The Unbearable Lightness (And Deep, Deep Dishonesty) of Sarah Palin

I hate a world in which smart conservatives are consigned to the periphery. There are two great intellectual/political traditions in contemporary American history. They are liberalism and conservatism. I'm a liberal. I find much of conservatism to be wrong. But conservatism is not immoral or un-American, no matter what the continuing prattling of Dick Cheney teaches us. Nor are the variations of these traditions somehow prima facie flawed.

I am also worried about a world in which Sarah Palin is the spokesperson for modern conservatism. But today the ruthlessly dishonest Sarah Palin represents the most vocal world of conservatism, yet we know that she is deeply and profoundly mendacious. And she is unwilling to be challenged.

Based on sheer politics a huge part of me hopes that Palin becomes the GOP brand. But the problem with that would be that Republicans would then be compelled to support her. I knew Ronald Reagan. I loathed Ronald Reagan. And yet Sarah Palin is no Ronald Reagan. I hope that America's right knows the difference. I fear that they don't.

Um . . .

Not to bitch about the officiating in a game whan the Patriots were clearly the better team, but: That was a fucking first down.

Up! Again

Here is what I wrote about the Pixar movie Up! After seeing it in the theater:

Up! is simply a beautiful movie. Toward the beginning it has what might be the single most emotionally powerful rendering of lived love between a couple as they grow old together. It is a movie about many things, not least of them loss, and it is poignant and funny and, yes, heart-breaking. It is perfectly suitable for -- indeed might be best appreciated by -- adults, but if you do not have kids, borrow someone else's so you are not the skeevie adult going to a Pixar movie.

After watching it on dvd as part of the Mrs. Dcat Birthday Bonanza yesterday, I double down on that sentiment. I will be profoundly disapponted if Up! (I think the exclamation point is part of the title) is not a finalist for best picture, animation be damned.

Aerosmith, RIP?

I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for Aerosmith. Although traditionally labeled a Boston band, they actually got their start in the Lake Sunapee region of New Hampshire, where I grew up. It's tough to be a kid growing up in the area without absorbing the bands full corpus. Furthermore, when Aerosmith was starting out, they were regulars in the local party scene so that the first time I planned to go to an Aerosmith concert my Mom was stunned that I'd pay $20 to see them when she saw them for free every weekend.

One great story (that I've heard from multiple sources) among myriads that people roughly my parents' age tell that created the band's local legend involves Steve Tyler hitting on my Mom. It's an anecdote that embodies both figures quite well. At a party one night Tyler was wearing nothing but a fur coat. He went up to my Mom and sort of embraced her, opened up his coat, and put himself on offer. My Mom's response? "Put it away, Steve."

So despite the fact that it has been a long, long time since Aerosmith put out anything even vaguely relevant, it was still something of a shock to know that the band may be no more. Always racked by fraught internal dynamics (they broke up once before in the early 1980s) it seems that Tyler has decided to walk that way.

Deadspin Giveth to the Sportsguy, Taketh Away Brutally

Just days after Deadspin founder Will Leitch wrote a nice piece recognizing the contributions of The Sportsguy Bill Simmons, the site publishes Charles Pierce's absolute takedown of Simmons' new book on the NBA. (Extra credit to Pierce for linking this glorious Molly Ivins evisceration of Camille Paglia.)

I know it is too grad-schoolish of me, but I find sympathy with both Leich and Pierce on Sportsguy.

1989

So the Baby Boomers had 1968. Holy shit, have they told us, and told us, and told us of the wonders of 1968. Because in 1968 they changed the world, you see.

But of course they didn't. As a general rule of thumb, the baby boomers who tell you all about how they changed the world are not the ones who actually changed the world. So some ex hippie will prattle on about peace and love and someone like John Lewis, who really did change a particularly noxious corner of the world, doesn't feel the need constantly to reinforce that point. And John Lewis is a politician, for whom plugging his role in changing the world ought to be front-and-center. (It's actually remarkable how few of the Civil Rights Movement's activists act like your apodictic baby boomers, when the irony is that they are the ones who are most in a position to act like self-important, self-righteous, and self-indulgent twits. Ahhh, baby boomers, the dubious gift that keeps on giving, even when we make it clear we really don't like the gift.)

Don't get me wrong -- 1968 was a remarkable year, made all the more so because its currents were truly international. It's a year I love to teach. And it's a year that has come to symbolize both the best and worst of that strange decade. But for my generation, 1989 was every bit as important, with the added benefit of 1989 having been a time when the world really did re-order itself significantly.

Twenty years ago (gulp) I graduated from high school and headed off to Williams. Little did I know when I made the two-plus hour ride into an entirely different world that within a few months much of the world that I knew would transform itself. The Berlin Wall, the prevailing symbol and metaphor of the Cold War, would fall, and that collapse would itself provide a metaphor for the crumbling of the Eastern Bloc and the dawn of a new era. As 1989 gave way to 1990 FW de Klerk, who had risen from the ranks of Afrikaner Nationalism with a seemingly impeccable apartheid pedigree, released Nelson Mandela from prison and unbanned the ANC and PAC, setting the stage for epochal transformations in South Africa. The Simpsons made its debut in December 1989. And of course Milli Vanilli's first album, destined to win a Grammy in 1990, was released in the United States. Tectonic shifts all.

Much like 1968, the legacy of 1989 is "Still Up For Debate." Any series of events that causes The Boston Globe to heap praise upon a Bush (albeit the competent one) is clearly monumental.

Worth Spending Your D'oh!

I have not yet read John Ortved's The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History, but it certainly looks like something I'd be interested in.

By the way, I don't know if I buy the idea that the new seasons are worse than the so-called golden age. Golden Age mythologies are almost always shallow and wrong, and what I find is that The Simpsons gets better with age -- episodes that at first don't blend with our idealized images of good Simpsons suddenly fit perfectly once blended into syndication.

That said, as far as favorite moments go, I would have to go with any number of Mr. Burns lines, such as when Mr. Smithers proposed that they go out for Chinese, and Burns replies, "Bah, those people are all gristle," or when, after losing an election for Governor Burns looks at the hoi paloi and remarks "Look at those slackjawed troglodytes, Smithers. Yet if I were to have them killed I'd be the one to go to prison."

Plus, I am not certain I could teach my classes without The Simpsons as a reference. The Simpsons: Is there anything it can't do?

Panhandling

If you take the advice of Glenn Frankel in The Washington Post and decide to visit the Texas Panhandle, be sure to swing on down to Odessa. We'll have a drink and a meal.

Book Talk (With Special Bonus Self Indulgence!)

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently had an exchange between Mark Bauerlein and Priscilla Wald, heavy hitters in the world of literary scholarship, about Harvard University Press' recently released A New Literary History of America, which has been garnering a great deal of attention of late. It makes for a fascinating engagement with what by all accounts seems like a major publishing event.

Speaking of major publishing events (shamelessness follows!) this weekend at the Southern Historical Association's annual meeting the University Press of Kentucky will be holding various book signings for some of its authors. I will be signing copies of Freedom's Main Line on Saturday at noonish in the book exhibit. If you are in the Kentuckianaohio area, swing by!

WaMo Turns 40

Washington Monthly celebrates its 40th birthday this year. As part of the celebration, the magazine has posted some of its greatest hits, which you can access here. Among my favorites: Taylor Branch on Civil Rights in Southwest Georgia, the smugness of baby boomers, the dubiousness of Woodward and Bernstein's cozying up to certain sources, and an assessment of the magazine's "Bullseyes and Blunders" over the last four decades.

And the Winner, By TKO . . .

A little while back Aaron Bady, blogging at Cliopatria, took on an argument by John McWhorter. This is a rough chronology of events: John McWhorter kicks the snot out of a straw man that he created about African American Studies. Aaron Bady, a real man, steps up in the place of the straw man. Bady proceeds to kick the snot out of McWhorter. Well done, sir.

At Least I Have My Heal . . . Oh, Wait

I'm back from my epic trip from the Petroplex to the Phoenix area, out east to Washington, DC for the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa (ASMEA) conference, and back here. I think I touched down in at least eight cities courtesy of Southwest's sometimes circuitous routes, but I made it back in one piece. Well, sort of. On Friday night/Saturday morning I awoke to tonsils swollen to four times their normal size. It was like swallowing a punching bag. Gagging on one's own epiglottis is not a fun experience. I got a shot yesterday and they are now only twice normal size, so hopefully I'm on the way to full recovery.

Until then, and until I dig my way out from under this pile that has accumulated, I'll leave you with this post from the FPA Africa blog in which I analyze the current state of the ANC and of South African politics more generally. I am trying to spin this into an op-ed, and if I do, you'll be among the first to know.

On the Road Again (Phoenix to DC Edition Self Indulgence Alert!)

I have a heavy travel week coming up. I am off to the Phoenix-area this week for the first few days (Let me just say this: U2) and then am heading straight to Washington, DC where I am giving a paper on democratization in Namibia, Zimbabwe, and South Africa at the Association for the Middle East and Africa's (ASMEA) annual meeting. I'll post as I can.

Least Shocking Revelation Ever

Just read in this week's Entertainment Weekly (article not yet available online) an explanation as to why it is apt that the documentary drawing from Jackson's rehearsals for his planned tour will come out around Halloween:

"Halloween was Michael's favorite holiday."

Really?!? A holiday when young children just show up at the doorstep dressed in costumes was Michael Jackson's favorite holiday? I, for one, am shocked.

(Too soon?)

Loving v. Virginia, 2009 Edition

Think issues of race are not still with us? Well, consider this story for as long as your stomach can handle it:

A Louisiana justice of the peace has refused a marriage license to an interracial couple. he's not a racist, mind you (we know this because he says so) but he's just thinking of the children:

"I don't do interracial marriages because I don't want to put children in a situation they didn't bring on themselves," Bardwell said. "In my heart, I feel the children will later suffer."

Apparently being a justice of the peace in Tangipoa Parish also confers on one great wisdom about the ways of marriage. Because, you see, in addition to his expertise on race, Keith Bardwell knows that interracial marriages do not last long. Again, we know this because he says so.

Loving v. Virginia settled this question in 1967, and even that decision came a century too late. Welcome to "post-racial" America, 2009.

[Hat Tip to my former student, Mary.]

Black Dynamite!

Oh, yes. Oh, dear God, yes!

Cleveland, Brown

John McWhorter: Not a fan of The Cleveland Show. From what I've seen, neither am I, and for many of the same reasons McWhorter cites. For those unfamiliar with McWhorter's work, he is usually described as a black conservative, though I do not think he embraces the label, and he very rarely "plays the race card" (itself an accusation almost always levied by people who have done or said something racist, but that's a post for another day) making his argument that The Cleveland Show is "Family Guy in Blackface" especially biting.

Take a Lookie Look at Tom's Bookie Book

Tom's book is coming to us in the spring. Consider this just an amuse bouche.

Defending Tenure, Defending the University

In a letter in Sunday's New York Times Book Review Peggy Troupin made as nice a defense of both university education and the tenure process as you'll see in a limited space. I will quote in full:

I went to Harvard with Michael Shapiro (hello, Michael!) and would like to answer his letter to the editor (Sept. 20) in response to Drew Gilpin Faust’s Sept. 6 essay, in which much frustration was manifest. Since graduation I have worked in academia, university administration and the private sector. The university is essentially a medieval institution, a bazaar of intellectual goods hawked by hoary promulgators of many divergent truths. It mysteriously produces, after four years, educated people — university graduates. No one has ever figured out another way to do this. However, the university cannot survive without government funding (replacing the church support of medieval times), contingent upon compliance with an array of complex regulations and laws. This has given rise to an entrenched quasi-governmental bureaucracy of managers.

The tenure system — antiquated, ritualistic and of course unfair — by its very quirkiness protects the academic side from being engulfed by the administrative side, as does the independence of departments. Without these inefficiencies, universities would become little better than branches of government, and the variegated thread to our cultural past would be broken. As long as we don’t tamper too much with the core model, we can limp along and pass something of value on to our children, so they can complain bitterly, in their turn, about the cumbersome, inefficient, unfair and bizarre institution called “the university” (and become educated in the process).

Tenure protects the many so that it can protect the few who most need protecting. There are two kinds of political immersions that can get a professor into trouble. The most obvious of these is simply their politics-qua-politics and how that might have an effect on research, writing, and teaching. But there is also the protection that professors need to be able to speak up within their own world -- academic politics themselves. Especially at smaller institutions it is easy for faculty to have run-ins with administrators over issues of academic policy. And while the outside world oftentimes imagines the academic hierarchy as clear -- naturally a Dean outranks a professor, right? -- the reality is that the demarcation is never that clear, and tenure protects a professor who might be every bit as professionally accomplished, and in many (many, many, many) cases more so than someone who chose to become a dean or VP from being steamrolled based on the real but dubious hierarchy. Professors should not have to forsake teaching and writing to be influential, and tenure in part protects shared governance and standing up against those who no longer speak for what happens in the classroom and in the archives and labs, or who speak with the vision of an administrator.

Updike's Papers

I am not the world's biggest fan of literary criticism as it too often manifests itself in American universities (ie: po-mo/post-structuralist blather). But good writing about books and authors is just about the most important thing imaginable within the walls of a university (other than the teaching, reading, and writing history, of course). Were I an early stage American literature graduate student in Harvard's English department I'd be making a beeline to Houghton Library, Harvard's main repository for archives, rare books, and the like, to check out John Updike's newly acquired papers.