The G Spot

Why I heart Atrios

By Kathy G.

Because, so often, he just cuts to the heart of things, with the most minimal of verbiage and bullshit. To whit:

Am I the only to whom it's occurred that monetary policy through the banking channel (as opposed to, say, actually dropping money from helicopters) is only likely to be effective if banks are pretty good at allocating capital efficiently, and recent history tells us that the existing set of clowns in charge completely suck ass at this?

I'd ask him to marry me, if I wasn't already the most happily married woman on earth.

Programming note

By Kathy G.

By the time you read this, I will be on a plane headed for Heathrow Airport and my long-awaited London vacation. Our hotel has internet access and I'll try to post a bit while I'm over there, but I'm going to be too busy to follow politics as closely as I normally do, and I won't have a whole lot of time to write.

However, I have a couple of posts in the hopper which will be going up over the next several days. And I'll do what I can while I'm over there.

Thanks once again to all the readers of this blog who made such great suggestions about things to do in London. I will definitely be taking up many of those suggestions.

I will return home on the 24th, and normal blogging should resume shortly thereafter.

Guest blogging at Art of the Possible

By Kathy G.

I wanted to let you all know that, for the next several Saturdays, I'll be guest blogging at Art of the Possible. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, Art of the Possible is a very interesting site that seeks to facilitate dialogue between liberals and libertarians. You can read my first post here -- it concerns the impact of teenage childbirth on the mother's education and economic well-being.

Long time no blog

By Kathy G.

My apologies to my readers for abandoning this blog so suddenly and without explanation. I wasn't planning to take a hiatus, but a combination of burn-out, lots of other stuff on my plate, and one of those periodic bouts of melancholy I'm plagued with, made blogging seem more like a duty than a pleasure. For a time, anyway.

But thankfully, I'm over that now. Regular blogging will resume momentarily.

My readers are the best

By Kathy G.

I wanted to profusely thank all of you who responded to my bleg asking for tips and advice about travel in England. If you read the comments, you'll see that I got tons of fantastic suggestions, and I'm sure my trip will be far more enjoyable than it would have been as a result. And btw, those comments are an amazing resource that anyone planning a trip to England would be well-advised consult.

I sincerely appreciate those of you who took the time to share your thoughts. And by all means, if you think of more stuff, keep 'em coming. I'll continue to check the thread.

A new website for film lovers: The Daily Plastic

By Kathy G.

I wanted to be sure you all are aware of a new website I highly recommend. It's called Daily Plastic, and it is the brainchild of my friend J. Robert Parks (an occasional contributor to this blog) and his friend Rob Davis.  Like the writing that J. Robert has done here, the Daily Plastic blog will focus on movies, but will cover other subjects as well. And, as the title suggests, Rob and J. Robert plan to post new content daily (at least during the week).

Mostly what they've put up so far are movie reviews, but there are other features as well: podcasts, an interview with documentary filmmaker Nanette Burstein, an embedded video of Jean-Luc Godard's 1986 film profile of Woody Allen, and more.  One handy feature I especially appreciate is their movie grid, which lists movies currently in release, in order from best to worst, and includes an excerpt from Rob's or J. Robert's review, plus snippets from the reviews of other critics.

I don't always agree with J. Robert (I thought Le Crime de M. Lange and The Flavor of Green Tea over Rice were two of the very best films ever made by Renoir and Ozu, respectively, dammit! -- and while Robert liked them, he doesn't rank them nearly as high as I did ). But he's frighteningly knowledgeable about film and as reliable a guide to what might delight your eyeballs as anyone I know, or read.

Already his site has answered a crucial question I was pondering yesterday: is the new Woody Allen film worth seeing? I'm as huge a fan as anyone of Annie Hall, Purple Rose of Cairo, and the early comedies, and for the most part I enjoyed Woody's films up to and very much including Sweet and Low Down. But many of the ones he's made since then that I've seen have been cringe-worthy. I didn't even much care for the recent film that was touted as being his comeback, Match Point. And given that I'm cheap and extremely reluctant to shell out ten bucks unless I think there's a good chance I'll find a film interesting, I was wondering whether Vicky Cristina Barcelona would be worth my while. Yes it got good reviews, but then so did Match Point.

So is Vicky Cristina Barcelona, in Cole Porter's parlance, the good turtle soup, or merely the mock? J. Robert answers that question and others here.

In other blogospheric news, as you may have heard, Matthew Yglesias has recently joined the Center for American Progress, and Ta-Nehisi Coates recently joined The Atlantic. Check out Matt's new blog here, and Ta-Nehisi's new digs here, and update your bookmarks, blogroll, RSS feeds, etc., accordingly. And best of luck to both of them in their new positions -- their respective organizations are lucky to have them.

1 out of 8, 2 out of 11, 2 out of 25

By Kathy G.

I'm late on this, but better late than never, I suppose. I wanted to congratulate my blog friends Matthew Yglesias (whom I've actually met a time or two in the flesh) and Ta-Nehisi Coates (whom I only cyber-know) on their new gigs. Matt is leaving The Atlantic to join the Center for American Progress, and Ta-Nehisi will be a blogger at The Atlantic.

When Matt announced he was leaving, it immediately occurred to me that Ta-Nehisi would be a great replacement (I swear!). I meant to write a post to that effect, but obviously I missed my chance.

Anyway, I'm very pleased to see that: a) The Atlantic hired such a talented writer (and Ta-Nehisi is someone whose work I've been admiring since his Village Voice days), b) Ta-Nehisi has broken the color line of the previously all-white lineup of Atlantic bloggers, and c) that he's broken through the Ivy League barrier as well (Ta-Nehisi went to Howard, but every other Atlantic blogger attended Harvard or some other Ivy League institution). Huzzah and kudos all around.

I think Ta-Nehisi was a great choice, don't get me wrong. But I have to wonder -- why is it that, out of a line-up of eight full-time bloggers*, The Atlantic has seen it fit to hire only one woman (Megan McArdle)? One female out of eight, or 12.5%, is pathetic. It's not like there aren't scads of fabulously talented women bloggers out there. For their next hire, why doesn't The Atlantic consider one of the following:

How about, say, the brilliant Echidne of the Snakes? The Atlantic's sole female blogger and supposed expert on economics, Megan McArdle, consistently embarrasses The Atlantic and herself by the many rudimentary errors about economics she makes. (Here is just a partial list of stuff she's gotten wrong since just the beginning of this year: she's screwed up basic economic concepts like revealed preference, public choice,  monopsony, and the Coase theorem, and has also seriously misrepresented what the peer-reviewed economic literature says about policies like the minimum wage, early childhood education, unions and productivity, and credit discrimination).

But instead of, or in addition to, McArdle, they could have a real live Ph.D.-wielding economist who actually knows what the fuck she's talking about! Imagine that! In addition to her economic expertise, Echidne is a damned good writer. Even though she grew up in (I believe) Finland and English isn't her first language, Echidne, even on her worst day, writes with wit, verve, and style. In English. Whereas McArdle would be hard-pressed to write her way out of a paper bag. In English.

But Echidne is far from the only choice out there. How about, say, the best political blogger around, period? Or our country's smartest young writer about politics and culture, full stop? Or any of these other smart, lively, talented, terrific women?    

Jamie Kirchick doesn't get around much

By Kathy G.

Clearly.  Marty Peretz's mini-me manages to pack an awful lot of stupid shit into one brief post, but here's the particular comment I'll respond to. Quoting my earlier post about Netroots Nation, he writes:

Also, “there could have been more panels with people disagreeing with each other.” Sorry, but dissent isn’t allowed in Netroots Nation.

Come again? How many liberal blogs has he ever read, exactly? Kirchick seems to be under the impression that the entire lefty blogosphere takes its marching orders from the Great Orange Satan. But I've always been partial to the Great Blue Satan and the Great Yellow Satanness, myself.

In all seriousness, though -- the left blogosphere is a motley crew and the idea that there's a top-down, command-and-control structure to it is ludicrous. We are united by a few core values, but on the whole we're an ornery bunch and since we lack the authoritarian mindset of many on the right, we're not so easy to control.

And anyone who reads liberal blogs knows that there is dissent and disagreement aplenty in the left blogosphere. Anyone remember the "your candidate sucks" wars from just, oh, two months ago? The Hillary haters vs. the Obama skeptics? And there are a multitude of significant policy differences as well. On the health care front, there are the single payer types vs. those who support Jacob Hacker-style mandates. In foreign policy, there are Chomskyite lefties vs. liberal interventionists (need I remind you that many, many prominent bloggers on the left like Matt Stoller, Ezra Klein, and Matthew Yglesias initially supported the Iraq War, though they quickly came to their senses about that?). There are those who strongly support abortion on demand without apology vs. those think it's okay to compromise on that stance, the better to chase the so-called "values voters." There are economic populists on the one hand, and deficit hawks on the other. There are those who believe we should target Blue Dog Democrats in primaries, and those who think that's a waste of resources. There are those of the opinion that when Obama screws up we should call him on it, and those who argue that Obama's liberal critics should shut the fuck up until the election is over, at least. There are those who want George Bush to be impeached, and those who think impeachment would be unwise. There are those who fervently believe that Jim Webb would be The. Most. Awesomest. Running Mate. Evah., and those who believe he is Teh Suck. And on and on.

There are, I think, three basic propositions about which the netroots agree:

1) The Republican Party in general, and Bush in particular, sucks;

2) The media sucks; and

3) The Iraq War sucks.

Netroots Nation round-up

By Kathy G.

I've been meaning to blog a bit about Netroots Nation. I apologize for not getting to it until now, but I didn't get home until last night some other things needed taking care of first.

I'll start with what I didn't like about Netroots Nation:

1. The expense. Bad enough that fuel prices mean that airfare is going through the roof, and the hotel itself cost a pretty penny (with taxes, around $155 per night for a double). But even worse was the $450 registration fee ($375 if you registered early). I'll be damned if I know where that registration fee paid for -- the only "meals" covered were two boxed lunches and one "brunch" consisting of coffee, juice, muffins, and bagels. Registration for a comparable conference, this year's Take Back America, was only $280, and that included most meals. Plus, if you were a student, senior, or low-income person, the TBA fee was reduced to $125 (if I recall correctly). Also, this year regular registration for Blogher cost $350, but for students the fee was only $75.

I know that scholarships were available for Netroots Nation, but still -- that's an awful lot of money, and the only reason my husband and I could afford it is that we're doing reasonably well financially this year. The cost is probably one reason why the conference was so overwhelmingly white -- it was about the whitest left-of-center gathering I've ever attended. And I don't just mean that there were few African-Americans -- Latinos and Asian-Americans were scarce as well. I also noticed that the attendees seemed to skew heavily male.

I think the organizers of next year's conference should make a concerted effort to make the conference more affordable. It hurts the netroots as a movement if its doors are closed to people of modest means, because then, inevitably, our politics will tend to ignore the bread-and-butter economic concerns that are crucial toward building a mass movement.

I've been told that in the past, it was suggested that, instead of holding the conference at a hotel, we could hold it at a university. This is apparently the route other groups go, and it makes a lot of sense to me. First of all, it's cheaper, and secondly, many large universities have adequate facilities, not only for the conference itself, but for lodging (in many colleges, the dorms are otherwise virtually empty during the summer, after all). I was told that the idea of going the university route was shot down because it would be too downscale and wouldn't impress the media muckety-mucks. But I say it's much more important to be inclusive than to give a rat's ass about what the clueless media will think (and face it, they're only going to caricature us as a bunch of dirty fucking hippies anyway).

My heart vagina belongs to daddy

By Kathy G.

I heart Digby for many reasons, but one of them is that she was among the first to write about the ghastly "purity balls" -- those sick Christian right rituals in which little girls pledge their "purity" to their daddies. She's written another post about this nauseating patriarchal rite, and it's especially sharp, because it concerns two of the things she understands best: the complete freaking horror show that is the American right, and the shallow, patronizing, bizarrely other-directed and thoroughly phony and dishonest spectacle that is the American mainstream media.

Time magazine has published a piece on the purity balls, and apparently, Time thinks they're just swell. Digby's take on this is spot-on as usual, but I especially enjoyed this:

But people like her would no more ask their own kid to do this than they would suggest she join the Hell's Angels, and any husband and daughter of her social circle would thinks she was nuts if she even tried. No, this lovely rustic ritual is for the little people who are "authentic" and "natural" and have Better Morals Than Us.

Or, in the words of upper class man-about-town Algernon Moncrief in The Importance of Being Earnest, "Really, if the lower orders don’t set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them?"

Digby continues:

It's that phony Village provincialism running amok again spreading patronizing, anti-intellectual drivel that allows these elites to wallow in salt of the earth moral superiority that they do not personally possess but take credit for by writing glowing paeans to primitivism and barbarity that nobody but a few fundamentalist weirdos actually believe in.

This brings to mind the strange media spectacle that was the reaction to the death of Tim Russert earlier this year. The endless grief-athon in response to his passing was unseemly, to say the least. I understand that yes, if someone close to you dies suddenly and at a relatively young age, of course it's shocking and horrifying and traumatic. But the media coverage of Russert's death was bizarrely out of proportion. This was a guy who asked questions on a weekly TV show -- we aren't talking about a president or the Pope here. One would have expected that media professionals would, well, have a sense of professionalism about this kind of thing. But no -- as usual, it was all about them.