Matthew Yglesias

Hill Hotties

This has got to be one of the more ill-conceived adventures in political journalism that I've ever come across. They also don't seem to have done this in a very rigorous way, since I've totally met Hill people who are hotter than some of these folks despite having met relatively few Hill folk.

Hill Hotties

This has got to be one of the more ill-conceived adventures in political journalism that I've ever come across. They also don't seem to have done this in a very rigorous way, since I've totally met Hill people who are hotter than some of these folks despite having met relatively few Hill folk.

Hipster Porn

In a Tapped post this morning, I made passing reference to "the scourge of hipster porn that's been plaguing the nation lately." The reference, of course, is to Suicide Girls.com, and I was only sort of joking. This seems to me to be a failure as both pornography and as hipness. More to the point, while there's nothing really wrong with people looking at porn, we should still encourage feelings of dirtiness and shame surrounding the subject.

Just Say No

My latest column says Democrats can't block John Roberts from getting his Supreme Court seat, but that doesn't mean they need to vote for him. This is, I think, the essence of what a majority party needs to be doing. Voting "no" on stuff, perfectly aware that it will pass anyway, while outlining an alternative agenda to be implemented after the winning of some elections. Then you need to try and win some elections. Obsession with participating in the legislative process in either a constructive or obstructionist manner is just a distraction.

The Vague and The Damned

In the course of a very long post at The Valve, John Holbo observes, "The thing Knapp and Michaels crucially miss, from the start, is that 'word' and 'sentence' and so forth are vague categories." Here's the thing. In my (admittedly limited) experience, whenever I read something in college by an English-professor-doing-philosophy (i.e., Theorist with a capital-T) that seemed badly wrong to me, this was almost always the key mistake. Not every Theory-type thing I read made the mistake, but every -- or almost every -- seemingly mistaken Theory-type thing seemed to make this particular error somewhere along the way.

Or, rather, the mistake seems to be assuming -- without argument -- that there's something scandalously wrong with a category being vague. As if a hairless man, when called bald, were to point out the sorites paradox as a defense. "Baldness is a social construct!" he exclaims. Well, in a sense perhaps it is. And yet he still has no hair. That some people occupy a fuzzy middle ground is neither here nor there.

Backstroke of the West

I'd like to note that this is the funniest thing I've seen in months. Take the dialogue from Revenge of the Sith, translate into Chinese, then translate back into English. The results are . . . hilarious.

John G. Roberts

I know nothing about the man. I do, however, have "John G. Raped and Murdered My Wife" tatooed across my chest. No. Sorry. This is a very serious issue. Go read someone else's blog now.

The Other De Tocqueville

Ezra's reading Democracy in America and hoping to imitate many an earlier pundit by "ostentatiously inject[ing] it into articles later on, making folks think I'm erudite without actually reading through the classics." And why not? I thought I would take the moment to recommend a different book by the same author, The Old Regime, about pre-revolutionary France, which is really interesting although, clearly, not as obviously relevant to the concerns of an American political commentator. Also thought I might ask if anyone knows why the French expression l'ancien regime is invariably translated at "the old regime" when it clearly means "the former regime."

The Fraud Caucus

New print article co-authored by myself and Mark Leon Goldberg has a simple thesis -- there are no moderate Republicans.

Alanis Unplugged

One of my secret shames is that I kinda sorta like Jagged Little Pill (consider that double super-secret background information). Nevertheless, I'm in a Starbucks right now and they're playing some kind of acoustic version of the album and it's . . . terrible. Potentially, this is a good thing. Perhaps if I listen to this crap long enough my aversion to it will spill over and created an aversion to classic Pill thus allowing me to regain some cred. On a loosely related subject, what war is Operation Ivy referring to in "Unity" when they implore us to "stop this war!"? Some kind of metaphorical war inside the punk scene, it seems.

Le Divorce

Got home tonight, flipped up the old channel guide, and saw that some kind of movie was starting at just that moment on one of the HBO stations that featured Naomi Watts so I figured I'd watch it 'cause she's so hot (see also, nice guy discussion below). She turned out to be playing a pregnant woman in what I thought was a quite charming quiet little film called Le Divorce. The reviews, however, seem to be terrible. Now I feel fine enjoying a poorly reviewed movie if it's, say, a schlocky action movie, but this was more of a quaint comedy of manners. Do I just have terrible taste?

Also: Go see Me and You and Everyone We Know, the phrase "back and forth" will never seem the same.

))<>((

;-)

Nice Guys Finish Where?

Emerging conventional wisdom in the progressive blogosphere seems to be that soi-disant "nice guys" who whine about how nice guys can't get laid are, in fact, whiny losers who more often than not aren't as nice as they think. No doubt that's true to some extent, and the linked posts make many good points. On the other hand, I feel compelled to raise some contrary considerations. It seems pretty robustly true that male sexual success is correlated, in part, with one's position in various social and economic hierarchies. At the same time, it's pretty clear that "niceness" is not a very useful attribute for climbing to the top of your average hierarchy. This is true whether you're talking about a peer set of standard-issue assholes (a frat house, a bond trading firm) or the totally non-standard assholes of professional political punditry. Gregariousness is rewarded in these contexts, but not actual niceness in the sense of morality, kindness, etc. Going too far off on the not-nice extreme, of course, can prove counterproductive, but the optimal level of niceness is not maximum niceness.

So you can see how it could be true that nicer-than-median men might wind up being less-than-median in attractiveness and you can certainly see how nicer-than-median men might not wind up enjoying the above-average levels of success they apparently feel they deserve.

But the true oddity of this whole discourse is the notion that sex and/or companionship is some kind of prize that the world owes to you in exchange for behaving well. Suicide bombers get their 72 virgins for sacrificing their life in jihad and nice guys are owed, apparently, something similar on the planet earth. The sexist presumption that women are commodities aside, even real commodities aren't distributed like that, so I don't see why anyone would be surprised by the realities here. And of course as Kant would tell you (I think) if you're acting nice because you think it will make people want to have sex with you you're not really being nice according to any conventional way of thinking about it -- you're trying and failing to be manipulative. Now naturally enough, the successfully manipulative will (by definition) have more success than the unsuccessfully manipulative. One can see an inclination to view failed efforts at manipulation as non-manipulative and, therefore, "nice" but that's self-deception.

10,000 Website When All You Need Is A Blog

Ironically (in the Alanis sense) enough, both of the blogs are right for are currently experiencing separate technical problems that are preventing me from posting to them. Per contractual arrangements, I believe I'm technically forbidden to post an opinion on the London terrorist attacks here so you'll just have to guess what I think about it (hint: terrorism is bad). I do, however, have a new column up about the role of stare decisis at the Supreme Court.

10,000 Website When All You Need Is A Blog

Ironically (in the Alanis sense) enough, both of the blogs are right for are currently experiencing separate technical problems that are preventing me from posting to them. Per contractual arrangements, I believe I'm technically forbidden to post an opinion on the London terrorist attacks here so you'll just have to guess what I think about it (hint: terrorism is bad). I do, however, have a new column up about the role of stare decisis at the Supreme Court.

Gentrification Giant

I went yesterday afternoon with Kriston to the new Giant in Columbia Heights to buy some BBQ supplies and it's . . . awesome. It seems to me that the Logan Circle Whole Foods has attracted a lot of business purely on the basis of the fact that the 8th and P Giant and the old CH Giant were so gross, while the Safeway on 17th street was so tiny. Now, those days are over and you only need to hit WF if you really do want to pay exorbitant prices for organic wackiness.

Land of the Dead

I wholeheartedly endorse Tm Cavanaugh's thoughts. It's a crime this film didn't get stronger support from the studio. Nevertheless, the big summer horror hit is destined to be . . . Dark Water . . . starts Friday. Be there.