Erik Kaplan is pro-Santa.
In 1897 the American Civil War correspondent and editor Francis Pharcellus Church wrote an editorial for the New York newspaper The Sun in defense of religious belief. The piece responded to a question by 8-year-old Virginia O. Hanlon and included what has become the famous catch phrase, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.”
Church’s argument is double-barreled. First he argues we have no way of knowing if Santa is really there... there are some things our brains just aren’t capable of knowing. Maybe Santa is one of them.
But why does Church argue for making the leap to Santa belief, rather than standing pat with Santa agnosticism? Here Church brings in his second, pragmatic point. We should believe in Santa Claus because it will make our lives better if we do. Echoing Nietzsche’s defense of art, Church argues that we need poetry, romance and childlike faith to make life tolerable. Life without Santa is dreary and unromantic, and life with Santa is fun and magical. So we might as well believe in him. We also, according to Church, should believe in fairies dancing on the lawn, and an unseen world full of “supernal beauty and glory.”
As a war reporter, Church saw mass slaughter carried out in the name of unseen ideals. He needed to believe in fairies, but we may balk at his Victorian tone with its creepy veneration of childhood and high-toned glurge. So it’s worth restating his point about the benefits of a belief in Santa in more modern, prosaic terms.
'Scuse me a minute while I dig among the scraps of paper and left over bits of ribbon for my official Romper Room Magic Mirror. Ahh. I see teacherken, and skohayes, and greenbird, and I see a2nite, and xxdr zombiexx, and skillet, and el vasco, and I see dinotrac being grumpy, stop being grumpy, dinotrac, and I see all the other people who get up early on Sunday morning and read this series. And I see you too, Greg Dworkin, pretending like you're taking the day off then sneaking in here just because you think I'm going to screw up and forget to post the APR... like I did last week. Well I'm here. Go back to bed.
The rest of you go read Eric Kaplan's piece. And if I didn't get to your name, blame this mirror. It hasn't worked well since I stole it from Miss Judy fifty years or so back.
When you've finished your assigned reading, you can come inside. Otherwise I'm putting a check next to naughty...
Ross Douthat naturally sees North Korea as just another bunch of people trying to make everyone politically correct, because making death threats and asking people to be considerate is... it's a slippery slope, people!
Of course it had to escalate this way. We live in a time of consistent gutlessness on the part of institutions notionally committed to free speech and intellectual diversity, a time of canceled commencement invitations and C.E.O.s defenestrated for their political donations, a time of Twitter mobs, trigger warnings and cringing public apologies. A time when journalists and publishers tiptoe around Islamic fundamentalism, when free speech is under increasing pressure on both sides of the Atlantic, when a hypersensitive political correctness has the whip hand on many college campuses.
So why should anyone be remotely surprised that Kim Jong-un decided to get in on the “don’t offend me” act?
I have to stop there, because that's just too much amazing for such a short amount of text. Already Douthat has managed to draw parallels between... well. Damn. Almost everything. And wouldn't America really be a better place if everyone was allowed, nay, encouraged to shout every racist, misogynistic, and generally bigoted thing that pops into their head? Clearly Douthat has a lot of pent-up things that he'd like to say, and he wants others to get un-pent, as well. I'll start—Ross, you're an asshole. You're welcome. Oh, and defenestrated? Either I don't think that word means what you think it means, or the paper you work for has been covering up some really interesting stories.
Frank Bruni thinks the Sony / North Korea conflict is just another skirmish in the war on privacy.
I’ll bet that it’s all been coming back to you and coming to a head: the invasive games that Facebook has played, the data that Uber holds, the alarms that Edward Snowden sounded, the flesh that Jennifer Lawrence flashed to more people than she ever intended. The Dear Leader is late to this wretched party, and the breach that his regime in North Korea apparently orchestrated is less revelation than confirmation. You can no longer assume that what’s meant to be seen by only one other individual won’t find its way to hundreds, thousands, even millions. That sort of privacy is a quaint relic.
The lesson here isn't that Hollywood executives, producers, agents and stars must watch themselves. It isn't to beware of totalitarian states. It’s to beware, period. If it isn't a foreign nemesis monitoring and meddling with you, then it’s potentially a merchant examining your buying patterns, an employer trawling for signs of disloyalty or indolence, an acquaintance turned enemy, a random hacker with an amorphous grudge — or of course the federal government.
There's more to worry about than just getting your emails peeked, sports fans. I personally know someone whose daughter, having never been involved in the making of, selling of, or having even ever watched, pornography, is nevertheless doing ten years without chance of parole for distributing the stuff. What did she actually do? She shared her password to a public server where some of the files were less than savory. She was twenty-two and in college when it happened. She'll be thirty-three when she gets out to begin her life as a felon and registered sex offender. Think on that the next time you're tempted to dip into a torrent...
Dana Milbank sings Auld Lang Syne for the worst Congress ever.
The 113th Congress this week went the way of the dodo — literally.
The lawmakers of the 2013-2014 legislative session finally put themselves out of their misery but not before Harry Reid’s Senate passed one final piece of legislation: S. Res. 564, marking “the centennial of the passenger pigeon extinction.” ...
This commemoration of extinction was a perfect end to what was, by just about every measure, the worst Congress ever.
According to a tally by the Library of Congress, 296 bills were presented to the president by this Congress... (The “do nothing” Congress of 1948 passed about 900.) More than 10 percent of the bills presented were about naming or renaming things and awarding medals. ...
The 113th Congress was responsible for the 16-day government shutdown in 2013, preceded and inspired by the “Green Eggs and Ham” filibuster by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.). The legislative term also saw the criminal indictment of one House Republican on tax-evasion charges (he was reelected), the resignation of another after a cocaine arrest and the defeat of a third who was caught on film kissing a staffer. Perhaps that’s because they had so little work to do: A Politico count found that the Senate was in session 141 days per year on average in this Congress, and the House 147 days.
Don't worry, Dana. I'll bet the 114th will pass lots more bills. And only 25% will be about adding "Reagan" to schools, airports, streets, bridges, mountains, courthouses, package liquor stores...
Ruth Marcus says the president is going out of the year feeling better than he came in.
After a grueling year that cost Democrats the Senate majority, the mood at the White House is remarkably chipper. The hyper-competitive president put post-election points on the board with an executive action on immigration, a historic overhaul of Cuba policy and a spending bill that, while flawed, managed to fund administration priorities and provide a year of certainty.
Meanwhile, the White House has some happy metrics to cite — and is happy to cite them. The economy has improved dramatically, with an unemployment rate of 5.8 percent and 57 consecutive months of private-sector job growth. The good news: The public mood is starting to recognize these improvements. The bad news: This optimism has not translated into greater approval for President Obama or his economic policy.
Of course, it might have been nice to have made a few of those big decisions
before Democrats had to face the voters, though I do understand that ostriches too afraid to admit that they had voted for the president were asking him to stay out of the way.
Colbert King has a few lumps of coal to distribute.
Naughty: Elizabeth Lauten, the Republican congressional communications director who dissed Sasha and Malia Obama for their clothes and facial expressions during the president’s pardoning of the Thanksgiving turkey.
Nice: The nation’s beautiful first daughters, who handle their unsought duties with grace, dignity and a maturity found lacking in many twice their ages.
King makes several naughty / nice observations about Ferguson, which might be worth including, had he not feel obligated to shake a finger at "black offenders who make crime a serious problem in African-American neighborhoods." You know what, Colbert? I believe we can all agree that crime is naughty, no matter the color of their skin. Or uniform. I'd like to think we can also have a conversation about Ferguson without having to fend off this bit of distraction and degradation.
The New York Times finds a contradiction between what Pope Francis says and how the church is behaving toward American nuns.
Six years ago... the Vatican shocked many of the laity by ordering a sweeping investigation into the behavior and fidelity of the 50,000 American nuns who quietly labor in hospitals, prisons and outposts of the nation’s impoverished. The inquiry, ordered by the church under Pope Benedict XVI, seemed a deliberate distraction from the abuse scandal, and was tinged with male chauvinism.
Now, under the more egalitarian Pope Francis, the inquiry has been concluded with a generally positive report that mainly praises the sisters and their works in words of gratitude and encouragement. ...
Unfortunately, there is a second, more ill-advised inquiry still to be completed — into whether the national leadership of the nuns has taken on what a ranking prelate termed “a certain secular mentality” and “a certain feminist spirit.”
These faults would also be known as "caring about people's well being" and "treating everyone equally." If we can get to the point where the church finds no fault with either of those ideas, we'll have made real progress.
The Washington Post editorial board weeps for Cuban Democrats, who have been betrayed by the president.
President Obama said he decided to normalize relations with Cuba because “we can do more to support the Cuban people and promote our values through engagement.” So it’s important to know the reaction of those Cubans who have put their lives on the line to fight for democracy and human rights. Many have supported engagement and opposed the U.S. embargo. But they are now pretty much unanimous in saying that the way Mr. Obama has gone about this is a mistake.
Actually, “mistake” is the polite word used by Berta Soler of the Ladies in White, an astonishingly courageous group of women who march each week in support of political prisoners. “Betrayal” was the term used by several others, who asked why Mr. Obama had chosen to lift economic restrictions and dispatch an ambassador without requiring the “significant steps toward democracy” he once said must precede liberalization.
For future reference, "pretty much unanimous" in Washington Post editorese means that 50 percent of Cuban-Americans support the president's plan to open an embassy in Havana and 39 percent oppose it. But then, those polls were actually taken of real Cuban-Americans in Miami, rather than Real Cuban-American Political Action Groups on the Post's home turf. And speaking of Miami...
Carl Hiaasen has a slightly different opinion from those folks at the Post.
Finally, a breeze of sanity.
After 54 futile years of hard-line hostility, the United States will begin normalizing diplomatic ties with Cuba.
This unexpected outbreak of common sense and humanity was initiated by none other than Pope Francis, who privately reached out to President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raúl Castro. He even let the negotiators use space in the Vatican.
As soon as the agreement was announced last week by Obama and Castro, the pontiff sent “warm congratulations for the historic decision.”
Politicians who are riled by the new diplomacy with Cuba wouldn't dare trash the pope. It’s much safer to trash Obama, who at this point shouldn't care what Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz has to say. ...
Cruz, Rubio, Jeb Bush and other presidential hopefuls would look like right-wing dinosaurs if they promise a new, harsher crackdown on Cuba. A solid majority of Americans favor open travel and free trade with the island. So do most Cuban Americans, according to a recent poll by Florida International University.
You think the right is afraid of looking like dinosaurs? Get your Jurassic Park jeeps ready, because these guys are not coming out of the Mesozoic without a fight. (now where did I put that GOPasaurus icon?)
Doyle McManus notes one of those other disappearances from the scene.
Remember Ebola?
Only two months ago, many Americans were gripped by fear of the uncontrollable spread of an apparently incurable disease that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention projected could strike 1.4 million people in West Africa before it came under control. ...
Members of Congress, mostly Republicans, warned that Ebola could be carried into the country by illegal immigrants or even terrorists, and demanded a ban on travelers entering the United States from the affected countries. Governors scrambled to draft quarantine regulations, producing a showdown between Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and a nurse he tried to confine to a tent. (The nurse won.) ...
But there is one list of politicians who still deserve a measure of scorn: the ones who fanned fear for fear’s sake.
This week, those politicians shared in an award they probably didn’t want: the annual “Lie of the Year” prize conferred by PolitiFact, the fact-checking arm of the Tampa Bay Times. They won, the paper said, because they deliberately “produced a dangerous and incorrect narrative” about an important global problem.
Hey, I don't normally do this, but let's
hop over to Politifact to read the list of winners.
Fox News analyst George Will claimed Ebola could be spread into the general population through a sneeze or a cough, saying the conventional wisdom that Ebola spreads only through direct contact with bodily fluids was wrong.
George Will? Not the George Will that I've banned from APR for the last five years? Yes, same idiot. Next.
U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., described Ebola as "incredibly contagious," "very transmissible" and "easy to catch."
A reminder that Paul's pro-opening Cuba stance was very much in the "stopped clock" category. There were other winners, and of course this was good for John McCain (who made his own false statement about ebola). But really, the next time you're wondering "how low will they go" when it comes to Republicans lying to win an election, the answer is "ebola." That low.
Josh Barro looks at the how the season of red and green affects that other kind of green.
"The Deadweight Loss of Christmas" is the sort of academic paper that makes ordinary people think economists are kind of crazy.
"I find that holiday gift giving destroys between one-third and one-tenth of the value of gifts,” proclaimed Joel Waldfogel, then an economics professor at Yale, in the 1993 paper. He estimated that ill-chosen gifts caused between $4 billion and $13 billion a year in economic waste; for comparison, he cited an estimate that put economic costs of the income tax at $50 billion.
This is the sort of provocation economists love: It rejects a beloved, sentimental tradition and devalues interpersonal interaction, while upholding the virtue of individual choice. After all, why should you shop for me, when I certainly know what I want better than you do? It’s no surprise that Mr. Waldfogel’s paper, “The Deadweight Loss of Christmas,” was published in The American Economic Review, one of the world’s top three economics journals.
But did the economists figure out what the loss would be if the Grinch had just dumped all the Who stuff off Mt. Crumpet? You know, somewhere there's probably a paper.