So people are trying to convince me that the death of newspapers doesn’t matter because of the astonishing rise of Internet journalism. And one great advantage of Internet journalism, I’m told, is that people get called on their factual mistakes. That’s the power of the blogosphere! People who don’t know what they’re talking about are destined to get smacked down by the wisdom of the mob! No more shall we have to endure the innumerable little errors of professional journalists, and no longer will anyone making errors have to hide behind the wall of disconnection and lack of access!

And yet! Today, I have had to endure post after post after post of the kind, “Obama won the Nobel peace prize? He hasn’t done anything yet!” Except that, well, that’s the Nobel peace prize. They do that all the time, giving the award before someone has accomplished his or her goals for peace, as a way to inspire them and, more importantly, to fund their efforts with the prize money. Is that wise? I dunno. Seems a little goofy to me. But if it was goofy, it was goofy yesterday. It didn’t suddenly become goofy today, anymore than Roman Polanski didn’t suddenly become a morally corrupt person when he was captured by the Swiss. Tons of people are reading this news, and making a flagrantly incorrect assumption about how the Nobel peace prize works. And they aren’t stopping to research– which you can do, with the Internet!– to find out if they are saying something smart. You can disagree with this award, and I do, but there’s a smart way to do it, and an ignorant way to do it, and many, many people are choosing the latter.

Somehow I’m not expecting a wave of retractions and corrections tomorrow. The Internet doesn’t work.

As many movement conservatives enjoy expressing outrage more than they enjoy sex, eating or the company of friends and loved ones, and as the entire conservative media is devoted to expressing ever-escalating outrage and grievance in the face of this liberal-biased country– you know, the country where they controlled all three branches of government a couple years ago?– the Nobel committee’s silly, indefensible decision to give Barack Obama the Peace prize is a great boon to those self-same conservatives. Is it any different, though, for any of us? Roman Polanski, ACORN, Michael Jackson and McKenzie Phillips are largely meaningless distractions, as well. But then, that’s our culture. That’s MY culture.  No one is above the outrage cycle. We have now, in our culture, synthesized the two worst elements of pre-9/11 and post-9/11 media: the pre-9/11 obsession with meaningless bullshit; and the post-9/11 obsession with filling every story with apocalyptic portent and over the top, tween-girl-at-a-Jonas-brothers-concert hysteria.

We still care too much about J-Lo’s dress and the Summer of the Shark. Now, we get around the idea that we are shallow for giving a shit about such things by infusing them with pseudo-political importance and our current national drug of choice, outrage. Everything is an outrage. Everyone is outraged. Every turn of the news cycle gives us a new opportunity to pound the table. Every item that crawls across the newsfeed at the bottom of our screens is an excuse to stab one’s finger into one’s chest and declaim, solemnly and with vast consequence, “I, for one, am sickened.” This is how a shallow culture convinces itself that it is deep. This is how a child’s culture convinces itself that it is adult. Every new twist requires the expression of acute emotional energy, and every expression reinforces that whatever we are, we are a deep, responsible people. 9/11 didn’t stop us from caring about the stupid nonsense. It didn’t turn our attention from little contrived controversies to major historical events. It just inspired us to elevate those contrived controversies to the level of history. The other two options were beyond the pale: give up on caring about bullshit, or admit that this is a shallow culture. Neither could be countenanced. Instead, we’ve chosen to live in a world where the next outrage is just moments away, and where the vast import of everything our minds light upon ensures that whatever else we are, we are all of us Very Important People.

“The rhetorical feat that the manifesto accomplishes is in making its threats continual, without resolution. The manifesto spoils for a fight and never ceases.” – Prendergast, Catherine. “Fighting Words.” College English 72.1 (2009): 10-28.

The Peace of Wild Things
by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Will Wilkinson is among our best writers when it comes to the issue of illegal immigration. Today he writes, “But, in my experience, laying out clearly the immense benefits to the immigrants is extremely powerful. It highlights the needless misery caused by the heartless status quo.”

Whether he is right or not about the political salience of arguing for the rights of immigrants, I don’t know. I do believe that he is absolutely right that it is  important that pro-immigrant activists not effectively endorse the exclusion of immigrant needs and rights from the conversation about immigration by only speaking about the issue in terms of what’s best for non-immigrants. A pro-immigrant argument that ignores immigrant need is bound only to contribute to immigrant marginalization. Understand that I believe that there are principled arguments for immigration restriction, but none of them endorse even implicitly that immigrant rights and needs make no difference.

It’s exactly because of immigrant rights and needs that I am opposed to illegal immigration.

Check this, and believe it: the suite of comprehensive rights, protections and empowerment for workers that grew from the efforts of the American labor movement of the early 20th century amount to one of the greatest achievements of western civilization. An entire nation of workers’ lives changed in less than a hundred years. Many American workers once earned terrible pay in squalid and dangerous conditions, with absolutely no consideration for long term health effects, and in a regime with no meaningful recourse against unfair termination or other illegitimate actions by employers (which were ubiquitous.) In a few short decades, we moved to a period where almost all American workers were capable of earning a decent wage, with legally enforced standards of cleanliness and safety and enforceable regulation on how much individual workers could be called on to work, how they had to be compensated for overtime and under what conditions they could be fairly fired. Added to this over the years were protections ensuring that black workers could not be fired by virtue of not being white, that women workers who could perform their function could not be fired by virtue of not being men, that Jewish workers could not be fired by virtue of not being Christian. In the breadth and depth of this comprehensive series of protections and rights, a vast swath of the American populace had their lives materially improved. This is the very definition of social progress.

And it only happened because of a demand, a demand made by workers, and fought for by many people at considerable sacrifice over a long period of time. Employers did not suddenly choose conscience over the profit motive but were forced through consistent organization and effort to adapt to a work environment much more conducive to worker protections and worker rights. The modern May Day celebration, if you weren’t aware, is a celebration of the American worker’s movement and its efforts to secure the eight-hour day. I will leave it for you to chew over what it says that no one in American cares about that celebration while people in Latin America and Europe do. Only people who have lived with the blessing of the protections that our workers enjoy could think to underestimate that blessing.

It is this reason, my great regard for the considerable achievements in worker rights and worker protection in America, that compels me to want to include currently illegal immigrants within them. I want as many people as possible to be able to enjoy America’s social goods. Which means that I want to let people in who want to come here and work here. It also means that those who come must play by our rules, they must obey American laws and rules about working and taxation. They cannot undermine American minimum wage law, they cannot work more hours than is legally proscribed, they cannot fail to pay into Social Security, they cannot undermine the American system which provides so much.

I reject both many principled arguments against illegal immigration and the rarer, troubling arguments that amount to appeals to nativism or tribalism. Yet I am also perpetually unable to understand advocates for illegal immigrants who speak as if there is some social good in millions of people coming to this country to be exploited for slave wages without the robust series of protections that make the American workforce so blessed. That these conditions are better than what they would be in Mexico or elsewhere is, I’m sure, true. But better is not good enough, not in a country that has staked so much and worked so hard to ensure that everyone who works enjoys minimums of compensation and safety. It is no victory for someone to come here and pick tomatoes for a dollar an hour. And it is only a dramatically lowered set of expectations for immigrants that could allow us to think that it is a victory.

Let them in, tax them, and let them participate in American abundance to whatever degree they are able.

Update: In the comments, North adds some additional thoughts that I endorse:

“-By allowing immigrants to come here and work illegally we not only undermine workers conditions here but also back in the native country. The phenomena of illegal immigration acts as a safety valve for ineffective, corrupt or inept governments. Their most disadvantaged migrate to “el norte” (eliminating potential protesters and dissatisfaction) and then send cash home to their loved ones (again buying more contentment and also giving the government a nice influx of foreign currency. Illegal immigration may well be a factor in the stagnation of the progress of some of the nations to the south of America.

-Illegal immigrants, by necessity, put a terrible burden on the charity of the safety net. Since we’re unwilling to let them die in the streets (to our great credit) or allow their children to become an uneducated underclass they pile additional burden onto those services along with all kinds of other community outreach done by the government.

My personal suggestion would be to set up a strong system to allow employers verify the eligability of employees to work in the country. That done we should offer a reward program where people illegally employed in the US can testify against their illegal employers and then earn for themselves maybe accelerated citizenship and perhaps a cash reward or maybe a scholarship as well scaling according to the size of the operation so exposed.”

Indeed. Enforcement of immigration law has to be centered on enforcement on employers. As long as there is a demand from our employers for illegal immigrant labor, people will immigrate illegally. Making it considerably easier for non-felon immigrants to come to our country is a big part, but it has to be balanced– and protected– by insisting  that our businesses comply with existing law.

I think the discussion about Roman Polanski’s recent arrest (and possible extradition) demonstrates how hard it can be to talk civilly about decidedly uncivil things. Personally, I think Polanski is a brilliant filmmaker and a world-class cretin. I’m disgusted by what he did. But I also have great reservations about how we can try him and maintain a full grasp on due process and rights of the accused. The physical evidence is in bad condition;the police who ran his case are mostly dead; the key witnesses are unlikely to cooperate, including the victim; and most importantly, and most concerning, for a democratic society, is that the judge and the prosecuting attorney conspired during the case. That’s a really, really big deal, and contra this piece from Salon, it’s a big deal no matter whether the prosecutors in LA think it’s a big deal or not. That sort of thing absolutely can’t happen in a nation of laws. Can’t.

The problem is that the heinousness of any particular crime should have no bearing on whether we support rights of the accused, but they always do. I imagine that many of the people (most certainly including Bill Wyman from Salon) find the major and uncontested judicial impropriety in this case to be no big deal precisely because of how odious they find Polanski. But it can’t work that way, really, if we respect due process. It’s exactly when we find the defendants most offensive (and damn, Polanski is offensive) that we are most tasked in our defense of rights of the accused.

But this is a conversation that is difficult for us to have. Anyone who has ever argued for due process in any particular instance has found himself being accused of arguing for the defendant, and I’m certainly not doing that. (Although I expect the accusation in the comments in 3, 2, 1….) More often, it’s not explicit accusations against those urging caution but an emotionally charged conversation that keeps coming back to the accusation– “he drugged and raped a child!”– rather than any logically or legally rigorous discussion of the various controversies of the case. Yes, the crime in heinous. But repeatedly mentioning the crime doesn’t change our commitment to due process. Now, whether Polanski”s previous guilty plea means that he has already been afforded due process is a question for legal minds greater than mine, and if it’s determined that he can be punished in a way that is consistent with a full and fair application of due process, I’ll weep no tears for Mr. Polanski. But that’s what’s required, for real justice, and we need to remain clear on that fact.

Incidentally, you’ll find that people are again and again emphasizing that it was anal rape. The term is thrown around again and again despite the fact that, theoretically, that shouldn’t matter– a 13 year old can’t consent to sex, of whatever variety. I think people depending on the salacious power of that word demonstrates the degree that emotion inevitably plays in these cases.

from Titus Andronicus
by William Shakespeare

Hear me, grave fathers! noble tribunes, stay!
For pity of mine age, whose youth was spent
In dangerous wars, whilst you securely slept;
For all my blood in Rome’s great quarrel shed;
For all the frosty nights that I have watch’d;
And for these bitter tears, which now you see
Filling the aged wrinkles in my cheeks;
Be pitiful to my condemned sons,
Whose souls are not corrupted as ’tis thought.
For two and twenty sons I never wept,
Because they died in honour’s lofty bed.

Lieth down; the Judges, & c., pass by him, and Exeunt

For these, these, tribunes, in the dust I write
My heart’s deep languor and my soul’s sad tears:
Let my tears stanch the earth’s dry appetite;
My sons’ sweet blood will make it shame and blush.
O earth, I will befriend thee more with rain,
That shall distil from these two ancient urns,
Than youthful April shall with all his showers:
In summer’s drought I’ll drop upon thee still;
In winter with warm tears I’ll melt the snow
And keep eternal spring-time on thy face,
So thou refuse to drink my dear sons’ blood.

I linked to Jon Chait’s epic takedown of Ayn Rand previously. Will Wilkinson responded here. I didn’t think that Wilkinson’s response was up to the challenge of convincingly disputing Chait’s piece, and I particularly felt that Wilkinson was more complaining about Chait examining Rand in a way contrary to how Wilkinson would like her to be considered than anything else. But then, I am certainly not an neutral observer. Wilkinson, it’s worth saying, is himself critical of Rand, although he maintains a defensiveness about her that I think is misplaced and driven by emotionalism.

The thing is that, even were I to accept all of Wilkinson’s defenses of Rand, I couldn’t close myself off to what experience tells me about how popular Wilkinson’s conception of Rand’s ideas is among Objectivists. My personal experiences dealing with Objectivists, and from what I have read and heard, is that they are very much in favor of the kind of crude readings of poverty, wealth and their relationship with virtue that Wilkinson denies. I can’t say this with any kind of statistical certainty, but my brief surveys of various Objectivist websites and videos seems to indicate that very straightforward, black and white equivalences between wealth and virtue, and poverty and lack of virtue, are exactly what are most celebrated about Rand by many Objectivists. The naked and explicit “poor people deserve it” attitude that is promulgated among many Objectivists is, I take it, precisely the appeal.

Take, for example, Objectivist Youtube star “Mr. Cropper,” who, when he isn’t asserting that Objectivist philosophy disproves modern science (and Objectivist takes on physics and cosmology richly deserve more public ridicule than they have been exposed to), explains quite heatedly that poor people want to be poor and that the deserve to be.

My point is that Will Wilkinson is a bright, compassionate person with a discriminating eye for philosophical nuance, and a man deeply dedicated to the task of human liberation. Many Objectivists– most that I have met or read, though I do admit and caution that this is anecdotal and incomplete– many Objectivists are not nuanced, and not self-critical, and not interested in eliminating human need. This isn’t a criticism of Ayn Rand, really, but it is a request for placing beliefs about her teachings in the larger context of how many of her followers understand her. (And this is equally a caution for me, as I have to place whatever small sympathies I have with Karl Marx in a context where many of his followers, historically, were frankly monstrous.)

Oh, as for Mr. Cropper, he is apparently now sleeping on his brother’s floor. Hey, man. Lifestyle choices!

Integrity and personal example compelled me to link to Conor’s response to me, which I failed to do, and I must. So linked. You should read it, if you read my previous post on the matter. And, if you must, you can read the comments which are universally about me, and, well, not cordial.

Personal insults don’t bother me on a intellectual level, although of course they hurt– in my experience, the only people who claim that personal insults don’t hurt are people attempting to shield themselves from the pain of personal insults. (I am called both a totalitarian and fascist, and a pussy, in that combox. I would have thought those were contradicting claims!) In my defense, though, both Conor’s response and the response from the comments misrepresent me in the same way that Conor is sure he has been misrepresented. They claim to argue that I am calling for politicized art. But, of course, the claim of my post was exactly that the NEA conference call wasn’t about politicizing art. I could be wrong about that! It wouldn’t be the first time. But I was not excusing politicizing the NEA; my entire point was that no such excuse was necessary because no such thing took place. To see so much vast verbiage expended at attacking me for endorsing politicized art, when my entire point was that I didn’t think such a thing was happening, is discouraging.

The self-critical process is invaluable, but it is also always in short supply.

Incidentally, should Conor ever show up in the comments section of this blog, personal insults against him would not be tolerated, both because of my personal regard for him, and because of this blog’s comment’s policy. I am told by those in the know that it is childish for us to care about such things, but we do, and I am proud that we do.

Ramones music + Elvis vocals + lyrics about zombies, werewolves and aliens = genius. Pure genius.

It’s a gorgeous day in Rhode Island, and I got the music on.

“The devotional behavior of some grassroots Mac cultists is like a “Windows launch party,” but sincere. See http://minimalmac.com/” -Matt Frost