Author Archives: Josh Eidelson

“HOLLER IF YOU HEAR ME”

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Just finished Michael Eric Dyson’s Tupac book Holler If You Hear Me. As in his book on MLK, Dyson draws out radical intentions and implications of his subject’s work, wrestles with the problematics of his life, and considers what the mythology that’s developed since his death says about the culture around him. The discussion of Tupac’s relationship with his mother, Afeni Shakur, brings together several threads of the book: the contradictory meanings of black masculinity in Tupac’s work and his thinking; the currents of rage, indictment, forgiveness, and affirmation in his music; the personal as political; the relationship between the ’60s Black Panther generation and the next one. If anything, the book suffers from Dyson’s tendency to over-explain the significance of each sentence from Tupac. Good read, and I learned a lot from it.

One passage of interest:
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12 MOST FRUSTRATING MOMENTS OF “WAITING FOR SUPERMAN”

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The 12 most frustrating things I saw – or didn’t see – watching Waiting for Superman:


– The way Davis Guggenheim used the kids’ stories. Each of the kids was sympathetic, and they dramatized the deep inequality of opportunity in America. But neither the kids nor their parents got much chance to talk about what they thought would make their school better or worse. Instead we got Guggenheim intoning that if this girl didn’t get into a charter school, her life would basically be hopeless. If Guggenheim believes that these kids are suffering because too many of their teachers should be fired but won’t be, why not let the kids say so? If he believes these kids are suffering because teachers or administrators have low expectations for them, why not let the kids say that? And if the kids instead talked about classes that were too big, or teachers that were overwhelmed or undertrained, or being hungry in class, that would have been interesting too.

– Something that sounded like Darth Vader’s Imperial March played over slow motion shots of Democrats appearing with members of teachers’ unions. This was especially agitating watching the movie as the Governor of Wisconsin is trying to permanently eliminate teachers’ bargaining rights in the name of closing a deficit he created with corporate tax cuts.

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BLAST FROM THE PAST: RET-JOE-SPECTIVE

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This week Joe Lieberman announced he won’t be running for re-election. This blog and Lieberman go way back. My third ever (run-on sentence-filled) post, eight years ago, was kvetching at the news he would run for president (and celebrating that Tom Daschle wouldn’t).

Lieberman has been a frequent target of this blog. Though I like to think I’ve always been fair to Joe, like in this post noting that Lieberman lent his endorsement to plenty of city- and state-wide campaigns well to the left of his national profile:

Damning by faint praise? Yes (also damning by harsh but deserved criticism).

Lieberman lived up to expectations, by declaring himself the only guy to go toe-to-toe with George Bush on values while not getting many people to vote for him – aside from Bob Kerrey and the staff of TNR.

(But I wanted him kept in the debates anyway.)

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NEW YEAR’S PROVOCATION, CONTINUED

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The blog’s TV preference statistical analysis correspondent e-mails in response to my last post:

I tried to do some mathematical analysis (which Aaron and you can check). In addition to the data points themselves, I used two additional pieces of information:

1. Six Feet Under is your favorite show (I think you told me this previously), and
2. You prefer Law and Order to Mad Men

Based on that, my estimate is that your Watch Preference Rating = (1.5 x Quality) – (Effort). There may also be a minimum Quality threshold for inclusion, although I’m not sure about that.

I’m assuming that the formula is constant throughout, which may not necessarily be true. The most challenging case is Modern Family, which scores very close to Six Feet Under, and higher than West Wing (w/Sorkin). Of course, I can’t be sure how precise your coordinate placements are.

I think my Dad is on to something. (Yes, I do stand by Six Feet Under as the best TV show of all time, despite all the objections raised on facebook) I went ahead and charted the same data points against the 1.5X = Y baseline he suggested and here’s how it looks:
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NEW YEAR’S PROVOCATION

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Here’s my plot of TV shows ranked by the effort it takes to watch them (keeping track of the plot, characters, etc.) and the payoff you get for your effort:

The x-axis is effort; the y-axis is payoff.

This is why I’d rather watch an episode of Law and Order than Mad Men.

A special problem I find with higher-effort, lower-payoff shows is that the lower-payoff makes it harder to pay attention and not start trying to bait celebrities over Twitter or whatever – but then that stops me from putting in the required effort, which then makes the show harder to appreciate…it’s a vicious cycle. We could call it “The Cycle of Mad Men.”

#2011PREDICTIONS

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Here (from my Twitter feed) are some things I predict will happen in 2011. Some I’m more confident about than others. I’m listing them in order from the best news to the worst news:

– Governors Rick Scott and Paul LePage will both become very unpopular.

– GOP House, GOP presidential race lead to all-too-small decrease in John McCain bookings on Meet the Press.

– Michael Steele will lose very badly in RNC re-election bid and then start saying things even more embarrassing for GOP.

– Journalists will debate ethics of letting Sarah Palin conduct interviews by e-mail.

– No federal or statewide officeholder will challenge Obama in Dem primary.

– Glenn Beck will lose a chunk of supporters over strident criticism of GOP congressional leadership.

– Mike Pence will run for Governor of Indiana.

– John Ensign will bow to GOP pressure and drop his re-election bid.

– Senate Dems make modest change to filibuster; GOPers call it “power grab,” say Dems “poisoned the well” for 112th Congress.

– Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer will feud over Pelosi’s opposition to Obama’s social security cuts.

– Sarah Palin will dominate media for month w/ conflicting tea leaves on whether she’s running for Prez; ultimately won’t.

– Cuts in 2011 budget deal cancel out any economic stimulus from 2010 tax cut/ unemployment deal.

Which of these do you think are wrong? (Many I hope are…)

YOU KNOW YOU’RE NOT A TWITTER EXPERT WHEN…

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Just saw Mary Matalin on CNN kvetching about Congress members using Twitter. It shouldn’t be used by politicians, she said, just by “kids telling their parents where to pick them up.”

Um, either Mary Matalin is very trusting, or she doesn’t understand what Twitter is. More evidence that you don’t need to know what you’re talking about to be on TV.

WHAT IS LINDSEY GRAHAM TALKING ABOUT? (or “Poison Duck?”)

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Lindsey Graham went on Face the Nation today to trot out one of his favorite metaphors:

“If you want to have a chance of passing START, you better start over and do it in the next Congress, because this lame duck has been poisoned,” Graham told CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer.

“The last two weeks have been an absolutely excruciating exercise. ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ a controversial topic – some say the civil rights issue of our generation, others say battlefield effectiveness – was passed in the lame-duck session without one amendment being offered,” Graham said.

This is the same guy who warned that the healthcare bill would poison the well for immigration, climate, closing Guantanamo, and the year 2010. It’s a favorite phrase of Lindsey Graham’s. And it’s totally bogus.

It’s bogus because it’s based in a view of politics like marriage counseling, where to get anything done the participants need to trust each other and share common goals, and offenses or betrayals can be paralyzing. When Lindsey Graham talks about poisoning the well, the implication is that Republicans may want to get things done that Democrats want too, but be unable to make them happen because they’re not feeling good about Democrats.
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NERDY PROVOCATION OF THE DAY

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With just under a month to election day, below is a ranking of how important each of the competitive statewide races is to me. My cut-off for “competitive” is that the top two candidates are within single digits of each other (in the 538 polling average); among the 30 races that made that cut, I tried to rank without regard to how likely I think the more progressive candidate is to win or lose – only based on how much I want them to win. I tried not to be decide based on which states I live in/ have lived in.

Factors I considered (totally unscientifically) were:
– Population of the state in Governor’s races – the bigger, the more important the race is
– Ideological range between the two candidates most likely to win – the more liberal the candidate I want and the more conservative the one I don’t, the more important the race is
– My guess at how effective each of the candidates would be (at getting legislation passed, defeated, or blocked; at making legislation more or less progressive; and at shifting public debate) – the more effective the candidate I support would be, and the more effective the candidate I oppose would me, the more important the race is

Here’s the ranking I came up with – from most important to least. Where do you agree? Disagree?

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FIGHTING WORDS (“PAUL RYAN MOVED MY BROCCOLI” EDITION)

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Paul Waldman: “…Politicians are allowed to say pretty much anything they want about their policies, no matter how dishonest, without reporters ever saying, “Hey, this guy’s lying over and over again about his policy proposals. What does that say about him? Is it possible he’s, you know, a liar?” But if that same politician should claim to have been first in his high school class, when he was actually third, the reporters will immediately say it “raises questions” about just what kind of guy he is.”

Tim Fernholz: “What that says to me is that the rich get steak, and the poor probably don’t get to eat at all for a few days. People complain about Bai’s failure to use research in his work, but letting Bush describe the plan that way without, apparently, checking into the numbers at all is a bit of professional malpractice.”

Jonathan Chait: “Getting a free pass time and time again because everybody knows your heart is in the right place is the sign of a man who has been fully embraced by the establishment.”

Matt Yglesias: “It seems to me that the 90 percent of members of congress who don’t claim to have a 70-year budget plan are the honest ones. For one thing, they’re not lying!”