A Catch Up Links Dump

My best intentions have been to get a lot of blogging done here. But reality (I am still a long way from catching up from my trip, for example) has interceded. So here are a number of stories that have caught my attention, with commentary as apt:

The imbroglio over the Muslim cultural center-cum-mosque a couple of blocks from ground Zero is driven by two interrelated factors: Pure bigotry and rank political opportunism. There is no excuse for trying to exclude any particular religious group from building in the area, never mind one that has long had a presence there. People don't have a right not to be offended or to be made to feel uncomfortable. But beyond that, feeling uncomfortable just by the very presence of Muslims is pretty strong evidence of pretty vile prejudice. I know, I know -- conservatives have tried to turn the tables on those who accuse them of bigotry, making the accusation somehow as bad as the actual act of being a bigot. But that's nonsense, and we need to keep pointing it out at every turn. Oh: and the critics are playing right into the actual extremists' hands. (There has been tons of commentary on this. Almost literally to pick two at random, see Richard Cohen at the WaPo and William Saletan at Slate.)

The 1980 Olympic boycott was a terrible thing, especially for its victims, the athletes who never got to compete. But that does not make the decision wrong or bad. It may well have been the best option in a scenario where there were few good options. Let's dispense with the pablum that sports and politics should never mix. Virtually the entire history of the Olympics (or for that matter sport) is inseparable from politics. Was it really a better option to go to Moscow, providing legitimacy, exposure, and financial support (directly and indirectly) to what was still at the time our enemy -- so much so that Ronald Reagan would soon after label the Soviets the "Evil Empire"? Once the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, there were no good options and considerable bad ones for President Carter when it came to the Moscow Olympics.

The senate recently unanimously (you read that right) passed a bill that, in the words of a New York Times editorial, "protects Americans from the whims of foreign libel judgments." This is important. A while back I was working with an editor on something about Zimbabwe that I was working on. I had written something pointed about Robert Mugabe and he pretty much told me that my commentary on Mugabe would likely lead us both into a potential libel suit. I thought at the time that he was overreacting (and refused to temper my writing, and so we parted ways) but I also knew that the British court system has often been used for libel fishing expeditions. And as someone who often writes for audiences outside of the United States it would be nice to know that the next David Irving won't be able to take me for all I'm worth. (Note to potential litigants: remember Steve Dallas' first law of being a lawyer: never, ever sue poor people.)

Not that we really needed studies to confirm it, but sports are good for girls.

A trifecta from The Chronicle of Higher Education: The New York Times recently stacked the decks in a forum discussion about university tenure (against tenure, I should add). Conservatives recently selectively used or plain misrepresented the arguments of a book on elite college admissions. And UT-Austin will be the focal point of the latest court action over affirmative action.

Finally, Charles Pierce wonders if the Jets, everyone's preseason favorites, are not in for a mighty disappointment. Amen. It's not like there is anyone else in the Jets' division that has had any success over the last decade or so.

Some Mild Carter Revisionism

I am a bit late coming to the game when it comes to recognizing the 30th anniversary of Jimmy Carter's "malaise" speech in which the word "malaise" never actually appeared. Gordon Stewart, one of Carter's speechwriters and an author of that address recounts its origins in this piece in The New York Times. One of his arguments -- that for all of its infamy, the speech was actually very popular -- also seems to be a point echoed in Ohio University Professor Kevin Mattson's new book on the speech, "What the Heck Are You Up To, Mr. President?": Jimmy Carter, America's 'Malaise,' and the Speech that Should Have Changed the Country.

My views on Jimmy Carter have come to be much like my views of George W. Bush. Not because they were both epically bad presidents, though they were. But rather because they were bad because they were incompetent more than that they were bad because of their ideas (though Bush and his administration in particular had some catastrophically bad ideas). After all, Carter, not Reagan, began the military buildup that helped bankrupt the Soviets. Carter, not Reagan, set in motion the opposition to the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan, with both its successes and its unintended consequences. And as much as he was pilloried for boycotting the 1980 Moscow Olympics, at least one of the arguments against it seem more and more dubious as the years have progressed: 1) That the Olympics are no place for politics. This is a view so ahistorical it would be laughable were it not still so pernicious. Furthermore, American policy has always been predicated on a balance of not supporting our enemies in either their economies or their propaganda. Going to Moscow in 1980 would have done both. I am not saying that the boycott was a great idea. I am simply arguing that today's conservatives, who believe that any engagement with Iran is tantamount to waving a white flag, in addition to mounting a stupid and also ahistorical argument, nonetheless must either acknowledge their own hypocrisy (fat chance) or that maybe they need to reconsider Carter's approach to the 1980 question. Furthermore, Carter's relative helplessness in the face oif the hostage crisis seems at least a little more understandable in the context of the intractable threats from radical Islam that we face today, not to mention the problems in Iran itself.

As for the speech itself, looking back on it, it is remarkable that the speech was fundamentally right. Its critics need to keep in mind that Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign was based on many of the the same ideas, at least the negative ones -- Reagan has gotten something of a free pass for being a sunny optimist, but his 1980 campaign was far from cheery. And Carter's views on energy seem eerily prescient in a tragic sort of way. Carter's problem was that he did not know what to do after the speech, that he faced circumstances largely beyond his control (many of which he inherited) and that he was a lousy leader who grew increasingly worse as his administration developed.