The Man Who Killed UBL

2013 02 12 The Shooter's Gear

Esquire has a really, really long and really, really good article about a man they call simply “The Shooter”. He is the Navy SEAL, since retired, who killed Osama bin Laden. Now, after 16 years of service, he has retired with no pension, no health care, no job, and no protection for himself or his family against retatliation. Read this fascinating story about the raid that killed the #1 terrorist, the men who went even though they were sure it was a suicide mission, and how our nation is now letting them down.

Lena Dunham and Privilege

I don’t watch Girls (or anything else with, from, or about Lena Dunham), but I was still interested in Silpa Kovvali’s take on Lena Dunham and privilege.

The clear implication is that Girls is an origin tale of sorts, chronicling what life was like for Dunham before she got it together and made it big. But in reality, Dunham and her castmates, all of comparable pedigree, are by and large playing characters far less privileged than they are. AtGirls‘s worst moments, the show veers dangerously close to mocking people poorer than her. Its most prominent theme — Hannah’s irresponsibility, laziness, and self-satisfaction — seems less a systemic critique of unpaid creative internships than an allegation that middle class kids who wish to pursue the same career paths as their upper class friends are spoiled and bratty. In a particularly grating scene, Hannah’s mother shrilly screams that she is cutting her daughter off because she wants a lake house. But it is simply good parenting for members of the middle class to steer their children away from fields that don’t promise a steady income. They don’t have the luxury of supporting their children forever, even if they’re willing to forego their desire to “sit by a fucking lake.”

Yet when asked about what distinguishes her from Hannah, Dunham shows no comprehension of the degree to which privilege can drive life choices. Frighteningly, she sees herself as less entitled than her on-screen counterpart, whose parents revoke their financial support in the series’s opening scene. “I’m sure that I’ve had some really unattractive, spoiled moments in my years, but I’ve never — that conversation that Hannah had has never happened to me, in large part because when I graduated from college, my parents let me live with them, but they made it really clear that they weren’t going to support any of my endeavors,” she told NPR. One wonders precisely what the starlet thinks supporting oneself means. The most glaring differences between Dunham and her character seem to be that she is far wealthier, better-connected, and has parents who live in Manhattan.

I’ve been reading more and more about privilege and class issues over the last couple of years, and this is one of the more interesting pieces I’ve read.

The Paranoid Style in (All) American Politics

Richard Hofstadter sort of wrote the book on paranoia in American politics with his 1964 essay in Harpers: The Paranoid Style in American Politics (full text). In the first paragraph, Hofstadter wrote that the paranoid “style of mind… is not necessarily right wing,” but (written during the heydey of the John Birch Society) he did focus more on contemporary right-wing rather than historical left-wing examples. It’s been nearly a half-century, but the partisan dichotomy has stuck around.

Today there is no doubt that paranoia and conspiracy continue to thrive among the right wing. The most prominent example would be Glenn Beck. I actually used to watch him regularly, but I grew too disgusted after the episodes about George Soros being some kind of international puppetmaster. And of course there’s the well-known Birther movement and a whole ecology of lesser-known conspiracies including everything from chemtrails to faked moon landings.

2013 02 11 Glenn Beck

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Excellent Analysis of the Super Bowl

This is the best football analysis that I’ve ever read. I guess that’s one  of the advantages of the supremacy geek culture, now even sports analysis has some statistical sophistication!

If you think that tells you that the Ravens1 elevated their game when they needed to, I can’t agree. What it really tells us is that we know way less about teams than we really think we know. Every recent piece of information we had about the Ravens heading into the postseason suggested that they were a floundering team limping in by virtue of a successful start to the season, some lucky bounces, opposing injuries, and strong performance in close games. Baltimore started 6-1 in games decided by a touchdown or less, with its only loss to Philadelphia, of all teams, before losing their final three such contests. We had a clear curve for Baltimore’s true level of play, and it was trending further and further downward. And yet, from that point forward, everything we thought we knew about the Ravens was wrong. For every power rankings article you read in November and every set of odds you saw in December, nobody had any idea that the Ravens were capable of putting together a four-game stretch this good. Was “play like the best team in football” really a switch they were waiting to turn on during the playoffs? Or were they capable of this all along and just hadn’t yet exhibited this level of play?

The one disagreement I had is with the analysis of momentum. Bill Barnwell thinks that there’s no reason to believe that the lights-out at the Super Bowl could plausibly have changed the momentum of the game.

Why was the blackout supposed to offer the 49ers momentum, anyway? Because it stopped Baltimore in their tracks for a half-hour after they had been dominating the game? If that really made a difference, why wouldn’t halftime have accomplished that?

I thought about that while I was watching the game, and I think the difference is that the halftime is expected. In terms of really getting your mind clear, that’s not going to do it. The random 34-minute lights-out would have been much better at creating a real and genuine break in the mental state of the players. Other than that: great analysis!

LA Manhunt Getting Ridiculous

This is a blue Toyota Tacoma. Dorner's truck is a silver Nissan Titan. Oops.
This is a blue Toyota Tacoma. Dorner’s truck is a silver Nissan Titan. Oops.

The first time police opened fire on a completely innocent person was bad enough, but now we’ve got two separate instance of LA cops spraying bullets because they thought that they saw Chris Dorner. Dorner, who has killed three cops and is still on the loose with a promise to kill more, is nothing to joke about. But neither are cops blasting away at innocent civilians who driving cars that aren’t like Dorners and who look nothing like Dorner. In the first case, they wounded a newspaper delivery woman and her mother who were driving a truck that is not the same make, model, or even color as Chris Dorner’s. The second example is no better:

His pickup, police later explained, matched the description of the one belonging to Christopher Jordan Dorner — the ex-cop who has evaded authorities after allegedly killing three and wounding two more. But the pickups were different makes and colors. And Perdue looks nothing like Dorner: He’s several inches shorter and about a hundred pounds lighter. And Perdue is white; Dorner is black.

“I don’t want to use the word buffoonery but it really is unbridled police lawlessness,” said Robert Sheahen, Perdue’s attorney. “These people need training and they need restraint.”

It reminds me of the way that gun-control advocates are always saying that we can’t afford to have concealed carry permit holders because only highly trained specialists would be able to react to a crisis rationally. Every time I hear that, I know that I’m talking to someone who has never actually followed stories of police violence. Sadly, these embarrassments are pretty much par for the course.

Chris Dorner is on the left. David Perdu, whose truck was rammed and then shot, is on the right. It's easy to see how the two could be confused for each other. They are practically twins.
Chris Dorner is on the left. David Perdu, whose truck was rammed and then shot, is on the right. It’s easy to see how the two could be confused for each other. They are practically twins.

I don’t want to make light of this situation, but as Michael Yon has pointed out (Facebook), police incompetence and media lust for blood are making this so much worse than it has to be. And it’s already bad enough.

Friday Music: Mumford and Sons

I snagged Babel, Mumford and Sons‘ most recent album, from a friend. He wanted to manage expectations. “It’s the same as their last album. Like… exactly the same.” I could tell by his tone of voice that this was supposed to be a bad thing, but it actually sounded great to me. Like, fantastic. Ever since I had heard The Cave on the radio in Michigan, drove home, and went directly to Google to find out who sang that incredible song, Sigh No More has been one of my very favorite albums. 

Mumford  Sons - Babel Artwork medium-652x652I have to say, however, that I have an unsteady relationship with anything popular. As a general rule, I prefer to do whatever everyone else isn’t doing. If I think I know where the crowd is headed, I turn around 180 degrees and start walking. And, lest you think that I consider this tragically heroic or some such tripe, I will add that the inevitable and quick result of this course of action is to find myself quite alone and quite sad about it.

So why do I do it? I have no idea, but I sometimes think that behavior explains pretty much my entire life starting with high school.

Surrounded by a lot of really smart, educated kids who were naturally overwhelmingly secular, I remained devout. But where most of the folks in that category would go for Catholicism or evangelical traditions, I was Mormon. Mormons have a fraught relationship with intellectuals these days, so naturally I veered off in precisely that direction. Which meant I found myself surrounded by progressive, social liberal types and therefore ended up a right-of-center social conservative.

I’m not for the current regime, but I am against the revolution. I’m not pro-establishment, but I am antidisestablishmentarian (not technically, but you get the idea). 

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Saving the Relics of Timbuktu

From WSJ article, click image to see more pics.
From WSJ article, click image to see more pics.

If you haven’t read the story of how the ancient library of Timbuktu–with manuscripts dating back to the 13th century–was saved from Islamic militants who torched the library before they fled advancing French troops, you ought to.

Their final act before leaving was to go through the exhibition room in the institute, as well as the whitewashed laboratory used to restore the age-old parchments. They grabbed the books they found and burned them.

However, they didn’t bother searching the old building, where an elderly man named Abba Alhadi has spent 40 of his 72 years on earth taking care of rare manuscripts. The illiterate old man, who walks with a cane and looks like a character from the Bible, was the perfect foil for the Islamists. They wrongly assumed that the city’s European-educated elite would be the ones trying to save the manuscripts, he said.