Awhile back I was reminiscing about how so many of today's most heated debates carry rather strong echoes of the past. And now we have further proof that some disputes just can't seem to ever die. The principal of McCord Middle School in Benton Harbor, Michigan has ordered the school band not to perform "Louie, Louie" in Saturday's Grand Floral Parade, held as part of the Blossomtime Festival.

Most readers will be familiar with this staple of raunchy dancing that's part of the repertoire of every band that plays at an American sporting event. What would generations of that soon-to-be-endangered species, "sexy cheerleaders," have done without a bit of bump-and-grind to "Louie, Louie." And Animal House afficianados will recall John Belushi's thoughtful explication of the significance of the lyrics. The website LouieLouie.net -- devoted to the production of a documentary on the history of the song, its composer/lyricist Richard Berry, and many of its performers -- has inventoried more than 1,600 recordings. Wikipedia reports that what is believed to be the world's largest jam session was held in 2003 in Tacoma, Washington, where 754 guitarists played a ten-minute rendition of "Louie, Louie."

For me, however, "Louie, Louie" is simply one of the great urban myths. So where else to look than that cornucopia of cultural artifacts, Urban Legends.

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Billmon has sussed it out. And unfortunately, I don't think there's a bit of tinfoil in his narrative -- just the natural logic of power and and an example of the dynamics of competition when interest groups obtain political controls over markets. A cautionary reminder for Democrats as well, I should add, even when they rationalize their own interventions as being on the side of angels.

First, choose an aspect of popular culture that you find offensive. This can be anything from Janet Jackson’s breast to “Desperate Housewives” to low-cut jeans. Label it un-American, and claim it is a symptom of the downfall of society. Then completely ignore the fact that popular culture is created by market forces and that most large media and entertainment corporations are owned by conservatives and contribute heavily to the Republican Party. Now you are free to blame popular culture, and by extension, the downfall of society, on liberals.

Yes, yes, the culture war trumps the class war and Hillary is making all the right moves. But it's still a big sham worthy of mockery. Don't tell anyone.

via Tim Blair, of all people.

Am I the only one mystified as to how someone can write an entire treatise about how the Republican party has successfully used the culture war to advance its economic agenda, and then advocate that the culture war somehow does not actually trump the class war?

Sorry, Yuval (and Paul Krugman by extension), but I think that the Moose has the big picture right here, as does, sadly, Ramesh Ponnuru.

I'm not sure what to do about this--Hillary Clinton's reframing of the abortion issue as one of preventing unwanted pregnancies seems like a smart move--but I'm pretty damned sure that "more cultural liberalism" is not the answer.

... on the other hand, there is definitely something amiss in Kansas.

UPDATE: See also Ed Kilgore's reply to Armando of DailyKos, which in my view shows a more productive way of interacting with the "netroots" than the Moose approach (though I agree with his overall "culture trumps class" argument), which in addition to being problematic in some of its details, raises more hackles than awareness.

Posts like these represent the ravings of a paranoid, lunatic fringe. See Digby for more.

Or, as Hofstadter puts it:

We are all sufferers from history, but the paranoid is a double sufferer, since he is afflicted not only by the real world, with the rest of us, but by his fantasies as well.

... for a more sober examination of the phenomenon that Wretchard seems to represent, see this Brian Urquhart review of Anatol Lieven's book on American nationalism. For instance:

After setting out what he calls the "American Creed," Lieven examines the historical roots of its antithesis, a "wounded and vengeful nationalism." Irrational hatred, even fear, of the outside world, combined with an obsessive belief in the treachery of American "elites" and intellectuals, is not only destructive at home; it also demeans the traditional idea of a people with a special mission to help other nations that has been variously described over the years by many leaders and thinkers. For one example, Lieven quotes Woodrow Wilson, speaking at the end of World War I: "America had the infinite privilege of fulfilling her destiny and saving the world." Ironically, it has taken Nature itself, in the Asian tsunami disaster, to show us once again that only the United States has the will and the resources—ships bearing helicopters and a worldwide logistics network—to respond immediately to such a vast emergency. Can this terrible experience help revive the reputation of Americans as a people with a compassionate mission in the world?

The missionary idea is further distorted, Lieven argues, by the Manichaean notion, frequently invoked since September 11, of the struggle between Good—America and those who unreservedly agree with it—and Evil. "Wherever we carry it," George W. Bush told the graduating cadets at West Point in June 2002, "the American flag will stand not only for our power, but for freedom." Such rhetoric has not only fueled self-righteous and nationalist extremism; it has also distracted the United States from the basic measures needed for a successful campaign against Islamic terrorism, including the serious pursuit of peace in the Middle East; and it has badly strained relations with the outside world. "If we have any sense at all of history," Lieven writes, "we should know that our system does not represent the 'end of history,' is not divinely ordained, and will not last forever."

In a chapter entitled "The Embittered Heartland," Lieven examines the paradox that while much of the world sees the modern history of America as "an almost uninterrupted chronicle of success" (Senator William Fulbright's words), very large groups inside the country itself do not see anything of the kind. Their sense of inherited defeat and humiliation not only poisons domestic politics but is also an important ingredient in America's particular form of radical nationalism. Lieven identifies an original source of this feeling in the fear on the part of the first, fundamentalist Protestant, Anglo-Saxon core of settlers that it was losing its control of politics and culture to more recent immigrant groups, "cosmopolitan elites," and the like.

Majikthise remarking on how Susan Sontag will be (mis)remembered.

Sontag became notorious for her reaction to the 9/11 attacks. She argued that hijackers had political and military objectives and that the attacks were not simply irrational acts of inscrutable malice. Predictably, her critics misconstrued her remarks as a defense of the hijackers.
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(It is ironic that the FBI profiler is a latter day folk hero. Americans love fiction and non-fiction about brilliant forensic psychologists who crack a baffling crime by "getting into the head" of a serial killer. I have never heard anyone argue that profiler shows generate sympathy for serial killers by acknowledging that they act for reasons.)

Unlike many of my generation, especially those of the female persuasion, the death of Susan Sontag doesn't conjure for me many intellectual epiphanies of my youth. When I was encouraged to read an article by a enthusiastic friend or reviewer, I'd find a paragraph here or there noteworthy, but neither her thought nor expression were compelling for me personally. And in later years I found her writing either opaque or a replay of "greatest hits" that wasn't all that relevant.

Yet her comments immediately after 9/11 I found all too sadly to the point. Their relevance was immediately proved by the outpouring of venom in response, whereby Sontag became the poster child for a vicious bundle of caricatures -- "sleeping with the enemy," betrayal of the memory of the victims, and "hate America first," all rolled into one. A total rejection of the simple acknowledgement that can more effectively protect ourselves from such horror in the future if we have some understanding of what the perpetrators thought were not only justification, but compelling motivation, for actions which are to us quite literally incomprehensible.

Ironically, it is those who pretend to a warrior ethos who seemed most likely to reject such a sensible inquiry. Yet isn't one of the first rules of waging war to understand the enemy? For armchair generals who love their Clausewitz, isn't the first step to understand the political foundations of a conflict -- from both sides -- before one extends that conflict into actual use of force?   more »

[UPDATE 12-10-04 from 12-4-04] Jonathan Chait finds himself puzzled over why those on the Right are embracing with glee a new study showing academics have a decidedly Democratic tilt.

After all, these studies show that some of the best-educated, most-informed people in the country overwhelmingly reject the GOP. Why is this seen as an indictment of academia, rather than as an indictment of the Republican Party?
[...]
Second, professors don't particularly want to be Republicans. In recent years, and especially under George W. Bush, Republicans have cultivated anti-intellectualism. Remember how Bush in 2000 ridiculed Al Gore for using all them big numbers?

That's not just a campaign ploy. It's how Republicans govern these days. Last summer, my colleague Frank Foer wrote a cover story in the New Republic detailing the way the Bush administration had disdained the advice of experts. And not liberal experts, either. These were Republican-appointed wonks whose know-how on topics such as global warming, the national debt and occupying Iraq were systematically ignored. Bush prefers to follow his gut.

In the world of academia, that's about the nastiest thing you can say about somebody. Bush's supporters consider it a compliment. [...]

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Ellen Goodman nails the constant whingeing on the Right about the Left's dominance of academia:

What next? Quotas for Republican anthropologists?

It's just about as constructive (and attractive) as the Left's own never-ending application of diversity metrics in every social setting.

IMHO, what we should be more concerned about is the increasingly narrow and detached focus of academic specialties that professionalization has promoted. These tendencies encourage the self-selection process and reinforce political bias in the very definition of the scope of appropriate academic inquiry. Although George Will's recent op-ed on the Left's domination of academia falls into several of the traps Goodman identifies, he does underline this legitimate area of concern. He quotes a recent article by Mark Bauerlein, professor of English at Emory University and director of research and analysis at the National Endowment for the Arts, in the Chronicle of Higher Education. [From "Liberal Groupthink Is Anti-Intellectual," Nov 12 2004, sub req'd]

Bauerlein says that various academic fields now have regnant premises that embed political orientations in their very definitions of scholarship:

"Schools of education, for instance, take constructivist theories of learning as definitive, excluding realists (in matters of knowledge) on principle, while the quasi-Marxist outlook of cultural studies rules out those who espouse capitalism. If you disapprove of affirmative action, forget pursuing a degree in African-American studies. If you think that the nuclear family proves the best unit of social well-being, stay away from women's studies."

This gives rise to what Bauerlein calls the "false consensus effect," which occurs when, because of institutional provincialism, "people think that the collective opinion of their own group matches that of the larger population."

That would require new institutional vehicles and shifts in professional incentives that rewarded truly inter-disciplinary approaches to defining what questions need asking. Too often, fashionable multi-disciplinary centers are spaces for integrative conversations in name only, merely attracting the funding that allows scholars to till their personal little gardens.

MC MasterChef's post on modernity and terrorism spun off an entire tangent about comparative religion as an area of knowledge, and how part of solving some of our conflicts will involve being open to learning about the "other" or the "alien". The discussion has been asking why this is especially a challenge in the field of religion, and some of the areas where greater learning should be promoted.

The topic is getting increasingly long and complex, so I thought moving it to the front page might help. The main part of the conversation starts here between Oscar and me.

This post responds to ideas Bondra presented about the frequent tension between personal faith and knowledge about other religions.

It is also a very belated attempt to respond to some of the observations JC made last week, responding to MC MasterChef's Christianism post, about the tensions between the personal and political in religious experience and matters of faith.

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When we deal with faith or religiosity at the individual level, rather than at the level of a religion's theology, institutions, history, etc. there are clearly a bunch of factors that come into play. Here are a few observations tossed out. Not as well organized as I'd like, but you'll get the drift.

One of the big problems we've had with this whole post-election brouhaha is that nobody pays attention to level-of-analysis. Here we're dealing with indvidual voting decisions and trying to claim causality from an institutional affiliation, where we keep focusing on personal attitudes on one topic (religion) being extended to other topics (abortion, gay marriage, etc) and we're paying less attention to the institutional affiliation aspects.

By that I mean that we don't know what the actual beliefs are of a voter who "belongs" to a specific denomination, who "regularly practices" the religion (which we measure by the proxy of church attendance), how strongly those beliefs are held, the degree to which the beliefs are internal (related to the experience of faith) or external (related to membership or loyalty to group), and so on and so on.   more »

Via JKC's diary at Tacitus and Kevin Drum, the best visualization of the electorate so far. It shows both population concentration (larger a patch the greater the number of residents from 2000 census) and intensity of polarization (from bright blue Dems to bright red Repubs). If nothing else, it's gorgeous. Undoubtedly its rorschach-like aspects will trigger lots of different responses, but to me its a splendid chinese dragon with ferocious blue jaws. But hey, I couldn't be reading any wishful thinking into it could I?



This is just one of a number of maps prepared by a trio at U of Michigan (physics and complex systems). Their page describes the methods used to prepare each. The cartogram (above) is based on a geographical map that uses the color scaling proposed by Robert Vanderbei at Princeton. We had alreday come across Vanderbiei's work in an earlier discussion of voting maps that JC
and MC MasterChef had brought to our attention.

My favorite of the Vanderbei maps, from an aesthetic standpoint if nothing else, overlays the colors on a map that includes mountains. Both striking and informative.



The Princeton page has some information on voting predictions as well.

By popular demand, the Michigan site is making the purple cartogram (above) and its companion map available as wallpaper.

Karl Rove's summary this morning of Bush II's coming attractions:

President Bush will renew a quest in his second term for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage as essential to a "hopeful and decent" society, his top political aide said on Sunday.

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