To hate and mock is one's devotion, but one kind of likes James Fallows.
Cleveland! (I've always kind of wondered how a law firm in Cleveland ended up Big Law-y.)
It's nice to lead a good, productive, and admirable life, but it's more important to squander one's opportunity to do so by insulting people on the internet.
It's a nice summary, and sounds like he did some impressive work in several arenas.
I admit to chortling at Fallows's characterization that going to Exeter and then Harvard is a "meritocratic sweep". Doesn't the man have an editor?
5: A good life, but don't get carried away.
Doesn't the man have an editor?
Not for his blog posts. Freedom. America.
Did Fallows write the appreciation? I thought he was quoting someone else. It certainly doesn't read like his writing.
Yes, he wrote it. What's wrong with it?
Fallows is one of our best writers on political and social issues. He represents everything I thought Michael Kinsley was before realizing he was a giggling wanker. Which must be whoa, over a decade ago.
9 last gets it right. I can't think of anyone from his particular rough generation/milieu who emerged from it so unscathed. Maybe John Judis, just barely, or Robert Reich, or Krugman if he counts, but almost every other establishment 80s-90s center-left Democrat became an enormous tool, IMO because of the enormous weight of terrible assumptions they thought they had to make in order to compromise with the Reaganites on economics.
Fallows doesn't seem the self-ignorant sort who would deploy a phrase like "meritocratic sweep" without irony. Perhaps the irony is insufficiently exoteric.
Maybe he thinks we're at the point where "meritocracy" is inherently understood to be ironic, like "best and the brightest".
11 was what I was thinking, Ned, but I'm happy to fight about it if you'd like. I think Jim Fallows is terrible!*
Also, Hendrik Hertzberg remains a good enough writer and appears to be a decent human being.
* I do not, in fact, think anything of the sort.
11: I don't see any info about his parents and their status. It could be an "meritocratic sweep" without irony.
Founded a charter school, so clearly a monster.
I think I'm just in a horrible mood today. And Calkins sounds as if he was a lovely person. But I have a hard time getting excited about the good works done by Harvard-Exeter-BigLaw Partner-Dude Who Soothed Student Unrest At Harvard and so on. Better that sort of person should be a good person than a bad one, and if you knew him I'm sure he was wonderful, but in terms of celebrating his life, I start thinking about camels and needles-eyes.
I see the problem, obviously, but I'm not quickly coming up with a better one-word shorthand for the aspirational high-points of achievement culture that would note them without focusing on the issue for debate.
10 reminds me that I just discovered that Fre/ddie de Bo/er has taken his weary one-true-man-of-the-left act to Andrew Sullivan's site, because Sady Doyle was right about everything de Bo/er has a more sophisticated understanding of his audience than I thought he looked at the job market for doctoral students in composition studies you procedural liberals are doing it wrong.
It is sort of reminiscent of that longitudinal study that found if you are an upper-crust Harvard man from 1920, then the single best predictor of happiness is whether you're a loving family man and aren't a total lush. I guess that's two things. (This guy sounds like a mensch.)
Hooray, LB. 17 is why I linked this, rather than some other obituary of a little-known good life. Calkins was no Paul Farmer: he worked entirely within the parameters of polite liberalism. I thought it was worth thinking about just how admirable we find that, and whether it's worth emulating. But it's probably not the most favorable week for people to think, hey, liberalism, not so bad!
22: Gonna join Bob at the barricades?
Fallows is very liberal, and very classy. Much like Carter himself.
Gonna join Bob at the barricades?
I raise them as genuine questions. I come down somewhere in the middle, right around "good guy, good life, and we need more like him, but even more like him aren't going to get it done in America."
No irony. I'm sure they're more liberal than he is, but he's still a genuine care-about-the-poor-and-working-class liberal (and the last one to occupy the White House).
27: man, what? I am a big Jimmy Carter fan but he sure as shit wasn't liberal in any coherent way. Less so than the current occupant of the office, probably.
29: See deregulation for instance. Ronald "Big Government" Reagan just continued the trend Carter set just with more racism, and government pork for defense contractors and other corrupt leeches.
Whoa, there, cowboys. I'm talking about Carter the man, which I think we can get a sense of from his post-presidency more than his presidency.
31: Alfred Kahn! who else knows who that is without looking it up?
32: Ah right, you mean Carter the anti-Semite...
Yes, let's form the ol' circular firing squad 'round yon Fallows 'n' Carter.
32: Wait'll you see Obama let it rip post-presidency.
Why, you think they're going to let him keep the drones?
35: "Kill the beasts! Cut their throats! Spill their blood! Do them in!"
37: Sure, let the white Southerner rehabilitate himself post-presidency while the black man is forever damned.
I recommend Bruce Schulman's The Seventies, very good on Nixon, Carter and Reagan and the continuities, with a sharp eye for social trends working all along.
I will say that this was pretty out there by national political standards of the mid-70s:
The other source of my understanding about what's right and wrong in this society is from a friend of mine, a poet named Bob Dylan. After listening to his records about "The Ballad of Hattie Carol" and "Like a Rolling Stone" and "The Times, They Are a-Changing," I've learned to appreciate the dynamism of change in a modern society.
I grew up as a landowner's son. But I don't think I ever realized the proper interrelationship between the landowner and those who worked on a farm until I heard Dylan's record, "I Ain't Gonna Work on Maggie's Farm No More." So I come here speaking to you today about your subject with a base for my information founded on Reinhold Niebuhr and Bob Dylan.
You know, in all the times I've heard my mom recount the story of how she took ballroom dancing with William Zanziger, I've never asked if he was a good dancer.
My dad was a charter subscriber to The Washington Monthly, so I read Fallows from about 1971. He had subscribed to Max Ascoli's The Reporter, not to I.F. Stone's Weekly or Ramparts.
If BioHazard's still around, I'd be curious what he was reading then, in periodicals I mean.
I can't believe I forgot about Hertzberg when I wrote 10. What a fucking moron I am. I assign myself 50 burpees.
That's not penance, you creature of vanity. If you're really sorry you'll have some pizza.
Hendrik Hertzberg's legacy is irrevocably smudged by his worthy crankitude on democratic reform. Democracy is ... OK, I guess, but I don't care about Jesse Ventura's attempt to install a unicameral legislature in Minnesota.
I'm not sure I understand 46. You don't think NPV is a good idea? Or you think that pushing for it make HH a crank? Or something something Jesse Ventura? I'm not being argumentative; I'm actually interested.
Carter was not a liberal at all, less so even than Clinton IMO.
On the other hand hypothetical 1980 presidential election* Unfogged would have been great -- "Ted Kennnedy is our savior!" "Kennedy is a vanity candidate! Mary Jo!" "I'm a weenie who likes John Anderson!" And, at the end: "Holy shit, we're all fucked. Like, fucked for real. My God."
*one of my earliest memories is the horror/terror on my parents' faces as the results rolled in.
42: You know, in all the times I've heard my mom recount the story of how she took ballroom dancing with William Zanziger, I've never asked if he was a good dancer.
See, ogged would have because he'd be talking about Zanziger the man, which I think we can get a sense of from his post-murderous rage life more than his murderous rage.
43: In '71 I was reading the NYTimes and US News & World Report. There were two kids, aged 3 & 1 to deal with, work, and a graduate program to pursue. I was too old to be drafted when the draft got serious and I would been stuck in a technical support branch earlier so the Vietnam war wasn't high on my list of worries. There weren't protests of any note going on in Birmingham anyway.
47: I'm just poking fun at his Diogenesis* on an important issue. He's the last concerned man!
48: The Flip-Pater voted for Anderson. He ... does not enjoy being reminded of this.
* [Fist pump.] Flippanter with the apt nonsense!
48:
Don't forget "Jerry Brown!" "Linda Rondstadt!"
the horror/terror on my parents' faces
Surprised or just dismayed.
My wife and I had just started going out. We watched the debate together. She found my preferring Carter but recognizing Reagan's appeal kind of alienating. She voted for Anderson.
48: Wait, was "Linda Ronstadt!" supposed to be a rap on Jerry Brown? What the hell did Linda Ronstadt ever do to offend people? Henley and Frey quit her tour to form the Eagles; she didn't fire them or anything.
And, now that I think of it, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the waiting for the bombs to fall pretty much burned out my OMG reflex. If isn't one horror, it's another. Fuck it, have a beer.
We took US News & World Report too, even though my dad was an avowed socialist. He preferred the bulletin style to the knowingness of Time & Newsweek. The David Lawrence pieces he just laughed at.
one of my earliest memories is the horror/terror on my parents' faces as the results rolled in.
I went out and got great take-out barbeque (was living in Houston) from a joint near me along with a six-pack. Was looking forward to night of following the results. Got home and turned on the TV and it was already over. Ate and drank with no enjoyment whatsoever.
Nothing wrong with Linda Ronstadt, God bless her soul, we're just trying to imagine blog comments and obsessions.
After The Stone Ponies she performed solo at, among other places, "The Bistro" on Olentangy River Road, which she remembered correctly as the pits.
55: My father, an AFL-CIO official, used to read USNWR and Fortune, saying their coverage of economics and the labor movement was, in his experience, much more accurate than Time's or Newsweek's. He figured that was because "the bosses" wanted accurate info, not BS.
But enough with the hatred and mockery. We're alive in the 21st century!
... thank God Almighty we're creating elites! In the past 150 years, medical elites have doubled human life expectancy all over the world. Elite Western medical establishments have given mankind the ability to literally eradicate diseases like smallpox and rinderpest. And, no matter how much you loathe pharmaceutical companies, the elite executives who runs these businesses have created platforms for sustained research while making medications available.
Nothing wrong with Linda Ronstadt, God bless her soul
Señor Plow no es macho. Es solamente un borracho!
"Ch/ris Her/ries is a sophomore majoring in Latin. His interests include rugby, crossfit, weiqi, and public service."
Up against the wall, motherfucker!
In 1980 I was a very young engineer. Voted for Carter and was shocked, shocked that Reagan won. I blame(d) John Anderson (who is still alive).
60: I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought that.
I guess on the basis that the Jones Day tax practice would have had a head in any event the tens or hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue he cost our government over his career aren't a mark against him.
But you must admit that being the head of the tax practice was in fact a "good job."
Henley and Frey quit her tour to form the Eagles; she didn't fire them or anything.
That is surely the worst thing I ever heard about Ronstadt, whom I love dearly. She should have fired them with extreme prejudice; better, never hired them in the first place.
Salt Lake City Hoping To Boost Tourism By Reminding Visitors They're Free To Leave At Any Time.
48: Who actually is or was a liberal, then? Or are they like true Scotsmen?
I ask this in true and humble perplexity.
50: I used to read all sorts of stuff that today seems like it was kind of silly. Like Harpers before Lapham, and Newsweek because it was less stupid than Time, and pre-US-edition The Economist. Also Avatar, The Old Mole, The Real Paper, BAD and The Phoenix, it being Boston/Cambridge. (Not all those were around in exactly 1971, but you know...)
and Newsweek because it was less stupid than Time
This was our household. My mother--a John Anderson Republican--considered Luce a despicable red-baiter.
I blame(d) John Anderson (who is still alive).
Prog ruined everything!
69.1 Ted Kennedy was a liberal!
Am I correct that Carter, W. Clinton, and Obama all refused the label, liberal?
A fallacy must be named to be misused. Both Carter and Clinton were on the right side of the party.
Right as in correct, or right as in favouring the monarchy in the Assemblée Nationale of 1789?
Who's a liberal depends on context. Here, I don't feel like one. To my brother and brother-in-law, I'm the thing itself.
74 -- The latter, though they are one and the same to noted Bourbon Legitimist Walt Someguy.
I'm more of a Bonapartist. I'm just looking for a man on a horse.
Who actually is or was a liberal, then?
I swear to God I will hunt down and ice bucket challenge the first person to mention Adlai Stevenson.
Walt Quelqu'un changed his name upon arrival to the Americas in order to evade being captured and tried for the crimes he committed during the revolution.
I really liked that Time article on the US healthcare system. Nice, longer article.
Now Time is evaluating their writers based on an advertiser friendliness score.
What about Adlai Stevenson in a sedan chair carried by six sexy female bodyguards of all ethnicities? Because that's what I'm offering, America.
"It's hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse."
Carter should have ridden a horse instead of a tank.
Wasn't Dukakis the one in the tank?
He should have ridden in the tank without the little helmet and promised to flay alive anybody who so much as looked at his wife for more than three seconds.
What about Adlai Stevenson in a sedan chair carried by six sexy female bodyguards of all ethnicities?
Pictures or it's not happening.
85: They were different people? Ouch.
He should have ridden in the tank without the little helmet and promised to flay alive anybody who so much as looked at his wife for more than three seconds.
Amen. I think that went into Political Operatives Protips immediately after the '88 election.
When W flew onto the Abraham Lincoln for the Mission Accomplished speech, I only saw pics of him carrying his flight helmet. Rove probably wanted to avoid the Dukakis effect....
I'm waiting for the liberal candidate who dares to ride a horse that is standing atop a tank that is on the deck of an aircraft carrier.
(I'm looking at you, Hillary.)
He should have ridden in the tank without the little helmet and promised to flay alive anybody who so much as looked at his wife for more than three seconds
I don't think this is the right lesson; Dukakis did nothing wrong in itself. The lesson should be that Democratic candidates are viciously and ignorantly attacked by media players who may privately disagree but whose income depends on it. Look how Jindall was just last week reviving that bit about how Kerry, who was riding a modern road bike, where the top tube is not parallel to the ground, but slopes downward front-to-back, was riding a girl's bike. May have originated in 2004 with Matthews, who is genuinely ignorant and was very well paid by Jack Welch.
Adlai Stevenson was not very liberal even by the standards of the day. Galbraith was very clear about this in his review of John Barlow Martin's biography of Stevenson. The older generation of liberals loved the man, though. His patrician eloquence reminded them of FDR.
A valuable witness on the politics of the period is Peter Viereck. He noticed that while Stevenson was far more articulate than Eisenhower (chose to be), there was very little difference between them on policy.
six sexy female bodyguards of all ethnicities
Six=all? Racist.
Huh? What are the other three ethnicities?
I'm pretty sure that was actually a girl's bike. But so fucking what. Anyway, the criticism was more "he's riding a girl's bike WHILE BOMBS ARE FALLING SOMEWHERE IN THE WORLD!" to which the reply is also So fucking what. Thank god politician's lives aren't recorded 24/7- Holder was eating dessert while riots were happening in Ferguson! Obama was having sex while soldiers were on patrol in Afghanistan!
Stevenson was far more articulate than Eisenhower
And clean!
I bet there's a picture somewhere of Amanda Curtis riding a horse.
Thanks, knecht, for recommending "What Did You Do in the Class War, Daddy?" and reminding me that it's pretty selfishly smug of me to feel safe having relied on being a female queer pacifist with serious scoliosis to keep me out of the draft, because that has nothing to do with the people who do get sucked in even during these days of enlistment.
I've had a similar thoughts to 101, but a mandatory, co-ed, you choose between public service/conservation corps/the military type draft always seemed like a good idea, though however you set it up it's not gonna provide the class dissolving aspect of the military. 2-3 years doing real mandatory work between high school and college would also be a good thing for a lot of people for other reasons.
I met some kids yesterday who were doing an AmericaCorps type thing where they act as quasi-lawyer/paralegals/basic legal services providers for low income people. Seemed like a great idea, probably good for the kids too.
act as quasi-lawyer/paralegals/basic legal services providers for low income people.
This is amazingly excellent, essential work to be doing.