But you'd need to read 10,000 of them to really be an expert at criticizing Gladwell.
Not if he takes ten hours to read each one.
Jesus Christ, he's a talented magazine journalist who's not an exceptionally rigorous thinker. He has almost literally no power over anyone or thing. Get over it already.
Nothing will make me care one way or another about Gladwell.
We're supposed to have reasons to complain about things now?
The correct paperwork, at least.
Would that 4 were true, but this stuff--Gladwell in particular--gets a crazy amount of traction in, at least, education and criminal justice policy. Folks are mercifully more critical than they were a few years ago, and sometimes the "behavioral economics" intervention or whatever that they dream up is better than what came before, but it's deep sloppiness feinting at precision and it. is. a. scourge.
To expand on 8, I've noticed many of his ideas parroted in my little bubble of the business world. His contribution to the set of things that people casually believe without asking questions about makes me uncomfortable.
This article thoroughly discredits Gladwell.
I feel like I should clarify that when I deride "deep sloppiness feinting at precision," I myself stand firmly on team "wear bravely your sloppiness," not team "actually achieve precision."
8 and 9 are correct. Gladwell is very popular and influential among the kinds of people with power over things like University dining budgets, so his sloppiness really is dangerous.
I would be staggered if Gladwell were not popular and influential among several people with power in Yawnoc's own organization.
I don't think Gladwell is being sloppy when he favors dining services run by large corporate contracts.
15 occurred to me as well. Do we know if Gladwell has taken any money from these companies?
Something something 1000 Philistines something something jawbone of an ass?
#4: Actually all top civil servants in Narnia read Gladwell's books as a sort of common curriculum and worship them. In place of actually studying the humanities and social sciences (besides econ.). It has a certain appeal to technocrats...
8 and 9 are unfortunately my experience too. There is a certain kind of dopey enthusiasm for too-perfect gee-whiz answers that drives me absolutely up a wall, and it feels as though people with a lot of influence over money (foundation staff, business leaders) are more susceptible than most.
But I dunno, maybe it just feels that way because they control money.
First you get the power, then you get the money, then you get the gee-whiz answers delivered weekly from a venerable publication.
Not to wax reflective, but could there be a chance that we might be overreacting the tiniest bit to Gladwell's fairly obvious choice to publish his roving explanations without the apparatus of apologies, assurances and half-takebacks with which we some of us poor benighted knowledge workers make it through our dreary days?
Am I alone in thinking that the problems described in 8, 9, 19, 20 have improved a *bit* over the past few couple of years, as part of a broader backlash against Silicon Valley style solutionism? (She said, as she ordered gyoza and laundry delivery through apps, pausing only to Ask Siri "who was King Alfred's favorite monk?").
23 As you say, there are probably possibilities I haven't accounted for, my apologies for not making that clearer, I'll continue to keep you apprised as I consider it.
Christ you people live in a dystopian nightmare world. I haven't heard Gladwell's name in any context other than "Gladwell sucks" in years.
16: I assume he still takes speaker fees, but I doubt there's anything direct.
*Note: I can't vouch for this source, just found it in a search for stories about Gladwell and speaker fees.
27 St. Neot.
"It's like uber, for information about 9th century monks."
27: don't you live in some idyllic topless European village or something?
If PHB types take Gladwell's sloppy arguments as sufficient evidence to implement bad policies, that's on the PHBs and the people who empower them. I'm not sure exactly what bankshot ad hominem neb is going for in 14 but trust me nobody in "my own organization" would be authorized to make a material business decision based on a fucking New Yorker article.
Gladwell's job is to write entertaining magazine pieces and books and he's really good at it. He's always been a bit sloppy in his thinking, but not gravely irresponsibly so and far less so than other similarly-placed public figures (like, oh, say, Thomas Friedman, who is still being published in the New York Times, if you can believe it).
The example in the OP is pretty meh IMHO and relies pretty heavily on some sleight-of-hand where ineffectively advocating for educational egalitarianism is somehow a smokescreen for corporatism run amok. I think it's very possible to think Gladwell's argument doesn't hold together without concluding that he's a shill for Aramark.
I'm not trying to make any kind of ad hominem, silly, nor do I think that the explicit basis for a decision would be "well, it was in the NYer, so". Influence needn't be so obvious to be real, and I really would be surprised if his influence weren't felt in big companies in these parts, and I do think he's influential. I don't think that the excuse that he's just an entertainer or story-teller (which he's made on his own behalf) holds water: his magazine pieces are presented as if they're straight reportage, in a venue that does, in fact, do straight reportage, and they are, as he must know, taken as they're presented, i.e. as straight reportage (same goes for his books). When enough people started calling him out for being at best sloppy both theoretically and factually, only at that point did he announce what no one thitherto could have been expected to have understood, that he never actually intended what he wrote to impart information or knowledge or to be grounded in reality.
I don't see what issue you can consistently have regarding Friedman. If a body's taking Gladwell's sloppy thought as a reason to implement bad policies is wholly on them, then isn't Friedman exonerated on similar grounds?
Gladwell aside, I had no idea Aramark was such a big company.
If you can't see the difference between, "We should invade Iraq because fuck those guys," and, "We should divert funds from dining halls to scholarships, even if it means doing business with Aramark," then there's no point in continuing the conversation.
I wouldn't say Gladwell's writing is "straight reportage." It's clearly synthesis and it (over)relies on the "here's a little-known fact that explains everything" trick. Frequently, the fact fails to explain everything satisfactorily. Surprise!
FWIW, I just think Gladwell is more Slate style contrarian than corporate shill. Things that liberals would think are good, like not using DDT or serving healthier food, are actually bad -- that sort of thing.
AFAICT Gladwell didn't even say "… even if it means doing business with Aramark", because that level of subtlety of thought is foreign to him, as is the decision to actually investigate what his proposals involve.
I wouldn't say Gladwell's writing is "straight reportage." It's clearly synthesis
Reportage beyond the level of stenography, especially investigative reportage, is synthesis, and "synthesis" is worlds away from just telling an entertaining story that has no pretensions to being accurate.
I can tell the difference between Gladwell's and Friedman's substantive proposals, incidentally, and didn't make any comment about them. If it's all on me if I make a decision about the running of my business after reading Gladwell's latest bestseller, and not on Gladwell, why isn't it on me if I start to support war in Iraq after reading Friedman's column, and not on Friedman? Or, if it is partly on Friedman in the one case, why isn't it partly on Gladwell in the other? The decisions involved aren't as grave, sure.
30: I live in a dappled glade, but we still have Internet.
It looks like you need to listen to Gladwell's podcast to find out exactly what he says, which is a step too far.
Since the entirety of the discussion of Aramark stems from the blogger's first mentioning Vassar's contract with them, and nowhere is anything Gladwell might have said about them mentioned, my assumption is that he went straight for glib ignorance. But, sure, the blogger could be omitting something.
The key phrase above is, "a bit sloppy in his thinking, but not gravely irresponsibly so." I may sometimes find a Gladwell argument silly, but i don't think he's laying down the intellectual substrate for a pernicious (neoliberal?) world order. If he's opined on something more consequential than university dining halls that you think is truly toxic, I'm all ears.
The Aramark thing is a total non sequiter.
Gladwell's argument: it would be better if Bowdoin spent less money on local, organic food and more money on scholarships.
On-point response: Bowdoin doesn't spend all that much on the food and it wouldn't pay for many scholarships.
Irrelevant response: If Bowdoin didn't buy local and organic then Aramark! Prisons! Slave labor!
I find Gladwell to be kind of glib and reflexively contrarian, but I certainly agree that his work isn't as obnoxious or potentially dangerous as Friedman's.
(Friedman is particularly frustrating to me because by most accounts he has a book from early in his career that was really thoughtful and good, and he apparently has spousal wealth such that he doesn't need to have a cushy columnist gig. He's both capable of doing better AND doesn't economically need his job, which makes it especially galling that he continues to eat up space that really good writers and thinkers could be doing cool stuff in.)
That said, the popularity of Gladwell-esque stories about the world is pretty dangerous in its own right. My thinking here is pretty colored by my personal biases for "world changing" efforts, which lean toward experimentation with multiple models and rapid iteration and not being too tied to One Magic Answer, as well as a general skepticism about OMAs that seem to confirm my prejudices.
Leaders who love Gladwell seem to absolutely adore the idea that there IS an OMA, and they love it even more that the OMA confirms their biases. They seem to completely lack a fail-safe that would cause them to pause and ask "Why does this explanation make sense to me? Who benefits if I buy into this worldview? Who is critiquing it, and why should I feel comfortable ignoring them?"
Basically what I hate about people who love Gladwell is that they are thrilled someone has done their thinking for them, and they're too clueless to understand that what he's doing is storytelling, not thinking.
Christ you people live in a dystopian nightmare world.
It's like you didn't even watch Trump's convention speech.
I think we can all agree that Gladwell is not worse than Hitler.
42 is spot on. Gladwell is popular with technocratic types who don't want to think too much about how humans actually work.
I hope we can also agree that Gladwell needn't be particularly important for it to be ok to enjoy reading essays bashing him.
48, 49: neb anticipated you back in 2013.
It is a really good essay.
Google tells me Gladwell pulls in about $80k per talk. What he's really selling is the little dopamine boost of illusory esoteric insight (always simplifying, never complicating) very skillfully woven into a breezy, readable narrative of discovery. In the end, people quote or refer to him a lot, but I'd guess he matters almost not at all. Pretty good living though, and doesn't even land him in the inner circles of hell.
Dude's got a long, long history of sleazy stuff. This one is particularly impressive, I think, if only for the sheer "oh seriously are you kidding me?" factor (but the lying bit is impressive too). The responses it got were a great example of the biggest danger of argument-by-rhetorical-question, which is that often someone can actually answer the question that is being (dishonestly in this case) asked.
The schtick he has works for him because it isn't so much appealing to a certain kind of powerful person with One Magical Answer, it's that that magical answer is one that that powerful person was really hoping, deep down, would be magical.
I'm sort of teetering between 51 and 52.
|| In other news, how about this Putin Trump stuff? Are we going to end up finding that some smoking gun memo that turns up has a kerning problem?
The wife is out of town for the evening, so I decided to go to the Star Trek movie. Mistake? |>
53.2 The Putin stuff is pretty amazing. Now I'm wondering about the flat out conspiratorial stuff that JMM alluded to but decided not to report on TPM.
53.3 Probably, but then I'm a biased ST fan who hates the reboots. OTOH, I love going to the cinema so enjoy.
40
I think university dining is pretty fucking consequential to the people in unconscionable labor conditions. And let's not forget his warm fuzzy embrace of broken windows policing. They read this stuff in graduate MPA programs and accept it as fact. It's consequential.
||
My computer glasses just now broke just before beginning my first day back at work after my leave. I knew that one of the arms was loose and probably should have replaced it when I was back in NY. Dune world problems.
|>
Is it the sort of thing where a glasses repair kit would work? Because those are pretty cheap, and I assume they sell them in Arrakis. Or is it a more serious break?
What is the Trump/Putin stuff? I am on a self-imposed Twitter break and feel behind on world events.
57 Going to try the Krazy Glue route, if I can get any here (I guess UHU is something like that).
No, see, we want Trump to be less connected to Putin, not more.
I just meant that in an "Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue" kind of way.
Ah, okay. Definitely not a good week, month, or year to stop sniffing glue.
In fact, might be a good time to stock up.
Holy crap. 59 is beyond appalling, not to mention terrifying. I keep thinking I can't imagine anything more frightening than this election and then we keep finding a new bottom.
It's such a perfect trap.
The campaign will stay away from it,I'm sure. instead they should be figuring out exactly which DNC staffers are necessary to win in November. Those folks can go deliver personal apologies to Sen Sanders.
69 Roger Stone?
But this isn't some Dan Rather planted documents type story.
Right, everything in the TPM post is a matter of public record, and damning enough regardless of whether a smoking-gun document of questionable authenticity emerges later.
69: Did you look at 59? I'm not really in a good position to suggest reading links, but it's evidence independent of the leak.
Have you tried sniffing glue?
Holds zero appeal, I'm afraid. Plus grocery stores seem to take even small purchases very seriously.
That's what we were saying about Ws national guard service.
To complete the thought above those folks not essential to victory ought to be helped to new positions on the Hill. Governors staffs. Something using their talents and new appreciation for discretion.
those folks not essential to victory
And how is this to be determined?
Oh sure, i understand the case. Just way convenient timing. We can expect the tranche of emails released Monday to some some really stupid shit.
Trump is way too incompetent to be playing at all. Not true about the other guy.
75. You think this would be difficult?
I'm sure the emails are going to have some stupid shit. Lord knows my emails are full of all sort of fuckery. I always figure that if I ever get served, at least the junior attorneys will have fun.
But, I don't see how stupid emails is going to help given than Trump still hasn't released his taxes. Presumably because the gist of the TPM article is right.
41: Aramark is not a non sequitur.
Gladwell (apparently) argues that Bowdoin should spend less money on food and more money on scholarships like Vassar and other peer colleges.
This seems to be a progressive argument (more scholarships for Pell grant qualifiers), but not only would it not accomplish its stated aims, it would also undermine one of the genuinely progressive things that Bowdoin is doing differently than Vassar and other peer colleges, which entails rejecting Aramark and Sodexho-Marriot.
You think this would be difficult?
I've never worked in the world of political campaigns, though I am acquiring a surprising number of friends who have, so I honestly have no idea. My question was sincere.
The Russian connection certainly seems to be getting picked up on social media in a big way. I wonder if this has a chance to backfire spectacularly on the Trump campaign. Last I checked Russia was not on the very short list of foreign countries permitted to interfere in American domestic politics with impunity.
Holy shit to 59. Corbyn and Farage are foreign owned too over here (Press TV and RT respectively).
82. Knew about Frarage, not about Corbyn, who seems to speak and act much as he would do anyway, any time these fifty years, so I don't see what the Iranians are getting for their money. But if it's so it should be better known.
What worries me is that all these connections have been hidden in plain sight for years and nobody in the political establishment seems to care. Why isn't it on the front pages?
Also knew about Trump, obviously. But it seems to be counter to the procedural liberal credo to say, "My opponent is a foreign agent, here's the scoop", and I don't understand why.
82: And George Galloway, who's paid by both.
George Galloway, blast from the past. Many years ago I chaired a meeting he spoke at, and had to take him to dinner first. He was absolutely charming, and made no sense at all.
absolutely charming, and made no sense at all.
New mouseover text?
I'm sort of ambivalent on the Trump thing: on the one hand, if he's basically a paid agent of Russia that's not great. On the other hand though it means he'd be taking orders from someone with a lot more sense than Trump, even they didn't have much affection for the overall well-being of America, and it was Putin. I mean, on the one hand holy cow that would be impressively bad for us. On the other hand, I think the Russian government probably knows what other countries are and how not to destroy the world in a giant nuclear war, so...
Oh yeah, at least Putin is competent. Such mixed feelings.
88.last would make a great slatepitch.
Hey, I'm not exactly saying either option is good or, say, not-terrifyingly-apocalyptic here. It's just that, well, a "US Owned By Russia" foreign policy is at least a bit more stable and predictable than a "US Owned By Whatever A Demented Narcissist Feels Like That Day" one.
My new thought: Trump is not circumspect about his fondness for Russia because he doesn't understand why anyone would think it means anything. We assume of others what we know of ourselves, so in his case, since he has no setting in between (1) oleaginous chumminess and (2) vituperation, gratuitous harm, and infinite lawsuits (his business relationships usually start out at (1) and eventually shift to (2)), he assumes this of everyone else.
Of course with his reactive nature, as long as Russians butter him up and he keeps multiple advisors in the Russian orbit, it would still be in as if he were in the pay of Russia. But I doubt that's literally true. In practice, depending on events, he would probably be as inclined to start a war with them as to go Molotov/Ribbentrop.
(Of course there's also his autocratophilia, which is another obvious feature of his whether or not it's Russia in frame.)
MHPH: That scenario would absolutely not have benefits in stability. Chaos in the US is in Putin's interest - that's half the reason they like him, they see him as adorably incompetent and welcome him screwing everything up and alienating allies.
They'd probably like him even if he fired Manafort and purged his campaign of their influence.
95 is right I think. This is what Farage does for him as well, in respect of both Britain and the EU.
Yes, I think 95 and 96 are right. "Follow the money" is a decent instinct, but as we all know,it's not the only, or usually even the primary motivation for human conduct.
With the emails, Russia is hoping to knock a percent or two off Clinton's total. To the glee of many. (Wikileak's seemingly anti-Semitic response to criticism is noteworthy in this connection. Is there a history there?)
|| The Bernie Sanders march just went past my office. 25 people or so, but they had a giant Bernie puppet! |>
98.last IIRC Assange has made some anti-Semitic comments in the past (but irresponsible laziness precludes me from looking this up just now*).
*As amends for which I offer this (rather weak IMHO) counter-evidence for the emerging Trump, agent of SMERSH narrative: http://www.newsweek.com/trump-says-us-should-shoot-russian-planes-if-putin-calls-fail-454902
99: I still remember the giant bloody handed G.H.W. Bush puppet that featured in a number of anti-Gulf War I protests.
Someone should start an Ultimate Giant Presidential* Puppet Combat League.
*Candidates included.
Bernie is no one's puppet. Unlike other people.
I'm confused about the Wikileaks thing; all I've heard about is the DNC stuff, but am I getting that there's something else to do with Putin/Trump?
The emails were provided to Wikileaks by Russian hackers.
69- I'd be surprised if Bernie feels like he needs an apology. I've talked to some Bernie Bros TM who might like one though. The narrative that Bernie "really" won the primary is picking up steam.
Whether he feels like he needs one or not, people who said stupid shit about him or his followers ought to look him in the eye. It was their job to take him and his movement seriously, and inasmuch as his movement is the future, to some degree anyway, they'll want to be able to tell people (on both sides) that they made a mistake, owned up, and apologized.
The narrative that Sanders actually won is a path to madness, with altogether too many happy travelers.
The narrative that Bernie "really" won the primary is picking up steam.
This is tiresome. The Wikileaks DNC leak doesn't say anything about rigging state primaries, as far as I know. I admit I haven't delved into it much, but the revelations chiefly go toward the DNC behaving as though they were an arm of the Clinton campaign team (oppo research on Sanders, etc.)
The DNC should damn well apologize to Sanders and his supporters; I gather one of them has already, though in a rather mealy-mouthed "I'm sorry to anyone I offended, I don't really believe what I said."
107 before seeing 106. Uh, hi, Charley.
In any case, heads should roll at the DNC. It is, shall we say, unfortunate that Tim Kaine was the former head of the DNC himself.
107.2 is why I think they should look him in the eye. A lot harder to pull off a non-apology apology when someone you wronged is right there, there's no one else around, and you've each got body language etc.
107.1 The emails I looked at were mostly from late April/May 2016, when the race was effectively over and Sanders was more or less running against the DNC. That's explanation but not excuse for treating his movement as an opponent.
I've been reading Sanders really won stuff in my social media for weeks -- just a few bitter enders, really, and all in states that are sure to go one way or the other. I'm worried not about the presidential race, so much, but that we really need good turnout to re-elect our governor -- a superdelegate.
Not unfortunate at all -- he can be the one taking the hard stand, and, anyway, probably has a better idea which staffers are essential and which can be seemlessly replaced. That should all happen (except for DWS) as quietly as possible in the circumstances over the next few weeks. Nothing public now, obviously, since other narratives matter more.
Except letting DWS be the scapegoat.
And why not give as many of her ceremonial duties regarding the convention as you can think of the Sen. Warren? (As C Pierce suggests.)
Someone named Marcia Fudge is apparently taking over the convention stuff.
he can be the one taking the hard stand
Interesting. I wonder if he actually should speak publicly about cleaning house at the DNC. Bernie supporters do need to be mollified.
wikileaks and antisemitism -- some tool of the international zionist conspiracy wrote about it.
WikiLeaks's spokesperson and conduit in Russia has been exposed in the Swedish media as an anti-semite and Holocaust denier; his son, who represents the organisation in Sweden and is handing out stories to selected papers there, has been involved in an earlier scandal where a story he wrote about the supposed Israeli control of Swedish media was withdrawn after several of the people in it complained of being misquoted.
Sha\mir really is a piece of work.
I guess the answer to 69 was "DWS", which is nice enough. She really wasn't covering herself with glory this primary season, even though as far as I've seen none of the DNC emails reflect things that would have genuinely/seriously affected the outcome. I guess it did make them look bad given how long Sandersy people had been accusing them of just that kind of stuff and getting scoffed at though, whether or not the earlier accusations were accurate.
Two things:
1) Over at LGM, the DNC email main discussion is "how stupid to write this down," in other words the problem is not the attitudes or the cheating but entirely about getting caught. This certainly enforces the meme of Clinton and Clintonite corruption, starting at the top and spreading all the way down to voters and blog commenters. The other State Dep't email story eventually ended with "can't prove can't prove deleted 90% of the proof" Innocent!
2) But we don't have to assume they were that stupid. It would be outrageous for Clinton supporters to pretend that 100% of the "bad stuff" done is in the published emails, and there was/is nothing else unpublished or unwritten. On the contrary, the presumption that the DNC were not idiots leads to the obvious conclusion that 90% of the crooked corrupt cheating they did was not put into emails.
I know there are a lot of lawyers here, but if the recently full cookie jar is empty you don't actually believe that the little kid ate only one cookie because that was what was in her hand when you entered the kitchen.
So no, we can't prove that DWS and the DNC cheated and stole the primaries, but after the emails, it is no longer outrageous to believe they did.
For many of them, it is their first time at the convention. And quite a few of them are new to politics, actually. Many of the Alaskans headed to Philadelphia were inspired to participate by presidential candidate Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is expected to fall short of clinching the nomination. Alaska Democrats voted overwhelmingly for Sanders -- 81.6 percent versus 18.4 percent for presumed nominee Hillary Clinton.
But even if their candidate didn't make it to the finish line, many of the delegates are sticking with politics and the party. They're working on campaigns, running for local office and hoping to have input on the future of the party at the convention.
Just learned the reason that concessionaire company is squatting on the IP to the various historical Yosemite names like Ahwahnee Hotel is that it lost its NPS contract... to Aramark.
Maybe they could hire Debbie Wasserman Schultz to help them fight Aramark.
I'm sure she'd rather be on the other side.
I like Malcolm Gladwell, but all the dislike has caused me to not read his latest book which makes me feel vaguely guilty for giving in to the haters.