Rinse and repeat

I can almost hear the strains of celebrations on the Hill over the indictment of Sen. Ted Stevens- by all accounts a real snake of a man - on seven (!) counts of corruption.

Also spells good news for Mark Begich, Stevens' Dem challenger, whose campaign fortuitously launched this cheeky ad last week:

Goodlings Gone Wild

Admittedly, I link to Ruth Marcus' column today partly because of its perfect Shakespearean title - "Goodlings Amok" - but mainly because she captures the infuriated disgust I felt reading yesterday's stories about the DOJ hiring debacles and fashions it into a coherent diagnosis of the Bush administration's congenital contempt for government:

"Every administration has its Goodlings, inexperienced punks who flaunt their authority as conspicuously as a West Wing badge.

Most administrations find ways to keep the Goodlings under control and the grown-ups in charge. The trouble with this one is that it is riddled with Goodlings Gone Wild, incapable of or unwilling to distinguish between the proper pursuit of political aims and the responsible administration of government."

Who needs a Maserati when there's WMATA?

Oooo, "aerodynamic look... sleeker with more curves."

DCist says new Metrobuses roll out next month! Fingers crossed that WMATA starts with the 30 series - my commute is going to be so fly.

Couldn't make him any LESS popular...

Via Politico, this too-good-to-be-true wire story - an Ohio political-swag manufacturer charged with printing buttons for Idaho Senate candidate Larry Larocco accidentally subbed in the image of another Larry - the state's sitting (and foot-tapping) Senator Craig.

A collector's item for certain!

Credit-taking feminism

The more I think on it, the more I find myself really liking Megan McArdle's post this morning on movement feminism's agency problem (much more so than the fellow commentor she quotes, so I recommend scrolling past that lengthy gray quote box).

And I actually attach to it even more as a critique of liberalism in general. Obviously I find her thoughts appealing because they're caveated with a long concession to the liberal case against bootstraps thinking, but even more so, I think it isolates a clear problem with the "we are all products of our society" argument without devolving into conservative blather about self-reliance.

In her words:

"I think that conservatives tend to give themselves too much credit for doing things that were enabled by a solid middle-class upbringing. As I wrote a number of years ago, it's easy and true to point out that poor teenagers wouldn't stay poor if they finished school, didn't have babies out of wedlock, and eschewed criminal activity--but how many of us had the courage to defy our parents and peers, drop out of high school, and sell drugs? Every time I think about how much my parents did for me just by choosing a peer group that valued college, I close my eyes and thank my lucky stars.

The problem of poverty is not that it's impossible to get out of -- lots of people do. It isn't even that you need to be some sort of superhero. The problem is that poor kids have no margin for error. I got to be a screw up who nearly flunked out of college, and thanks to parents and schools that cared desperately about my fate, nonetheless turn it all around, pull a 4.0 in my major, and graduate on time. The first time a poor kid pulls that kind of crap, he's back at home looking for minimum wage work.

But if the right goes too far in congratulating people for pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps, I think the left often goes too far in crediting nebulous social forces over individual agency. It's not only incorrect, but also, it seems dangerously passive....

... it seems to me that celebrating your courage and hard work is a fundamentally feminist action. You don't need to deny the concept of privilege to recognize that we are not only products of society--that, in the words of Scout Finch, virtuous people are those who do the most, but those who do the best they can with what they have. When you say I did this, you send the most important feminist message at all--that women have the power, and the right, to improve their lives."

Recession Mauve

I had an Econ201 flashback in the drugstore on my lunch break today, having decided to treat myself to a new lipstick (or, more accurately, the experience of buying a new lipstick, since the cosmetic aisle of the drugstore remains among my ultimate guilty pleasures) and remembering Professor Elzinga's example of lipstick as an "inferior good." As in, consumption goes up when the economy goes south, and consumers are looking to substitute cheap pleasures for bigger luxuries.

At the (boom)time of my class, it seemed like a quirky Econ tidbit, but it's apparently playing out - to some degree - in today's miserable financial climate.

Turns out that the NYT did a story on the phenomenon at the beginning of the summer, and while the Lipstick Theory is a little less Market Economics and a little more Marketing Cosmetics, plenty of anecdotal and sales evidence suggests that its alive and well in the 2008 slowdown.

Also something of a personal mile marker, as I've started realizing in recent weeks that the economic slump/recession (depending on where you get your news), seems to have finally trickled down to my humble bank account, and my climbing gas and grocery bills have made it increasingly difficult to sock away any significant part of my paycheck.

Anyway, my $8.99 Color Riche in Gilded Pink is an excellent barely-there late summer shade.

McCain veep choice announcement forthcoming?

I don't know how I missed this bulletin from Monday, but apparently campaign sources slipped Bob "Leaky Wheel Gets the Grease" Novak the word that John McCain will be naming his ticketmate later this week...

in other Novak News, apparently the old codger hit a pedestrian this morning and didn't even notice! He told Politico that "I didn't know I hit anybody... a bicycle rider stopped me and said I had hit someone."


7/28 Addendum:
Okay, now I just sort of feel like a jerk.

Also known as love

Via Daily Candy, an absolutely stunning story of a 15 year old Liberian refugee who makes jewelry from bullets fired during the country's civil war. Truly lovely - the necklaces and the young woman both. The sort of thing that renews your faith in the power of earnestness and hope; read more about Lovetta and Akawelle jewelry here.

Regime change

I have seen the future of college, and it is handmade sleigh beds

From the NYT, a critical look at massive university endowments. The lens on the subject is tiny Berea College in Kentucky:

"Berea’s $1.1 billion endowment, which puts the college among the nation’s wealthiest. But unlike most well-endowed colleges, Berea has no football team, coed dorms, hot tubs or climbing walls. Instead, it has a no-frills budget, with food from the college farm, handmade furniture from the college crafts workshops, and 10-hour-a-week campus jobs for every student."

So the "traditional mountain crafts" might be a little much, but the Berea model ends up sounding less like Amish U and more like a progressive future for higher ed, especially compared to its consumerist counterparts and their hoarded endowment wealth.

In short, an insightful investigation of whether the era of endowments existing above public scrutiny might be coming to a close. Unexpectedly, Amherst "$1 million per student endowment" College president puts it really well:

“Congress, the media, the public all have an interest in knowing whether we’re using our resources to make sure the best students have access to the best education,” he said. “They should be asking, are we really affordable? Are we offering the highest quality education? Are we directing graduates to think about their social responsibilities?”

Samantha Power's back!

And better -

"I don’t feel inclined to revise my [Iraq withdrawl] frame out of deference to this manifestly moribund discourse that the administration and its supporters inflicted upon us in the course of the last few years."

- than ever!

"A culture war among men"

I like Jewel Wood's editorial on TheRoot today. The asinine title is actually misleading - he has some trenchant things to say about Obama and masculinity.

I have a pet academic interest in America's cultural transition from JFK's preppy virility to LBJ's crass swagger in the '60s, and the related class issues. I'm convinced that the pendulum shift between the two models over the last four decades has had an outsized impact on our political climate (see Kerry, John, subsection "windsurfing"). I think Wood's argument is really insightful in this context, and hopeful, that an intellect-based masculinity need not be a classist masculinity:

"This seamless melding of white- and blue-collar achievement has rendered Obama the embodiment of smooth... The result is that Obama has accomplished what men like Sen. John Kerry and former Vice President Al Gore were not able to accomplish; he has brought sexy back to white-collar masculinity."

"No customers were hobos."

A little summer Friday fun from New York magazine -
a hard-hitting feature on the city's lemonade proprietors. My money's on the savviest of the young marketers, the Brothers Schiller, a.ka. Stand #3:

Stand 3
SAM SCHILLER, 10, AND WILL SCHILLER, 8, BROTHERS.
Location: On their stoop outside their Upper West Side apartment.
Price per cup: 25 cents.
How did you lure customers? WILL: We made up a word that was Oreo and lemonade: OREONADEOL!
Does it work? WILL: Sort of. We have a lot of customers, and a few were hobos. SAM: No customers were hobos.
How did you know what to charge? SAM: My personal financial advice is 25 cents, because everyone can afford it. Even if your allowance is $1, you will be able to afford four glasses. Also, you can make a classy combo with Oreos, or do three glasses for 50 cents.
Do you have advice about giving good customer service? SAM: You might want to joke with them. WILL: But not a lot. Sam does it too much. SAM: You know it’s good if they point their finger at you, “Ahahahaha.” Laughing is contagious.
Do you enjoy having lemonade stands? SAM: If there’s a definition of fun, that would be the definition of it.
Earnings . . . . . . . . . . . . .$20 to $30

Rowlr.

Although she apparently had a brief appearance in the spring, Daily Show correspondent Kristen Schaal was new to me as of last night's "Cougars" segment, and I'm completely smitten. She has that equal parts naivete and smugness shtick so nailed. I desperately hope we'll see more of her.

This week especially, it's a welcome reminder that good satire isn't about just making a point - it's actually funny.

Wall-E: obesity discrimination? and really innovative product placement

So, I loved Wall-E, of course - personal responsibility, obligations of environmental stewardship, and a protagonist evolved wholly out of the awwww-inspiring intersection of Cute or Sad, what's not to adore?

I thought Daniel Engber's critique in Slate, was thought-provoking, though; I'm paraphrasing, but his argument is basically that Wall-E perpetuates some awfully nasty stereotypes about the obese as lazy, helpless, and stupid. He points out that many of the myths about obesity (some of which I was guilty of believing) are not only unkind but untrue, and not only untrue but actually kind of classist:

"The desire to link obesity and environmental collapse seems to have more to do with politics than science. Eco-liberals put down their Nalgene bottles and wring their hands over the fat slobs in Middle America. It's these red-staters who are screwing things up with their shopping malls and their fast food."

Food for thought, if you'll forgive the pun, but I think my friend Lindsey has it right that the satire was so extreme that it seemed less a condemnation of the obese and more just plain hyperbole. But I'm also kind of with her on that "I might have been embarrassed to walk out of the theater had I been an obese adult or (really sad) kid. "

On a more or less unrelated Wall-E point, Ad Age has a piece this morning suggesting that the Apple-esque Eve "might well be the [product placement] model of the future," in that the seamless, gleaming-white object of Wall-E's affection represents a "product homage" to the sleek ubiquitous Apple designs. Quoting a technology marketing analyst, Ad Age suggests:

"Subliminal might be the key here. Some people will pick up on some of it, but most of it works as subliminal in the way that says this is the coolest and latest stuff. It reinforces the look and feel of Apple."

Fascinating, and far more sophisticated (and less obtrusive) than standard product placement.

Bottom line, if you haven't already, go cheer the little guy on in theaters.

Triumphant post-Aspen return

Back from my blogging hiatus working the Aspen Ideas Festival (and then catching up on my actual job), and posting again.

While my personal intellectual pursuits at the Festival consisted entirely of procuring sold-out event tickets for Altria muckity-mucks and ensuring that the JPMorgan logo was placed prominently behind the climate change speaker, you should visit The Atlantic's coverage of the events. Our dynamic web duo, Jennie and Terrence, did an exceptional job capturing video highlights from a staggering sea of panels, sessions, and high-profile appearances. One of the most compelling moments was Jeffrey Goldberg interviewing Michael Chertoff, whose measured thoughtfulness certainly surprised me.

Not to be confused with the best moment of the nine days, however, as that honor belongs undisputedly to riding in a Chevron-branded rickshaw through the Aspen 4th of July parade: