhibition opens to the general public on March 27. By Oli Scarff/Getty Images.

Russia’s Neocon-In-Chief

He has contempt for soft power; he believes in manly military priorities; he seeks to spread the Russian model to the near-abroad; he longs for another clarifying, nation-mobilizing cold war; he’s paranoid; he’s incompetent; he despises “appeasement”; in over-reaching, he undermines himself. Is he Cheney or Putin? Or, apart from the constitutions which constrain American leaders, one and the same?

Quote For The Day II

“At times we are able to humiliate our worst enemy. Inevitably, his weak moments come and we are able to thrust in his side the spear of defeat. But this we must not do. Every word and deed must contribute to an understanding with the enemy and release those vast reservoirs of goodwill which have been blocked by impenetrable walls of hate,” – Martin Luther King, Jr., Dexter Avenue Baptist Church; Montgomery, Alabama, Christmas Sermon, 1957.

(Photo by Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post via Getty Images. Details of the KSHB screenshot here.)

Pre-K Prejudice

Harsher punishments for African-American students start in preschool, according to a new Department of Education analysis:

Black children constitute 18 percent of all kids attending preschool but account for 48 percent of all students suspended more than once, the new data show. Across K-12 schools, black students represented 16 percent of the student population but 42 percent suspended more than once in the 2011-12 school year.

Earlier studies have found that these high suspension rates for black students – males in particular – exist among older students as well, Yale associate professor Walter Gilliam said. The race gap “was bad then, and it’s bad now,” Gilliam said. “You don’t have to be able to split hairs to see how disproportionate it is.” Gilliam’s own research has found high expulsion rates among black preschoolers, but there has been little prior research on suspension.

Bouie notes that the disparities aren’t limited to suspensions:

Compared to their white counterparts, black boys are three times more likely to be placed in remedial or “problem” classes, as opposed to receiving counseling or a diagnosis. School-related arrests are depressingly common, and in 70 percent of cases, they involve black or Latino students. The same goes for referrals to law enforcement – in one Mississippi school district, for example, 33 out of every 1,000 students have been arrested or referred to a juvenile detention center, the vast majority of whom were black. This has far-reaching consequences. Suspensions lead to more absences, as students become disconnected from the school. In one study of 180,000 Florida students, researchers found that just one suspension in ninth grade can drastically reduce a student’s chance of graduating in four years.

Marcotte sees a larger problem:

Social-justice activists have been raising the alarm for years now about the “school-to-prison pipeline,” which the ACLU describes “as a disturbing national trend wherein children are funneled out of public schools and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems.” It works like this: Students, especially students of color, are hit with outrageous and disproportionate disciplinary measures in the school system. At best, that causes them to fall behind in their classes, but it can also result in students being suspended or shuffled off to separate classes for troublemakers, causing higher dropout rates and the subsequent higher unemployment and imprisonment rates. Sometimes schools turn to the police, who then arresting kids for minor infractions, treating them as criminals instead of young students who need support.

Plagiarism As Poetry

MoMA poet laureate Kenneth Goldsmith takes the spotlight in the following preview for Noriginals: The Art of Uncreativity, a “multi-platform feature documentary” exploring creativity in the age of algorithms:

Meanwhile, Johannah King-Slutzky explores the field of robopoetics (RP):

Is anything about computer-generated poetry radically new? Mostly, yes. Robopoetics challenge several conventional theories about literature and bolster other claims (like Barthes’ death of the author) with hard, non-theoretical proof. In electronic literature there is no dyadic author and text: the new creative schema is a triad of programmer, robotic author, and text. Robopoetics shifts the burden of creativity onto programming and the selection of source materials. (If you’re feeling contrarian you might argue that this contemporary triad isn’t so different from the classical muse-author-text model, but anyway.) …

I’ve written and read more than the average amount of poetry, but somehow amidst all the difficult poetry, I forgot that relatability and straightforwardness are the marks of a mature poet, too. Once, I read computer-generated poetry for 10 hours straight. The next week I could only stomach plainspoken Du Fu. I had to turn the clock back 1200 years. In this and other ways, games like Bot or Not might be a good learning tool. The same skill you refine by playing Bot or Not—the detection of gibberish—can also assist in separating the livejournal from the laureate. … In the words of Bot or Not’s creator, “The ability to tell whether something is of human or computer provenance … might become really important. We will all be like blade runner people, trying to tell if a text is human.”