I got Ex-Friends by Norman Podhoretz after a friend suggested it. Podhoretz was a leftist who went to the right, much as I have done. Unlike Podhoretz, I am still friendly with many leftists. I can't think of a single one who won't talk with me. At least there's no one who I actually would miss who has stopped talking to me. Yet I share many of Podhoretz' concerns.
In the opening chapter, he spends 50 pages on his friendship with Allen Ginsberg. Ginsberg and he had gone to Columbia together, and Podhoretz could tell that Ginsberg was a good poet, whereas he himself was not. Podhoretz drifted into journalism, and into political journalism. But he disdained the slovenliness of Beat style (he didn't like Kerouac's superlatives), and Beat mores. This incensed Ginsberg. I think Ginsberg had a part of his mind that was still healthy, and Podhoretz became his unofficial conscience.
Podhoretz was a family man. When he saw poems like Ginsberg's, he took exception:
...he fucked me in the ass
till I smelled brown excrement
staining his cock
& tried to get up from bed to go to the toilet a minute
but he held me down & kept pumping at me, serious & said
"No, I don't want to stop I like it dirty like this."
(quoted on p. 54)
Ginsberg's "active sponsorship" of NAMBLA, was another issue.
Wordsworth went to the right after witnessing the horrors of the French Revolution. In the 20s and 30s, there was of course Marianne Moore. Moore was especially shocked by the giddy quality of much of the sexual experimentation.
In the tract of poem above, could it be said that there was even a "relationship" between the autobiographical Ginsberg, and the perpetrator? One of Ginsberg's recommendations to me as his writing student was to write "great big dirty sex poems." Ginsberg for some reason thought the scene he described above should be generally experienced.
Podhoretz closed the Ginsberg chapter with a quote from George Orwell, who also witnessed the sexual experimentalism of the left, and their cheerful comraderie toward criminals. "The fact to which we have got to cling, as to a lifebelt, is that it is possible to be a normal decent person and yet to be fully alive." (p. 56).
Podhoretz cites Ginsberg's fist-fucking poem "Violent Collaborations," and poems like "Please Master" and "Sphincter" --, which are especially difficult to read, but Ginsberg's poetry, even poems like Howl, are replete with references to his NAMBLA-esque lifestyle and ambition.
The abortions, illnesses (mental and physical), and other spiritual crises that Ginsberg's generation brought about through their championing of sexual and drug experimentation, leaves me wondering why so many are so enamored of it.
Should extracurricular activities such as those described above be covered by the universal healthcare system the Democrats propose?
Friday, January 29, 2010
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93 comments:
Kirby,
I think your view of the left is very much a consequence of your idiosyncratic choices as to who represents the left.
Ginsberg may be front and center for you, but I'd not heard of him before (poetic savage that I am), and I can't say that I've seen anything in his poetry or views that commends him to me. Indeed, he strikes me as a narcissist who's learned that he can get attention by shocking people, and a small measure of safety and support by claiming that what he's doing is art.
I don't see a meaningful leftist agenda in Ginsberg's work. At the end of the day, the only thing that makes him "leftist" seems to be his homosexuality, and by this criterion, J. Edgar Hoover was a leftist too.
To me, a leftist is someone who believes that the future can be just, and that we should organize society so that everyone has the opportunity to live a dignified and productive life. A rightist, on the other hand, is someone who believes that the present is just, in that the people who are prosperous today are precisely the people who deserve prosperity.
Ginsberg seems to be intent on destroying everyone's sense of dignity, beginning in a very public way with his own. Thus, he's not a rightist because he doesn't support the status quo, and he's not a leftist because he believes in creating a future that is less just and dignified than the present.
People are enamored of it because they mistake such behavior for freedom and the Devil inside thinks we all should have FREEDOM.
Which is damn silly.
GM -- Stu's lack of awareness of Ginsberg could tip us both to the absolute erasure of poetry in the contemporary world. Ginsberg's archives were sold to Stanford for millions and when it happened it made all the major media. His books won major prizes. And yet to Stu, who teaches at a big college, hadn't heard of him before.
I don't think I would have heard of the Beautiful Mind fellow John Nash had it not been for the film. Is that a decent parallel?
I think poetry is meant to be a more public think than the most abstruse speculations of mathematicians even those that win major prizes.
Ginsberg was known all through the sixties as a major leader of the left -- friends with people like Abbie Hoffman, Timothy Leary, and others (I assume Stu has heard of these).
I can't account for this lack of awareness of this very major poet. I could understand if Stu was not in academia. In my home town I once told someone I had spent the summer studying with Allen Ginsberg. This was the wife of a prominent academic at the local college, and I assumed knowledge of him.
She said, "Is he the guy that runs the gas station on 3rd street?"
"Yes," I said. "That's him!"
Still, if Stu's view of Ginsberg was the general one in the avant-garde left, I would be willing to consider myself as part of that group to some degree. But he is regarded as an immense saint, along with Jean Genet, William Burroughs, and Abbie Hoffman.
I think people in my milieu generally view him as a saint and as a hero, without any significant drawbacks.
The same people would regard Tiger as a heel after the last two months' revelations. Well, I'm not even sure about that.
I think Bush would be regarded as a heel, as the devil incarnate, while Tiger and Ginsberg would get a pass.
One figure of the left who might not get a pass would be Charles Manson. I'm not sure if anyone would give him a pass.
But Ginsberg is solid gold, and his books are thought to continue very significant insights.
To me, a leftist is someone who believes that the future can be just, and that we should organize society so that everyone has the opportunity to live a dignified and productive life. A rightist, on the other hand, is someone who believes that the present is just, in that the people who are prosperous today are precisely the people who deserve prosperity.
Ginsberg seems to be intent on destroying everyone's sense of dignity, beginning in a very public way with his own. Thus, he's not a rightist because he doesn't support the status quo, and he's not a leftist because he believes in creating a future that is less just and dignified than the present.
The fuck. What?
Okay--so your view of Left and Right is absolutely insane and biased and no wonder you think folks on the Right are crazy.
First we should stop using "Left" and "Right" because they don't make any damn sense.
I propose we use "Tory" and "Whig." No one in America knows the first damn what the words mean and we can, therefore, use them without prejudice.
A Whig is someone who believes that change and progress are best done through the State and that things can always be better than they are right now. Moroever, a Whig mistrusts anything that is not the state and yet resembles the state--they do not like parents and so think that children should be educated in schools. They do not like doctors and think that panels should decide how medical care is given.
This is because Whigs are generally intelligent people who see that the world is fucked up and think--shit man, if I could only get everyone else to see what I see the world would be great!
Whigs generally fall into the "all men are angels" camp; they are, in short, idealists.
Tories, however, are realists. They understand that the world is fucked up but that it can be even more fucked up if things aren't done properly.
They also understand that tradition and "The old way of doing things" are damned important if for no other reason than kids are stupid and shouldn't be allowed to create their own system of the world.
More later but my head hurts.
I'm definitely down with the Tories in Gm's description. I propose that the change be made permanent.
I wonder how Jacques would go for these definitions.
Do these definitions still hold in England?
I never follow the politics of other countries but assume that they are roughly like our own.
I think Thatcher was called a Tory.
Brown was supposed to be a liberal but he still believes in the Iraq War, which confuses his comrades.
These are terms I don't know the origins of. They were originally parties in early America. by the time of Lincoln were they still in use?
G.M. is right. Those definitions were bogus.
Here are a few more bits...
A Leftist/Whig contemplates "change" with expectation.
A Rightist/Tory contemplates "change" with trepidation.
A Leftist/Whig places emphasis on what could be.
A Rightist/Tory places emphasis on what has been.
A Leftist/Whig looks at his forebears and notices what they did wrong (in order to fix it.)
A Rightist/Tory looks at his forebears and notices what they did right (in order to preserve it.)
I'm trying to fair with those. What do you think Stu?
Kirby,
As I said, I'm a poetic savage, with all the peculiarities of the self-taught. Which is to say, I know the inscription at Thermopylae, but nothing Ginsberg. I know the Psalms and Homer, Jeremiah and Shakespeare, Tolkien and Isaiah (did you know that Tolkien was on the translation committee for the Jerusalem Bible?!). In the past decade, I've learned of, acquired and read volumes by Sassoon and Neruda. Anything newer, music excepted, I've learned from this blog.
As for modern poetry: "The words of the prophets are written on bathroom stalls, and subway walls," "And the poets down here, don't write nothing at all, they just stand back and let it all be." Don't disregard music as a vehicle for poetry.
Ginsberg was known all through the sixties as a major leader of the left -- friends with people like Abbie Hoffman, Timothy Leary, and others (I assume Stu has heard of these).
Of course I know of Hoffman and Leary, but I consider them to be counter-cultural rather than leftist, and I'm surprised that you don't make this distinction too. Hoffman was more an anarchist than anything else, and Leary a druggie. That both opposed the war in Vietnam (as did the mainstream left) doesn't make them leftists, it just meant a shared agenda on one item. It's like saying that Cornyn and Boxer are the same politically because both opposed the Bernanke reappointment.
Any honest leftist will tell you that real exemplar of effective leftism during the 60's was the anti-hero LBJ, whose accomplishments w.r.t. the the Civil Rights Act of '64 and Voter's Rights Act of '65 stand as monuments without parallel. That he was a flawed hero is a given, painfully evident for those of us who grew up in the 60's, especially for those of us with two-digit lottery numbers.
Still, if Stu's view of Ginsberg was the general one in the avant-garde left, I would be willing to consider myself as part of that group to some degree. But he is regarded as an immense saint, along with Jean Genet, William Burroughs, and Abbie Hoffman.
I'm a leftist, albeit an eccentric one. Certainly not avant-garde. We Lutherans are rear-guard folk :-). I first heard of Genet in Craig's poem. I've heard of Burroughs, but know nothing of him. Hoffman's another story.
I don't think I would have heard of the Beautiful Mind fellow John Nash had it not been for the film. Is that a decent parallel?
Not bad. Any chance you've heard of Juris Hartmanis?
I can't account for this lack of awareness of this very major poet. I could understand if Stu was not in academia.
But as far as I can tell, you can't say five consecutive coherent words about evolution, climate change, or mathematics. C. P. Snowe, two cultures. In spades.
The same people would regard Tiger as a heel after the last two months' revelations.
Different eras are part of it. And of course, Tiger was doing cocktail waitresses, a rich man screwing poor girls. An old story, which fits into an old narrative.
One figure of the left who might not get a pass would be Charles Manson.
How the heck do you figure a psychopath like Manson to be a figure of the left?
GM,
Okay--so your view of Left and Right is absolutely insane and biased and no wonder you think folks on the Right are crazy.
Sanity is overrated. Insight is underrated. Something that the Right and I can agree on.
I propose we use "Tory" and "Whig." No one in America knows the first damn what the words mean and we can, therefore, use them without prejudice.
I don't think it will fly, but I'm glad to note that Lincoln was a Whig before there was a Republican Party. I think he'd find himself more at home in today's Democratic Party than today's Republican Party, the 1860's to 1950's notwithstanding. You might even agree with this, although I suspect Kirby would feel otherwise.
LBJ's biggest mistake wasn't Vietnam, it was in saying that the Civil Rights legislation would cost the Democratic Party the South for generation. He underestimated the stubborn resentment of the South, which still makes excuses for slavery, rebellion, and military dictatorship in the name of states rights, and which is no more reconciled today to the Civil Rights Act than it is to Appomattox.
That said, I think that "Left" and "Right" have lost any reasonable meaning, and it is time for a new political alignment. This is immediately evident in two groups: blue-dog Democrats and ecological Evangelicals.
my mother tried to train my brother who was left handed
to be righthanded
he's amazingly ambidexteruos something i don't think was on her mind
my mother votes right no matter what
she may have voted for kennedy
because she's irish but other than that she's an unthinking right voter
my brother can't make up his mind he's a centrist independent
there's a lot of kinkiness on the right
i thought all the marxists were dead
nobody talks of marxists anymore
except kirby and fox news
it's the unconscious unseen devil loose in america
i suspect that right oriented right folks like the sound of the word right because it helps them to adjust to the way they know themselves to be they don't really think about it
the left uses a left hook
that's how our fearless probably a secret muslim knows nothing represents nothing president got elected it was a left hook
i think the right is still stunned
can't keep those gloves up very well
but they're all being playground pussies those damn righties are
i mean they're just saying no because they know it will piss the lefties off so they like doing it like kids will do when they know how to push buttons
righties are actually wrestling with a huge inferiority complex they know the left understands things better than they do and they're angry about that adn they want to understand but they are blind they think they are americanas but actually they're just powerhungry fascistic slobs in suits...in their comic book world the righties are the righties because america is about profit at the end of the day not about stupid things like clean air and water and all young people being given a fair shake and challenging the presumptions of the sickeningly rich and powerful
i think the only adjustment the left has to make is to give all the power to the women...the next elections should be all about women...the men should all say sayonara...and go fishing...i think the pretentions associated with the idea that maybe we could create a climate where men and women could work together in every sphere- i think that bubble is already bursted
so all the women should get together and be the lefties
and the men can be anything they want to be...and it no longer has to be connected to any demands the women might have of political america
the men if they've read some good books over the years will become the indepentents and everyone else should be righties...peopel who don't read books and think it's all about money and jobs and livin free in america those people should be the righties
i suppose sarah palin and michelle bachman will be the winning ticket in 2012 if the world doesn't explode before that...but i think they should both go over and be lefties
both parties are getting to be very boring parties the food is not good at these parties the music is stupid and nobody is doing anything very enjoyable what's the use of having a party if it isn't going to be enjoyable
i like the way obama razzed and cajoled the reps and sens the other night i thought he was masterful
i like it when he smiles his big african american smile and his teeth sort of glow
basically he was saying to the righties you guys (and girls) are really a bunch of assholes you don't work you don't discuss anything you just fold your arms and echo the pathetic refrain NO YOU CAN"T like kirby olson and then when the lefties ask why they say we have our reasons and then they just fold their arms tighter and tighter like it's some big playground showdown or something
my sense is that kirbyeez preference for the right is like his preference for lockes on the door...even though the chances are one in 999,000,000 that anything would ever happen to the house at night he wants the lockes on the door...the locke on the door of life is the keynsian key to life liberty and the pursuit of ennui
( i think that's what they originally meant)
the right seems only to be saying we are obliged to keep a certain segment of the voting population completely distracted and fearful
adn that means stupid
the right is largely platonic
the left they're aristotelian
they suffer from a warped empiricism but they try to get things right with reality where the righties are locke(d) into platitudes about some god give mishmash about liberty and life and property...that's why real estate is such a big thing in this damn country
all the women must be lefties now
and no more women in real estate
only men get to buy and sell real estate..to canadians
and only men get to run the banks too
except for things like
gaurding the safe deposit boxes women could do that but everything else is men computers and artificial intelligence robots
yeah the righties have to learn to read more and shut up
whereas the lefties need to do some readjusting
the women should just take over the left all to gether
men who read a lot of books must all be independent and largely apathetic
and everyone else can be righty
maybe all ginsberg was doing was advocating that he really wanted to be a woman
but i think those sorts of persons should all be on the right
the only people who will be free to be in either party are people like me in religious life who don't give a damn about the contemporary feuds between the cognizant and the benighted
in order to be free to go with or go to any party you like you like have to be like willing to make a personal like sacrifice for like a like higher purpose
or else i'm just going to appoint you to the appropriate party and that's it
it is a brave new world
tories to the left of me
whigs to the right
here i am
stuck in the middle with ewe
jh
LS/conservative talking points:
1) Obama has to use a teleprompter.
2) Obama never makes jokes.
3) Obama never admits mistakes.
The evidence to the contrary:
http://tinyurl.com/yks9oxv
Brett, this is 81 minutes long. I listened to the first two minutes, and did hear him say that he wants vigorous debate. That was good, but not funny. He seemed to be reading notes. Could you tell me which minute I should go to? I can't listen to this guy very long. I've heard far too many of his vapid speeches. He's not as grinding as Kerry is to my ears, and at least his hair is not insane, as Kerry's is, but I need to spend less than five minutes on this kind of thing -- too many other taxin' pursuits.
Stu,
Fair enough about the two cultures business, but Ginsberg has been quite a lot in the news, whereas mathematicians and their accomplishments rarely make the news.
I'll try to fill you in more later.
Tertium quid: Tories with wigs.
At about 22 minutes is where the question/answer section starts.
He makes the Republicans laugh in the first words of his first answer...
This is a 'highlights' video, if 60 minutes is too long -
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/32225.html
Of course, with a political slant and spin, but that's what you inevitably get when you don't want to listen to something in its entirety.
He admits that not having the debates on C-Span was a mistake on his part, born of his failure to organize the conversations in such a way that they could be filmed.
And others, too, but you'll have to watch the whole video to find those:-)
Yeah, the problem is that the "counterculture" of the 1960s is exactly what the left is.
Also, MUSIC IS NOT POETRY AND POETRY IS NOT MUSIC. They are closely related. But music has melisma and poetry does not--allowing music to get away with FAR less rigorous language.
Yes.
Lincoln was a whig. He was also wrong.
Let's see--what intelligent things about evolution, climate change, and mathematics would you like to hear?
We defer to you on mathematics because that field of study doesn't seem to be politicized. But I don't believe we've heard you spout anything but the party--I mean consensus--line on the first two.
Here's five words about mathematics:
Infinity orders: true and necessary.
jh's comment got me thinking about some lefty memes about conservatives:
1) Conservatives don't read.
2) Conservatives are angry.
3) Conservatives are just reacting and don't actually have ideas.
4) Conservatives are only concerned with themselves and don't care about other people.
Now of course the reverse is true. How do we bear false witness against you?
Stu has factual problems, too. For instance he thought that the Duke faculty had spoken up about the lacrosse lynching. A very few did, very much later, and they didn't do anything more than squib a puny note to the campus paper.
It's as if a lynching had taken place in a small town and nine months later a few members of the small town, after it had been universally conceded that the lynching was wrong, came out with a circular to the effect that they should have done something.
I don't think mathematics matters in terms of values creation. On the other hand, Ginsberg has had a massive impact in that area. He is in fact a kind of unacknowledged legislator of a whole new area of values including within the gay rights, and gay marriage area that has altered Stu's synod.
Ginsberg has been undeniably a major engine of change in America.
I can't think of any mathematician who has had a similar transformative impact on American values.
It's values that we're talking about.
Stu claims Lincoln for the Democratic party, when the Democratic party was profoundly against the Civil War. He does this without offering any reasons for his opinion.
I'm sure GM would be willing to give Lincoln over to the Democrats.
But Lincoln went to war, and stuck with the war although it was terribly unpopular and this cost him his life. I can't see anything that the Democrats are willing to do that would result in a new war.
They are willing to cost lives, but only when it comes to babies who can't hurt them back.
Also, Lincoln could keep his speeches relatively brief. Gettysburg is less than 300 words.
Obama drones on and on and you go through it with a comb and can't find anything that he's said.
I went through Audacity and found it consisted of nothing but high-sounding phrases that said nothing.
Bush could keep his speeches short. He may not have always been grammatical in the finnicky Bostonian sense, but there was meaning in his Texas-style sentences. The tiny speech after 9/11 was magnificent compared to all the brainless bluster and tacking about of BO.
""counterculture" of the 1960s is exactly what the left is."
No, GM. That's not true. Not true at all.
That's the way the right likes to paint the left.
But, nope, you're wrong.
That'd be like me saying that the Teabaggers are all exactly what the right is.
Except, of course, Teabaggering would be a Slightly better labeling, because it's not anachronistic.
Even though this labeling would be better than yours, it'd still be wrong for a whole host of obviously-fallacious reasons.
Just like your labeling.
Lame, bad labeling.
Lest we forget.
The 60s were 40 years ago.
Stu is on the left. I am on the left. Nothing in either of us (except that I Sometimes have a beard) makes any sense in terms of the 60s counterculture.
Yawn yawn, Vietnam, Altamont and the atom bomb.
Next, please.
BO did have one great diplomatic moment: The Beer Picnic.
We didn't get to hear what he said there, but we did get to see him wipe his peanut grease on his trousers.
I'll give him credit for that as his public relations triumph. But the Cambridge Police Union backed Scott Brown, so maybe it wasn't such a triumph.
It struck me that maybe many readers aren't familiar with Ginsberg. I love some of his poems. This one is a favorite, though I'm not going to print quite the whole thing. He'd been hitchhiking to Seattle with Gary Snyder (heard of him??), and squibbed this meanwhile -- about 1956:
AFTERNOON SEATTLE
Busride along waterfront down Yessler under street bridge
to the old red Wobbly Hall --
One Big Union, posters of the Great Mandala of Labor,
bleareyed dusty cardplayers dreaming behind the counter . . .
'but these young fellers can't see ahead and we nothing to
offer' --
After Snyder his little red beard and bristling Buddha mind
I weeping crossed Skid Road to 10c. beer.
Labyrinth wood stairways and Greek movies under Farmers
Market second hand city, Indian smoked salmon old overcoats
and dry red shoes,
Green Parrot Theater, Maytime, and down to the harborside
the ships, walked on Alaska silent together -- ferryboat coming
faraway in mist from Bremerton Island dreamlike small on the
waters of Holland to me
-- and entered my head the seagull, a shriek, sentinels
standing over rusty harbor iron clockwork, rocks dripping under
rotten wharves slime on the walls --
the seagull's small cry -- inhuman not of the city, lone
sentinels of God, animal birds among us indifferent, their bleak
lone cries representing our souls.
A rowboat docked and chained floating in the tide by a
wharf. Basho's frog. Someone left it there, it drifts.
Sailor's curio shop hung with shells and skulls a whalebone
mask, Indian seas. The cities rot from oldest parts. Little red
mummy from Idaho Frank H. Little your big hat high cheek-
bones crosseyes and song.
The cities rot from the center, the suburbs fall apart a slow
apocalypse of rot the spectral trolleys fade
the cities rot the fire escapes hang and rust the brick turns black
dust falls
uncollected garbage heaps the wall
the birds invade with their cries
the skid row alley creeps
downtown the ancient jailhouse groans
bums snore under the pavement
So Brett,
All of a sudden you are against abortion and gay marriage?
You think that murderers and rapists should be hanged?
You think that people are poor because they choose to be?
Sorry, but the "counterculture" since the days before Byron has lead the West through a steady "progression" (HA) that has traded order for chaos.
WB,
A Leftist/Whig contemplates "change" with expectation.
A Rightist/Tory contemplates "change" with trepidation.
A Leftist/Whig places emphasis on what could be.
A Rightist/Tory places emphasis on what has been.
A Leftist/Whig looks at his forebears and notices what they did wrong (in order to fix it.)
A Rightist/Tory looks at his forebears and notices what they did right (in order to preserve it.)
I'm trying to fair with those. What do you think Stu?
I don't object. But I think that most of us are impure w.r.t. these definitions. As I look to the past, I see some right, some wrong. Much of what has gone before us should be preserved. Some should not. We are neither wiser nor less wise than our forebears. But we do have an advantage over them of knowing what they did, and how it turned out in their circumstances for good or ill.
picklesworth if you call me just another degenerate blogger in cyberspace i will be deeply offended
yet i contend
i was lured into this whole realm of LS with the promise that it would be alright if i acted like an idiot
kirby said i could everyone else more or less expects it so i'm just going to keep up the good work ethic of local idiocy village idiocy - if you must
an idiot with a lute
now you get the picture
hmnh hmnh hmnh
picklesworths' limricks are neat
not only witty but replete
with scathing suggestion
of jhs' indigestion
when he dines on pickles and meat
i think there are some rightys who read there was what's his name that catholic dude and the lutheran dude priest who became a catholic dude priest what were those guys' names i forgot by god it's been so long - william f buckley that's it and the other guy was was was was was was was was was was was FIRST THINGS richard richard richard richard john neuhaus that's the guy i knew i'd rmemebereremberber ebr blah blah blah
what was i saying
o yeah rightys who read kirby is a righty and he reads a lot but he's an awfully odd righty you must admit
I'm just trying to make the political landscape easier for people and easier for me to take over the complete leadership of this country when it's time...hey what time is it anyway? i'm proposing a leadership based on serious apathy...my message to the people will always be...you know when it comes right down to it
I REALLY DON'T CARE
all i really care about is people giving me their money i've determined that is the only way anyone is ever going to be happy
give brother john your money and you will know sublime happiness
i especially love the smell of the money that the very rich have it just smells so nice
i do agree with kirby that republicans smell better than leftys...but i think there's a real message in that earthy odor we all smell coming from the left
i just hope someone recognizes the futility of social agendas beyond things like naps and healthy food
seeyez
jh
There is clearly a Humanistic hothouse, in which professors of this and professors of that engage in spirited debate in journals, conferences, faculty meetings, and hot tubs for all I care. And in which who thinks what of whom, and indeed who is screwing whom (either literally or metaphorically) represent the most compelling truths of the moment. If you're of that community.
It's kind of like the blogosphere of the right, another hothouse. You seem to be drawn to them.
Did you hear what Berube had to say about Silliman? Do you know what Althouse thinks about Podhoretz? Probably. In that whole world, the only one I give a damn about is Chomsky, and that's because of his theorems. In my world, the Chomsky normal form theorem for context free languages has value. All the rest of it, not so much. I'm not denying the possibility that there's value for you in the rest, just that there's no value for me.
Do these academic battles make the papers? Yeah, but I don't read the stories, any more than you read the stories about mathematics/computer science. Sometimes these discussions spill out into nonacademic culture, but far, far less often than the inmates believe. They're all legends in their own minds. Yours too, it seems. Not my flavor of Koolaide.
The idea that the political left relies in an substantive way on the humanist left is laughable. About as laughable as the notion that the humanist left has intellectual respect for the political left. It's no different on the right, e.g., I doubt very much that Brooks' opinion of Cornyn is suitable for a family-oriented blog, nor DeMint's opinion of Bennett. So it goes.
Stu, much of what mathematicians do is probably equally irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. And you've already pointed out how mathematicians also like to gather in coffee houses to spin their theories like tops, and create amusement for one another.
And perhaps this is a kind of coffee house where those of us who woiuld not be able to carry on a conversation in real time can have several hours to think of responses, and to do some research, get our facts wrong from time to time, misspell, and still find it of interest to return. That's what I hope for.
I am probably an odd duck to be a neo-Republican. And no doubt if I was in deep country Mississippi or in Texas I would swing the other way, but I am in New York, and lived in Seattle, and in Finland, so I haven't seen the other side much, but did get alarmed by the silliness of Brother Allen, and his terrible assertions that came especially in the twilight years.
Chavez had to devalue the Venezuelan monetary unit this morning's paper asserts.
I would be with the Bohemians if they would agree to be a very small group that didn't threaten to take over the government. With Obama in, and those poems in the Occidental Journal, I'm not sure he isn't one of us, which means, not factually sound, and substituting poetry for good plain sense, and probably trending towards Buddhism.
I love all those things, honestly, and vegetarian cafeterias, and even sympathize when some teen girl breaks into a fox house and releases the foxy furs into the forests.
It's just that that kind of thing should remain a very marginal enterprise.
The big enterprise has to be Lutheranism, or something like it. Something that can just say no.
NO NO NO NO NO NO.
If nobody else is going to do it, then I'm going to do it.
NO HE CAN'T.
There, I said it!
Wordsworth, Podhoretz, and, um, meeeeeeee.
What is the song that goes no no a no, a no no, a no no no, no no no no, no no no no no!
That should be our theme song.
Kirby,
Stu, much of what mathematicians do is probably equally irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
I don't disagree. But Mathematicians, not ordinarily thought of as being socially intelligent, don't think that society in general hangs on their words. That's a particular delusion of the humanities.
Except Stu,
That the "humanistic left" is responsible for teaching the following:
Teachers
Artists
Historians
Journalists
Poly-Sci Majors (who become)
Lawyers
NGO workers
If you don't think the above folks have influence in society then I fear you've been breathing the chalk dust too deeply.
Kirby,
Stu has factual problems, too. For instance he thought that the Duke faculty had spoken up about the lacrosse lynching. A very few did, very much later, and they didn't do anything more than squib a puny note to the campus paper.
A bit of revisionist history? You accused the entire Duke faculty (~2200 souls) for complicity in a note that was signed by fewer than 150 of their number. I noted that there were some voices on the other side (law and econ specifically). You say econ came out late. I don't think that's clear, but I also don't think I've misrepresented the Duke faculty, but clearly you have.
I don't think mathematics matters in terms of values creation. On the other hand, Ginsberg has had a massive impact in that area. He is in fact a kind of unacknowledged legislator of a whole new area of values including within the gay rights, and gay marriage area that has altered Stu's synod.
I doubt Ginsberg figured in many people's minds in Minneapolis this summer. He's been dead for more than a decade, after all. No, I think it's the realization that sexual orientation is innate, and that there are monogamous homosexuals. I'll also note in passing that Romans 1 makes it clear that homosexuality is a punishment for the sin of not acknowledging the God they knew, rather than being sin of itself. Not that I expect Biblical literalists to be Biblically literate, nor to distinguish sin from the consequences thereof. Remember the man blind from birth in John 9. Maybe the homosexuals among us today exist so that God's works might be revealed through them. What say you, Pharisees?
I can't think of any mathematician who has had a similar transformative impact on American values.
I'm skeptical that Ginsberg has transformed American values. Offended, perhaps, but not transformed.
But let me suggest a few mathematicians who have had a big impact on Americal values. Boole. Peirce. Shannon. If foreigners are allowed, Newton, Kolmogorov, Turing. That you don't know the connections is given. It doesn't mean they're not there.
Stu claims Lincoln for the Democratic party, when the Democratic party was profoundly against the Civil War. He does this without offering any reasons for his opinion.
I clearly referred to the Democratic Party from 1960 on, i.e., the time when the Democratic Party turned embraced Civil Rights, and the Republican Party rejected them. And obviously, that is the reason why. That and Lincoln's whiggishness. Oh, and the fact that he stood for Union. Today's secessionists wear red ties and flags on their lapels.
But Lincoln went to war, and stuck with the war although it was terribly unpopular and this cost him his life. I can't see anything that the Democrats are willing to do that would result in a new war.
Heath care. Obama's trying to hold together the Union, as today's so-called Republicans are trying to tear it apart. And he's paid a price in popularity. But Chancellorsville gave way to Gettysberg, and it's too early to count a good man down.
ferryboat coming
faraway in mist from Bremerton Island dreamlike small on the
waters of Holland to me
The Seattle waterfront didn't change very much between 1956 and 1965, the year when I started taking the boat from Bremerton Island. It's actually the easternmost portion of the Olympic peninsula, referred to by locals as the Kitsap peninsula. Ginsberg must have meant Bainbridge Island, not realizing there were two boats. Bainbridge is where Roethke went to recuperate from his bouts with manic-depression on the estate of a timber baron descended, like Roethke, from German immigrants. He died in their swimming pool. One of my dad's colleagues bought the house next door to the timber baron two years after Roethke died and we often went to visit, usually on long holiday weekends. We even got to go sailing once on the timber baron's 90 foot yacht. The estate is now a botanical garden known as the Bloedel Reserve.
Sailor's curio shop hung with shells and skulls a whalebone
mask, Indian seas. The cities rot from oldest parts.
I think he's talking about The Olde Curiousity Shoppe. I'm pretty sure it's still there. Our junior high Science Club went over on the boat in 1965 to see an exhibit at the Seattle Science Center, a holdover from the World's Fair in '62. Most of the club stopped in at Radio Shack to look at electronic gadgets on the way back to the boat. Mickey Sabo and I decided we'd rather go to the Curiousity Shoppe, so we ran about fifteen blocks to get there. It was only a a block away from the ferry dock, but we stayed too long and missed the boat. Poor Mr. Glenn, our faculty adviser, had to get the skipper to use the ship-to-shore radio to tell the ticket taker at the dock to let us on board the next boat an hour later. Our mothers had to drive into Bremerton to pick us up when we got to the other side. Up until then I was planning a career in rocket science. Mickey played the sousaphone in the marching band. He never talked with me much after that. I think he probably still blames me for missing the boat.
jay-ache is not degenerate;
he's not one of the pack;
he's not a slinky model
with an impressive rack.
he's not a guy who says the same
as every other putz.
he's writing for the joy of it
and spilling out his gutz.
funny things he likes to string
in paragraphs and more,
hanging them on clotheslines
and piling them on the floor.
i hope this verse convinces you
i pray it's made it clear
that you are A and Plus with me,
a minstrel i hold dear.
stu:
Thanks for this clarification to Kirby on Republicans and civil rights legislation:
"I clearly referred to the Democratic Party from 1960 on, i.e., the time when the Democratic Party turned embraced Civil Rights, and the Republican Party rejected them."
Wrong and unfair.
As a quick check of party voting stats on, e.g., the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 indicate, in both cases a higher proportion of Repubs voted for the legislation than Demos. And in the second case, the temporary provisions of the act have had broad bipartisan support
(1970, 1975, 1982, 2006)
during Repub presidential administrations.
Some of the decades-old legislative debates over what are "civil rights" and what kind of "equality" is desirable concern the opportunity-grounded versus the result-grounded arguments as well as what proper roles federal legislation and government mandates have to play.
In any case, it would be interesting to know how many straight math or computer science PhDs the U of Chicago has granted in recent years to African-Americans. Any figures or analysis available?
Kirby:
I'll go with GM's, WB's and your comments on Whigs and Tories and of course identify with the Burkean latter group.
(However, what is known as the "Whig Interpretation of History" is more complex, though it certainly suggests "progressive"--though not necessarily Leftist--beliefs.) Most of those of the current lib-Left often seem to have their feet firmly planted in the air.
I also think stu and Brett (and perhaps jh) have under-estimated the dominance the cultural Left enjoys in academia and its influence on media, goverment, business, even religious institutions.
Jacques it's nice to have you back and thank you for this clarification.
Craig, the Seattle poem is about walking around Pioneer Square, but I think they also walk up to Pill Hill on Yessler and over through the REI area, before descending again.
The old Wobbly hall was just across the bridge on Yessler into Pill Hill.
the theatre he mentions is an old porno theatre where bums slept for most of the afternoon for the cheap price of a movie.
the ten cent beer sign is still in Pioneer Sq. but I think this was already historical in Ginsberg's time?
How much did a beer cost in 1956 in Seattle's Pioneer Square?
Also, the men groaning for beans -- the Salvation Army headquarters is stillin Pioneer Sq., and lots of bums line up.
Snyder and Ginsberg plot through the poem what do we give to the young? they seem to have settled on a Rousseauian nature worship combined with Buddhism.
Their letters are now out, and a more thorough study ciould be done, but I think that's more or less what they decided upon: destroy western civilization and replace it with Buddhism and a kind of nature worship (Snyder went more toward the nature worship) which you could say in turn goes back into the Christian transcendentalists, and has a somewhat more healthy quality than the nuttiness that Ginsberg served up.
But they were both thinking about what to serve up. Mandalas of what is the essence fo the thinking int he poem. What do we serve the kids to save them, and make ourselves into beer parlours, getting them drunk on LSD and crazy sex visions.
In the 60s (the 1960s) the left was not inside the Democratic party to the extent that they now are. The kids who went wild at the Chicago Democratic convention are now deeply entrenched inside the party and are doddering about.
Bill Ayres who was a Weatherman at the time is now deeply entrenched inside of Democratic politics, for instance.
There are hundreds of thousands of people like him in the Democratic party.
I don't think LBJ would recognize the Democrat party today, and would almost certainly side with the Republicans. LBJ was on the side of Vietnam, and very few inside the Democrat party have any sense that war might ever be necessary.
Many are seemingly sorry that America even continues to exist.
Even the president's wife has made statements to the effect of how she grew up never feeling pride in America. I think that's the basic sentiment of the Democrat party.
It's certainly a sentiment that you can find in very high-level Democrats such as the president's wife, or in his appointment to the SOTUS who said that white men haven't got any judgment.
Which, it seemed to me, was a denial of the Founders, and of every president but one since the inception.
All one big bad that she has come waddling along to correct.
Meanwhile, more bad science, in terms of the climate "problem":
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7009705.ece
"very few inside the Democrat party have any sense that war might ever be necessary."
This during an administration that has doubled our efforts in Afghanistan...
Oh Cognitive dissonance, where are you?
JADL,
You are factually correct. A greater proportion of Republicans than Democrats (in both houses) voted for the Civil Rights Act of '64. This was a time of transition. E.g., Strom Thurmond voted against the Civil Rights Act of '64 as a Democrat, and against the Voting Rights Act of '65 as a Republican. Other Southern Democrats (representing the hard core of the "no" votes on both) would move to the Republican Party, which gladly accepted them in the run-up to the '68 election.
But I do think this is a second order term. The question of the precise moment in time when the Democrats became more progressive than the Republicans on matters of racial justice is something that depends a lot on how you discount the trends. Certainly, when Eisenhower brought the National Guard into Little Rock in '58, the honor was with the Republicans. But I'll note that Barry Goldwater opposed the Civil Rights legislation, and I can only assume that Richard Nixon (the architect of the Republican Southern strategy, and Republican Presidential candidate in '60 as well as '68/'72) opposed it as well.
In any case, it would be interesting to know how many straight math or computer science PhDs the U of Chicago has granted in recent years to African-Americans. Any figures or analysis available?
Sure. Dig back through the archives. In the meantime, can you explain to me why you think this question is relevant to the issue at hand?
Kirby,
I was just at a local Barnes and Nobel. I figured I'd check and see if they had any Ginsberg poetry, as you've made him out to be a big cheese and all. It took me a while to find the poetry section, relegated as it was to a low traffic section of the store, I'm sorry to say. They had about 9 shelves of poetry, much of which consisted of anthologies. They did have two books by Ginsberg, a single volume collected works, and a shorter volume. Not nothing, but not much. GM will be glad to know that they had six volumes of Plath, as a first point of comparison. I didn't think to check for Moore.
I dare say I'd have found more at the Seminary Coop in Hyde Park, but that's hardly a fair test of cultural impact. Indeed, even Barnes and Nobel is relatively academic as mass-market bookstores go.
In comparison, there were about 30 shelves of specifically Christian themed material, located in a high traffic area between the 2nd floor elevator and the coffee shop, including a half-dozen shelves of Bibles.
They had many more copies of "Inconvenient Truth" out than Ginsberg, and still more copies of "Going Rogue." And, of course, Danielle Steele and J.K. Rowling blew them all away. So much for cultural impact.
Stu, there's probably a difference between the number of people reading a book such as GOING ROGUE, and the quality of readers. For instance, poetry can be reread, whereas I don't think GOING ROGUE can be reread. I love Ginsberg's poems in many cases, and have a very high recollection of many of them.
I read JK Rowling with my daughter from 3rd grade up (she's now concluding the series with the 7th or 8th book) and I have no specific recollection of a section of any of these books that I would like to revisit. I would not tell her that, but it's the truth.
Some of Moore's poems I've read a thousand times, probably, and keep finding new material in them.
It's a bit like reading the Bible. Today we went through the St. Paul letter again where he talks about love, and how it's different than making a spectacle of oneself in the church by going into tongues and clanging around like a gong. I was astonished by how much in it still seemed new to me.
"Love never ends."
I thought of my father, again, and how true the tiny sentence was.
Maybe too it is something like junk food from McDonald's which sells in outlandish numbers. Trillions, I suppose, are now up on the marquee.
But we don't wish to go back and re-experience the quick trip through the drivethrough in our memory.
But a visit to a very good restaurant one can revisit.
Most people probably don't care about those distinctions.
I think some do.
I know you and I do. I know that all of the people visiting this blog do, including JH.
We all know about a difference between quality and quantity.
Quality sticks. We have talked about quality before.
I am not averse to quantity (some days I have gotten over 4000 hits on the blog), but what I still hope to sustain is a quality conversation. That means more to me than thousands of people coming from all over the world for a lick of hot grease.
Poetry sells in tiny numbers, but the people who visit and read and reread it I do think have a larger impact on the society.
Mathematicians and poets are alike in wanting to look at things a lot looking than most.
I apologise for not knowing much about mathematics. I got stalled on negative numbers in my Cliff's Notes Guide to Algebra One. I doubted if they knew what they were talking about. But it's been about a year since I had that terribly frustrating experience.
I now have sabbatical, so will try to finish the book. I'm hoping once Grady gets tenure, he will come back.
I'm pretty happy with the composition of the seminar at present, but I do think we need two mathematicians so that we can experience a rumble between them from time to time.
I'm very happy with Picklesworth, and I wish Sally would stick around more.
As for JH, his recent rejection of the blog troubles me. I am filled with sorrow by his temptation to depart.
He makes me crazy, but I want him to participate.
I go back to the political sphere partially because it becomes a fantastic free-for-all, and partially it ups my numbers, and partially that sphere is so troubling.
But we could also try to retreat into more arcane spheres soon.
I'm thinking of a post about dwarves, and giants, soon. Why are we so fascinated by the liminal? There is a dwarf in one of the Gospels -- I think it's in Luke. He says that a man of "small stature" is sitting up in a sycamore tree. Is that the tax collector?
Is the small stature referring to his actual size or to his lack of standing in the community or both?
Dwarves and midgets (the latter term is no longer counselled -- it's something along the lines of saying "negro" when one should say "black" or "African American).
Kirby,
Keep your Potter Hatred to yourself. I've read the books probably three or four times over now and, like all excellent sagas, continually find new and interesting points. F'rinstance, it is clear now that Potter is an allegory for Jesus throughout the entire work, beginning with his being raised by "outsiders" and showing precocity at about the age of 12.
But I digress.
Stu, you do realize that the "realization that sexual blah blah is innate" is directly because of the work of Ginsberg, et al?
Well, he might be a parallel figure to Jesus, with his precocity, but I can't imagine Jesus playing the game on the broom, or fighting in quite the way he does with Voldemort.
I see this as a different world altogether. Many people claim I look like Harry Potter grown up. I rather like that.
I just don't find the prose intricate enough, or the lines funny enough.
How would you rank it next to Shakespeare?
I think you probably get pretty much the whole thing in one go, whereas Shakespeare feels inexhaustible to me.
I haven't heard the Harry Potter as Jesus meme before. Now I feel less embarrassed when my daughter brings the book to church.
GM,
Stu, you do realize that the "realization that sexual blah blah is innate" is directly because of the work of Ginsberg, et al?
Do you have a reference?
Kirby,
It's prose.
It's utter worthless shit that Shakespeare wouldn't wipe off of a dead horse's ass.
Now, compared to other prose it's quite good. Especially compared to other saga-type prose. Rowling's not as good as Tolkien in some respects though in others she is. She's not as funny as CS Lewis but not as circumspect either. She's a damn hell sight better than Steinbeck and Buck. She's better than Stephen King.
Stu,
I would start <a href="http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2008/04/open-letter-to-open-minded-progressives.html>here</a>.
He's done most of the leg work in making the case painfully obvious.
But if you can't already see it, I don't know how anyone can make you.
Her stories are certainly enthralling. I wasn't paying attention to style when I read them because the stories were too good.
stu:
Just a note on your erroneous note on Richard Nixon and civil rights. You wrote:
"But I'll note that Barry Goldwater opposed the Civil Rights legislation, and I can only assume that Richard Nixon (the architect of the Republican Southern strategy, and Republican Presidential candidate in '60 as well as '68/'72) opposed it as well."
Again, a casual fact check defeats your assumption. Arguably President Nixon willingly and successfully engineered the greatest desegregation effort the US has seen, and especially in schools, though he thought forced busing to achieve racial balance a misguided and self-defeating strategy (I think his judgement's been vindicated on that score). He inaugurated the first federal affirmative action programme and endorsed an Equal Rights amendment in addition to other measures aiming to foster greater equality of opportunity.
I've noted before how support for measures to ensure greater opportunity and protection of the laws inherent in sound civil rights legislation (and its enforcement) is often co-opted among "progressives" by talk about "racial justice," "social justice," "affirmative action" etc., which are often euphemisms for racially-preferential hiring, set-asides, quotas, redistribution schemes, and entitlement dependency, the latter set often inimical to the ideals of civil rights and equal protection for all citizens.
My last question was perhaps just academic, for I wondered whether your departments of math and computer science conceive "racial justice" is an attendant goal of your educational mission, and if so, what you've achieved in the areas of PhD-granting or hiring vis a vis African-American candidates.
Here's a pretty good overview article on the Duke 88 case, again for Stu. According to the article, out of the original 88, one actually did apologize, and it was a mathematics professor named Arlie Petter:
http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2007/05/kc_johnson_is_a_professor.html
Here is the Wiki article on Arlie Petters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arlie_Petters
Per Jacques' question, he appears to be from Belize, which means he's African-Belizean, or something, I suppose (I don't think you can say African-American about a guy born in Belize, but I have no idea what you can say, so maybe you can).
Kirby,
Has Ginsberg's homosexuality ever caused you to question your own heterosexuality? Has his lifestyle made it easier for you to imagine yourself as a homosexual? Have the "mountains of homosexuality" that Ginsberg discovered within himself ever suggested that there might be the slightest molehill of homosexuality within you?
I doubt it.
If you look at the traditional seven deadly sins, I get them. Wrath? You want to fight about it? Greed? Give me more! Sloth? Let me sleep on it. Lust? Oh, yeah, baby! Envy? You have it, you know you do. And damn it, I want it! Gluttony? What's one more?
These are all sins I can wrap my head around. I can see the temptation.
Anal Sex? You've got to be kidding. If you're not wired that way, there's revulsion, not temptation.
So what exactly is the threat? I don't doubt that Ginsberg challenged you and made you uncomfortable. "Big dirty sex poems?" Ginsberg hardly invented them, not even in their homoerotic form. If sex sells cars, sex can sell poems, and with them the poet. His advice wasn't necessarily bad, as generic advice from one poet to another goes, but he failed to account for his audience.
It wouldn't surprise me if, given the bad reputation that faith has in society today that he'd be amused to advise you to write poems that reflected a judgmental (i.e., dirty) faith, knowing that this would get people riled up, and so talking about you.
And so the circle turns. You're his disciple, in ways that you haven't yet realized. Would Ginsberg have his reputation without his homosexuality? I doubt it. Maybe your peculiar faith holds the key to building yours.
JADL,
So, Nixon is a paragon of Equal Rights? It's hard to reconcile with his "Southern strategy," but Nixon was a man of contradictions, even more so than FDR. I'll provisionally concede the point for now, as regards Nixon. But issues with specific individuals aside, the southern segregations left the Democratic party in the late 60's, and found a welcoming home in the Republican party. I don't hear much talk about Equal Rights coming out of the R's these days, fetuses excepted, of course.
You ask about African-Americans in Math and CS at the University of Chicago. We've done better than a lot of departments, but the track record is hardly envious. UC Math recently had a African-American chair, and as it turns out, graduated the first African-American Ph.D. But I don't know the recent record of that department. Computer Science had one African-American Ph.D., in '96 IIRC. This sounds terrible, but it's actually pretty good, given that African-Americans constitute about 1/4% of the CS Ph.D.'s, and we've granted fewer than 100 Ph.D.'s. We've done much better in our MS program, but I don't have the statistics.
You ask whether our departments conceive 'racial justice' as a goal. In some sense, the answer is yes. There's no reason to believe that CS or Math talent concentrates in males of northern european ancestry, and therefore, it seems likely that departments that can attract a more diverse faculty, and train a more diverse student body, have the opportunity to be stronger than they would be otherwise.
GM,
I took a quick look at the article you referred to. Honestly, the beginning (consisting of paragraph after paragraph of repeated assertion that liberality was an article of faith, without the slightest shred of evidence, nor the slightest differentiation w.r.t. conservatism) was an utter turn-off. I have little use for authors who seem so determined to waste my time.
But if you can't already see it, I don't know how anyone can make you.
Kind of how I feel about the Debt/GDP graph, and that is actually evidence rather than mere opinion. Everyone here just knows that the Dems are worse financial managers than the Reps. Not much point considering actual evidence.
Re: Dems/GOP--the point is now rendered moot as the 2010 and 2011 deficits are larger than what, ALL of the Bush ones?
stu:
Thanks for providing the information on your departments' record on degree-granting and hiring of African-American candidates. I know there haven't been many to reach those levels in math and computer science, but I hope there will be more in future. I don't know why there haven't been more, but I'm sure it hasn't been because of adverse discrimination.
Yes, Nixon was a man of contradictions; he was a force for guaranteeing civil rights for minorities and he did try to attract Southern Demos, including reformed segregationists, to the Repub party. The time was long overdue for change, as fair-minded people of all political persuasions realised. It's unfortunate that the worthy cause of guaranteeing constitutional perogatives left to the states served so many so long as a smokescreen for the evil practice of racial segregation.
As for the PhD problem within certain constituencies, I think some of it has to do with dynastic emphasis. Once in a class in grad school the prof asked the 45 of us how many had parents with Ph.D.'s. All but two raised their hands.
You need a parent to show you the ropes, I think, via seeing them reading and discussing in the house.
Cosby says there's an 80% man-missing rate in African American households. This also creates a dearth of gold, since there's only one income.
Getting through grad school to get a Ph.D. doesn't guarantee income. If it's income that's wanted, other avenues are probably better prospects.
As for the what's the worry question that Stu asks wrt Ginsberg and anal sex -- I'm not worried for myself, but for the culture, in which I fear that this is becoming a norm. ginsberg is one of the few authors that is universally taught, and I think that his viewpoint will come to seem normal, which is the whole point of teaching him over and over.
The idea is to ram that viewpoint down the throats of students like worms down the hatches of baby birds creating a whole new generation of pervs. Some of those students might have been borderline cases but ow they'll go over to the left, and harm the nation doing their best to overlook the ten commandments and any other previous norm.
Ginsberg was violently against all the norms: against war, against marital love and faithfulness, against faith itself, against hygiene.
JADL,
I nominate calling the Dixiecrats who moved from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party over their objections to Great Society era Civil Rights legislation "reformed segregationists" for the LS whitewash of the year. It was a odd statement in a remarkably irenic note.
It's unfortunate that the worthy cause of guaranteeing constitutional perogatives left to the states served so many so long as a smokescreen for the evil practice of racial segregation.
Amen to that. I think this underscores why the federal government (as it did under Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and most successive administrations) had/has to take the lead in Civil Rights. Some of the States have histories/agendas that are not compatible with the view of equality under the law.
Kirby,
My theory w.r.t. African-Americans specifically is that those who have the ability to succeed academically get a fair bit of pressure to go into fields that have a high social impact, e.g., law (for obvious reasons), and medicine (because doctors are looked up to, irrespective of race). In effect, they were/are as foot-soldiers in a battle to uplift their race. Math and CS (except for CS for a few years between '97 and '00) are not generally viewed as fields that have a high probably of generating a large income, or providing a pulpit for racial legitimization. If anything, they're high risk, moderate impact fields.
One thing that you'd think would result in more diverse faculties/student bodies is the ubiquity of student support. Math and CS graduate students, with few exceptions, get teaching or research assistantships which cover tuition and provide enough income to support a modest lifestyle. But the benefit seems entirely theoretical. African-Americans would rather go into debt and get their degrees in English, or so it seems.
Both Math and CS struggle with gender as well as ethnic diversity. Various studies have shown "pipeline issues," i.e., the proportion of women and minorities interested in Math (specifically) decreases from primary school, through secondary school, undergraduate, graduate, and faculty ranks. And given that things were once much worse than they are, there's a real dearth of female full profs in Math. The situation in CS is better, if only in comparison to Math.
At the same time, however, these departments tend to be quite diverse in an international sense. E.g., my department's faculty has 11 native USAians, three Indians, two Hungarians, and one each from Israel, Argentina, New Zealand, and Russia. Our current Ph.D. students are even more diverse, and come from Turkey,
India, Italy, the Philippines, Iran, China, Russia, Vietnam, Spain, the US, and probably a couple others.
As for the what's the worry question that Stu asks wrt Ginsberg and anal sex -- I'm not worried for myself, but for the culture, in which I fear that this is becoming a norm.
Let me take this apart, as your statement (which I'll paraphrase as "anal sex is becoming a norm") can be interpreted in at least three ways.
1. Some people who would otherwise have no attraction to homosexually (what I'll call "innate heteros") will be recruited into a homosexual life style.
2. Some people who are innately homosexual, but who would have in the past chosen to live a publicly heterosexual (and probably de facto bisexual) lifestyle will chose instead a publicly homosexual lifestyle.
3. Heterosexuals will come to see homosexuality as something that is acceptable if a bit peculiar, sort of like being a Republican.
I believe that the effect of Ginsberg and others has certainly been to move us closer to 3 (today's news about the military reconsidering don't ask, don't tell is a case in point). I don't doubt that 2 is happening too, but I see this as a good thing. The marriage relationship is too important to allow it to become camouflage for something else. And too many women (it's mostly women) have ended up in marriages without much physical warmth, and with AIDS, due to this sort of abuse. And the point behind my asking questions about your personal reaction is to point out that 1 probably isn't happening, whatever your fears.
Both Math and CS struggle with gender as well as ethnic diversity. Various studies have shown "pipeline issues," i.e., the proportion of women and minorities interested in Math (specifically) decreases from primary school, through secondary school, undergraduate, graduate, and faculty ranks. And given that things were once much worse than they are, there's a real dearth of female full profs in Math. The situation in CS is better, if only in comparison to Math.
At the same time, however, these departments tend to be quite diverse in an international sense. E.g., my department's faculty has 11 native USAians, three Indians, two Hungarians, and one each from Israel, Argentina, New Zealand, and Russia. Our current Ph.D. students are even more diverse, and come from Turkey,
India, Italy, the Philippines, Iran, China, Russia, Vietnam, Spain, the US, and probably a couple others.
Why on earth should it matter?
I don't care if my CS people are purple or clear as long as they are the most capable, period.
People don't generally mention this when it comes to basketball, which is just a matter of whoever can get it in the hoop.
Also, I would think that in mathematics there is a slightly favorable advantage toward those with high IQs.
You should give some aquacephalics a chance, Stu.
can't keep up
GM,
Why on earth should it matter?
I don't care if my CS people are purple or clear as long as they are the most capable, period.
That is the issue, of course.
The observation is that the US citizens in a typical math and CS department are not diverse in gender or ethnicity, and I believe this true in many other disciplines too.
So now we ask, do we indeed have the most capable people? There is reason to doubt.
The problem for now is that we do not have enough solid data, and therefore any policy decision (and ignoring the issue is a policy decision) is necessarily on shaky ground.
I think there is reason to believe that trying to encourage diversity, instead of excellence, has actually hurt some minority prospects, mismatching them with schools (through preferences) and over-promoting them, thereby undercutting some of the long and steady growth that we might have seen otherwise. I think the best policy remains MLK's vision in the I have a Dream speech.
www.tinyurl.com/reaganreagan
There was a Zionist at the University of Washington who gave an interview perhaps to the Seattle Weekly as I recall in about 1995 in which he said that whenever he considered a question he thought much like some aunt of his had, and the sole question was, "But is it good for the Jews?"
With identity politics, you get the sense that this has become the new nationalism, a kind of multicultural monadism in which each group wants to be the only one.
Democrats thinking but is it good for the Democrats, and Repos thinking pretty much the same, and all other groups, and families, and people, just hoping that whatever happens there will be a silver lining in it for them.
We're a long way from Kennedy's phrase, "Ask not..."
Now it's allthat any group can ask, all day long, with an unrelenting sound of braying, rather than praying.
We too should join in the chorus: "But is it good for Lutheran Surrealists?"
that, I say, should be the only criterion of a thing's merit.
Purity tests are bunk.
But Beinart is full of crap. His piece willfully hides context, conflates the executive and legislative branches, and is agenda driven.
Lets be clear, Reagan wasn't perfect. In spite of purity tests and such wargarrblll, Reagan fans understand this. In fact, this is underlined by the fact that conservatives reject amnesty. But Beinart doesn't acknowledge this for what it is. It's a silly little piece that reveals more about Beinart than Reagan or conservatives.
Kirby:
Why don't you do a two-part blog on your encounters with Ginsberg. Was he your teacher at Naropa?
First part could be a straightforward, accurate account with a portrait. (No bullshit)
The second part would be an organized, reasonably argued take on his poetics, and the implications of his positions (as you see them).
I think that would have real value, and should be done. (It rarely has been.)
WB,
I think there is reason to believe that trying to encourage diversity, instead of excellence, has actually hurt some minority prospects, mismatching them with schools (through preferences) and over-promoting them, thereby undercutting some of the long and steady growth that we might have seen otherwise. I think the best policy remains MLK's vision in the I have a Dream speech.
I don't disagree, but I will note that in the mathematical sciences specifically, there is a long-standing meme, "Math is hard for girls," which gets reinforced by parents and some (by no means all) teachers.
And even people who are excellent mathematicians will from time to time run into a mathematical concept that they don't "get" easily the first time. When this happens, boys are often encouraged to persist despite the difficulty, where girls are discouraged.
One might argue that the reverse sometimes happens at pre-collegiate levels with respect to English.
But this gets us back to your comment. Let's say you have someone who belongs to population that is underrepresented in a particular career, and they run into a particular roadblock. Do we tell them, "everyone runs into roadblocks, keep at it," or do we tell them, "maybe it's time to read the writing on the wall?"
I don't see this as necessarily being a liberal or conservative issue, but simply a question of what's the right advice to a particular person in a particular situation. In the case of academic fields, there is a suspicion that academic talent is not concentrated in any one gender or ethnicity, and moreover by the time you get to graduate school, there's been a huge investment in getting that far, and a large cost in changing directions, so advising a student to persist is usually the right thing. Except, of course, when it's not.
In practical terms, those of us who have had to advise graduate and/or professional students have had to give discouraging news. The "you're not smart enough" talk is always a lot harder than the "you don't try hard enough" talk, since in the later case, the student doesn't have the investment in success that they do in the former, and the later case acknowledges the possibility that victory is possible on the student's current terms, whereas the former explicitly denies this possibility.
What context, WB? I ask non-sarcastically, because I was between the ages of -1 and 7 when Reagan was president, so I don't actually have much in-depth knowledge of his presidency beyond the broad strokes, and haven't done much active research, so I only know what I have internalized passively...
Though I disagree with your point that conservatives realize Reagan wasn't perfect.
YOU realize that Reagan wasn't perfect, but a heckton of your average conservative voters and (especially) your average conservative talkingheads paint him in Godlike colors. (this is actually a strength of the Republicans politically - Democrats criticize each other and so do a bad job of branding past leaders as heroes...a more accurate, but less politically efficacious, approach).
Stu - your points are interesting re: the roadblocks certain demographics face, and the way society trains them or implies them to respond.
That being said, the answer then would lie in educational initiatives at the lower levels -
Trying to get more PHD students from a minority group doesn't make sense if the reason that there is a small representation of that group is because that group has been dissuaded by society to fight through obstacles to get to the point where they would be an appropriate candidate for a PHD.
So the approach to 'getting more minorities into the upper eschelons of the math world' or what-have-you should be much more about changing societal attitudes and having initiatives for kids than about the hiring/accepting policies from institutions...
I know what I'm meaning, but not sure if what I'm saying makes sense...
does it?
Brett, take for instance the circumstances concerning the Marines in Lebanon. There really was no good reason for them to be there (I think it had something to do with keeping the peace after the Israeli incursion in 1982). In any case, the situation does not resemble that of Afghanistan. For him to bring those troops home was not a major capitulation in the way that giving up in Afghanistan would be.
Another bit of context that would be helpful concerns taxation. I'm very far from fully informed on this, but Beinart makes it sound like Reagan had a brief dalliance with tax cuts and then, having seen the light, changed his mind on the basic principles of taxation and raised them several times to get it right. Hogwash. He was able to get a major tax cut early in his term (to encourage business and stimulate the economy) and then was willing to work with Democrats to simplify the tax code and do a better job of covering social security costs via an increase in payroll taxes. He wasn't a zealot, but a principled pragmatist.
So why do conservatives like him so much? Because we're not zealots either! We want sane government. Take last February, the Stimulus Bill was a terrible idea. It borrows money and then wastes it willy-nilly. A rational idea would have been to lower corporate tax rates to encourage businesses to grow (and then to hire.) And I'll throw this in for good measure: during campaigns lots of folks talk about "middle-class tax cuts." After all the tax credits available, there are a lot of folks who aren't paying income tax period. They don't need any more tax cuts.
I'll admit, memories grow rosy over time. We like him because he was an effective leader and communicator who shared our basic principles and aspirations. Perhaps I should have cut Beinart a bit of slack, but I got the sense that he was manipulating the facts just to slam conservatives today. I think that's dishonest.
Brett,
Trying to get more PHD students from a minority group doesn't make sense if the reason that there is a small representation of that group is because that group has been dissuaded by society to fight through obstacles to get to the point where they would be an appropriate candidate for a PHD.
So the approach to 'getting more minorities into the upper eschelons of the math world' or what-have-you should be much more about changing societal attitudes and having initiatives for kids than about the hiring/accepting policies from institutions...
I know what I'm meaning, but not sure if what I'm saying makes sense...
does it?
It does, but...
The problem is that it comes of as self-justifying. We're saying, in effect, that there's a problem, it's a big problem, but it's not our problem. Except that it is.
My take on this is that the pipeline leaks at all levels. That is to say, the proportion of females in CS drops from high school to college, from college to graduate school, and from graduate school to initial faculty position, and then through the faculty ranks.
If the problem existed at the lower level, you'd expect to see these proportions stabilize (or even reverse, since the "survivors" have been through a more aggressive culling process). But that's not what you see.
Part of our take on this is that programming (or math) are often taught in a particular context, which assumes an interest in modeling the real world, gaming, etc. Perhaps these are not content neutral examples, and somehow appeal more to males than females. If so, building our lower-level courses around appropriately neutral contexts would help, but it's not clear what that context would be.
In the meantime, people just try stuff. Summer research programs. Targeted recruitment (this is a big deal at CMU and Berkeley) on the theory that pipes with a large fraction of females will leak less in proportion. More generous maternity leave policies for junior faculty, on the theory that "biological clock" issues content for research time for female junior faculty. That sort of thing.
and "implies them..."
Sorry about that.
ouch
You're not a zealot, W.B. - but a lot of the people who glorify Reagan are.
I think the point of the article was less to denigrate Reagan than to denigrate those who have an unpragmatic, overly-rosy view of Reagan that they manipulate to fit their current definition of 'conservative' in an ideological way.
Your description of the stimulus-package is biased and leaves out context:-)
It was like 40% tax cuts, and a large chunk of it was to support states so they didn't have massive massive rounds of layoffs of employees like teachers and police officers, and the rest was infrastructure, which both creates jobs and provides services for zee country!
It was like 40% tax cuts, and a large chunk of it was to support states so they didn't have massive massive rounds of layoffs of employees like teachers and police officers, and the rest was infrastructure, which both creates jobs and provides services for zee country!
Brett, right back atcha! ;) No, you're right that there were some tax cuts in there and some infrastructure. And certainly boatloads of it was to bail out state and local governments who were up a creek. But notice how you framed that as saving the jobs of teachers and police officers. You didn't say anything about saving the jobs of joyless bureaucrats and blood sucking DMV workers.
Yup, we're all prone to "framing" issues. So I'll forgive Beinart, but I still think he's a tool.
Oh, I don't know Beinart at all, and I'm sure he's a tool, but sometimes tools can be used to fix things, or find fault in things, and I do believe that (again, not ever coming from You, but from pundits and populace) the righties actually have put a glossy glow over Reagan's years so that they sell him as something he was not. I think I'd probably like real-Reagan more than glossyglowy righty Godlike taxcutty Americaloveydovey Xenophobiariffic Reagan that the righties sells and trumpets and oh if we could just get back to the days of pure conservative unpragmatic Reagan, all would be fine well dandy and bloomingblossoms.
And are DMV workers really bloodsucking?
All of those bureaucrats have jobs, and it's good that many of their jobs were saved - I'm sure some are feckless fruitless floppy positions that don't do much good, but I'm sure many are necessary. It's too big of an issue to go line-by-line down it, but I still don't buy that Just tax cuts would've been the silver bullet that saved 'merica from depression...the unemployment rate has held virtually steady since July, so whatever the case we avoided a major catastrophe of having 1983-like unemployment levels:-)
Brett,
Reagan was the bees knees. Is that too rosy? :)
Eh, I think 'cat's pajamas' works better for Reagan.
Brett--
Measured in 1983 standards we're there or worse. 18%, mon frayer.
Now 'bout the math stuff--that whole thing was debunked, stu, way back in the late 90s. So, sorry.
Perhaps it's because sexual & genetic differences actually exist in humans as in all animals across whole groups, while outliers are a probable and periodic occurrence.
"Measured in 1983 standards we're there or worse. 18%, mon frayer."
Source me...
GM,
Now 'bout the math stuff--that whole thing was debunked, stu, way back in the late 90s. So, sorry.
You're thinking of that hack Herrnstein? If he was right, then why have the proportions increased over time? So sorry, Herrnstein has failed the test. His speculations have not proven fruitful, nor his evidence compelling.
GM,
One more quick observation. If I consider Chinese-Americans, the male-female ratio is a lot closer to 50/50 than among Northern-European-Americans. This suggests that cultural issues are at play, at least to me.
The response to Herrnstein (Gould) is apparently also a bunch of violent distortions.
It's hard to know what's what in that debate. IQ is an incredibly odd idea.
There have to be many other criteria. Serial killers are generally said to have higher IQs than average.
Not sure this means they represent a valuable contribution to society other than helping with overpopulation (the Malthusian perspective).
Like everything else, we are going to be split. Some won't even consider someone like Herrnstein, even if the facts were as plain as day, and laid out in a row.
Others are only too eager to leap on his thesis and turn it into a battering ram against Affirmative Action.
I'm dubious not only about both sides, but about the concept of IQ itself. I think mine goes way up and way down. I notice that some days I can whiz bang through a Sudoku puzzle, and other days I just start at them and can't get started.
Brett:
http://www.shadowstats.com/
Stu,
Yes, obviously "culture" plays a HUGE role but it is also very difficult, if not impossible, to competently diffuse the effects of culture & genetics.
Don't know who Hernstein is--thinking of someone else likely.
And the numbers have "gotten better" over time because more attention was paid--whatever you focus on is going to raise slightly--and if girls are given attention over boys then the girls will do better.
Like, duh.
Kirby,
The response to Herrnstein (Gould) is apparently also a bunch of violent distortions.
Gould's refutation (the Mismeasure of Man) came out almost a full decade and a half before Herrnstein, so response isn't quite the right word. I don't recall any violent distortions, although I don't doubt that they've happened. I do doubt that Gould was their author.
But you don't need to indulge in violent distortions to reject Herrnstein.
I'm dubious not only about both sides, but about the concept of IQ itself.
If you're dubious about the concept of IQ, that's a good thing (since there's copious evidence that intelligence isn't one dimensional). But understand that if you take that position, you've already emphatically rejected Herrnstein and embraced one of Gould's central tenets.
In my opinion, it is devilishly hard to separate cultural factors from native ability. By the time someone is developed enough to make an intelligence test meaningful, they've already been immersed in culture, and moreover, cultures are correlated in ways that we don't understand.
Let me use this to suggest another framing of the left/right split.
On the right, our current culture is seen as something that is not a mere accident. If you're on the religious right, you probably feel that our culture is the way it is because that's the way God wants it to be. If you're on the modern nonreligious right, you view culture as an evolutionary artifact, and you believe our culture is one that has benefited from considerable evolution, is at a local optimum, and therefore it cannot be improved by simple tinkering.
On the left, there's a tendency to view culture as having evolved, but very slowly in comparison to changes in our material conditions, and therefore as (at least possibly) carrying maladaptive features along with it. Hence, informed cultural engineering has a reasonable chance of improving the quality of human life. With this there comes a greater willingness to consider other cultures, and relationship between culture and the quality of human life. The right takes this as evidence of an anti-western bias, but this is a deep misunderstanding. The point is that willy-nilly experimentation is unlikely to be helpful. So let's take advantage of the diversity of human experience first, and use the accidental experiments that history has performed for us to inform our intentional experiments.
To this end, I'll note that Confucius set out to build a "deliberate tradition," based on selecting those features of the "accidental tradition" of his era that seemed most likely to result improve the quality of life. Confucius is not usually thought of as a "liberal" figure, because we're viewing him from our perspective. But clearly, viewed as a man of his own era, Confucius exemplified the stance I'm identifying with the left.
Stu, Gould apparently republished the book after the Bell Curve was published, and took a swat at it.
Wikipedia has an article on the Bell Curve that lists those who are on one side and on the other.
It's a closer call than even the Climate Change (which I realize you have declared a slam dunk).
It was very well-received at first.
An anomaly in the Bell Curve (which I haven't read, but I have read Eysenck and some others) is that American Indians come out higher than everyone else. I was told this anecdotally by a mountain climber friend who happened to go climbing with a sociologist, so that's several steps removed.
I think I am much smarter some days than on others. It improves my mind considerably if I have been in touch with a very good mind.
I get lazier around dimwits, and tighten up around smarties.
Some days I write extremely well, and other days everything I write turns to mush.
So I think there may be peak capacities, and probably some kind of lower limits, or outer limits.
I doubt if Hitler OR Einstein had a lot of emotional intelligence.
I think they would have both made bad nurses.
But Hitler did fairly well in public speaking.
And Einstein in his realm was rather bright.
I do think that brilliance without appropriate moral guidance is not only worthless but terribly destructive.
You have to hand it to Al Qaeda for 9/11, as you have to hand it to Hannibal Lector types. They aren't exactly dummies.
The problem lies in their lack of ethics.
People who aren't very bright but who are morally sound are often a real treat to know. I often love them unreservedly.
Very brilliant people like Michel foucault who is completely out of bounds on almost every question, or people like F. Nietzsche, or even people like allen Ginsberg -- you really have to keep an eye on them.
Kirby,
Stu, Gould apparently republished the book after the Bell Curve was published, and took a swat at it.
Makes sense. Herrnstein (and Murray, lest we forget) make a lot of the same errors that Gould identified in earlier psychometricians. From Gould's point of view, there wasn't much new in Herrnstein. But I doubt very much that Herrnstein made all of the errors that Gould identified as having been made over the history of psychometrics. Just some of them.
It's a closer call than even the Climate Change (which I realize you have declared a slam dunk).
I do consider Climate Change to be a slam dunk. I also consider Gould's criticisms of Herrnstein to be on target. That said, there's a strong version
of the anti-Herrnstein side that claims that intellectual capacity in all of its myriad dimensions is independent of gender, ethnicity, etc. I don't recall Gould saying that the strong view had been proven, merely that it has never been satisfactorily disproven. These are very different positions.
For my part, given the tremendous rate of gene-exchange historically between populations that we normally think of as distinct, I expect that intelligence differences between ethnicities are somewhere between very small and nonexistent. The distinction between male and female is not so easily dismissed based on admixture considerations, since the Y chromosome is and has always been male-only. But even in this case, I suspect that differences in most dimensions are negligible, and of the rest, the girls beat us at least as often as we beat them. This suspicion is based on the notion that if large differences exist, then we should have seen compelling proof by now.
It was very well-received at first.
Maybe in your circles. I certainly heard of detractors pre-publication.
Stu - what do you think of GM's shadowstats.com?
I expect that intelligence differences between ethnicities are somewhere between very small and nonexistent.
Go to half-sigma, read the studies there. It's about a 5 point difference which is within one standard deviation but still statistically significant.
I don't know how sound the research is, but another criterion of intelligence that has been discovered, or at least reported in the press, is that those who have both parents tend to do better on the tests. I think this is because of more exposure to more ideas in the home. This is cultural, perhaps.
Asian families have a very minute divorce rate and also the highest IQs.
Whites have next highest and have somewhat lower scores.
Ebonesians have a lower rate yet but have catastrophic divorce rates up in the 80% plus range. Cosby argues that that is the central criterion.
Adam Smith argues in Wealth of Nations that what you do with your own mind all day has an effect on it. So if you are doing math all day your mind will get better at doing math.
If you are making nails all day your horizons will narrow.
He worried about that.
Liberal arts was meant to broaden horizons at one time before it became the reeducation scheme that it currently has become.
Brett,
Stu - what do you think of GM's shadowstats.com?
Thanks for the nudge. I'd skipped over the part of GM's note that was directed to you. The U-3 vs. U-6 issue has been on my front-burner for a long time (cf., Brad DeLong's blog). The thing that the Republicans don't want you to notice is that all three unemployment curves inflected more or less at the point Obama took office, and all three are now (finally!) down a nudge. A big part of this IMHO is stimulus funding (which is to say, the proper infrastructure spending part of the stimulus, rather than the tax cut part that was put in in a futile effort to reach out to Republicans).
U-6, IIRC, already accounts for discouraged workers, and so it's not clear exactly where the additional discouraged workers come from for the SGS line, or how they document it. In any event, I'm reasonably convinced that the U-6 line is the one we should be paying attention to, and many of us have been. Note that U-6 has been essentially U-3 + 6% over the 16 years reported. But no matter which curve you pick, it's clear that the economy was in accelerating melt-down over the last year of the Bush administration, and it has bottomed out in the year since. This should be granted whether you credit Obama/stimulus or the intrinsic resiliency of the US economy. (I'd give it 30-70, myself, I suspect that our rightist colleagues would say -50/150, but this does leave them with an embarrassment in explaining 2008). Anyway, I doubt that this is the point that GM was trying to make.
In any event, the unemployment statistics they're showing only go back to '94, so I don't see how they can possibly refute your claims about '83. Maybe GM can point us something on the site that does go that far back.
The CPI curves I'm less informed about. There's really no explanation as to what the blue ("pre-Clinton") curve is, or why we should care. The "experimental" and "official" curves never differ by my than 1%, and are usually much closer. Again, why should we care?
I'd like to understand the GDP curves(check the link in the right column in the "alternate data" block, and follow your nose). My intuition is that the SGS curve is pessimistic here, although if true it is exceptionally damning of both the GHWB and the GWB administrations, much more so than the official statistics. Again, I doubt this is the point that GM was trying to make.
FWIW, my impression is that the government econometricians have been consistently professional. Do economists propose alternative measures? Sure. The government econometricians themselves propose and report alternative measures, which is why we have a U-3 and U-6 to talk about in the first place. Economics as a field that is characterized by very vigorous (and usually healthy) debate.
Let me point out that the SGS statistic for inflation appears to have averaged 10% over the past decade, whereas the official statistic seems to have averaged 2.5%. To me, the later figure corresponds to my experience over the same period, whereas the former is just insane. Here's the math: 10% inflation compounded over the course of a decade is a 2.6x factor, whereas, 2.5% compounded over a decade is a 1.3x factor. The ratio of my last take-home paycheck (1/31/10) to that of a decade ago (1/31/00) is 1.24. If the SGS statistics are to be believed, I should be feeling as though my purchasing power has been cut in half. I don't.
My moral, I suppose, is that the alternative curves make interesting discussion points, but I certainly won't take them as gospel, but rather as alternative positions within the context of that vigorous debate. YMMV, of course.
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