The Commentariat -- Aug. 19, 2013
Guardian: "The partner of the Guardian journalist who has written a series of stories revealing mass surveillance programmes by the US National Security Agency was held for almost nine hours on Sunday by UK authorities as he passed through London's Heathrow airport on his way home to Rio de Janeiro. David Miranda, who lives with Glenn Greenwald, was returning from a trip to Berlin when he was stopped by officers at 8.05am and informed that he was to be questioned under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000. The controversial law, which applies only at airports, ports and border areas, allows officers to stop, search, question and detain individuals." ...
... Glenn Greenwald comments: worse than the Mafia, puppets of U.S. national security state, despotic, etc. "If the UK and US governments believe that tactics like this are going to deter or intimidate us in any way from continuing to report aggressively on what these documents reveal, they are beyond deluded." ...
... Charlie Savage of the New York Times: Miranda "had spent the previous week in Berlin visiting Laura Poitras, a documentary filmmaker who has also been helping to disseminate Mr. Snowden's leaks, to assist Mr. Greenwald. The Guardian had paid for the trip, Mr. Greenwald said, and Mr. Miranda was on his way home to Rio de Janeiro.... Mr. Miranda was in Berlin to deliver documents related to Mr. Greenwald's investigation into government surveillance to Ms. Poitras, Mr. Greenwald said. Ms. Poitras, in turn, gave Mr. Miranda different documents to pass to Mr. Greenwald. Those documents, which were stored on encrypted thumb drives, were confiscated by airport security, Mr. Greenwald said." ...
... ** The Courier. Driftglass: "But it is also true that if non-journalist David Miranda was detained because he was couriering some portion of a trove of incredibly dangerous, stolen US intelligence secrets across international borders at Mr. Greenwald's behest, Mr. Greenwald owed it to his readers to include that very important fact in his reporting. And so once again we see the problem inherent in advocacy journalism when the advocate in question continues to believe his only obligation to his readers is to share with them only those details of the story that are favorable to his cause."
... CW: contributor P. D. Pepe links to this New Republic piece in which Ben Wittes of the Brookings Institution accuses the Washington Post of sensationalizing the leaked NSA audit report to mislead its readers into believing NSA personnel routinely spied on innocent Americans, while at the same time he skewers the Obama administration: "... if there were a way to botch more completely a public response to these disclosures, I'm not sure I know what it would look like." Wittes composes a graf in which he lays out what the administration should have said. Ya know what? Witte's suggestion is pretty much a copy of what the Obama administration actually said in respose to the WashPo report by Barton Gellman. Right there in the self-same Washington Post,Ellen Nakashima reported on August 16:
The White House said in a statement Friday that the 'NSA documents being reported on today ... demonstrate that the NSA is monitoring, detecting, addressing and reporting compliance incidents.' In a conference call with reporters Friday, NSA Compliance Director John DeLong repeatedly said that the agency takes compliance seriously and that the audit's existence proved that. 'People need to understand there's no willful violations here,' he said. The mistakes are in the 'parts-per-million or parts-per-billion range,' he said. 'We really do look for them, detect them and correct them.' Added DeLong: 'No one at NSA, not me or anyone else, thinks they are okay.' When pressed, he said there have been willful violations, but the number is 'minuscule ... a couple over the past decade.'
... Say "Never mind," Ben. (Wittes' criticism of Gellman's piece is still worth reading.) ...
... Update: Wittes responded, "Yes, they eventually said some of the same facts, but not in the story--and they did it in a reactive and apologetic fashion. My point is that this is actually a record to be proud of, and they are not reflecting that."
... Good Question, Obvious Answer. David Sirota in Salon: "With the latest major revelation about National Security Agency surveillance, there's a huge taboo question that needs to be put out on the table: Has President Obama been deliberately lying about the NSA, or have his statements just been repeatedly 'wrong'? ... If indeed he hasn't been deliberately lying -- then it means he has been dangerously, irresponsibly and negligently ignorant of not only the government he runs, but also of the news breaking around him."
Paul Krugman: Republican leaders don't understand healthcare reform. Even now. ...
A lot of Republicans seem to believe that if they can gum up the works and make this law fail, they'll somehow be sticking it to me. But they'd just be sticking it to you. -- President Obama, Saturday
I don't think shutting down the government is a good idea, but I do think that we were elected, conservatives were elected, to try to stop this overreach, this government takeover of healthcare. -- Sen. Rand Paul (RTP-Ky.), Sunday
... Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "A pair of tea party groups is teaming up to pressure key Republicans to support an effort to defund Obamacare. Tea Party Patriots and the grassroots group For America are launching online ads against a dozen GOP senators who either oppose the effort or haven't announced a position."
Kevin Robillard of Politico: "New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly says there's "no question" more people would die if the city's next mayor ends the controversial stop-and-frisk policy, which a federal judge has struck down as unconstitutional. 'No question about it, violent crime will go up,' Kelly said Sunday on NBC's 'Meet the Press: when host David Gregory asked if more people would die." CW: that's right Greggers; feed him his lines. ...
... ** New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in a Washington Post op-ed, writes that stop-&-frisk is not racial profiling. He disses the Post editors & the judge who ruled against the city. CW: He completely undercuts his own argument, however, when he argues that it only makes sense to target young black & Hispanic males since they're the ones who commit the crimes, & calls it "absurd" not to target young minority men. "Unlike many cities, where wealthy areas get special treatment, the NYPD targets its manpower to the areas that suffer the highest crime levels. Ninety percent of all people killed in our city -- and 90 percent of all those who commit the murders and other violent crimes -- are black and Hispanic. It is shameful that so many elected officials and editorial writers have been largely silent on these facts." Read the whole post. You may find yourself agreeing with Bloomberg anyway. ...
... OR, maybe the city could have effectively reduced crime by getting the lead out.
Wherein Fiscal Conservatives Figure out Prisons Are Expensive. Jerry Markon & Frederick Kunkle of the Washington Post: "'There is an expectation that the generic Republican position is tough on crime,' [Virginia Attorney General & candidate for governor Ken] Cuccinelli said in an interview Thursday. 'But even that has budget limits, particularly on the prison side.' Two decades after Republican George Allen charged into the Virginia governorship by vowing to eliminate parole for violent offenders, a rhetorical shift among the state's leading conservatives reflects changing attitudes toward criminal justice nationwide."
Wherein the Chamber of Commerce Figures out the Tea Party Is Not Its BFF. Sabrina Siddiqui & Paul Blumenthal of the Huffington Post: "... the chamber's big spending in 2010 to elect a House GOP majority appears to have backfired. Many of the conservative lawmakers the chamber helped elect are now an impediment to the business lobby's legislative priorities, either by contributing to Congress' dysfunction or by actively opposing chamber-backed measures."
A Scandal of Her Own? Raymond Hernandez of the New York Times examines Huma Abedin's complicated simultaneous employment arrangements -- at the State Department, at a consulting firm called Teneo, for the Clinton Foundation & for Hillary Clinton personally. Abedin & her friends & employers aren't talking, which is vexing Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). CW: how the hell did she figure out her billing?
The Messiah Is a Girl. From Alaska. David Edwards of the Raw Story: "The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol was one of Sarah Palin's earliest supporters to be picked as the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, and now he says she can 'resurrect herself' by running to be a senator from Alaska." CW: hope nobody tells former Half-Gov. Palin/The One that a Senate term runs for six long years.
Ted Cruz for President/Prime Minister of North America. Todd Gillman of the Dallas Morning News: "Born in Canada to an American mother, Ted Cruz became an instant U.S. citizen. But under Canadian law, he also became a citizen of that country the moment he was born. Unless the Texas Republican senator formally renounces that citizenship, he will remain a citizen of both countries, legal experts say." CW: hey, if you're a citizen of a foreign country where they have socialized medicine & even the police wear red jackets, can you be a "real American"?
Congressional Elections 2014
Brian Beutler of Salon: "... the [Republican] party worries it's so rudderless and unpopular that it might blow what everyone believed to be a rigged game much sooner than expected. In three different stories, four reporters with strong Republican sourcing detected a specter of doubt haunting the GOP. The Washington Examiner's Byron York distilled it most clearly. 'Behind the scenes -- in whispered asides, not for public consumption -- some Republicans are now worried that keeping the House is not such a done deal after all,' he wrote. 'They look back to two elections, 1998 and 2006, in which Republicans seriously underperformed expectations, and they wonder if 2014 might be a little like those two unhappy years.'" CW: I'm not getting my hopes up.
Local News
Back Before Maureen Started Keeping Bob in the Dark. "Look, Honey, Jonnie sent me a big check, too."... Rosalind Helderman & Carol Leonnig of the Washington Post: "Attorneys for Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, will spend Monday locked in separate hours-long meetings trying to convince federal prosecutors that the first couple should not be charged in the gifts scandal that has dominated state politics. The meetings open a new, critical phase of the investigation, timed to help prosecutors decide over the next few weeks whether to file charges.... The central issues for prosecutors are what precisely McDonnell may have said or offered to [businessman Jonnie] Williams on his own and how much the governor knew about his wife's acceptance of gifts from Williams and her actions to help his company.... As the scandal has shined an uncomfortable spotlight on the governor's marriage, McDonnell's side has conveyed to authorities that his wife often purposely kept him in the dark about the largess she was accepting from Williams...."
Julie Watson of the Washington Post: "The effort to recall San Diego's embattled mayor is kicking off in the nation's eighth-largest city Sunday, one day before Bob Filner is set to return to work after undergoing behavior therapy." Peter Rowe of the San Diego Union-Tribune has more.
Presidential Election 2016
Peter Nicholas, et al., of the Wall Street Journal: "Political allies of Vice President Joe Biden have concluded that he can win the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination -- even if Hillary Clinton enters the contest -- and are considering steps he could take to prepare for a potential candidacy. While Mr. Biden has made no decision about his future, people familiar with his thinking say, he hasn't ruled out a bid for the White House. If he runs, that could set up a titanic battle between two of the party's most prominent figures."
Justin Sink of the Hill: "Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) unloaded on fellow Republican lawmaker Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) Sunday, accusing him of providing 'a grab bag of misinformation and distortion' on the National Security Agency's top-secret surveillance programs. In an appearance earlier on 'Fox News Sunday,' Paul accused the spy agency of 'looking at billions of phone calls every day' and said the constitutionality of the programs should be evaluated by the Supreme Court." CW: King has said he is seriously considering a 2016 run, & Li'l Randy knows all the words to "Hail to the Chief."
President Handsome. Hillary Chabot of the Boston Herald: "Former U.S. Sen. Scott Brown told the Herald he is looking at a possible 2016 presidential bid today as he hit a well-worn stomping ground for Oval Office hopefuls -- the Iowa State Fair." CW: Tried to learn the words to "Hail to the Chief." Too hard; can hum a few bars. ...
... Nicole Belle of Crooks & Liars: "BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! *wipes tears from eyes*"
Local News
New York Times: "A day after the Egyptian government acknowledged that its security forces had killed 36 Islamists in its custody, suspected militants were reported on Monday to have killed at least 24 police officers in an attack on their minibuses in the restive northern Sinai region." ...
... Welcome Back, Hosni? New York Times: "A court in in Egypt has ordered that former President Hosni Mubarak, who has been detained on a variety of charges since his ouster in 2011, should be set free, according to state media and security officials on Monday, but it remained possible that the authorities would find a way to keep him in detention and his release did not appear imminent."
New York Times: "Oscar Pistorius, the Paralympic and Olympic track star, was indicted Monday in a South African court on a charge of premeditated murder in the death of his girlfriend. Magistrate Desmond Nair set a trial date for March 3, 2014. Mr. Pistorius, who has been out on bail since February, will remain free until then."
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Reader Comments (16)
Ben Wittes from the New Republic has this to say:
"I cannot decide if I am more annoyed at the Washington Post or more annoyed at the Obama administration for the way this latest cache of Snowden-leaked NSA documents is playing. I have now gone through the documents with some care, and I find both the Post‘s formulation of the story and the administration’s response to the leak mind-boggling."
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114364/nsa-spying-defense-case-administration-isnt-making
Worth reading and it's stance is refreshing.
Weekend responses:
Apologies for just getting to some of the weekend notes addressed to me.
Ken was wondering whether or not Hari Seldon would make a good leader for our time. Seldon, for anyone who has not immersed themselves in Asimov's wonderful Foundation series, was a kind of super Nate Silver who used mathematics, logic, and probability to roughly lay out the direction of his society. Despite Seldon's general benevolence and obvious brain power I was never overly happy with the idea of psychohistory (Seldon's predictive invention). Maybe it was because his work predicted the fall of the empire or maybe it was because it gave me a bit of a tautological shiver. Anyway, another Foundation character who might make a good leader was Salvor Hardin, a confirmed peacenik. One of Hardin's favorite sayings (or rather my favorite of his sayings) was "violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." He preferred brain power and guile to atom blasters.
More than either of these guys though perhaps Asimov himself would have made a great leader. A true polymath, he was interested in science, history, art, the social and philosophical issues surrounding artificial intelligence (I, Robot), environmental issues, and, well, practically everything else. Like all great philosophers he looked at all sides of an issue. The societies and characters he created in Foundation and the Robot novels were examined from multiple points of view, one reason they hold up so well so long after publication. But Asimov was an atheist. I don't think we're advanced enough for that in our leaders, especially not in this country.
PD mentioned on Friday that she was going back to reading George Eliot so as to be able to leave 21st century vicissitudes behind for a while. I don't know which novel she's reading but I recently put "Middlemarch" in my re-read pile (in line after "Anna Karenina", "On the Road", "Blood Meridian", and a couple of Stanley Cavell books), leading me to ponder the fitness of Dorothea Brooke as a great leader. She was smart, precocious, self-effacing, knew how to read people well, had a great interest in helping the poor, and had patience enough to put up with that dreadful twit Casaubon. We could do a lot worse.
And while we're on the subject of great fictional leaders, I'd like to also nominate Atticus Finch, having just re-read Mockingbird (this is my summer/fall for re-visiting some old fictional friends). He explains to his children that real courage is not a man with a gun in his hand, but one who will fight the good fight to the end even when he knows he's probably licked before he even starts. But he does it anyway because it's the right thing to do. And every now and then, you just might win. The fact that the jury took hours to convict Tom Robinson is a testament to Atticus' moral strength and leadership.
But in terms of leaders, we got what we got. The great comfort of literature is that it gives us a glimpse at what we might have.
In reference to the Huma Abedin article, below (at URL) is a definition of Special Government Employee. Interestingly, all congressional part-time home district employees are SGEs -- maybe that's where she got used to the idea, since HRC must have had some of those in NY when she was a senator.
I would guess that the "normal" SGE in the Department of State would be a member of a study panel, commission or delegation, a regular way to pay and clear citizens who enter into the temporary workforce for limited periods.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/202
@Akhilleus: before you decide to make Atticus Finch our fictional president, read Malcolm Gladwell on Finch's/Lee's willingness to accommodate racism. Anyway, I found Gladwell's take instructive.
Marie
@Patrick. Thanks. Maybe somebody should tell Chuck Grassley.
Marie
Thanks Akhilleus for the response and to the CW for the Gladwell link.
Of course, I brought up Seldon fully aware of his fictional nativity, born and nurtured in the marvelous Asimov brain, and equally aware that the vision of each of us is limited by the times in which we live. Science fiction, perhaps more successfully than other modes of fiction, successfully shucks the shackles of the contemporary, but it is still bound by its authors' experiences and biases, which are always somehow tied to their place in history. Nonetheless I have often found science fiction authors better able to stand outside that history and provide a longer and wider perspective than the usual run of naturalistic fiction. Though I don't read it as much as I did when I was younger, I'm sure my view of the world and my place in it is a product of my extensive reading in the field, and I'm grateful for it.
As for Gladwell's take on Atticus, I found this line about Dickens most instructive: "Orwell didn’t think that Dickens should have written different novels; he loved Dickens. But he understood that Dickens bore the ideological marks of his time and place."
It reminded me of (was it last year?) an earlier RC discussion of the moral shortcomings of Thomas Jefferson in which some criticized Jefferson for not measuring up to today's standards on racial issues.
Of course, he didn't; he did not live today. That is not to say we should not examine the differences between then and now; in fact, it is one of the most vital reasons to do so. But it does mean that history is just that: history is history because it is past, and while examining the differences and similarities between what was and what is should be instructive, our primary interest should be to do what we can to make things better in the now that belongs to us.
So...like Marie and I presume Gladwell, I don't think Atticus would cut it as President today. He was a man of his time. (I'll save discussion the intriguing disconnect Gladwell posits between heart and policy for another post; I think it deserves a closer look.) And regretfully, I don't think we can rely on Hari Seldon either (and certainly not on the Rand Pauls of Right who assert a grasp of our history about which they demonstrate time and again they have no clear idea at all); Asimov's creation was intended to be a man out of time, a kind of academic superman (kinda like his creator), godlike in his vision and reach. But of course he wasn't. Nor was Asimov. Not even he.
No one of us is.
" The mistakes are in the 'parts-per-million or parts-per-billion range,' he said."
Think about that for a moment. In the latest revelations nearly 3,000 NSA abuses were identified, and according to Charles Pierce, "those 2776 times do not represent 2776 individual violations but, rather, 2776 times the NSA violated the privacy rules. Each violation might contain thousands of unique infractions."
And that number represents parts per billion.
Just how much of our information are they gathering up? My guess is it's pretty much every phone call made and every e-mail sent.
So under ideal conditions the NSA gathers up all our communications, has a computer scan them, and then asks the FISA court for a warrant to read the actual e-mail/call transcript if the computer finds something suspicious.
If someone came into your house, turned on your computer, and read your e-mails without a warrant, the evidence obtained in that search would be thrown out. If someone tapped your phone without a warrant, the evidence obtained by listening in on the call would be thrown out. But now we're being told as long as a computer reads/listens first, then the government is perfectly justified in saying probable cause exists, even though the suspicion is based on an unwarranted search.
In the meantime, a federal appeals court has ruled "stop and frisk" to be unconstitutional. Physical stop and frisk is illegal, but electronic stop and frisk is permissible?
The fruit of the poisonous tree is apparently perfectly good to eat as long as the tree's root system is a computer.
Marie,
Thanks for pointing me to the New Yorker piece but I have some problems with the messenger as well as the message.
I read the Gladwell piece and it’s interesting in a Gladwellian kind of way. That is, until you dig around a bit. I have never been much of a Gladwell fan. I read the Tipping Point and I’ve read bits and pieces of his other stuff but I’ve never been convinced. He tends to take ideas that seem pretty basic, adds Friedmanesque anecdotes to support his point, and pronounces himself right on all counts. Much of what he has to say is interesting in a smug sort of way. That doesn't make what he has to say wrong but I think his points would be better made were he more careful in his thought processes and presentation.
For example: it’s better to be born wealthy with lots of great connections. Gee, ya think? But he also loves to set up false analogies and odd dichotomies that redound to the success of whatever premise he is supporting that day. Now some might say that no one uses anecdotes that don’t support their premise, but plenty of excellent writers and good thinkers do exactly that. Just not Gladwell. Not Friedman either, but that’s another story.
He says, for instance, that successful geniuses only come from well off families with connections and social standing. He chooses for his example Robert Oppenheimer. For contestant number two, he chooses a guy who had a high IQ but never made anything of himself and never had an impact on the world (Gladwell’s litmus test for greatness). He never heard of Michael Faraday? William Herschel? Giuseppe Verdi? Abraham Lincoln?
There are more but Gladwell never mentions them because they don’t fit the moral of his story.
So what about Atticus Finch? I would never try to argue that Finch is not in many ways, a man of his time, and one possessed of his own failings, but when Gladwell insists that Finch does not display sufficient rage about the case he's working on, I have to say “stop.” Okay, first, the guy is a lawyer. Lawyers, at least the most successful ones, are not raging types. But neither Gandhi nor Martin Luther King were raging beasts. I think Finch accepts a difficult task, especially for the place and time of the novel. Gladwell is trying Finch by the standards of early 60s civil rights activism but the story takes place in Alabama in the 1930s. See? Here’s that false dichotomy thing.
He also compares Finch unfavorably to Thurgood Marshall (another problematic dichotomy). But Marshall was fighting against Plessy with a team of lawyers funded by the NAACP in the mid fifties. And there was a fair amount of legal support for his well argued position (SCOTUS overturned Plessy unamimously). Finch was fighting for the life of a black man in the deep south in the 30s who had been accused of raping a white woman. He was alone and he lost. Integrating schools and defending a man against a racially motivated rape charge. How are these two cases comparable apart from the racial component? Gladwell never tells us.
He also makes a point of claiming that Finch’s worldview was singularly parochial and locked into the society of the “island” of Maycomb, Lee’s fictional southern town. I’m not sure Gladwell has actually read the book because during his closing argument Atticus makes a specific point of noting the universality of the problem of racism and its universal insupportability. He never says, “Well, here in Maycomb…” No. He makes his argument on the basis that it is always wrong, universally wrong, wrong in every time and place, to convict someone or to think thus and such about a person because of the color of his skin. Where is the parochialism in that argument?
He also tries to turn Atticus into an apologist for the KKK. Here again, he forgets that TKAM is not a documentary. It’s a work of fiction. And that told through the eyes of Finch’s daughter, recalling, years later, the events surrounding this specific incident. In many passages of the book, it is possible to detect, in Scout’s recounting, Atticus’ attempts to shield his children from the seamier aspects of life as much as to school them. At one point Scout asks him if it is okay to hate Hitler. Atticus tells her that it’s not okay to hate anyone. Gladwell is outraged over this. He maybe never heard that Martin Luther King says pretty much the same thing. It is against Atticus’ personal code to at least try not to hate anyone which is, in my view, the essence at the heart of the civil rights struggle.
Gladwell then tries to excoriate Finch for pointing a finger at the girl who brought the rape charge against Tom Robinson, trying to make the claim that Finch was dastardly for daring to point out the reduced state (financially and perhaps morally) of the Ewells. Well, pardon me all to hell, Malcolm, but in fact, what Finch recounts, is exactly what happened. And I don’t think he was going to win his case by demanding that an all white jury of in 1930s Alabama take a black man’s word over that of a white woman and her father just on his say-so. He had to come up with a detailed rationale for them to believe Tom Robinson’s story and a believable reason for understanding why the Ewells would have concocted their tale. He defended his client. That was his job, for chrissakes.
Finally, just in case his other five tacks don’t take, he switches gears and demands that we also condemn Atticus for his conniving with the sheriff against Tom Ewell on grounds of class. Tom Ewell, who, by the way, actually had raped his own daughter, perjured himself to send another man to the gallows, and attempted to murder two children. He posits that Finch and the sheriff align themselves with the well off Radley family and let Boo escape his well deserved fate as a murderer. So now it’s a class struggle as well with Atticus as Czar Nicholas.
Here again, this is a novel, not a documentary. The denouement demonstrates Atticus’ essential humanity and fully developed inner sense of morality. He was entirely prepared to let his own son stand trial (something Gladwell conveniently neglects to mention) when he believed it was Jem who had killed Tom Ewell. But it was another thing, morally, for him to condemn Boo Radley, a man who had rescued his children from a terrible fate. This is not a double standard, this is Finch’s understanding of the difference between legally correct and morally right and his sense of when the differences apply.
So while there may be something to what Gladwell says about Jim Folsom, who, by the way, was a political figure of the 1950s, there is next to nothing to compare him with Finch, whose story is set in the 1930s. Atticus Finch and his real life inspirations were part of what helped change things. Was there accommodation? I've no doubt. But such deeply entrenched sensibilities as racism take time to be dislodged. Christ, we're still working at it.
Sorry for the rant but I would be more likely to consider the failings of Atticus Finch had they been presented in a more intellectually honest manner and by someone whose own weaknesses as a thinker are not so evident and ubiquitous.
Akhillius, Agree about Asimov for POTUS, recalling that R. Daneel Olivaw was the wizard behind the psychohistory curtain all along and that Seldon may never have existed. How prescient. His social dysfunction aside, Vonnegut, or at least someone with his singular insight, might be an even better choice, especially given the way he could fashion an analogous but much simpler Olivaw in The Sirens of Titan. And his predictions in Player Piano for early 21st century are still hair-raising accurate.
Ken and Whyte,
There really is something especially compelling about well done science fiction. Perhaps because the really good writers, when dealing with created worlds, have to try to accommodate a multiplicity of factors, their interactions, backstory, and future history (to swipe a Heinlein idea) in order to present the reader with a society (even if it's only a society of one) with enough verisimilitude to carry the weight of inspired narrative.
Something else I thought about regarding Foundation involves the way religion was used as a form of thought control. No wonder Asimov was an atheist.
I too, like Ken, read most of my science fiction in my during a misspent youth surrounded by stacks of books, but the social theories, problems, and solutions embedded in many of those stories helped to inform my thinking along the way. The philosophical conundrums presented in the best sci-fi/fantasy stories and novels still resonate whether from Mary Shelley, Philip K. Dick, Heinlein, Asimov, Bradbury, William Gibson, Larry Niven, Tolkien, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Vonnegut, H.G. Wells, and on and on. Great stuff.
In high school, my brothers and I latched onto the Avon Science Fiction Hall of Fame story collections. These included Theodore Sturgeon's fabulous "Microcosmic God", C.M. Kornbluth's "Little Black Bag" (great surprise ending), Murray Leinster's "First Contact", Tom Godwin's "The Cold Equations", "Mimsy Were the Borogoves", "Roads Must Roll", "Arena", "Helen O'Loy", "The Weapon Shop", "Nightfall"....Man what I wouldn't give to have those books today. We also had a bunch of Dell paperbacks that reprinted some of the great pulp stories from the 30s and 40s. One of my favorite included the preposterously titled but incredibly satisfying story "Leiningen Versus the Ants".
Oh, for the hours and hours spent with books in those days.
Just a thought about Ted Cruz (I try not to have too many of those).
If and when he climbs aboard the GOP Clown Car Express for 2016, will have to give a speech denying fealty to Stephen Harper, similar to JFK's speech debunking the theory that he would be controlled by Rome?
"Leiningen Versus the Ants" was dramatized/broadcast in 1957. It starred William Conrad (best known, perhaps, as the radio voice of "Gunsmoke"'s Matt Dillon, as Leiningen. Good show.
http://www.escape-suspense.com/files/Suspense.08.25.1957.LeiningenvstheAnts.mp3
Ooh yeah... I forgot to add: there's an interesting bit of dialog early on in the broadcast when Leiningen says: "Critical situations only become crises when women and oxen get involved." Gotta love it; 1957.
James,
Thanks man, I will definitely check that out. William Conrad had some serious pipes. I can hear him saying "I couldn't die like that. I, Leiningen will defeat the ants!"
Am finally getting a chance to read these interesting comments. We have, at this time and will for four more days, two very active grandchildren staying with us while their parents get a much deserved time alone up in the piny woods of Maine so my RC reading is limited. I do however want to thank Akhilleus for responding to his responders––what a bud!––and found his take on TKAM quite wonderful. I came across Cladwell's article some years ago, saved it to be digested again later. My husband and I had a grand old discussion about all this––he had taught the novel for some years as part of his literature itinerary and interestingly argued the same points you, Ak, have made. At the time I leaned more with some of Cladwell's points, but later after "digesting" I came to see things differently, mainly understanding the time and place in which the novel was set. We do sometimes assess so much of the past with our present. Ken addresses this so well.
I've never been a Sci=fi fan except for Asimov, but you all have piqued my interest. Such a good discussion.
As for George Eliot: I am reading the biography by Ruby Redinger that has been sitting on my shelf waiting for a year or two to be taken down and devoured. It is highly analytical and a tad tedious in parts, but since I am an admirer of Mary Ann I want to know what made her tick.
And fuck Ted Cruz.
Akhilleus: Appreciate your walk down the SF memory lane, when I think about it an odd journey to take, reminiscing about fiction that is supposed to be about the future. Still remember and have copies of every story you mention and am still acquiring more SF, a compulsion fueled less by current interest than the growing power of my own store of nostalgia.
On Gladwell. Glad (I won't duck the temptation) you took the time to critique him so well. I have long distinguished between those who write well and think poorly and those whose good writing reflects and substantiates good thinking. I don't know how others would define intellectual honesty, but I would say an intellectually honest person, regardless of his talent and articulateness, thinks as well as he or she can before seeing his or her thoughts into print. In Gladwell's case, there is no doubt of his talent, of his ability to string words and thoughts together into a superficially reasonable form. And from his pile of production, I'd guess he does it quickly. Of that ability I admit to being frankly envious.
But when I read him I can't help but get the sense of a glib salesman at the keyboard, trying to sell my something that if swallowed whole would not be good for me. Hence my thanks for, as I said, taking the time.
What I wonder is whether someone as smart as Gladwell obviously is knows he's cutting corners and using his marked facility with language to dress up partial truths in the garb of useful and serious thought.
And as I write that, Christopher Hitchens also comes to mind, a writer I have often admired but not always trusted.