To boycott or not to boycott?

I've enjoyed discussing with the folks over at Toxic Culture the issue of the upcoming Chinese Olympic games and the relative merits of an American boycott. Without a doubt, the Chinese government is guilty of suppressing the civil and human liberties of its people by means of arrest, surveillance, and even torture. Moreover, the government maintains significant trade relations with some of the most barbaric regimes on earth, namely Sudan (whose government is complicit, at best, with the genocide in Darfur) and North Korea (whose military dictatorship controls its people by means of mass imprisonment and unspeakable human rights abuses). To top it all off, China's enormous growth over the past decades has been marked by environmental devastation, as its dam projects destroy surrounding communities and ecosystems, and its coal-burning plants produce inordinate amounts of CO2 and suffocate its population.

Given these realities, it is not difficult to defend the position that we, as Americans, should boycott China's Olympic games. The thinking goes that such a boycott would (a) allow us to morally distance ourselves from the Chinese government, refusing to cast a blind eye toward its crimes, and (b) pressure the government to reform itself by showing that, if it doesn't clean up its act, America will not trade with them. The boycott is a time-honored tradition of American protest, and perhaps its more famous deployment came in the form of the Alabama bus boycotts of the Civil Rights movement. The question is, though, is boycotting the Chinese games the most effective way to encourage that nation to reform?

A similar debate is presently brewing between our presidential candidates. The Republican line on "rogue regimes" like Iran has been to refuse to engage them (although Bush's recent championing of its negotiations with North Korea seems to call into question the sincerity of that policy). As a result, the McCain team has used Obama's statement--that he would be willing to sit down and talk with Iran's leaders--as a means to show that Obama would "coddle" or "appease" our enemies. The GOP thinking goes, apparently, that the best way to weaken bad leaders is to refuse to engage them; to shun them, if you will.

However, the thinking behind this is historically incorrect. Our attempt to isolate post-World War I Germany did not lead the German people to rise up against its rulers so that their nation could once again participate in international commerce; rather, it allowed the Nazi leadership to exploit anti-outsider sentiment among an impoverished populace and consolidate the country's few resources into one totalitarian center. In modern Iran, America's refusal to trade with the country almost certainly aids the government's policy to suppress "subversive" Western media, all the while creating a perfect scapegoat for the nation's economic woes. The same thing happened in Iraq: cutting ourselves off from the nation furthered the economic conditions that foment radicalism and xenophobia, and prevented us from influencing their people through private channels like the press and student exchange.

Where policies of isolation and shunning have failed before, would things somehow be different with China? Would it help to democratize China is we barred our citizens from participating in the Olympic games? It is difficult to see how it would. The Chinese government has, by this point, accumulated enough resources that it could maintain its power regardless of whether the U.S. continues to invest in the country. Any shortfall in investment would almost certainly be felt the hardest by the citizenry at large, and not by the government and the country's most powerful capitalists, who would use their international connections to retain much of their power and resources. While there would certainly be many in China who would look to an American boycott as a sign that the Chinese government must be reformed, there would be many more who would look to the boycott as a tremendous and unwarranted insult, leading to a deeper support of the Chinese government. The government would be able to use a boycott as an anti-American rallying point, a symbol of Western arrogance and a reason for its citizens to be more loyal to the motherland.

Moreover, the experience of the 1980 boycott of the Moscow Olympics, over Russia's invasion of Afghanistan, demonstrates the ineffectiveness of the strategy. Rather than leading Russia to remove its troops from Afghanistan, the 1980 boycott strengthened Russia's anti-American resolve, and their troops stayed there until 1989. Numerous American athletes were deprived of the chance to achieve their life-long dream of an Olympic medal, and the world missed out on a rare opportunity to join together around a common interest, in a non-hostile environment, and communicate with one another at a time of great international strife.

Communication is critical. This is especially so at a point in Chinese history in which its government still practices many of the human rights abuses that helped solidify its current power, yet the nation is opening up to outside influence and ideas that have the potential to drive real democratic reform. Now is a moment with the real potential to tip the scales toward reform. China's government will not change itself because the United States looks down on it with a shameful and condemning eye. Any reform will come from the bottom up, as more and more Chinese citizens attain knowledge about their own government's practices and about alternative forms of government. The confidence of dissenters will rise as they increasingly recognize that people around the world share their ideas: and they must have contact with these outsiders in order to gain that insight. The best thing that the U.S. government can now do is to send our people, en masse, into China, currying a favorable impression of America and creating the potential for communication between "us" and "them." The worse thing we could do would be to slap the Chinese people in their faces at a moment of great cultural pride, while at the same time halting our own citizen's opportunity to communicate, share with, and persuade the Chinese citizens whose knowledge is the best hope for a new China.

Reading Diane McWhorter's Carry Me Home: Part I

This Pulitzer Prize winning account of Birmingham's history and its role in the Civil Rights movement is a dense, but truly eye-opening read. At over 700 pages of relatively small font, it's one of those books that, for me at least, requires a fairly long period of time and a lot of patience to finish. The last time I tackled such a task was the summer during college that I dedicated to reading the immense Russian classics Anna Karenina and The Brothers Karamazov (well worth it). As I muddle through the final month of my current job, I find myself in another relatively stress-free time to finally tackle Carry Me Home, which I had shelved for some years since I purchased it. In addition to the blessing of time, a recent PBS series on the Civil Rights movement, as well as reverberations from the Obama campaign, have peaked my interest in these seminal events in American history. Given that I grew up in American during the immediate aftermath of the Civil Rights movement, it is strange (but not by accident, as I've come to realize) that I knew so little about the events surrounding the movement. Now, I'm learning a great deal about the place that produced me, and it has been an enlightening experience. I plan to blog some thoughts on the book, and, given that it will take me some time, and the book spans so many themes, I'll break it up into parts.

The first section of the book has been primarily devoted to uncovering the roots of legal segregation in Birmingham, which, for primarily economic reasons, were stronger than those in other Southern cities. The all-powerful corporation U.S. Steel had a strong financial stake in Birmingham, where, it turns out, the mineral deposits were perfect for producing the steel that earned the company its profits. The corporation saw as the primary threat to its massive profits the organization of the Birmingham-area labor force. The Populist and Progressive movements, which were rooted in leftist ideas about the redistribution of wealth and the organization of the working class, had found conditions in Birmingham ripe for the organization of a strong labor movement. Indeed, the deplorable working conditions of many steel workers, combined with the lavish, leisurely lives of the very few who controlled the industry, had created a tinderbox of discontent from which a powerful leftist movement could emerge.

The corporation brought in experts in union-busting, who saw the demographics of Birmingham as providing the perfect opportunity to launch one of the most effective anti-labor strategies: "Divide 'em" ("Depress 'em," and "Drug 'em" being the other two primary tools). The steel-controlled (and steel-controlling) white lawmakers, kept in power by racist and anti-poor tools like the poll tax and voter intimidation, instituted strict segregation policies to keep whites and blacks from meeting together at left-sponsored rallies. The infamous Eugene "Bull" Connor famously arrived at conferences sponsored by national labor organizations to erect physical barriers between the white and black participants and to stake an army of watchful police officers around the meetings. In addition, the corporation paid a handful of charismatic working class men to organize Klan rallies and lead masses of poor whites in anti-black bombing campaigns and other intimidation tactics. The result of these efforts was highly effective: those who might otherwise spend their energies organizing against the corporation that enslaved them instead spent their energies fighting each other. The powers-that-be took advantage of their workers' lack of education and residual feelings of post-reconstruction racism in order to suppress any rebellion. It was a brilliant strategy that worked.

Amidst the red scare of the 50's and 60's, Progressive and labor-centric advocacy became politically unviable as a rallying point. With the leftist political organizations largely hiding out, and its adherents working hard to disassociate themselves, the struggle for black rights in the South had to take a new form unsponsored by Communist sympathizers. Out of this emerged the Civil Rights movement, and leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose struggle was rooted in a church-centric, equal rights and human dignity approach, rather than the leftist, organization-of-labor and equal-economics-for-all approach that was so sorely defeated by segregation.

This narrative has been enlightening for me, as one can easy draw strong parallels between the union-busting strategies of the Alabama fascists and the hate-bating of the modern political Right. Barack Obama was onto something in his (much maligned) statement that working class whites had become embittered at their government's inability to respond to their needs, and thus had "clung" to issues like religion and guns. The 2004 Bush victory against John Kerry was almost certainly aided by Bush's pushing of issues like gay marriage, which served to draw a wedge between traditional Democratic constituents and the masses of uneducated whites who, in reality, had been made poorer by Bush's economic policies, and whose families had suffered disproportionately from war deaths in Iraq. By exploiting the relative ignorance of those who were harmed by Bush's policies, the Bush team effectively drove those voters away from the Democratic party, whose candidate would have almost certainly supported policies that were better for those voters than those of Bush.

I look forward to continuing with Carry Me Home, and I hope that I will continue to learn both about the history of the region that bred me, as well as about the political strategies that continue to shape America. Until next time!

"Dance Machine" is my new favorite TV program

It was total happenstance that my wife and I turned on the television this evening to find "Dance Machine" on ABC. We had turned on the set and muted the volume while we talked, but I could barely focus on what she was saying amidst the image of these random people doing awkward, ridiculous dances on a sound stage. What the hell is this? We turned up the volume, and I found a new favorite show.

Basically, "Dance Machine," is a game show in which non-professional dancers compete in head-to-head "dance offs" before a studio audience, which votes for the best dancer in each round. The winner moves on, the loser is eliminated. In the episode we saw, round one saw this 22-year old "mixed martial artist" from Las Vegas compete against a 31-year old African dude who worked as a grocery store cashier. The martial artist, not surprisingly, was a pretty good dancer, and he threw in a few pretty impressive acrobatic moves to his routine. Elvis didn't have the same skills, but he seemed like he was having a great time up there, as he mixed in some moves almost clearly inspired by African dance with some contemporary hip-hop break-dance type stuff. The other contestants included a fashion designer, a high school PE coach, and a circus acrobat.

The thing that makes the show so fun is watching these ordinary people dance in the awkward, silly way that normal people do. There is no pretense of any skill, so, unlike a show like American Idol, we aren't laughing at the people who lack skills, we're laughing with them as they show off their lack of inhibitions and their ability to take themselves lightly in front of a crowd of people. And I literally laughed throughout the show, both because some of the dancing was awkwardly bad, but also because the contestants and the audience were having such a great time, and it was sort of infectuous.

The good-natured "DJ Rod" spins records and keeps a huge grin on his face as he watches the contestants having so much fun making fools of themselves. It's honestly the most light-hearted thing I've seen on television for a while. In a day in which TV show contestants are made to take themselves so seriously as the "next big star," and reality shows turns even the most frivolous of relationships into break-down-and-cry human dramas, it is refreshing to see a program that lacks any pretense whatsoever. My hats off to whoever created it.

When idealism meets pragmatism: the case of gas prices

I've often thought that the environmental movement's biggest liability was its association with images of hippy-dom and tofu, something that causes much of middle America to look with suspicion at projects designed to protect the environment. Much of the appeal of the Hummer, I'm convinced, was that people saw it as an "in your face" to those who they perceived to be elitist, self-righteous liberals from California and the like. Many average Americans have a view of environmentalists as holier-than-thou big-heads, and it doesn't help that many who subscribe to environmentalist views often take the tone of lecturer, criticizing the average over-consuming American in terms that can be mocking and abrasive. It is unfortunate that many progressives are unable to suppress the disdain in their voice as they mouth off about fat suburbanites with their cookie-cutter McMansions and mall-centric social lives. The thing is, it's these suburbanites, the Silent Majority, if you will, who we ultimately have to win over in order to change our culture's consumption habits.

That's why high gas prices are such a blessing. It's always been the case that our unsustainable consumption habits would eventually cause resource shortages. It's just that it's sometimes hard to convince the average American of this reality while the oil and the food flows so freely and cheaply. In prosperous times, claims of an impending resource crash can often be seen as so much "End is Near" fanaticism. If anything, we're lucky that the gas crisis is happening now, and somewhat gradually, rather than slogging through years more of an artificially deflated market culminating in a sudden, depression-inducing crash. As it is, folks are beginning to feel the pinch gradually, and they're (hopefully) beginning to realize that resources are indeed finite.

This article in today's New York Times presents a good illustration of this hope. The market for houses out in the suburbs is suffering, as people begin to realize that the cost of gas is too high to sustain long daily commutes into the city. More people are considering moving closer to town. It seems that economic considerations are beginning to outweigh people's desire for isolation (and segregation, no doubt) and a bigger house. Might the trend in gas prices lead to a renewal of our urban centers, a greater demand for public transportation, and a reduction in sprawl and traffic congestion? It is certainly possible.

The two greatest threats to the realization of this silver lining are (1) the possibility that the economic consequences grow broader, to the point of a crash, in which case the negative consequences of a depression would almost certainly outweigh the positives of less driving, or (2) some massive act of government intervention, subsidizing oil further, prolonging our oil dependency, and delaying the sustainability reforms that are our only chance to avoid an eventual crisis. Perhaps with an Obama presidency, the latter is less likely to occur. In any case, the curse of high gas prices is potentially a blessing in disguise, and I'll be watching with fingers crossed to see where the situation takes us. In the meantime, those who are concerned about the environment should take this opportunity to change the tone of their advocacy from an aesthetic, moralistic one, to one that focuses on the practical consequences of unsustainable growth.

Be! Aggressive! Be! Be! Aggressive!

During my first couple of years out of law school, I worked for a federal agency that was largely staffed by other recent law graduates. It was the sort of job that one needed good grades and maybe some journal experience to attain, but it was filled with graduates who, like me, had not quite made the cut for clerkships or six-figure jobs at BigLaw. As a result, there were many who felt a little bit of bitterness about their position. I am proud to honestly say I was not one of those people.

In any case, most of us were there on a two-year contract, and, as the term's end came near, we all started freaking out about where we would go next. There was much grumbling among my compatriots about the impossibility of finding a job, coupled with the sad-bastard complaint that, despite the great experience we had gotten during our work, law firms wouldn't look at us because we were considered inferior to federal law clerks. Many folks ended up going to another government agency, and I have since heard tales of much unhappiness on the part of those who took such a job despite the fact that they really wanted to do something else.

The problem was, as young people who had gone straight from high school to college to law school to (possibly) a summer associateship at a firm, to this job, most of us really had no clue about how to market ourselves and find a job. As we had approached high school graduation, we submitted applications to a number of colleges, where there were people waiting on the other end and eager to review our materials, and we just waited until they got in touch with us to admit us. Same with law school: admissions staff were ready to actively peruse our applications and invite us to come to their schools (and give them some money). And, during law school, firms often came right to the campus to interview us, and our career services offices spoon fed us by submitting our resumes to our firms of choice. In sum, we were basically handed opportunities in exchange for a little bit of effort on our part.

These experiences in mind, most of my government-job colleagues' job searches looked like this: print out a bunch of resumes, along with cover letters, sometimes with subtle variations in the text to reflect the target firm, send them all out, and wait to hear back. The most typical result: failure. My colleagues moaned at the lack of responses, complaining of a soft job market and lamenting their decision to take their current job (and, in the background, probably lamenting that they had spent a little less time at the bar during 1L). And, for the first few weeks of my job search, I did mostly the same thing. Difference is, I eventually realized that it wasn't working, and, intent that government agency #2 was not in my future, I changed up the strategy.

Rather than passively sending out resumes to firms, I used the martindale.com website to find firms that seemed like they would be a good fit for me: small, AV rated, litigation focus, in town, and specializing in areas of law with which my government work had made me familiar. I found about 15 firms that matched my criteria, and then I aggressively sought to sell myself to those firms. It usually went like this:

Step one: Call the firm. Tell the receptionist your name and that you would like to send a resume. Ask for the name of the hiring partner so that you can properly address your cover letter. Be really nice. Step two: Send the resume. On nice paper. (Duh).

Step three (and this is the key): Call them back about two days later. Try to call on the day after the resume likely arrived in their office. Some of these firms get stacks of resumes every day. Even if they truly intend to review them all, the demands of a hiring partner's work load is going to inevitably result in resumes stacking up and never being read. The least you can do is try and call attention to your materials while they are still near the top of the stack, and the partner last read your name yesterday or that morning, rather than a week ago, right before all those day-long depositions.

When you call, ask if you can speak with the hiring partner (you should know his or her name from the last call). Even if the receptionist doesn't put you through, she will at least tell the partner that you called, and your name will be on his or her mind. Or maybe she will put you through, in which case you'll probably get voice mail. This is a great opportunity for you to ramble off a concise summary of who you are and what skills you might bring to the table. Or maybe the partner will answer the phone. This scenario can be incredibly intimidating. But sack up! You're an adult now, and an attorney, no less. Be articulate and polite and sell yourself aggressively. Unless you plan to sit in an office all your life and take commands from those who decided to be more assertive than you in their career paths, you're going to have to learn to assert yourself and your ideas at some point, so you might as well start now.

I followed this general approach, and, out of 15 or so firms that I contacted, I got 4 interviews and 2 job offers. Not bad, I don't think. Then again, this means that I was rejected by numerous firms that I had personally invested myself in communicating with. And that can be a bad feeling. But a willingness to suffer some intermittent rejection is a prerequisite to eventual success. And I feel sure that any reasonably accredited person who is willing to be aggressive and actively pursue the job they want can attain it. It just takes a little bit of growing up and a willingness to step out of the admissions-council-and-career-services-offices womb that nourished us for so long. Those who wait for someone to seek them out will inevitably find themselves in the jobs that nobody else wants. Those who can break out of their insecurities and apply a little bit of pressure to potential employers may find themselves doing work that they truly want to do. And isn't that why we went to law school in the first place?

So ignoble

This article in yesterday's Fulton County Daily Report perked my attention this morning. I read the headline and its subtext, which indicated that a judge had reprimanded an "Athens attorney" for a "verbal assault," and smiled as I guessed that the incident must surely have involved James W. Smith. Unfortunately, I was not surprised to read that Smith had engaged in conduct that Judge Sweat of Athens had characterized as "so ignoble as to bring the legal profession in disrepute.”

Mr. Smith operates out of a great piece of office space, smack dab in the middle of downtown Athens, GA. He has a nice hanging sign outside of the office, with words like "D.U.I.," "Personal Injury," and "Bankruptcy" printed prominently on the windows. For an Athens-residing layperson needing any of these legal services, Smith's office would seem like an obvious place to seek representation. I credit this, and not his reputation, for much of his business.

While in law school, I had heard stories about Smith's antics. A friend of mine who had interned in a judge's chambers told me stories about Smith shouting in court and vigorously objecting to minor points of evidence. While observing a hearing in that same judge's courtroom, I witnessed Smith shout his arguments at the judge in a manner that struck me as undiplomatic at best, and a huge strategic blunder at worse, given the amount of disfavor that he almost certainly brought onto himself. The thought among many who witnessed these antics was that Smith behaved in such a manner in order to impress his clients, to create the impression that he was a truly zealous advocate. And, most likely, his client really did feel that they were getting great representation. Any maybe they were: despite the judge's displeasure, it seemed that opposing counsel (an assistant district attorney in this case) was genuinely exasperated and intimidated.

That being said, it's not surprising to read about Judge Sweat's condemnation, in this instance, of Smith's behavior toward opposing counsel. According to the Daily Report article, Judge Sweat reprimanded Smith for making patronizing comments about opposing counsel's lapel pin, which represented his son's death while serving in the U.S. military. While Smith apparently did not make any overtly negative comments, he asked counsel about the pin amidst a contentious dispute over the propriety of certain deposition testimony. Then, at a second deposition, after counsel asked Smith's client about Smith's representation of the client in past matters, the following exchange took place:

Mr. Smith: Why don't you go jump in a lake, Drew? Why don't you go over
there—Where's your pin today?

Mr. Marshall: I'll be serving you with—

Mr. Smith: Where's your pin today?

Mr. Marshall: Get out of my office.

Mr. Smith: Don't ever have another deposition set up here. Don't you
hit me.

Mr. Marshall: I'm not going to hit you.

Mr. Smith: We got witnesses.

Mr. Marshall: Don't disrespect my
son.

While Smith's comments weren't overtly disrespectful, his reference to an intensely personal matter in the context of a contentious dispute was almost certainly intended to intimidate or upset opposing counsel. It is no wonder, then, that Judge Sweat reprimanded Smith. To be sure, the judge may have given Smith less leeway than he would have with another attorney, given Smith's reputation as a difficult and borderline-disrespectful presence in the court room. If anything, the scenario illustrates the importance of a lawyer's good reputation within the legal community: while an obnoxious presentation may impress your clients, it will undermine your ability to generate good will and political capital among judges and fellow members of the bar. And, more than that, it will perpetuate the (sometimes deserved) image of attorneys as cut-throat and conniving capitalists who will stomp on the feelings of others all for the sake of victory.

This dolphin is ruining my life

Dolphin Olympics 2. That elusive title, as you can see, is a hyperlink. But do not click on it, for there is a serious possibility that doing so will lead to the evaporation of hours and hours of your precious time, and, in addition, will cause you to hallucinate, well into the night, images of a tiny dolphin bouncing around on stars and soaring among planets. Here's a little video to give you a better idea of what I'm talking about, assuming that you heed my advice and don't actually play this game.

I have mostly avoided the video game obsession that I've noticed among many of my similarly-aged male peers. As a kid, I loved Nintendo, and spent an inordinate amount of time playing all the Ninja Gaiden, Mega Man, and Mario games. I was good at them too. But somewhere around the time when I discovered competitive debating and girls, I just sort of dropped out of the video game culture. By the time X-Box, PS2 and all those systems began cycling through the market, I had lost all interest, and never got into the first-person shooters that define modern videogaming. So I've been surprised at how severely addicted I've become to Dolphin Olympics 2.

It has something to do with timing, I'm sure. I'm winding down the last month of my current job, and I've accepted an offer to begin a new one in August. That being the case, I have very little incentive to be productive at my current job. So I'm especially susceptible to anything that can pass the time. And DO2 does that too well.

I read a little bit about the game, and it was apparently created by a group of designers competing in a challenge to create games for the "casual gamer," i.e., people like me who don't get into the ultra complex first person shooters and neverending role players. DO2 is quite simple indeed. Basically, you use the arrow keys to control this little dolphin, who you guide from the water to the surface to complete jumps, flips, twists, and other tricks. If you land the dolphin back in the water at the right angle, he continues to build momentum and acceleration, so that subsequent jumps become higher and higher. The jumps can eventually become absurdly high, and, once you figure out a few tricks that allow the dolphin to suddenly and rapidly increase his acceleration, you can reach planets and stars, wracking up millions and millions of points.

It takes a while to learn the skills to get this high, and, to be sure, there is an element of luck to it all. Once you reach the speeds necessary to gain these heights, it becomes more and more difficult to control the dolphin, and, therefore, more difficult to aim the dolphin toward the "power rings" that will give him a burst of speed and send him to the most distant planets (Pluto is the last planet . . . with an elusive "restaurant" lying somewhere beyond that--something that I've only seen in youtube videos of gameplay). The thing is, though, while there is certainly a learning curve, its not so steep as to lead one to throw up his hands and give up. Each game draws you closer to understanding how to control the dolphin in a way to reach maximum height and speed, and the spectre of reaching those distant planets and attaining the absurdly high scores listed on the game's website is irresistible. (I've reached 98 million. . . There are a few who have made in past the 1 billion mark).

Nonetheless, I really need to find a way to stop playing this. It's too easy to use it as a "brief" distraction from work, but it invariably turns into one "just one more game" after another, until I've wasted hours. There are a lot of things I'd like to accomplish now that I've got this lull in my workload. I started a novel some time ago, and I'd really like to dedicate some time to that. However, as I look at the screen right now, I detect tracers of this dolphin sliding down rows of stars, and when I close my eyes to sleep, I see that damn dolphin, racing along the water's surface, dipping and diving into the blue. It's honestly making me a little depressed. I'm honestly writing this blog in the hopes that it might be the first step on my 12-step program to a Dolphin Olympics 2-free life.

Marvel is run by genuises

This weekend, we went out and saw Marvel's second attempt at cinemizing The Incredible Hulk, and I found it incredibly entertaining. We saw Iron Man just last month (also great, by the way), and there are striking similarities among the look and feel of these two films. And this is clearly intentional. At the end of Iron Man (after the credits), a mysterious figure played by Samuel L. Jackson presents Tony Stark (Iron Man's alter ego) with the proposition of a team of superheroes. At the end of The Incredible Hulk, Stark presents the idea to the general who created the Hulk. It seems that Marvel is building up to a S.H.I.E.L.D. film, based on the comic of the same name, which will pit a team of very different superheroes against a team of supervillians (notice how both Hulk's and Iron Man's arch-nemises fail to die at the end of their respective movies?). As one can only imagine, S.H.I.E.L.D. will be an action-packed montage of one intense battle scene after another. And personally, I can't wait.

The Incredible Hulk was great. While it lacked the quick, near-perfect pace and the dynamic protagonist of Iron Man, and while the interactions between Edward Norton and leading lady Liv Tyler seemed a bit stilted at times, the action sequences were really hard-hitting, and the final battle between the Hulk and his super-hulk nemesis was an incredibly satisfying payoff. The battles were beautifully coreographed (do you call it coreography if it's computer-generated?) and had me literally on the edge of my seat as I suspended disbelief and clung to the hope that the Hulk might be defeated. I also enjoyed Bruce Banner's explanation of what it was like to transform into the Hulk: a furious hallucination, like a gallon of LSD had been poured into his brain, leaving him with little recollection afterward of what took place. When Banner realizes that the only hope for saving humanity is to transform into the Hulk and fight the monster that is ravaging New York City, he concedes that he lacks control over the beast that he becomes, but hopes that he can at least "aim" it in the right direction. I like this hero: a vicious monster, in both brain and body, occupied by the heart of a timid, caring human who struggles to aim this deadly power toward only those things that would harm his fellow humans.

In any case, I marvel at Marvel's ability to transform a business based primarily on a dying commodity, the comic book, into a flourishing, growing enterprise based around films (and, no doubt, action figures and the like). While the RIAA has helped to demonstrate to America the copyright monopoly's potential for abuse, Marvel has, at least in this sense, painted a picture of the social and economic benefits of copyright. By taking their characters and building new works, new worlds, and new stories in motion pictures, Marvel has adapted its business to the realities of a changing media landscape. I personally possess more than a little nostalgia for the comic book stories that I grew up on, but I'm impressed and pleased that, through its films, Marvel is continuing to create new and exciting stories out of its great characters. As the Marvel universe grows into an ever-larger world of interconnected characters and films, it is likely that the films' values will increase, as the stories build on one another and fans seek out past films to better understand the new stories. I look forward to following these stories, and I'm grateful to the creative minds at Marvel for enriching our artistic landscape with these rich, dynamic, and bombastic films.

Regaining community with facebook?

I can't lie: I love facebook. The "reconnecting with old friends" element is cool, but, honestly, I mainly enjoy checking to see what new things my friends have added, whether it be photos, funny quotes, witty status updates, interesting links, etc. It's a form of entertainment, only the content is created entirely by people you know, and sometimes the content is just new information about people you know. As facebook has become more popular and more central to peoples' communicative lives, people have begun to updates their statuses and add new content more often, and, as a result, the site becomes a richer, more interesting source of diversion.

To be sure, social networks, or any online services that collect personal information, possess the potential for abuse. It is frightening to think that all of these personal details are now in the hands of those whose primary goal is to persuade the masses to buy things we don't need. Perhaps more frightening is the spectre of an Orweillian future in which government uses this information to classify people into threat levels based on their political views or personal associations. But that's not what this post is about. This post is about the strange psycological effect of suddenly and unexpectedly reconnecting with long-lost acquaintances and gaining a window into their new lives.

Facebook recently introduced this "People you might know" feature (which, as Gawker noted, could be called "People who you hate"). With this feature, facebook calls to your attention a list of users who are "friends" of one or more of your own "friends," and, wouldn't you know it, this list often contains numerous people who you, indeed, know, and, quite often, dislike (and that's why they're not your "friend" already, natch). As a result of this feature (combined with the fact that facebook is gaining in social acceptability), I have recently been contacted by some of the more obscure faces from my past. Today bore the ultimate example, when I was "friend requested" by a woman who used to babysit me when I was in elementary school. It looked like she was doing great, and, though I had to strain for a minute to recall who the hell this person was, it was kind of neat to hear from her. I guess.

While its kind of interesting to hear from people like this, do we really need to know where they live now, what they look like, their new occupation, etc.? Was it better when I remembered my babysitter as this 14-year-old kid and my first innocent crush, rather than a 30-something woman with a fat husband and a Land Rover? Is it healthy or normal for this person to be connected to me in a way that gives her access to 100's of pictures of me and my friends and family? Is anything good gleaned from any of this? Intuitively, it seems not.

On the other hand, maybe social networking is returning us to our roots as a tightly-connected, social species. Social scientists often lament the modern American's detachment from community, as so many people leave their childhood homes, with its social roots, in order to re-settle in new city after new city. As Robert Putnam detailed in Bowling Alone, we have detached ourselves from one another, living as islands unto ourselves and losing touch with those who have shaped us. As a result, we feel depressed and isolated, with little sense of our role in a broader community. I think that, in fact, it is this phenomenom that makes social networking sites so popular: we thrive for community, and facebook allows us to at least feel like we are regaining contact with those who we've left behind.

It's difficult to say whether this sense of reconnection is more than superficial. Sure, I can now see photos and write on the "wall" of my old babysitter and long-lost high school acquaintances, but this a far cry from the tightly-knit, generations-old communities whose loss we so lament, right? Then again, maybe this new technology is moving us in a more healthy direction. While we may never restore the village-like closeness of earlier America, maybe tools like facebook can help us to repair the psychological harm done by a spread-out society. And maybe they can do more than temporarily alleviate the mental symptoms of personal detachment; maybe reconnecting with old friends and acquaintances will lead some to initiate actual physical contact with those who they miss; maybe facebook will remind people of the value of closeness and inspire people to stay near those who they care about.

Or maybe not; maybe facebook simply perpetuates our disconnection by superficially placating our pangs of loneliness. And this is a certainly a real possibility. But, given the newness of the technology, it's yet to be seen what kind of long-term effect social networking will have on our culture: here's hoping that we will use it to restore our frayed communities, rather than deepening our disconnectedness.

Cancer

I have been lucky: with the exception of my grandparents, who had gotten on in years, I have never had someone very close to me die. A couple of my childhood friends died in car accidents, but I was a kid then, and I didn't experience the sense of loss that attends the death of a young adult: one who, over time, has built a world around themselves, but whose life's work and connections with others, while still building themselves, are suddenly cut short. The fact that I have largely avoided tragedy sometimes scares me, because I don't know how I'll handle loss when it inevitably confronts me. I am very inexperienced in dealing with death.

When I was a child, I remember listening to my parents talk about two of their best friends from college, a married couple, one of whom had developed terminal breast cancer in her late 30's. We made several trips to see the friends, and, as a child, I understood that everyone was very sad about her cancer, but, being disconnected by both age and my relative lack of closeness to her, I never felt anything that could be described as pain. I felt empathy, but never pain. When she died, my sister and I stayed with our grandparents while my parents went to her funeral. I remember my mother crying a lot in the days surrounding her death, and I've never understood that emotion until very recently.

One of my oldest and best friends just found out that his girlfriend, someone who has been his closest confidant for years, has brain cancer, and it doesn't look good. Speaking with my usually-happy-go-lucky friend, I hear a helplessness and lostness that I've never heard before in his voice. He lives some miles away, and I haven't spent a lot of time with his girlfriend, but, in the time I spent with the two of them, I witnessed a happy and sincere friendship, and I saw her as someone with whom he was truly compatible. I like her very much. I imagined that they would stay together possibly for the rest of their lives, and we would all get together on holidays and send pictures of our kids to each other. To imagine her dying, and to think of my best friend suddenly and terribly losing his closest companion, makes me incredibly sad. I can't claim to understand the pain that he must feel, but I understand a little better the emotion that my mother must have experienced as she cried over the death of her college friend.

It feels absurd to imagine a young friend--who you know as this vibrant, alert, thoughtful, full-of-potential, just-getting-started person--being dead. To think that each thing about her--her quirky musical tastes, this weird way she laughs, the appreciative smile she brings to my friend's face--would all be extinguished, is unbearable. But, ultimately, it's something that we'll have to bear, some more than others, and that feeling of powerlessness is a hard thing to accept. Of course, we can always hope for miracles, but, more often than not, our hopes for metaphysical intervention falter in the face of our bodies' inarguable mortality. This feeling is something new to me, and I fear it's new to my friend as well, and I know that he is feeling it far more intensely than I am. I suppose that my job now is to be available to him as an ear to speak to or a shoulder to cry on, and to work hard to do good for those who I care about, reminded by this event of how quickly we can lose someone's irreplaceable company.

Kozinski and Porn

A co-worker just sent me this incredibly fascinating post regarding an "adult materials" site once maintained by Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. Kozinski has always been known as a colorful, even bombastic judicial figure, penning opinions that rival those of Scalia both in their clarity and their appeal to a sort of layman's logic. While conservative in the libertarian sense, Kozinski tends to be far less of a "law and order" thinker than Scalia, and his place on the ideological spectrum is often seen as opposite that of the politically conservative Supreme Court justice (whether this is a technically accurate assessment or not).

In any case, the article describes some of the contents of the site, which was apparently maintained at a url bearing the judge's name (alex.kozinsky.com - now down), as follows: "a photo of a naked women on all fours painted to look like cows, . . . a video of a half-dressed man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal," and "a graphic step-by-step pictorial in which a woman is seen shaving her pubic hair." Wow. He claims that he did not think that the site was publicly accessible, which is entirely conceivable, given the shock experienced by some when they realize that any images they post on, for example, facebook or myspace can be seen by millions. But the really interesting thing about all of this is the way he has reacted to these revelations. Rather than the what-you-would-expect denial or attempt to blame a hacker (those devious hackers, always putting porn on folks' computers!), he has sought to defend the maintenance of the images. To wit:

Some of the material was inappropriate, he conceded, although he defended other
sexually explicit content as “funny.” [. . .] Kozinski told the Los Angeles
Times that he didn’t think any of the material he posted on his website
would qualify as obscene. “Is it prurient? I don’t know what to tell you,” he
said. “I think it’s odd and interesting. It’s part of life.”

While the contents of his site are admittedly embarrassing, I find his approach to the issue to be actually quite refreshing. Humans (especially males, sorry) are naturally interested in sex and sexual images, and American culture is notoriously far behind that of the Western European democracies in our openness and frankness about sex. While a certain degree of sexual modesty is healthy and beneficial, and while Judge Kozinski was certainly foolish to display these images on a site publicly associated with his name, we shouldn't feign shock at the revelation that a prominent or respected person enjoys sexual imagery.

We often find that those who are the quickest to condemn sexual expression are hiding their own sexual desires, and perhaps their outspokenness is a defense mechanism. I'm reminded of Newt Gingrich's recent admission that, while he led the G.O.P. in a "character counts" onslaught against the promiscuous Bill Clinton, he was himself engaged in an extramarital affair. Or Larry Craig, who allied himself with the anti-gay right-wing of the Republican party, yet frequently sought undercover gay sex. Or Ted Haggard, who resigned from his role as leader of a massive, puritanical church amidst a methamphetamine-and-homoerotic-massage scandal. We see again and again examples of those who condemn "deviant" sexual behaviors, though unable to resist the very same impulses.

The Kozinski revelations will almost certainly trigger all sorts of scandal-laden coverage and talking-head commentary from those who supposedly represent the morally conservative in America. But, given the biological roots of our sexual impulses and the fact that sexual desire is indeed, in Kozinski's words, "part of life," the vast majority of this outrage will be feigned and self-serving, functioning only to encourage us to repress our sexual nature. And, almost certainly, some will use this to political ends, using Kozinski's entertainment choices as some sort of metaphor for the tradition-skewing "activist" nature of the Ninth Circuit.

In any case, it's clear that Judge Kozinski should have been more discrete with these images and should not have had them posted on a site associated with his name. But we should approach the incident as something to laugh at, an ultra-candid glimpse at the humanity of a renowned public figure. We should take personal respite in the fact that even those who head our most stolid institutions are prone to the same ridiculous curiosities as the common man. And we should look with great suspicion at those who use this incident as an opportunity to moralize or to castigate those with "deviant" sexual desires.

"The Bachelorette" will destroy us all

This sort of show is as unavoidable as a train wreck. I don't really want to look, and I'm ashamed at the impulses within me that lead me to look, but, unavoidably, I am unable to avert my gaze from the disaster on the screen. These late-20 to 30-something dudes with big pecs and popped collars take turns awkwardly mouthing lines about "opening their hearts" and "sharing themselves" to this moderately attractive television personality, and, all the while, a light, alt-rock inspired guitar track plays in the background, delivering highly specific emotional queues, so that we know when the interchangeably awkward interactions are meant to signal "not a connection" plateaus or "yes a connection" crescendos. The transparency of the program is, on the one hand, maddeningly laughable, but, on the other hand, culturally tragic, as I imagine that millions of modern Americans empathize with the struggles of these characters or find something in these images that is aspirational or even desirable.

Is The Bachelorette a microcosm for single adult life in America? Is this what it's like? I think that, probably, it is not. I would imagine that the audience for this program is largely (a) young adults (teens to mid-20's) whose dating interactions are somewhat similar to those on the show, but that's ok, because they're young and its expected and acceptable that their romantic interactions are a bit immature, and (b) older adults (late 30's to early 50's) who have long exited the dating world and, for whatever reason, are somewhat nostalgic about the experience, and derive some escapist utility from the show. But, of course, there must be a chunk of mid-20 to 30-something viewers who see in the show something that is like their own emotional experience. And that upsets me a bit.

It upsets me to imagine that individuals in my generation might form their most important relationships along lines that are as vapid and artificial as those portrayed on The Bachelorette. The show depicts this woman's quest to find the man she will marry based on a series of middle-school-like dating games and awkward on-camera exchanges that invariably involve about 100 recitations of the term "feelings" or the expression "opening oneself up." Lost in this charade is any concept of what marriage actually is, beyond an extended "go steady" marked by an elaborate party and an expensive white dress. The deeper, richer, more complicated realities of a life promise, with all its shared responsibilities and death-do-us-part difficulties are obscured by the image of a saccharine-simple hallmark moment that ends, rather than begins, with a wedding. And while this image might largely reflect the modern American's attitude about marriage, such a popular and slickly-produced program also sells and promotes these ideas, leaving especially its younger viewers with a stupid, self-defeating concept of how the strongest bonds are formed.

Or maybe its harmless, innocent escapism. But I'm not buying that. I believe that television, perhaps more than any modern force, has a powerful impact on our view of ourselves and how our society should look. And so long as those who create and sell television content continue to produce programs like The Bachelorette, it will be no surprise that Americans find their relationships less and less fulfilling, and problems of divorce and infidelity persist.

Do Americans really give a shit about horse-racing?

A couple of years ago, this movie Seabiscuit came out, and it was about a famous race horse that won 3 races in a row back during the Great Depression era. Apparently, it was a big national story at the time, or so the makers of this movie would have us believe. In the weeks and months leading up to this movie's release, there was a steady stream of Seabiscuit-related media on the television, and it's hard to believe that this was a coincidence. Clearly, whoever made Seabiscuit was in cahoots with some other big media types, and plans were made to hype up horse-racing so that everybody would go see this movie.

Soon thereafter, we were presented with the story of Barbaro, the fantastic American hero of a horse who would, like Seabiscuit, remind Americans of our grand struggle and our triumph over adversity by winning three races in a row. I never saw Seabiscuit, but I got the impression that it presented the horse as some metaphor for Americans' struggle with and eventual triumph over the Depression and the Nazis. I think the Barbaro story was implicitly sold as some extension of the 9/11 narrative--you know, how we Americans would triumph over the forces of Islamo-fascism just like Barbaro would run faster than those other horses. Then Barbaro died and, I shit you not, this made front page news in every major newspaper, and the anchors of the various news shows hung their heads and fought back tears as they described the national tragedy of the dead race horse for weeks, and I thought to myself, "really?"

Since when was horse racing actually such an important thing that so many Americans cared so much about. In my mind, the sport's importance has historically been confined to the Kentucky area, and was viewed outside of the region as sort of a colloquial phenomenon. Like wind-surfing or competitive bowling or something. Not something that grasps the national attention in the way that truly national sports like baseball, football, or basketball do. I mean, how many Americans actually watch horse racing regularly or would even have any idea who won the latest horse race if left to their own devices and weren't force-fed this information by major news outlets? I'm guessing not many. Yet, again we have the tale of Big Brown the almost-champion horse posted all over the media, with column after column of press devoted to analysis of why this great horse was unable to win the most recent race, what with the fact that he had won two races before that.

It remains a mystery to me how this sport gets hoisted onto the front pages, with these horses treated like national heroes. Is there some conspiracy between horse-racing promoters and media moguls to promote the sport via the news media? Are journalists and other media types, for whatever reason, more keen to horse racing than other classes of Americans, such that they are naturally drawn to such coverage? Or is this just a self-perpetuating myth, in which the journos at some point were led to believe that horse racing is nationally important, such that they jump all over horse racing stories whenever they arise? Or am I totally off-base here, and Americans on the whole really do love horse racing?

The creative candidate

I could list many reasons why I am so excited about a potential Obama presidency. But beyond my enthusiasm for what his policies might look like is a sense that he is someone with whom I can relate and someone who I can look up to as a role model. I think that many in my generation feel this way, especially young men. As the Bush presidency has run its course, I think that many of us have been frustrated by, on the one hand, our genuine desire to be proud of our country and our identity as Americans, but, on the other hand, our inability to relate to the man in charge and our anger over the image of the obstinate, ignorant American perpetuated by the administration. Obama looks and acts more like those who we admire, and I think that much of that has to do with a certain right-brained sensibility.

Arts and media have become America's primary export and a central part of our culture, and, for those of us who grew up in a nation whose primary heroes were actors and filmakers, rather than farmers and steelworkers, Obama is a candidate who feels like a natural leader. He seems comfortable in his own skin, lacking the bordering-on-insecure macho posturing of leaders like George Bush and Dick Cheney. He seems comfortable making a joke and even acting a little silly (see "I'll whoop 'em, I'll whoop 'em!"). He possesses a certain right-brained artistic sensibility, which is something that I gleaned from this anecdote in a recent Time magazine profile of his mother:

Ann and her son were the first foreigners to live in the neighborhood, according
to locals who remember them. Two baby crocodiles, along with chickens and birds
of paradise, occupied the backyard. To get to know the kids next door, Obama sat
on the wall between their houses and flapped his arms like a great, big bird,
making cawing noises, remembers Kay Ikranagara, a friend. "That got the kids
laughing, and then they all played together," she says.

These stories and others lead me to connect with the candidate, and I think that others in my generation probably feel the same. As we enter into the stages of our adulthood in which we will raise children, enter into leadership positions, and become role models to our juniors, we want a president who embodies the creative spirit that is central to modern America.

All touchy-feeliness aside, a creative president might benefit our nation's economy and security. If anything, the Bush administration, with all its Nixon-era appointees, has demonstrated that traditional approaches to security often fail to adapt well to modern predicaments. The traditional notion of conflict--lined-up, marching armies of two warring nations fighting a series of battles until the territory is won--is sorely outdated, as demonstrated by America's current struggle against loosely affiliated groups of terrorists, who do most of their damage through small, clandestine groups of operatives. The Bush team demonstrated an inability to think creatively in its response to 9/11, in its declarations of war against the nation-states of Afghanistan and Iraq, in response to a criminal plot perpetrated by a nationless group of religious fanatics. The left brain looks for things that have worked in the past, and tries to replicate those successes by doing those things again. The right brain draws from the lessons of the past, but attempts to craft new, creative solutions. The old ways aren't working to fight terrorism, and are failing in many other areas as well, and a creative, artistic president might be exactly what we need to adjust to a changing world.

Bama Gettin Money with Diplo

Whilst reading one of my favorite music blogs, Gorilla v. Bear, I found this great Diplo remix of "Bama Gettin Money" by Huntsville rappers PRGz. I had never heard of this group before, but was kind of amused by the prospect of these guys repping Huntsville in the same way that Three Six Mafia does Memphis or the No Limit/Cash Folks did New Orleans. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there are a lot of folks living pretty tough lives in Huntsville, but its a pretty small city that I've always thought of as a pedestrian sort of locale. I've got family there, and its just never struck me as very tough, at least not in the same ways as many of the cities we associate with hip-hop. Plus, they're main export is Space Camp. In any case...

Diplo is an artist I first discovered while browsing through CD's in the DJ booth of UGA's college radio station. I really liked his combination of Southern rap staples like 808 kicks and high hats with strings, weird synth sounds, and heady samples. This remix does one of my favorite things, which is to combine gritty gangsta rap-style vocals with heart-strings-pulling, cinematic sounds. I don't know what it is about this combination, something about the way the pain hidden in otherwise boastful and hedonic lyrics is drawn out by the blue notes in the music. Plus, there's a highly recognizable sample from an 80's hit, which I can't place right now, but which adds to the fun of the song. Check it out, and I'm sure you'll agree:

Stealing the shine

For supporters of Barack Obama, and for Democrats everywhere, last night should have been a night of unbridled excitement. And today should be one in which we bask in the glow of our new nominee, mentally preparing ourselves for the psychological warfare of the upcoming campaign against John McCain. And, without a doubt, I do feel very excited to have Obama as the nominee and, hopefully, the next president. But it is undeniable that Clinton's persistent foot-dragging has rendered the end of the primary somewhat anticlimactic, and that's really a shame.

I guess we could find some good in it. During the first year of law school, all the new students are required to write what's called the "open memo" in the middle of the first semester. It would be our first real grade, and, for most of us, it was our first piece of legal writing ever. After a grueling couple of weeks working on the thing, the deadline passed, everyone had turned in their memo, and there was a raging Tuesday night party that rendered some incapacitated for the next day's classes. A particularly tough professor, in explaining why she would expect all of us to be alert on that next day and would not excuse any absenses, explained that the all-out party was the equivalent of a football team bringing the crowd out of the stands and tearing down the goal post after the first touchdown. The point being: you've still got a long ways to go; you haven't really earned a celebratory release yet; celebrate now and you'll underappreciate the challenge ahead. And I suppose the same thing could be said for the Democratic nomination: Obama's won a tough battle, but the war against McCain is likely to be far more bloody, so let's not congratulate ourselves yet.

Even still, we need momentum and enthusiasm to spare going into the general election, and Hillary's foot-dragging deprived us of the out-and-out pep rally-like celebration that Obama deserved and needed. I wrote before about how her persistence is rallying a base of anti-Obama fringe Democrats, which truly threatens to undermine his chances in the general. There are many reasons that I hope Obama does not choose Clinton as his running mate, but Hillary's bad sportsmanship at this stage has, unfortunately, fomented my feelings that I do not want her around to taint my grand enthusiasm for Obama. Here's to hoping that she hasn't damaged the campaign too severely, and we can have something to truly celebrate in November.

Some general thoughts on baseball

Very much looking forward to going to see the A-Braves play tonight. I loved playing baseball as a really young kid, but I grew to hate it as my adolescence drained my confidence and, in turn, my ability to play very well. (That's my official story, and I'm sticking to it! I was only bad at baseball because I lacked confidence!) Heh. Anyway. I never really liked it again until a couple of years ago when I started going to Brave's games. On a nice night, there's nothing better.

To explain why I enjoy baseball games so much, I'd like to draw a contrast to my experiences going to UGA football games. The games usually started in the late morning or afternoon, so, during the early fall at least, it was usually very hot. The mood of the crowd (at least in the students' section) is one of ravenous anger and animosity toward the other team. My worst college football experience actually took place during a very random game between the University of Alabama and Middle Tennessee State University, at which this guy beside us screamed "Fuck you! Fuck you!" at the MTSU team until the veins popped out of his neck and his face was completely red and sweaty. This, despite the fact that Bama beat MTSU by several touchdowns. You'd see this same sort of thing at UGA games, and I was convinced that, half the time, these dudes were feigning their passion. In any case, you don't often see this sort of thing at a baseball game.

Besides the angry attitude, there's the fast pace of a football game, which demands that the audience be nearly-always standing, yelling for each play. In contrast, baseball games provide an opportunity to sit and relax with a group of friends and enjoy a fairly slow-paced game. Sure, during an intense rivalry, you might see some of the same intensity that you see at every single football game, but, given the sheer number of baseball games, these moments are fewer and farther between. Baseball is the sport of the patient, whereas, in a football game, the match can be completely upended and won or lost in the course of any single play, so, as an audience member, your biting your nails for something big on each hike of the ball. In baseball, on the other hand, it always takes three pitches to get an out, always takes three outs to end the inning, so there's no point about getting worked up about any single play, save the few exceptional climaxes.

Tonight, its Braves-Marlins, second game in the series. Should be a good time to relax and enjoy a cool summer night.

The nostalgia drug

Artwork by Luke Chueh, via google image search. Used without permission, but hopefully he won't mind!

Today, I applied for a government job, and part of the application required me to list my last five residences. Of course, I can hardly remember the address of the apartment I lived in my last year of college, so I was fishing for the answer. I went into an email account I've held since then, and started from the very first email in the account, going forward in time to look for some reference to the address. This fact-finding mission drew me into a whirlpool of nostalgia that I had not expected. As I read through emails I had sent to old girlfriends, to my now-wife as we went through "just friends" periods, to professors about 5-page papers that, at the time, seemed like near-impossible tasks, I was sucked back into a time that I had nearly forgotten.

I could hear my voice in the old emails, but my language was different, my word choice, my salutation and conclusion. I ended emails to friends with Bjork-infused phrases like "warmth, sack," and "with great sincerity, sack." I talked of impending debate tournaments and beer-infused social events. The whole thing was so surreal. More surreal was the way that reading the words sent some chemical signal to my brain that made me feel I was, once again, the person who wrote those messages, and it was a drug-like shock.

We've all experienced this before, most likely. Some smell will come out of nowhere and remind us of some vague impression of a time in our past, and we'll be momentarily transferred to that time in the past. Or a song will come on that reminds us of our childhood. Whenever I see any reference to the movie Scarface, I think back to our honeymoon on a remote Bahamian island, where we watched a videotape of the film during a rainy day. Whenever I go into a library, the smell of the air freshener and the books reminds me of my first summer as a high school freshman at debate institute, where I discovered an ecstatic world I had never known to exist. This emotion can be intense.

But I worry that it's not healthy, and something that we should avoid exposing ourselves to excessively. I've heard before that, when we think to times past and sentimentalize over them, we tend to filter out any pain or dissatisfaction that we felt during those times, remembering them only as good and perfect pasts. This usually occurs because we think of good times past when we are discouraged by our present, and we are reaching back to figure out how things were different before. . . before we started feeling so bad. But if we think about it rationally, we'll remember times in that past when we were just as upset or unhappy as we sometimes are today. Nostalgia and sentimentality can be self-deception and escape in the same ways that drugs or alcohol can.

I think sometimes of a once-favorite uncle of mine who experienced a midlife crisis sometime in his 40's. Left his wife for a four-times-divorced and slightly younger woman, almost certainly making his decision in a moment in which he convinced himself that his life as a single man was a blissful, perfect time, free of the hardships that his marriage had brought on. I saw him about a year after he made his decision, and I could see the misery and shame in his eyes. He had wrecked the worlds of his two children and left his wife to struggle on her own financially. He had let his sentimentalization get the best of him and forgotten that his notion of a perfect yesterday was not based in reality.

That's not to say that there isn't value into some reminiscing over good times. Half of the pleasure in doing something fun or exciting is the knowledge that you're creating memories to cherish and share later on in life. Hearing an old song with old friends and uniting around a shared past can be a wonderful experience. Smelling a scent that reminds you of a past love, or of falling in love with the woman who has since become your forever, can be a happy reminder of a life well-lived. But, as with any other escape, one must approach these things with caution and consume them with discretion. We have to remember that we live in the now, and we never can return permanently to that past, and, honestly, if we did, we'd probably be disappointed to learn that it wasn't as perfect as we had remembered it to be. It's great to remember the good things that we've experienced, but it would be a tragedy to convince ourselves that that's as good as it'll ever get.

Will Hillary be 2008's Ralph Nader?

As I've read the coverage of the pro-Clinton protests at the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting, I can't help but be struck by the similarities between these folks and Nader's supporters in 2000. Nader's supporters were faced with an election that they could not possibly win, along with the distinct possibility that their efforts, if they persisted, could result in the election of George W. Bush, a candidate who was, without a doubt, far more antithetical to their beliefs and goals than Al Gore. However, they ignored this rational conclusion and persisted in their campaign, perhaps out of pure egoism. They almost certainly contributed to Gore's defeat and the disaster of the Bush presidency. And, even today, Nader continues to enter himself into presidential races, concerned primarily with his own self-importance, and ignoring the practical consequences to our nation. He has remained willfully blind of his role in a shameful period of our nation's political life.

This write-up does much to solidify my sense that the hard-core Clinton supporters are, at this point, an anti-pragmatic fringe who must resort to the most irrational and ad hominem of arguments to prop up their now-flimsy position. The rules governing the 2008 primaries were clear to everyone at the outset of the campaign season, and the Rules and Bylaws Committee has now, through a democratic process, altered those rules to give Florida and Michigan a voice that they were initially denied. The writing is on the wall that Obama will be the nominee and that those who support the principals embodied by the Democratic party must now set aside their differences and support our candidate. Yet, with disregard for the damage they might do, this die-hard fringe is pulling out all the stops in their diatribe against Obama, embracing even the looniest of positions, such as the accusation by a random guy with a Youtube account that he and Obama did crack and had sex in a limousine. Seriously: see it here.

And Hillary doesn't do anything to stop it. In fact, she encouraged these folks to protest the meeting. Immistakably, blood will be on her hands for any damage these folks do to the Democrat's prospects for the presidency. It is a sad trend in the history of social movements that the movement's destruction often comes from within. Jealousies and animosities arise among those who would lead, and what could have been an effective and united front for social change becomes a fractured, self-defeated farce. We can only hope that, in the week ahead, Clinton will concede the nomination to Obama and begin to do the hard work necessary to undo any damage she has caused to the party. If she does this, she will do much to bolster our chances to take back the White House in 2008. More than that, she will save herself politically and avoid becoming the pariah that Nader has become. 

Also:

I enjoyed this great speech by Donna Brazile, in which she appeals to basic principles of fairness and predictability in defending the decision not to fully count the Florida and Michigan delegates.