Someone picked a great time to make himself unavailable.
Over the last few months, following The New Republic’s centenary anniversary and a staff shake-up, a perceived legacy of racism in the magazine has been the topic of intense arguments, mostly carried out online. In the wake of the debate, vexing questions demand answers: How do we reconcile the magazine’s liberalism, the ideology that animated the Civil Rights revolution, with the fact that many black readers have long seen—and still see—the magazine as inimical and at times outright hostile to their concerns?
The New Republic owes an accounting to itself, its critics, and its readers; an honest reckoning on where it has gone wrong is the necessary first step to figuring out how to do better.
[…] The magazine’s myopia on racial issues was never more apparent than in Peretz’s and editor Andrew Sullivan’s decision in 1994 to excerpt The Bell Curve, a foray into scientific racism in which the authors, Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein, asserted that differences in IQ among blacks and whites were largely genetic and almost impossible to significantly change. The book had not been peer-reviewed, nor were galleys sent to the relevant scientific journals. As The Wall Street Journal reported, The Bell Curve was “swept forward by a strategy that provided book galleys to likely supporters while withholding them from likely critics.”
Read the whole thing, Andrew.
***Update***
If you read only one more thing about Charles Murray and his works, make it this epic investigation of the data by Ron Unz at AmCon; read his follow up here if you still feel hungry at the end. Unz answers Murray and his crows in what I feel is the most effective possible manner – by accepting the data of Richard Lynn in good faith and subjecting it to an appropriate panel of alternative hypotheses. As it turns out Lynn’s data has almost nothing to say about IQ but it has quite a lot to say the IQ test and what it measures.
Karmus
Can’t talk. Swimming! (Squeak)
burnspbesq
I’m not on your side on this one. It was because of The Atlantic’s coverage that I read The Bell Curve and was able to see for myself just how bad the science was and how pernicious the ideas were. What, exactly, is wrong with that?
The idea that some ideas are so pernicious that they can’t even be discussed is anathema.
Trentrunner
Regarding another TNR story that Andrew published but was later proved wholly false (maybe Hillarycare?), Andrew later acknowledged the story was baseless but said that the story was worth publishing because, it was “provocative.”
Provoke that, motherfucker.
burnspbesq
(emphasis added).
Right there, in the highlighted words, is where Heer’s argument falls apart. He’s in effect saying that merely choosing to publish what it published is an explicit endoresement of that content. That’s nonsensical. Does ESPN explicitly endorse James Dolan’s stewardship of the Knicks by posting the NBA scores? There is a vast gulf between “we think it’s important for you to know about this” and “we think this is correct.” As an Atlantic subscriber at the time, I have what I think is a pretty clear memory of which side of the gulf it was on. If somebody wants to show me, with excerpts, that I’m misremembering, that’s fine.
Trentrunner
@burnspbesq: Nice try, Andrew.
Would you also like to read an article on the “science” of how women make flighty, emotional decisions when they’re on their periods?
Or a truthy article about how homosexuals are pederasts?
I mean, we’re just exploring challenging ideas, right?
Tim F.
@burnspbesq: There is discussing something, and there is repeating it uncritically to people who you know will mostly not read the book. Plenty of outlets discussed The Bell Curve. Sullivan just printed large passages from it under The New Republic‘s masthead. Sullivan tried the same defense with Betsy McCaughey’s vile fabrications about the Clintons’ health care plans and again he failed to acknowledge the difference between fostering a discussion and running uncorrected bullshit in your magazine as if it were a news feature.
burnspbesq
@Trentrunner:
Your obsessions are pretty disturbing.
dedc79
@burnspbesq:
There are many different ways to bring people’s attention to a book, and in particular a book such as this one. The problem wasn’t that TNR covered the Bell Curve, the problem was how much of that coverage – and in particular Mr. Sullivan’s defense of the book – looked a hell of a lot like an endorsement. They drummed up the whole controversy so that they could then profit from the attention it engendered.
Brother Dingaling
@burnspbesq: @burnspbesq: Your memory must suck since we are talking about The New Republic.
burnspbesq
@Tim F.:
In see the point you are trying to make, but I don’t find it to be valid. As I said, I was an Atlantic subscriber at the time, and I’m pretty certain that I did not suffer from anything like the confusion whose existence you are positing.
burnspbesq
@Brother Dingaling:
Whatever. It’s Tuesday. Is that all you have?
Eric U.
the bell curve issue had both sides weighing in, and the “against” side were very convincing. But really, the only reason it needed to be done at all was that Sullivan’s TNR was the kind of magazine where people could hint that blacks were inferior. TNR always had dissenting voices, i.e. token Republicans. It made it interesting sometimes.
Brother Dingaling
@burnspbesq: @burnspbesq: You seem confused now. We are talking about The New Republic.
Also,
The magazine’s myopia on racial issues was never more apparent than in Peretz’s and editor Andrew Sullivan’s decision in 1994 to excerpt The Bell Curve, a foray into scientific racism in which the authors, Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein, asserted that differences in IQ among blacks and whites were largely genetic and almost impossible to significantly change. The book had not been peer-reviewed, nor were galleys sent to the relevant scientific journals. As The Wall Street Journal reported, The Bell Curve was “swept forward by a strategy that provided book galleys to likely supporters while withholding them from likely critics.”
Staff members at The New Republic vehemently opposed running the excerpt, but Sullivan and Peretz had the final word. A compromise was reached: The excerpt would run along with critiques written by The New Republic contributors, such as Mickey Kaus and John Judis. While the critiques made good points, only one was written by a scientist with the background needed to evaluate the book’s claims. “I’m not a scientist,” literary editor Leon Wieseltier wrote in his contribution. “I know nothing about psychometrics.”
Considering that The New Republic was the gateway for many distinguished careers at publications like The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic, the magazine can be seen as not just reflecting the media’s diversity problem, but actively contributing to it.
Because most of the critiques were political and philosophic in nature, many readers were left with the false impression that the book had some scientific validity. By the time devastating scientific reviews appeared in places like the Journal of Economic Literature and Intelligence, Genes, and Success: Scientists Respond to The Bell Curve (edited by Bernie Devlin, et. al), the book already enjoyed unmerited prestige, thanks to the imprimatur of The New Republic. The Bell Curve was perhaps the most impactful, and unfortunate, example of the magazine’s embrace of racial mythmaking.
dedc79
@burnspbesq:
What makes you think your reaction is representative or otherwise relevant?
MattF
There’s a difference between publishing a mendacious piece of propaganda and publishing something that’s simply incorrect. The Bell Curve was racist propaganda cloaked in scientific garb. Now, I can believe that Sullivan was not competent to make the necessary distinctions, but that soesn’t excuse him. It just means he wasn’t qualified for the job he held.
Samuel Knight
Glad that the new owner is firing back at the jerks who preceeded him.
To me one of the sad things about the Bell Curve was that the evidence was in their own data that something else was going on. Racial differences were narrowing over time which made a lie to their argument it was immutable.
And now a blogger helped point out why – it was lead that primarily poisoned poor people who happened to less white.
That’s what real analysts look at – not junk navel gazers like the old TNR.
jl
@burnspbesq:
” The idea that some ideas are so pernicious that they can’t even be discussed is anathema. ”
Who said that? Did Tim F. or Heer say that?
I read what Jeet Heer wrote and I thought he said if an editor publishes controversial scientific that takes special technical expertise to properly evaluate, then there is an obligation to provide readers with the information needed to properly evaluate it. The TNR did not do that. Sullivan did not even want any debate published with his excerpt, not even by a literary editor.
You are flailing away at a straw man.
jl
Some people might consider comments on blogs like
“Everyone knows that The Bell Curve used the wrong measure of heretability! Stupid!”
or
“Even a rock should know that The Bell Curve’s use of standardized coefficients did not fix the problem of confounding information from regression parameters and the sample distribution! Jerk!”
adequate context for public evaluation of controversial scientific research.
Others may not consider that kind of thing helpful.
Calouste
@burnspbesq: It’s not Tuesday either. Maybe you should make an appointment with your doctor and ask about early-stage dementia?
different-church-lady
“Andrew’s getting very profound,” said Daisy, with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. “He reads deep books with long words in them. What was that word we ——”
jl
@Calouste: I think the Esq. has been traumatized by the frightening eruption of anti-white man hate frenzy.
As I noted in the thread below, I myself (with my own eyes!) have been called a Nazi by a self-righteous white progressive and a person of color at a presentation, for directly confronting the claims of bad econometric research on genetics and race. I guess I should agree with burnpbesq.
But I don’t. And I do not see where Tim F. or Heer said anything like what the Esq. claims
rb
@burnspbesq: …Tuesday?
chopper
@burnspbesq:
when they published bit from the book, was the lead-in “HEY LOOK AT THIS CRAZY BULLSHIT! CAN YOU BELIEVE DUMBASS PEOPLE ACTUALLY THINK THIS??’?
srv
The men who bleat about post-affirmative action racism and the readers who love them.
jibeaux
I need an open thread so I can ask a dumb question.
Eh, what am I waiting for?
I’d like to have designed an inexpensive business logo that I can use on business cards, letterhead, and a website. I’ve been looking on fiverrr for someone to do this but I don’t know exactly what formats I need for those purposeS. They give you about 20 choices. Who can tell me what formats those would be? And if you are or know someone who could work with me on this in the $30 or so range, lmk.
scav
Kinda fun to watch burnsie get into his Ecco Homo cosplay, begging for the stigmata of anonymous comments of disagreement. Like many of his ilk, he rather forgets that his first-order character of devotion and re-enactment was actually killed (as were all the martyrs with lions (and tigers and bears oh my!)) because they failed to conform to the “traditional” behaviors, mores and establishment behavior of their times. Because those current “traditional” behaviors, mores and establishment behavior is his second-order object of utter devotion.
Percysowner
@burnspbesq: Whatever. It’s Tuesday. Is that all you have? Err! It’s Thursday? And you are making an argument that the less than honest coverage by THE NEW REPUBLIC is justified because you read coverage in The Atlantic A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PUBLICATION that made you realize The Bell Curve was crap? I guess your inability to tell days apart and to tell one magazine from another is not a great endorsement of your observations abilities and if you can’t tell Tuesday from Thursday and The New Republic from the Atlantic, you really don’t have the sense God gave lettuce and your views should be judged accordingly.
Gin & Tonic
@jibeaux: If SVG is an option, that’s probably your best option. It stands for “scalable vector graphics,” and it’s an open format. This means the image can get as big or as small as you want without losing resolution, and that it’s readable by a very wide variety of other programs in case you want to take your work elsewhere.
Gin & Tonic
@Percysowner: I think the “it’s Tuesday” was an attempt at humor.
mattH
@scav: That’s an insult to Nietzsche
kc
Has anyone heard from Glocksman since yesterday?
jibeaux
@Gin & Tonic: thank you! I know “vector image” cropped up a lot.
scav
@mattH: Mea culpa then, but I will admit to never having struggled through to read him well enough to make it intentional. Collateral damage is damage all the same. I hear he’s Peachy.
mattH
Guess I should have put a ;) next to that. My point is that Burns takes himself more seriously than Nietzsche did. But humility is a bigger thing for Nietzsche than most readers get
jl
@scav: Speaking of Nietzsche, I got lost somewhere between the second and third order level of ‘meta’in your comment above. I will try to figure it out later.
trollhattan
@jibeaux:
You want it created in a “vector” format and not a bitmap/raster format. Vector graphics are infinitely scalable and don’t lose detail when enlarged, while bitmap graphics such as images from your digicam, are constrained by the pixels they contain when created.
Perhaps the most common graphics program is Adobe Illustrator, which creates .ai files that can also be exported in numerous other file formats–vector and bitmap. There are many others.
ETA re. the above, SVG is gaining traction in the Web arena as a standard, so is probably a safe option.
Kay
@Tim F.:
Exactly. He’s admitted this, hasn’t he? He opposed the health care bill because he was “afraid” of excessive regulation. That’s why he promoted that absolute bullshit from what was clearly a paid political operative. Either he misled people to achieve his personal ideological goal or he’s a moron. Pick one.
Eric U.
TNC did a devastating review of what was wrong with TNR as far as race relations goes. Plenty of other things were wrong with it as well, see broken Glass.
Before the internet, I was never particularly concerned with the effect magazines like TNR had on politics. It never occurred to me that they managed to kill things as significant as Hillarycare. Fortunately, that’s not likely to happen in the future. I’m glad they are doing a retrospective.
Tenar Darell
@kc: I haven’t seen him, but I have not read every thread all the way to the end. He hasn’t post in Elon’s thread yet today…. I hope he’s okay.
@Glocksman, really hope you’re tapering okay and talking to someone IRL about treatment.
boatboy_srq
@Samuel Knight:
Whodathunk that environmental factors would evah play a part in development. (/snark)
This is why every push to eviscerate the EPA needs to be fought as both an environmental issue and a social justice one. Crime stats, IQ numbers, graduation rates, income, life expectancies, all skewed by lead poisoning is probably the best illustration of how the greedy at the top keep Those People in line – not with oppression, but mere parsimony and indifference.
TNR, when it published all the Bell Curve nonsense, probably hadn’t thought to do the sampling necessary to find a physiological impediment to minority equality; but since that would require natural science chops (not social science ones) it likely didn’t occur to them – even as the authors were no doubt stripping toxins from their own homes for their own health and safety. I suspect that there was even a bit of underconscious sense of superiority at work in some of the writing: Those People weren’t keeping toxins away from their families, so if they underperformed due to the exposure it was still somehow their fault.
Aimai
@Trentrunner: why yes, yes he would. Also one on the virtues of phlogiston and cupping.
jl
@Kay: I see it as an obligation of a publication, or any organization, to stand behind things that they publicly disseminate as news or a matter of fact or scientific research. It is about the basic distinction between editorial content and claims of fact.
There was certainly enough public controversy, that involved many experts familiar with the technical issues, to make a very strong case that the research in The Bell Curve was extremely controversial. And perhaps it was incompetent, which most experts in econometrics, psychometrics, and population genetics (the technical fields involved) think is the case.
Sullivan and the TNR brass did not perform due diligence. Sullivan wanted no debate to appear in the publication he edited. This has nothing to do with PC suppression of free and open debate, or of uncomfortable scientific conclusions.
I really do not see it as a difficult or hard issue in any way.
SiubhanDuinne
Speaking of hinky media initiatives:
http://www.indystar.com/story/news/2015/01/29/pence-ditches-state-run-news-site-plan-after-uproar/22530263/
Another Holocene Human
@Samuel Knight: Stephen Jay Gould absolutely demolished Bell Curve back in the day.
If IQ was due to genetics, then why did Black kids in Minneapolis do better on standardized tests than white kids in the Deep South?
A true puzzler, that one
Another Holocene Human
@scav: Is it wrong to point out that it’s Ecce Homo and ecco is a clothing line or something like that?
I feel the urge to say something because at first I thought you were making a play on words but then realized you were talking about the religious thing.
jl
@Another Holocene Human:
” If IQ was due to genetics, then why did Black kids in Minneapolis do better on standardized tests than white kids in the Deep South?
A true puzzler, that one ”
If the quality of the data is bad enough, or you have enough missing variables, and you misuse enough fancy statistics, that is easy handled my dear Sir. No problem at all.
And then if you can get some high profile publication to print it with no commentary or debate by those qualified to make an informed critique, and it looks like is an iron clad case, you have it sewed up (edit: aka, you win the morning! and Shape the Future!)
Another Holocene Human
@jl: Exactly, if it was provocative and controversial they should have invited dueling opinions to appear on the pages, you know, bring in some expert in the field with orthodox opinions to review it and comment and then have some dipshit conserva-supremacist give their opinion. You know, for balance.
That would be lame but it wouldn’t have fueled all this contempt and questioning of their motives for all these years. But, you know, it’s better that Sullivan showed his hand in all this. Nobody can claim they didn’t know exactly who and what he was.
Steeped in all that Burke and Oakeshott, he no doubt was well aware of the colonial adage that the “natives” of the far flung British empire could not match in reasoning skills a “twelve year old British school boy.” wank wank wank
jl
@Another Holocene Human: Control is always better when it is served genteel.
scav
@Another Holocene Human: Ah, yes, I was aiming for that and was unaware of potential typos that involved brands. So, clearly, entirely correct to point out mistake and misdirection. Clearly.2, there is unintentional meta in what I thought was a simple rant.
mattH
@boatboy_srq: It’s relatively recent that the lead exposure>>violence correlation with leaded gas has reemphasized that environmental exposure has such long lasting effects. Besides, Bell Curve is of a sort with Broken Windows “theory”, not incidentally pushed by TNR. Not a coincidence IMO.
Another Holocene Human
@jl: lol, actually it’s easier than that and you don’t need to know any math
first, like any conservative, you totally ignore poverty, inequality, food insecurity, and stuff like that that impacts school performance
then, like any ‘reformer’, assign magical qualities to schools and teachers, but ignore issues like money and resources, so messy
finally, just toss it all in excel and average the whole US together, there are no significant regional differences (that’s why you can talk about ‘real ‘murka’ and your supposed (white) GOP majority while ignoring that in some regions white males overwhelmingly voted Democratic, this is bog standard sleight of hand)
No need for any deep thinking, presto-chango Blacks just underperform, even in that stimulating Northern air. Tsk, tsk, tsk.
PS: ignore language spoken in the home, that doesn’t impact IQ lolwut
Another Holocene Human
@mattH: Broken windows has a bad name because it’s been conflated with Stop and Frisk since they were implemented by the same people. Broken windows was about policing lifestyle issues while stop and frisk is about racking up 1000s of “contacts” to meet some numbers in Compstat which mean confronting and humiliating people going about their business not doing anything wrong. Really totally not the same thing.
Broken windows also has a bad reputation because in typical conflation of correlation and causation fallacious thinking a lot of police and police-humpers think that it has a first-order effect on crime prevention and nothing could be further from the truth. It’s second order at best.
Another Holocene Human
@Eric U.:
These magazines, like the Atlantic, have an influence and also reflect the thinking of the elites. And the elites manage to get their way judicially and politically over and over again. So, yeah, best to keep an eye on that shit.
The lack of scientific reasoning in the Atlantic and the reliance on 18th century philosophers later shown to be empirically wrong about, well, everything, back in the 1990s very much concerned me, and a wave of woo, education “reform”, climate denialism, and other dipshittery followed. An era that seems to be coming to a close but not before bringing back measles epidemics as a “thing”. Good going, Rousseau-lovers. Maybe you should have learned some basic math.
(I did IB in high school–long story–and you can graduate IB with the shittiest math class the state could cough up, I mean the non-honors students would be embarrassed to be graduating with this level of math. How can you make decisions for a whole society if you can’t grasp the basics of a scientific paper and can’t do basic math?)
Roger Moore
@Another Holocene Human:
It also has a bad name because it’s unevenly applied in ways that make life harder for poor people and people of color. The police flood into poor neighborhoods and harass people going about their daily business. They then arrest people for petty crime that would go unnoticed in wealthy neighborhoods, costing them money in fines and giving them police records that will make it harder for them to get out of poverty. Oh, and because of that, it creates antagonism between the police and population, which makes cooperation harder when the police are investigating more serious crime. It’s a plausible-sounding idea that winds up being awful when applied in the real world by real world police.
Villago Delenda Est
@Trentrunner: Pretty much the Thatcher loving Tory’s argument about the entire McCaughey fiasco, in which the vile Phillip Morris funded harridan further fucked up our health care system in the name of sacred profit.
“Just throwing a bunch of bullshit out there for discussion”.
trollhattan
O/T ZOMG ebola in da haus!
1. Did not expect that, can measles be far behind?
2. Obama must be blamed.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Tenar Darell:
I only came in on the tail end of the glocksman thing, but IIRC he works for a large discount retailer that offers pretty good benefits. Assuming they have one, he should contact his company’s EAP (Employee Assistance Program). That’s corporate code for “substance abuse and mental health assistance,” most large companies have one, and it is CONFIDENTIAL from your boss.
Villago Delenda Est
@Another Holocene Human:
To clarify, IQ measures “intelligence” in a particular language. I’d flunk a Russian IQ test because I can’t decipher Cyrillic, let alone speak Russian. So clearly I’m an idiot as far as Bob in Portland is concerned, because I am ignorant of the language of the Master Race.
On the other hand, in Germany I’d probably pass for dull normal.
This is the problem with measuring “intelligence”. There are unspoken assumptions built into the test that don’t stand too much honest scrutiny…but then again, for people like Murray and Hernstein, honest scrutiny is not part of their tap dance. They’ve got an agenda they’re pushing and their shaping data to support that agenda. Not honest, not scientific, but very racist.
The Ancient Randonneur
We win the Revolutionary War, the Union prevails in the Civil War and we STILL haven’t eradicated the Losers from out midst.
Villago Delenda Est
@Kay:
Well, I don’t know. Looks like a dessert topping and a floor wax to me.
Given that the ideological goal is moronic on its face (this guy is a fan of the vile Burke, remember) I’m thinking it does double duty.
max
@burnspbesq: Your obsessions are pretty disturbing.
So are the obsessions of the white East Coast gentry (pinstripe division) (OK, any division). They seem to have an enormous amount in common with your run-of-the-mill Klansman, albeit expressed in a much more genteel fashion.
@Another Holocene Human: These magazines, like the Atlantic, have an influence and also reflect the thinking of the elites.
I think they signify the talking of the upper crust, as there all too frequently doesn’t seem to be a lot of thinking involved.
max
[‘They’re getting better, kinda.’]
elm
I think this thread marks peak burnsie.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Villago Delenda Est:
It can be a helpful diagnostic tool for things like learning disabilities. Part of the testing they did on me for ADHD was an IQ test, and it was really interesting to see I had a sudden drop when it came to the memory portions — exactly where you would expect someone with ADHD to have an issue.
Amir Khalid
@Villago Delenda Est:
You might be in good company there; as far as I know, Bob in Portland is just as ignorant of Cyrillic and Russian as you or I.
boatboy_srq
@mattH: “[L]ead exposure>>violence” may be a fairly recent (re)discovery, but “lead exposure >> intellectual degradation and premature death” has been known in the medical field for generations: my grandparents (1890s babies both of them) were aware of it, and I recall discussions at home about lead paint – based on my grandparents’ guidance from the 1920s – from when I was very small (Grandfather was an MD BTW so this isn’t folk wisdom but professional medical opinion that was passed down).
The problem as I see it isn’t that the connections are relatively recently broadcast, or that the evidence to support them is pouring in now (where before it was trickling in). The problem is that the same people who did the right thing for their own families never took into account that those same actions weren’t being taken universally – or at least if they weren’t then it was a fault of the parents not looking after their children properly and not a societal swing-and-miss not to require the same prevention in housing/schools/etc. It’s very easy as a social scientist to describe behaviors as the product of social factors and domestic conditions, and forget that physical environmentals can play a very meaningful part in the results (as in this case). And without a medical professional conversant with residential toxins (those potentially present in the home or school) participating in the research (or at least available to discuss it with the researchers on a regular basis), the social scientists, working in a comparative vacuum, wouldn’t be immediately disposed to consider these factors so wouldn’t include them in their models.
For example: a parent conscious of lead in the home wouldn’t necessarily also be a researcher aware of such hazards in a school or workplace, and would be less likely to automatically include those factors in the research s/he did. Similarly, a renter wouldn’t necessarily think to ask a landlord about such things; and a landlord would have an interest in providing the minimum standard for the rent demanded, so cheaper materials should be expected and the presence of toxins should be assumed – even though the tenant might not be sufficiently informed to ask and would probably be afraid to ask in a pre-Fair-Housing environment.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Oh, I have no doubt of that. It’s just that it’s so bloody easy to misuse, and Murray and Herrnstein did, for a political agenda.
Similar to using a hammer to drive in screws. Close but no cigar on the best tool for the job.
Riley's Enabler
@jibeaux: You’ll want vector based artwork for your print pieces – best to go with a .eps file, though a vector PDF will work. You *can* place a high resolution TIFF (not .jpg for print work, due to lossy compression). For web-based applications, JPEG (.jpg) are fine. If you need more info, send up a flag and I’ll send private email so as not to bore the masses.
On second thought, you’ll only need vector if you’ll need to rescale massively in the future – say a banner or poster or billboard. If everything will always remain mostly SMALLISH, then go with a TIFF format in CMYK for printing, which can easily be converted into an RGB .JPG for web.
High resolution = 300 dpi for print work, full size.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
I don’t see why it needs to be limited to an either/or.
Samuel Knight
Stephen Jay Gould – waht a great, missed man. And yes, he did demolish the Bell Curve in the day. And yes, the lead in gasoline (and paint actually) thesis did come years later. But it was there in their own darn data.
What was truly vile in Sully (and his compatriots) were willing to put unsubstantiated garbage into their magazine in order to score points. They were (and are) propagandists. Just because they called themselves liberals doesn’t mean they were. They were lying about that too.
Once you start with the premise that Sully, Chait and others are just lying it’s much easier to see where they’re coming from.
trollhattan
Hey y’all, check out Texas’ new rising star.
Villago Delenda Est
@Another Holocene Human:
This is one of the problems with The Wealth of Nations that few touch on because MEGO or something, they’re too busy in rapture about the “invisible hand” mentioned once and only once in over a 1000 pages. Anthropologists have tried in vain to replicate Smith’s idea of how money was invented and can’t find any real world examples anywhere to support it. Oh, it makes sense and all from the view at the top, but unfortunately unlike much of the rest of the book, Smith simply asserts it and can’t back it up with data.
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: Indeed. He has whined in the past when I’ve posted links to primary sources.
Villago Delenda Est
@trollhattan: Another Texas pol who needs, desperately needs, a slap upside the head.
Gin & Tonic
@Roger Moore: O/T, but you mentioned Moab in another thread. Have you ever taken any of the photography workshops there?
Villago Delenda Est
@The Ancient Randonneur: Sully was imported from the old country, and I’m thinking that the primary reason is that there’s no way he could ever get the upper class status he craves in the UK. Too Irish, too Catholic.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@boatboy_srq:
You should seek out the episode of the new “Cosmos” where Neil de Grasse Tyson talks about the scientific war over lead. It was the tobacco of its day, with powerful commercial interests fighting tooth and nail against having it banned. Really fascinating and ultimately sad story, since they ruined the life and reputation of the scientist who was able to prove that environmental lead was highly toxic.
Bobby Thomson
@burnspbesq: the pet Nazis argument. Still unpersuasive.
? Martin
Thanks Obama
Big government regulations cutting the death rate from auto accidents in half in just 6 years. Thankfully we made some of that up with guns.
boatboy_srq
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): It’s on my “to watch” list. Incidentally, Grandfather was opposed to smoking as well – back in the 30s. But of course since he didn’t publish, his voice was limited to his patients.
Violet
@trollhattan: From the article linked in your article:
So they yelled at children. Nice.
trollhattan
@Violet:
Yeah, bless their hearts. Bet they were fired up because they weren’t in on the action pouring beer on American Indian kids at that hockey match.
scav
@Violet: Their next stop was clearly to be a rally against the notorious “NoGo” Zones of Birmingham, Paris and the rest of dying under Islamic Sharia Communist Marxist Old Europe.
Bobby Thomson
@burnspbesq: I’d say destroying your credibility is good enough, Counselor.
Bobby Thomson
Fywp.
Mike J
@Villago Delenda Est:
You used “harridan” just yesterday when talking about Thatcher. Why not vary it with “bitch” or “cunt”? Or better yet, try an insult that isn’t about their genders and instead is about what awful people they are.
Bobby Thomson
@? Martin: I blame cash-for-clunkers for taking Stupid Useless Vehicles off the road.
boatboy_srq
@Violet: CAIR. To wingnuts, that’s two parts al-Qaida’s propaganda machine and one part ACORN for Islamofascists. Shrub’s buddy Alberto Gonzales (among other Shrubbery) went after them in a big way. It’s no wonder they got that kind of reception. But of course the “protesters” are off the hook because Religulous Freedumb, baby!
Cervantes
@Villago Delenda Est:
He doesn’t have it here, either.
Mandalay
@Mike J:
Indeed. And earlier this week he called Sarah Palin a “street walker”. Hmmm, there seems to be a pattern emerging here….
Just be aware that you are dealing with someone who makes Sullivan seem like a complete amateur when it comes to misogyny.
Another Holocene Human
@Roger Moore: That happens because they overwhelmingly hire police from another neighborhood who palpably hate the people in that neighborhood to police that neighborhood.
I love watching that show about Maine State Troopers. They confront dozens of people all doing shitty things in state parks and let almost all of them off with a warning. I did see them arrest somebody once. Sometimes they write tickets. For shit these people damn well knew was illegal.
Community policing only works with community input and partnership, I somehow suspect that backdoor taxation summonses to get revenue and the typical complaints of merchants and long term residents about nuisance activity probably don’t overlap much.
I do have a bit of an issue with the vehicle stuff, it’s like a catch 22. I want to see vehicle shit enforced but that means not forcing those without the means to drive for employment. They really, really need to provide federal funding for transit operation. But even APTA opposes that (because they suck).
Another Holocene Human
@Villago Delenda Est: Yeah, it’s funny, if you dig into all that lovely Census information and then look at census blocks where the majority are foreign born or where majority don’t speak English at the home, funny how they match up with “troubled” schools. Almost as if trying to learn in a new language your parents aren’t proficient in, 9 months of the year and suffering poverty from your parents’ limited gainful employment prospects might have a teeny tiny impact on school performance in the best of times and of course these aren’t the best of times because poor communities can’t pour extra resources into the schools to beef up the curriculum with bilingual programs and more ESL/ESOL enrichment and ESL/ESOL math classes and so on.
Also, too, you made a funny because our Putiniste friend doesn’t actually understand Russian either.
Cervantes
@burnspbesq:
Whatever day it is, it seems not to be your best day.
Hope tomorrow is better for you and everyone.
Cervantes
@Mike J:
Only Words, as Kitty MacKinnon pointed out, are sometimes anything but.
Thanks for the comment.
Another Holocene Human
@boatboy_srq: Okay, I remember the 80s and there was a lot of public health work done about lead in residences, for example old rentals with lead paint on the radiators or windows or old owner occupied houses with lead pipes.
The issue here aside from urban lead abatement which was pursued with a vigor proportionate I think to the political influence of the affected populations, is the Ethyl con. It’s a story of how a chemical company lobbied the government to permit the usage of a heavy metal additive they and everyone else had every reason to believe was as fucking toxic as lead paint and industrial lead had been. And they got away with it for fifty fucking years. That’s some shit. As for the backed up exhaust and urban high rises, I honestly don’t think the futurists, central planners, and even earnest housing advocates who created that Futurama dreamscape ever imagined that kids in those “wonderful” concrete towers would be huffing asthma-causing, brain-destroying toxic pea soup exhaust clouds. But when the evidence started to pour in, it took years of community organization and activism to start to abate these hazards, and much of the abatement came from white people who saw the Hudson burning and read Silent Spring and had a freakout about the aesthetics of it, not because little children in the inner city were growing up with asthma.
Also, the link between serious lead poisoning and violence was known but since the inference had been made looking at industrial workers in the late 19th century the vulnerability of children to aerosol lead and the impact that would have on societal levels of violence going forward wasn’t grasped at the time.
Those horrible stories of construction workers poisoned doing cleanup at badly-managed shooting galleries could come straight out of the Gilded Age.
Another Holocene Human
If white do-gooders gave a shit about children of color with asthma they wouldn’t be pushing for “bus rapid transit” so vigorously and would circle the ones who do with torches and pitchforks until they backed off because RUBBER TIRE POLLUTION according to the research is heavily implicated in environmentally triggered asthma. So guess what it doesn’t matter how little exhaust comes out the stack (which they have worked on). Funny how the “nicer” places all have rail. Funny …
Another Holocene Human
@Samuel Knight: It was old Social Darwinist wine in new, white supremacist bottles.
gogol's wife
@Mandalay:
Word choice aside, I don’t think that VDE is a misogynist. And I have pretty good radar for that.
Another Holocene Human
@Villago Delenda Est: I treated his assertions without proof as amusing anecdotes but avidly pored over the data he did provide. His data on Britain going back several centuries was amazing and really broadened my knowledge of history.
But of course invisible hand nitwits were just looking for something to confirm their prejudices. They don’t even bother with Adam Smith now, too much of a wild eyed socialist for them today. Ayn Rand and the Austerians are top of the charts.
Citizen_X
@Another Holocene Human: Um, wouldn’t increased bus usage decrease car usage, thus decreasing rubber tire pollution?
Another Holocene Human
@Violet: Bigots.
Eric U.
@Another Holocene Human: bus rapid transit almost surely drops the rubber tire pollution 100x over cars, which is the real comparison
Villago Delenda Est
@Mandalay:You’ve been told to go DIAF.
Do it. NOW.
Another Holocene Human
@gogol’s wife: Mandalay isn’t really one to talk. The irony is rich.
Now, Mike did make a good point overall, but I wasn’t aware “harridan” was as charged as such gems as bitch, cunt, twat, and slut. Or the horribly misused whore. Not that I see anything wrong or insulting to whores, who provide a service for a fee, in calling certain politicians whores, as they also perform a service for a fee. As Bierce said, an honest politician is one who once bought, stays bought. An elusive quality to be sure. The trouble is I’ve seen “whore” flung around as an insult repeatedly in the last few months about people who don’t provide services for fees which is all rather confusing and has that slight whiff of misogynistic rhetoric to it, especially when this is said of women, say, Sarah Palin, who may be an attention whore, yes, but to call her a whore, rather than grifter, is an insult to both sex workers and cons. Especially when one is criticizing her use of sex to sell her brand (that eyeroll inducing promo she did), just misogynistic as hell. Please.
Besides, all the misogyny kind of destroys the enjoyment I, as a former inmate of a purity-obsessed religion, derive from seeing a so-con “warrior” hypocritically use lust and covetousness to feed their greed and need to for attention (does that fall under pride? or envy?). It just shows how much their talk and deeds about “modesty” and “purity” are palpably the opposite, kind of the way the Duggar kids talk about relationships as if they’re arranged sexcapades, I mean it’s freaking gross. They talk about ‘elevating’ relationships but they actually just reduce them down to sex. But that’s inevitable because they do so much violence to the social animal that the reptilian urge is all you have left. Derrr. It’s okay herpaderp they deny science too.
Another Holocene Human
@Eric U.: Not if it’s an existing bus route and the fight is between rail and BRT.
Rail has been PROVEN to pull better numbers than bus on the SAME ROUTE. You can find all the evidence you need trolling through 50+ years of transit data by mode. Route 39/Green Line E-line in Boston is the class example. Big ridership drop when bus-tituted. All those claims about BRT reduced stops are irrelevant because in that era the T made corner to corner rail stops so it was a frequent stopper, it wasn’t spread out like modern rail projects would be. (less stops = higher average speed)
So NO, this is a false premise because it’s bus VS rail, not bus or nothing and NO, because rail actually DOES result in mode switching at a relatively higher rate than bus, in a very big way, a way that is SUPER obvious if you’re familiar with the data, I mean we’re talking about thousands of rides here, you can’t miss it.
But, ya know, talk to transit riders. It’s not just the “fluff” of rail, you know the perception of better service, the nicer stations, or whatever (part of which is also driven by regulation, surprise surprise). Many, many people get nauseated riding buses but are fine riding rail. This is A LOT of the reason that the ridership numbers are so different. The fact that rail+subway leads to less transfers probably helps but there are plenty of systems around the country where the rail route is less convenient than the surface bus route for whatever dumb central planning issues were at play and yet people pile into the rail because they can read their blackberry on the train but they get sick on the bus.
I’m probably too emotional about this, it’s just driven me up a wall for years and years. The data is all out there and known and it still gets IGNORED and stupid shills from the highway building interests are still running around the country spreading lies about rail and being believed and these fifth columnists in the federal DOT framework, specifically Volpe Center, are pushing this garbage and doubling down spending hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars proving their bogus “point” in metal and concrete. Pisses me off, it does.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mike J: So, I use gender specific insults against very disagreeable women. I invite you to sue me. I want to be precise. People get bent out of shape about “bitch” and the c word is just right out around here, and those are reserved for the most egregious.
This has nothing to do with women in general. Anyone who imagines I’m a misogynist probably missed all my railing at the pro-forced birth crowd and their incessant desire to punish women who dare to assert agency in any way.
Another Holocene Human
@Eric U.: lol 100x, wtf, are you not aware that there is more pressure on each tire from the axle weight of the bus or truck than on a fucking car, also, are you aware of the seated capacity of a bus oh and btw, the seated capacity of that rail vehicle and standee capacity per federal guidelines? a lot higher, surprise, surprise.
Your statement is silly.
Villago Delenda Est
@Another Holocene Human: The problem, as always, is the upfront costs of rail vs. BRT and the ongoing maintenance cost frighten people to death. This is yet another consequence of the short term economic thinking that dominates this country. Never mind that rail is less expensive overall per passenger carried…we’re not going to let our eyes glaze over thinking about THAT.
Another Holocene Human
@Villago Delenda Est: looking up harridan by the dictionary and thesaurus, seems like it is your classic gendered insult, this person is a vituperative nag AND a dried up old crone, which just makes it all the more vile, amirite?
Calling her a sadist is a little more on the nose, I think.
Another Holocene Human
@Villago Delenda Est: Yup, first of all you can point at BRT projects with great ridership and then turn around and not implement any of the expensive parts of BRT and still call it BRT which is a great and enduring scam.
Secondly, rail projects have to follow a bunch of regulatory guidelines whereas bus lines are really ass wide open when it comes to bus stops. I mean, sure, you could get sued under ADA for your bus stops but, ya know just take it as it comes. Broward County did. They shut down stops as they get their ass sued. Oh well, just bus riders, right? They probably rent.
Third, it’s all bullshit. These buses NEVER last as long as the federal gov’t and the manufacturer claim. The gov’t spends A LOT replacing big expensive systems in these buses well before they reach their 12, 15, or 17 year mark. On the other hand except for fucked from the beginning railcars like Boeing (thanks, US Congress–good work) cars or Breda cars (shitty procurement process failed in two big cities to exclude a Euro-Boeing bid from being considered, and two big cities got screwed), steel body rail cars have a VERY long lifetime. They’d really only have to last twice as long as a bus but they tend to last 3 or 4 times as long and they don’t need:
tires every 18 months
new transmission every 10 years
new engines … ever
The wheels need machining, brakes need maintenance, I’ve seen A/C units that sucked totally replaced, doors that sucked totally replaced (both for the Boeing cars–#winning), but they have less parts to go bad (unless they’re Boeing cars–supposedly they had 3000 parts per car–the good news is that Boeing swore off transit vehicles, hopefully forever, the sad thing is that Congress never swore off Buy America, because learning from failure is unAmerican), sometimes they even weigh less (unless you purchase through FTA because they’re smoking crack), and they can be overhauled every couple of decades to provide decades more of faithful service. Let shit to break, less abuse on the rails-on-concrete-slab than on asphalt roads.
MBTA still runs those horrid Boeing cars during rush hour unless something has changed, you know, from 1978. Good luck finding a 1978 transit bus that’s not a coach conversion out there in service somewhere.
Basically most of what’s said about purchase price and lifetime costs are bullshit. After years in the industry I feel they’re even more bullshit than I thought when I was a rail advocate. I’ve seen how the bus thing works or doesn’t work. And it’s not getting any better because manufacturers following moving EPA targets are dumping untested engines on agencies and then playing the warranty dance to try to dump the costs of rebuild on the agency and ultimately, back on the federal government.
Bobby Thomson
@Another Holocene Human: this may be a surprise, but a lot of people don’t live in Boston. Or in places with existing rail lines or even rights of way.
gwangung
@burnspbesq: what a moronic post. It’s a topic for discussion if you have data. Not poorly researched arm waving.
cokane
The thing about sullivan and tnr is that he was clearly, thoroughly unqualified to an editor at that point in his career. i mean what was he? a recent college grad steeped in english political theory?
and out of all the awful things that occurred during his tenure, the bell curve episode is the least offensive in terms of journalistic integrity. i mean they had stephen glass, ruth shalit making shit up. and the hillarycare article was just blatant misinformation that sullivan let side because he was essentially a hack.
:[
it’s not surprising really
different-church-lady
@Roger Moore:
Well, you gotta admit that embezzlement, tax avoidance, insider trading, and securities fraud can be hard to notice…
cckids
@trollhattan:
With an Israeli flag? Hmmm. What a fool.
sm*t cl*de
the research in The Bell Curve was extremely controversial. And perhaps it was incompetent
“Incompetent”? The Bell Curve drew heavily on the work of J. Philippe Rushton, and his theory that black people have smaller brains because black men have bigger dicks and apparently one cannot have both [I am not making this up, although Rushton preferred to dress up his fantasy in terms of “r/K selection strategies”]. Rushton in turn found evidence for his theory by scouring through Penthouse and Playgirl letters columns.
That is what Andrew Sullivan was mainstreaming.
marduk
@Another Holocene Human: I don’t know if that’s a fair representation of the role of buses overall. Buses are good for last mile or 3 and rail is good for backbone. Buses can be effective in cities that won’t pay for commuter rail as well. When i was a kid in the 80s outside Boston I would 1 .ride my bike to the bus stop and lock it in the bike rack provided. 2. take the bus to the nearest T station. 3. be at city center in less than an hour door to door. Without bus and rail working together it would have been impossible. With a good mass transit system it was a recreation. Also The Pixies and go pats.
ellennellee
this controversy just seems so transparent to me.
i’m a neuropsychologist; i administer IQ tests. in the course of this work, i get to apply them and analyze their validity and reliability, on the front line. so here’s what i know about these tests, and the people who take them (not to mention those who administer them). they measure IQ as defined by those who design the tests. reading unz and lynn and murray, i’ve been shocked over the years on a number of levels (one of my closest post-doc buddies at harvard was a heinstein student), not least of which is how this simple fact gets so little if any real attention.
but is this not the racialist way? it falls fully in line with the inclination to see oneself and one’s ilk as the ultimate in every realm. humans are god’s chosen species, judeo-christians his chosen people, americans his chosen judeo-christians, and so it goes. this mentality makes it not just easy but imperative to ignore all the evil ignorance rampant in said chosen folk. wasp brings to mind the additional tangible image, replete with the relentless, stinging attacks the acronym misses. or ignores.
i’m still shocked this racialist mind set holds any sway; i’d have thought jared diamond’s comprehensive and incisive analysis of the rise of civilization pretty much flushed that sort of self-centered notion down its appropriate toilet for good. and interestingly, his purpose in writing his brilliant book was to dispel such specious notions of racial superiority. he succeeded on paper, but evidently not in the minds of conservatives who will not be dissuaded from delusions of grandeur.
but then, as conservatives, that task is tantamount to the immoveable object encountering the irresistible force. despite the fact that another test of intelligence would be to pit a native against, say, sarah palin in the african bush. simple parameter: just, you know, survive.
seems a better measure of native intelligence. one that evolution can more readily assess.
different-church-lady
@marduk: What I think AHH is getting at is streetcars-and/or-light rail in dedicated right-of-ways.
For example, those buses you used to ride in Boston: did you know that back in the day nearly every one of today’s numbered bus routes used to be a streetcar route? In 1940 the “bus/train” combo you talk of would not have been necessary, because there was rail all over the city.
Further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_conspiracy
jl
@sm*t cl*de: The Bell Curve was based on data from IQ and aptitude tests, and longitudinal surveys of youth educational attainment, employment history, income and other socio-economic measures.
Damn, I wish they would have copied Rushton more closely, so it could have been based on Playboy and Penthouse. The data analysis would have been more fun.
sm*t cl*de
@jl:
All true, but they also cited Rushton heavily and gave him equal credence.
sm*t cl*de
@jl:
IIRC, The Bell Curve also relied on Linda Gottfredson‘s work on vocational aptitude. Gottfredson was a vocational psychologist at the time, a white supremacist from way back, and heavily invested in various forms of quackery into which we need not go. Returning the favour, Gottfredson was instrumental — along with one David Brooks — in persuading the Wall Street Journal to print her totally-disinterested article on the brilliance of this Bell Curve book.
jl
@sm*t cl*de: I believe that is true. Their literature review was very incomplete and biased. And they were very biased in the previous research they used for assumptions used in their analysis.
However, they did use data from standard and respected sources that have often been used (edit: and often very badly misused) in that kind of research. So, I think it was appropriate and important that people looked carefully at what they actually did with those particular data sets. What they actually did was a mess. Having verified that, no one can accuse you of avoiding unpleasant empirical findings. Well, Sullivan did accuse people of doing that, and still does, regardless the fact that experts have in fact reviewed their analysis carefully. But at any rate,you have an answer for anyone who is willing to listen even if Sullivan is not.
Villago Delenda Est
@sm*t cl*de:
This is pretty much the same as Antonin Scalia discussing what Jack Bauer would do in a Supreme Court decision document.
Villago Delenda Est
@Another Holocene Human: I’d go with sociopath, myself.
Because it’s painfully obvious that empathy is not one of her qualities.
Villago Delenda Est
@cokane:
Hmmm, I understand what you’re saying here, but I’m not sure the past tense is fully accurate.
Present tense and future tense would also apply.
Nutella
Sullivan and Niall Ferguson were best buddies as Oxford students and then both came over here where their Oxfordian accents led the American establishment to believe that they were 1) English toffs and 2) brilliant intellectuals.
So, so wrong.
Hunter
Sullivan was also touting The Bell Curve in his blog, at which point I stopped reading him, as it came home to me very forcefully that a) he didn’t know what he was talking about, which not only didn’t stop him, it didn’t even slow him down (and I do have a background in social sciences), b) he’s a closet racist, and c) he’s not very smart.
Ian
Wait, Ron Unz, really?
I mean, sure, if you define the ‘best takedown’ as ‘accept pretty much all the stupid premises of the work and only worry about data-bias problems’. I kinda think we can do better than the lame and unwarranted Stephen Jay Gould driveby, the casual and basically wrong acceptance of 0.8 as a heritability factor for IQ, and the endless and mostly incorrect complaints that academics aren’t looking at this stuff ‘coz they’re scared or something.