Happy Birthday to Peter Bonerz, 75.
A bit of good stuff:
1. Brad DeLong: honest, classy. A mensch.
2. Stuart Rothenberg takes an early look at 2014 primary challenges.
3. Josh Marshall on the sale of the Washington Post to Jeff Bezos. I'm still mostly critical of the reporting of the sale because there wasn't enough emphasis on What It All Means for non-staff contributors to WaPo blogs.
4. And Scott Lemieux is absolutely correct about Alex Rodriguez in Texas.
I was listening to that new Macklemore song on the radio the other day, and while I applaud his message, and while there are still way too many young people being persecuted for being gay, still...there's nothing especially risky about that song, no? Not like Andrew Sullivan publicly advocating for gay marriage in 1989, for example.
ReplyDeleteThat's the miracle of Andrew Sullivan, it seems to me. Not that he doesn't care what a world filled with Brad DeLong's (circa 1989) think about him - I'm sure he does - but he doesn't let it stop him. That's a characteristic of the best practitioners of this format (I'd throw Ta-Nehisi in there as well): you dislike them often in addition to liking them, and they don't care, they keep at it regardless.
It doesn't fit the traditional definition, but Sullivan doing what he does, regardless of unpleasant reaction, and making a big contribution to changing the world for the better - that too is menschy, no?
DeLong is far from classy (I won't speak to his honesty). Rather than examining his basis (i.e. constant accusations of bad faith against anyone even slightly to his political right) he simply makes an unprincipled exception for one person in one case.
ReplyDeleteThe actual classy thing to do would be to use this as a realisation that his political opponents legitimately disagree with him, and retract, and stop making, all such accusations. But naturally such will never come from the Krulong.
Who calls Achilles "Akhilleus"?
ReplyDeleteWell, I bet the Kyklopes and Kirke would. Less flippantly, I think the Fitzgerald translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey used those transliterations, and transliterations often get pretty politically fraught. I mean, we don't refer to Peking that much anymore.
DeleteIt's a little hard to ever take Stu Rothenberg seriously again on the subject of midterm elections after he wrote this.
ReplyDeleteOn the sale of the Washington Post to Jeff Bezos, Peter Goodman at Huffington Post has an excellent analysis.
ReplyDeleteEmbarrassingly, proudly, and famously screechy prog deLong "admits" that he was not as sufficiently proggy as some other prog (who wants to run a DNA test on Sarah Palin's baby because of the name of a chromosome) on a pet prog issue and is highlighted as a gentile mensch by a 24/7 partisan dem. Every prog around here gets a blue ribbon participation medal.
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