Catch-up Time

Over the next few days, I plan to post on articles and topics that I wanted to call out from the rest of the year, but for one thing or another--lack of time, usually--just never got around to. Some of them were topics I wanted to expand on and the entries just never left the ground (really, the notebook). Most of them will be from the recent months and weeks, as they are fresher in my memory. Here goes:

New York Magazine is just fantastic. They always have really interesting articles featuring really interesting trivia, often about New York. Case in point: One out of every apartment in Manhattan is occupied by only one person; the number is one in three when you add in all the other boroughs. Jennifer Senior's December 1st cover story on loneliness doesn't offer much new insights other than those statistics, but reinforces a lot of existing theories on the nature of community (note: I did a lot of research in college on this topic, especially dealing with community vis a vis the internet, so it wasn't new to me). What I especially loved was that the article reaffirmed a lot of my anecdotal evidence regarding single life:

[Eric] Klineberg, the NYU professor who is writing about living alone, points out that single people are partly responsible for the vibrancy of New York’s public life: “We know form marketing surveys that single people go out more than couples,” he notes. “They’re more likely to go to restaurants, to bars, and to clubs. A lot of people who live alone say it’s very hard to enter their apartments and stare at the walls when there’s so much going on outside.”

Conversely, married people—women especially—have smaller friendship-based social networks than they did as single people, according to [sociologist] Claude Fischer.

The article goes on to say that that the reason why many single people feel lonely is when they are surrounded by other couples--and that family neighborhoods in particular are the places that have the highest rates of social isolation, especially among the elderly. Asynchronous environments breed loneliness; that's why it's better for one's livelihood if they aren't exclusively around others who are in a different stage of life.

Weak ties (acquaintences and people you are one or two degrees separated), the internet, and of course, New York City (and cities in general) get quite the boost here. But that's fine; the overarching idea is that people--connection--are what matters, and that getting out of the house and interacting with others will boost your mood. The internet bridges the public and the private, and often facilitates this.

I look forward to David Carr's column every week, and he rarely disappoints. While he has written many that I could talk about endlessly, his recent entry on how the media essentially created Black Friday opened my eyes to the symbiotic relationship between advertising and the media--something I all too often overlook.

I orginally had not planned to read the Times Magazine's cover story on John McCain the week before the election, citing time constraints and not much interest, but it turned out to be way better than their Obama cover the previous week. "The Making (and Remaking) of John McCain" ended up showing how important public relations and message-managing is--and how the McCain camp's infighting and lack of direction killed their campaign. The death knell is spelled out:

The campaign was in the throes of an identity crisis by June 24, when a number of senior strategists gathered at 9:30 a.m. in a conference room of McCain’s campaign headquarters in Arlington. As one participant said later, the meeting was convened “because we still couldn’t answer the question, ‘Why elect John McCain?’ ” Considering that the election was less than five months away, this was not a good sign.

If the people running John McCain's campaign cannot answer that question, then he is doomed.

Speaking of that long-ago election, remember that Wall Street Journal story on Obama's thinness? Apparently the reporter took some of her quotes from a Yahoo message board. Ouch. Certainly not the only time this year that a reporter got into trouble for going to dubious online outlets for sources.

I wrote a lot about the Journal's coverage of the election, especially how voters decide on a candidate. I had wanted to add another entry to that list, on their September 4th article, "The Biology of Ideology". It's the old nature vs. nurture argument: are even voting patterns predetermined? That's one heck of a scary idea. I was very skeptical of this idea and hated the article back when I first read it. I took a more pragmatic approach, of convince us why you're worthy. Tom Friedman summed it up five days later:

If you as a politician connect with voters on a gut level, they will follow you anywhere and not fret about the details. If you don’t connect with them on a gut level, you can’t show them enough details.

I wondered why it was ok for newspapers to openly assume Obama was going to win the presidency, as many non-opinion pieces used "when", instead of "if", in referring to anything after the election. Guys, that's why people say the media is in the tank for the dude. Lay off. Turned out Clark Hoyt at the Times agreed with me.

I felt though--and vaguely remember coming across something along these lines--that people tend to vote in step with the environment they find themselves in. In my social life, my friends and I (generally) read the same media, or at least the same types, have similar opinions, and come from similar backgrounds, so of course we tend to vote similarly. This is true all over; I wondered how hard it would be to separate from the pack.

I need to start reading New York magazine more

G.G.: Yeah, to me there's a disconnect in McCain's approach to tech. He's obviously smarter about it than he seems (given his time on the issues in the Senate), but the fact that during the last decade he never sat down on a Saturday afternoon and said, “I'm going to teach myself how to use the Web and send e-mail,” is troubling. It just feeds the out-of-touch-ness. Obama on the BlackBerry himself is a powerful image.

M.Y.: It really does make you wonder what he was basing his policy decisions on. You'd think he'd be curious, right? He's voting on these bills, and his office has computers in it. Still, to me the most remarkable thing isn't about McCain personally but how slowly our definition of the "important issues" shifts — the whole idea of the information economy still isn't much more than a throwaway line as far as political campaigns are concerned.

A really interesting discussion between Matt Yglesias (his Atlantic connection makes him automatically rule) and Garrett M. Graff, editor of the Washingtonian and the first blogger to get credentialed by the White House. Just by the looks of his resume, he seems pretty awesome, too. I just plucked out the section on McCain and technology--they make a really good point on how it's not brought up in this campaign, though it should be, as technological progress has been and will continue to define the future of the country.

Later, there is talk of making Americans sacrifice, criticizing President Bush for encouraging Americans to shop as a response to September 11 than to do anything. I've always agreed with that statement--as a kid I always was swept up when hearing historical narratives that dealt with sacrifice in terms of war, be it WWII, the Civil War, or the Revolution. It seemed so exciting, working for your country, doing good! Shopping is frivolous, nothing like planting a victory garden, and I've been eagerly wanting to do something.

Hahaha

My mom sent me this, and it's really quite funny and accurate:

(From ph33r and loathing)

Don't Mess with the Media

I’ve read a lot about Sarah Palin. I find her interesting. I don’t hate her with the force of a thousand suns like a lot of my friends do, but I do believe she is completely over her head and is in no way ready for the national stage, and I think she’d be disastrous if given the opportunity to exercise her values legislatively.

Her beliefs are polarizing, to say the least. She has a way of creating enemies, and governs in a very personal manner. I think part of her charm is that she is cute and pretty, and leads what many consider to be an incredible life. I think many women wish they could pull off something like that; they ignore the warning signs, they ignore the pregnancy, her spurious background. She’s approachable, and that feeling wins out.

Luckily, her utter unpreparedness for a national campaign is finally becoming clear, and it’s become increasingly apparent that John McCain has made a terrible mistake by selecting her as his running mate, exacerbating the decision by following it up with the genius idea of shielding her from the press.

The media likes access; the media likes answers. They do not like rebuffs, refusals, or rejections. The media’s job is to get stories out to the public, and when people make their jobs difficult, they are not happy. The media can be your friend, and they are big on relationships—they can make or break you, so treat them well. Sarah Palin was a public figure before she became a vice-presidential candidate; she’s had experience interacting with the media, just on a smaller scale. For god’s sake, her degree is in journalism!

There’s a difference between demurring for privacy’s sake and outright refusing to answer questions because you have no answers. The only reason not to let the press talk to her was because they were hiding something—which is so completely obvious that it’s totally backfiring on the campaign.

But I just want to point out an interesting example of how media partnerships work, why it’s so important to cultivate positive relationships with them. From Vanity Fair, via Andrew Sullivan:

Obama, on the other hand, was snubbing Murdoch. Every time he reached out (Murdoch executives tried to get the Kennedys to help smooth the way to an introduction), nothing. The Fox stain was on Murdoch.

It wasn’t until early in the summer that Obama relented and a secret courtesy meeting was arranged. The meeting began with Murdoch sitting down, knee to knee with Obama, at the Waldorf-Astoria. The younger man was deferential—and interested in his story. Obama pursued: What was Murdoch’s relationship with his father? How had he gotten from Adelaide to the top of the world?

Murdoch, for his part, had a simple thought to share with Obama. He had known possibly as many heads of state as anyone living today—had met every American president from Harry Truman on—and this is what he understood: nobody got much time to make an impression. Leadership was about what you did in the first six months.

Then, after he said his piece, Murdoch switched places and let his special guest, Roger Ailes, sit knee to knee with Obama.

Obama lit into Ailes. He said that he didn’t want to waste his time talking to Ailes if Fox was just going to continue to abuse him and his wife, that Fox had relentlessly portrayed him as suspicious, foreign, fearsome—just short of a terrorist.

Ailes, unruffled, said it might not have been this way if Obama had more willingly come on the air instead of so often giving Fox the back of his hand.

A tentative truce, which may or may not have vast historical significance, was at that moment agreed upon.

Sexism and Sarah Palin

I do not understand the argument that Bristol Palin’s pregnancy makes Sarah Palin “more real”. I know teenage pregnancies happen. I’ve witnessed them, though only through the gossip factor, not personally. That’s probably why I think this argument is bull. From Maureen Dowd:

As more and more titillating details spill out about the Palins, Republicans riposte by simply arguing that things like Todd’s old D.U.I. arrest or Sarah’s messy family vengeance story will just let them relate better to average Americans — unlike the lofty Obamas.

“If this doesn’t resonate with every woman in America, I’ll eat my hat,” Bill Noll, an Alaska delegate whose daughter got pregnant at a young age and kept the baby, told The Times’s Ashley Parker.

The DUI is old news and doesn’t matter. Even when Bush’s DUI came out five days before the 2000 election it didn’t matter. But Bill Noll’s comment is ridiculous. Bristol Palin’s pregnancy doesn’t resonate with me. Planned Parenthood exists for a reason, people! There are tons of contraception methods available. I know there are complications in getting contraception, but there are many ways around this problem.

Honestly, there are very few stories that are going to resonate with any woman, and the idea that I should relate to this is ridiculous. The closest I worried about pregnancy when I was a teenager extended to the fictional characters I watched on television, and even then I disapproved. It’s a well-known fact that pregnancy ruins shows. Yes, it’s a crappy situation, but for many people—for many females!—it’s just simply not something that is a concern, for a variety of reasons.

But I’m sure I’ll just be called another East Coast Blue Stater who doesn’t know anything about Family Values.

Speaking of Family Values, the way the Republicans are spinning this story—which had to have elicited tons of “holy shit” when the news broke—is amusing. While others have harped on the “choice” aspect (it had to be Bristol’s, because if she actually went to have an abortion the news might not be as big if it broke at all—though it would certainly counter her mother’s political and moral stances), I’m amazed that this is so hailed as a positive thing. Having a child out of wedlock is considered bad enough in Republican circles, but a teenage girl pregnant, who isn’t even supposed to know about sex from her abstinence-only education and churchgoing family! I’m baffled by conservatives championing her when her personal life, by this fact, contradicts what she believes in. I know there is quite a debate going on about what constitutes appropriate criticism…and everything seems to go back to, is it ok to say this…because she’s a woman?

The concerns facing Palin—everything from her experience to her family life—are completely valid. I don’t think it’s sexist to wonder about her caring for a disabled newborn and providing for her oldest daughter’s child, even though many presume that her husband will do most of this type of work. Even moving her large family halfway across the world to Washington is something to note. I would like to hear the tale many women crave: How She Does It. Nannies, messy house, older children babysitting…THAT’S what makes her “real”.

The fact is, most of the childrearing and other domestic duties still overwhelming fall to the woman in the household, no matter how busy she is and no matter how much the husband helps out, so it’s not (so) sexist to wonder why McCain would pick a woman like her, why should would accept, and how she would be able to juggle the role. To quote Dowd again (who I agree here with):

Hillary cried sexism to cover up her incompetent management of her campaign, and now Republicans have picked up that trick. But when you use sexism as an across-the-board shield for any legitimate question, you only hurt women. And that’s just another splash of reality.

Yes, it’s unfair that no one would criticize a man in her position, but these are realistic concerns. While there are many reasons for McCain not to nominate her and for Palin to not accept the job, I do not blame them. It’s a tremendous opportunity, and even if she’s not elected she can still change things.

Sexism is one of the insults in this campaign that basically can be applied to anything, and oftentimes I hear a line it’s attributed to and think it’s nonsense. Racism is sometimes substituted as well. I wish it wasn’t so, that if Barack Obama had a disabled child we would wonder how he would care for him. And it might come up, but not to the extent that it does with a woman.

I’m actually surprised that I haven’t heard (much) criticism of her parenting skills. That would seem to be a focal point. What is also so strange is that Sarah Palin announced her daughter’s pregnancy as a rebuttal to rumors that her 5 month-old Down’s Syndrome-afflicted baby was her daughter’s child, not hers. There are many people who don’t believe this, citing Bristol’s mysterious disappearance from school earlier this year, her mother’s late announcement and lack of showing. I don’t understand why she would hide this information, other than it makes her daughter look bad and her not so great either, but it’s not any more damaging than the original pregnancy is. Truthfully, Bristol Palin didn’t even look pregnant when she stood (with her boyfriend holding her hand on the platform, joining the rest of the family) at the RNC. But then, in my infinitely great punditry skills, when I first heard that the vice-presidential candidate had a teen daughter who was pregnant, I predicted that the Republicans’ run for president would be done. How in the world would that be acceptable? But hey, people want Mama, not Obama, now.

**Hey John, part of this is the second half of that "vicious and haphazard" post.

Why I Like Sarah Palin; or, Oh, the Cult of Personality

I know the few people who read this blog are wondering why I like Sarah Palin, especially as her stances on many issues I disagree with.

In order to understand, you need to watch her speech last night:


She delivered a great speech, plain and simple. The speech was well-written, and accomplished what was needed: introducing herself to the world, attacking her opponent, bolstering her running mate, laying out her accomplishments and to a degree, what she--and McCain--stand for. Like all political women must do in these types of speeches, she brought up her family in detail, and mentioned her role as a mom, but the beginning was actually the best part of her speech. I even enjoyed the many Democratic disses, and she had many good lines. She integrated personal experiences with campaign promises, and injected favorable historical comparisons.

The truth is though, besides all that, I was taken in by her charm. She was funny, forceful, ironic, and she delivered that speech. I loved her facial expressions. She never came across staged, but genuine and natural. I just flat-out loved her, and wanted to vote for her at times, just her, issues be dammed.

The crowd at the RNC loved her too, and like watching Obama last week, just added to the intensity, the feeling of being swept away by collective passion. They chanted so long even before she spoke a single word--other than "thank you"--that you'd have been mistaken for thinking she was running for president, not a woman nobody knew from Tina Fey a week ago.

She handled everything beautifully. Contrasting last night's atmosphere when she spoke to when both Cindy and John McCain sputtered through their speeches tonight only emphasized what an electric presence she has.

But this is the problem, though. I disagree with her on a lot of things--and as other issues come to light, like when she "rhetorically" asked the Wasilla town librarian about how to go about banning books, and the fact that when politicians disagree with her she tends to view it as a personal attack--these things should serve as warning signs that This Isn't the Candidate For Me. But I find her interesting, and she seems like someone who gets stuff done, who actually works hard and cares. Those pesky personal qualities I admire about her--her amusement at the people and process around her, her charm, her ironic expressions, even the way she dresses--are not reasons I should support her. I like the fact that she started in PTA and wound up somewhere else entirely, even that she's so very Alaskan. How cool.

Thinking that Sarah Palin is a cool person, disregarding what she stands for, is the type of thinking that's gotten us into trouble before. It's true, I shouldn't vote for someone that I think I can relate to, or be friends with, because I won't have the opportunity to test that theory out and it's pretty pointless, but it's potent. After all, even David Brooks said that McCain picked her because he felt she was like him--against common sense.

That the Palins are pretty should not matter, but pretty people always win. Pretty people with fun slogans like "Hottest Governor in Coldest State" also push buttons. These things all draw attention, and the RNC needed it. Frankly, Sarah Palin was all I cared about for this convention, and hers is the story I'm interested in. I'm still very much drawn to her; I want to support her, because I like her, if not what she stands for. But I can still respect her very much and resist voting for her, based on my convictions. Isn't that what all the presidential candidates have been saying this entire election anyway?

Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin is incredible.

I saw her speech and I was definitely impressed. In a certain light, she reminds me of Tina Fey. It’s a shame that I disagree with her politically on a lot of issues, and there’s all that dirty laundry coming out of the woodwork, because listening to her I just wanted to vote for her, just her.

Most people talk of how incredible it is that she made the leap to Vice Presidential nominee, but I think the bigger leap is the one from mayor to governor. As governor, she’s already high profile, but she was mayor of a tiny suburb, smaller than my town (and I live in smalltown Jersey). Granted, it’s Alaska, and Alaska is small by population standards…but a run for governor requires assets, money, clout…which you usually don’t have to that degree to run for an office that big.

More to come.

Does a presidential candidate need to be tech-savvy nowadays?

Since I’ve been writing a lot recently on trivial issues the candidates are judged on, it’s time to shift the focus on John McCain. He’s gotten some press recently on his computer illiteracy, so much so that he’s in danger of being seen as out of touch and a luddite.

McCain’s inability to email not only strikes some as being another knock against his age but also on his ability to adapt to new things. After having a president that is known for being a stick-in-the-mud on a good day, most voters want someone now who is a little more flexible, and a candidate who looks so feeble with using the basics of computing is not only going to turn off the tech-mad young, but those who can’t believe a guy’s been able to survive the past decade without a computer. Even the poorest of Americans, even the ones who can’t afford a computer, let alone WiFi, usually have a MySpace or an email account they can check at the local library.

The number one perennial insult for anyone running for office must be “out of touch”, to prove that the candidate is out of step with Americans. But America is so vast that one person’s outdated is another one’s fashion-forward. McCain might eschew email and still talks of learning about “the Google”, but I bet there are Americans who are charmed by this. I know two people who barely know the basics of computing (one doesn’t even own a PC and just got her first email address three weeks ago--and she is not a senior citizen), and they are both, incidentally, Republicans, and are likely to vote for McCain. The fact that he doesn’t know his way around a computer might be comforting to old fogeys like these two, who can relate, instead of finding that they are talking circles around them like anyone else.

How important is John McCain’s familiarity with modern technology to voters? It’s more important than Obama’s eating or exercise habits, that’s for sure. Most of the coverage has ridiculed McCain, baffling so many people as to how he’s lived the past decade or so without such basic familiarity with email. His daughter has a blog, for crissakes. Imagine trying to explain that to daddy.

Anna Quindlen has it right when she says that power is isolating, that web searching and fact-checking are for assistants, not for the boss. But it’s true that I also found it unsettling to hear that he relied on his wife to do all the basic online things. Couldn’t she teach him? It’s pretty easy to create a login name and password, and so much computer prowess is amassed from just clicking around, which of course is something the senator doesn’t have the time for. But it’s amazing that a man with seven kids is just so completely unaware of how so much of modern life is conducted on the computer. My brother and I make fun of my dad a lot because he’s pretty computer illiterate (if the AOL icon bar is not in the same place, he freaks out), but even he knows how to email. Sort of.

Being Healthy is Now a Liability

The Wall Street Journal gave us another gem today:

[I]n a nation in which 66% of the voting-age population is overweight and 32% is obese, could Sen. Obama's skinniness be a liability?

So because Obama likes to work out and eat healthy, and God forbid, does not care for ice cream, it’s another sign that he’s “elitist” and “out of touch” with Americans, since we’re all fat and eat disgusting fried junk. We can’t relate to someone who buys arugla at Whole Foods, who doesn’t eat “typical” All-American fare like Cheese Whiz, who’s too much of a celebrity and superhuman since he doesn’t have to struggle with what to eat and constantly worry about his weight.

What an insult to the millions of Americans who not only have brains, but actually do care about eating healthy, who exercise, and to all the thin people out there. Those kind of preoccupations are obviously only for the wealthy and the famous. Gyms must be a coastal thing, since according to the article, it’s all the Midwesterners and Southerners (and female Clinton supporters) who have problems with Obama’s food and exercise preferences. And if you exercise too much, not only is it big news but the implication is you are vain.

The article touches on his recent Access Hollywood interview, other presidential “gaffes” with food, and how President Clinton’s oft-discussed McDonald’s habit helped him win voters back in 1992, especially in Southern states like Georgia and Tennessee, since they have a large number of overweight people.

Although Obama, “stays away from junk food and instead snacks on MET-Rx chocolate roasted-peanut protein bars and drinks Black Forest Berry Honest Tea, a healthy organic brew,” at times he has to pretend that he really, really isn’t that guy:

Lately, Sen. Obama is more careful. On a campaign stop in Lebanon, Mo., on Wednesday, Sen. Obama visited with voters at Bell's Diner and promptly announced, "Well, I've had lunch today but I'm thinking maybe there is some pie."

He settled on fried chicken and told the crowd he's become a junk-food lover. "The healthy people, we'll give them the breasts," he told the waitress. "I'll eat the wings."

Even though his smoking habit has gotten attention—although even that is considered a liability, since the percentage of Americans who smoke has decreased rapidly—apparently it’s not enough:

Some voters say that even this adds to Sen. Obama's somewhat superhuman persona.

"I mean, really, who quits smoking and doesn't gain any weight?" says 30-year-old Stella Metsovas, an Obama supporter in Laguna Beach, Calif.

Everything, especially in politics, is a lose-lose situation. If Obama was overweight and ate junk food, coverage would be about his health and all the millions of voters who would be turned off by his laziness and disrespect for his body, and Republicans would question how fit he is for the job, physically and mentally. With all the constant coverage on how unhealthy and fat Americans already are, there’s no need to criticize the candidate for taking care of himself and liking what he likes. Mike Huckabee won a lot of support for being vocal about his weight loss struggles, and became an inspiration to many. That’s the kind of initiative voters look for in presidents—and what many see in Obama.

Rest in Peace, Tim Russert

I was away when Tim Russert died. My mom originally wrote this information in an email, but my father made her delete it, for fear of upsetting me.

My parents and I loved Tim Russert. I loved his exuberance, the jolly earnestness he had when discussing anything remotely related to politics. He could hardly contain himself when discussing the election, and his eagerness was a joy to watch.

"Oh, look at him!" we would say. "Look how excited he is!"

His passion for politics was infectious. After hearing about the Pennsylvania primaries, I felt the need to get my hands on anything remotely related to the facts, then go out and do something, be part of the process. I was always happy when I saw him on the newscast, knowing that I was recieving the best quality information from a guy who truly cared.

I'm still reading about his death, and of course, am sad that I missed all the media coverage that has been criticized for overblowing his death. I'd rather see that than any of the firestorms that circulated among lesser individuals--and I'm not even talking about people who achieved only a fraction of what Tim Russert did in his life.

On the plane back I read the New York Times Magazine cover story on Chris Matthews. I had been saving it for a while--though God only knows why--since it wasn't particularly good and Chris Matthews is a blowhard. Apparently the two didn't like each other, and I can certainly see why Russert would not care for Matthews. When you're better known as your impersonation on Saturday Night Live, you know you're in trouble.

One of the saddest things to me is that Tim Russert did not live to see how the 2008 election finished. But then I know he would just be hungry for more, to see what would happen under this new president. I'll miss his twinkling smile, his passion, and how he made me care about whatever he was talking about. And I'm very sorry that I never watched Meet the Press.