Overhead, Without Any Fuss, A Star Was Going Out

I didn't really intend to go on a blogroll here, but now comes the news that Arthur C. Clarke has died. My extremely minor connection to Clarke is that when I was working at my first job in New York as an editorial assistant for Asimov's and Analog, I was responsible for gathering e-mail, and we received one brief one from Clarke (I can't remember to whom it was directed). I was actually not a huge SF fan (I think that helped me get the job, really), but that and taking a phone call from Harlan Ellison were cool moments (though maybe not as memorable as my encounter with the Star Child).

More importantly, he was responsible for helping Stanley Kubrick shape the brilliant 2001: A Space Odyssey, a film I loved as a child and still love today (though not for the exact same reasons), he wrote the classic Childhood's End (in important respects a forerunner of 2001), and generally was in the vanguard of encouraging space exploration and scientific discovery. There may have been arguments about who the B was in the ABCs of SF, but the C was always Clarke.

It Haunts Me

It originated in Chicago and was syndicated in a few areas around the country, including the city of my childhood, Dallas, and it was the weirdest, creepiest children's show I have ever seen, like some methed-out version of Sesame Street. So naturally I want to share. I give you The Gigglesnort Hotel:





I'm sure the creators are perfectly lovely, nondemented people, but my sense is that if they televise a children's show in Hell, it's this one.

Derbyshire's Lies

Wait, is that title disingenuous? Well, no way to change it now.

"Reverend Wright and other African-Americans of his generation … came of age in the late fifties and early sixties, a time when segregation was still the law of the land."

Segregation was not "the law of the land" in the 1950s. It was the law in a minority of states.

Maybe Obama should have parsed this further and made a distinction between de jure segregation and de facto segregation? Or maybe that distinction is needlessly fussy when compartmentalizing segregation into tidy "legal here" and "illegal there" or "legal then" and "illegal now" ignores the messy reality that segregation survived and survives outside and beyond its legal life span, and it certainly did not end at the handing down of Brown v. Board of Education.

"For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation, the memories of humiliation and doubt and fear have not gone away; nor has the anger and the bitterness of those years. That anger … occasionally … finds voice in the church on Sunday morning, in the pulpit and in the pews."

If, as Obama seems to be claiming, those are the sentiments only of Wright's generation, how come those whooping and clapping their approval in those sermon clips include lots of young people?

I don't think Obama is claiming that, or at least he's not excluding the possibility that younger generations of black men and women might have their own reasons for bitterness. I've known young women who absolutely cheer on their feminist elders, even though they can actually have credit cards of their very own!

"Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends."

Fear of crime is not a legitimate emotion? Or is it just not legitimate for politicians to appeal to it? If, oh, say, some liberal Democratic governor of some state gives weekend furloughs to the perpetrator of a hideously callous murder who then, while on furlough, commits armed robbery and rape, why should criticism of that governor for that act be out of bounds in a political contest? Or should it only be out of bounds if the murderer is black?

Is it really necessary to point out that the key word here is "exploited"? Given that Derbyshire seems to be still running the '88 campaign, maybe yes.

No one thinks that crime isn't a legitimate issue. What some people also think is that using singular, and not obviously representative, crimes as a stalking horse for racial fears is a bad way to create a framework for policymaking and not at all an obvious way to make decisions about policymakers.

"But it also means binding our particular grievances … to the larger aspirations of all Americans — the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family."

Well, I'm an immigrant, and I try hard to feed my family. And yes, I have grievances. For instance, I think I pay far too much tax in support of far too many public sector workers, most of whom do nothing useful. So … how will you bind your "particular grievances" to mine, Senator? Or am I somehow unrepresentative of immigrants?

This is kind of a weird response, like Derbyshire thinks the speech was directed at him, personally. And ... yeah, actually, you are unrepresentative of immigrants, unless you think that British immigrants who write for The National Review are typical.

"This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care …"

The lines in the Emergency Room at far too many U.S. hospitals are filled with illegal immigrants, preventing citizens from getting timely emergency help. What's your line on illegal immigration, Senator? Oh, right — you're fine with it, as is the rest of your party.

Not wanting to wall up the border and deport every illegal you can lay hands on does not equal "fine." Indeed, Obama "wants to preserve the integrity of our borders. He supports additional personnel, infrastructure and technology on the border and at our ports of entry" and has proposed legislation "to crack down on employers that hire undocumented immigrants."

"Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven’t fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today’s black and white students."

What on earth does this mean? It's true that there is widespread school segregation today. In my state, 60 percent of black students attend schools that are at least 90-percent black. From what I can see, the main reason for this is the great reluctance of nonblack parents to send their kids to schools with too many black students, which they assume are beset by all the problems associated with poorly run public schools. Do you think that they — actually we, as my wife and I share this reluctance — are wrong to think like this? How will you persuade us to think otherwise? Or will you depend on judicially-imposed forced integration of the schools?

What on earth does this mean? Obama argues that segregated schools are failing schools, and Derbyshire ... agrees, I guess. But apparently pointing out that segregated schools are failed schools isn't enough: Obama should have pointed out that they're segregrated because nonblack parents also think that segregated schools are failed schools. Good point!

And so on ...

For the record, any speech that references E Pluribus Unum is a good speech, and Obama's skill at pivoting on issues is very much in evidence here; whether it will tamp down the Wright controversy remains to be seen, but my gut instinct is that the issue will fade somewhat but loom in the background; it will certainly cost him votes at the margins, but not enough to cost him the nomination. In the general? Depends how far it fades.

Metaphorical Male Siblings Before Courtesans

An under-commented upon aspect of the Spitzer brouhaha is the apparent fact that he used a friend's name to do his late-night business:

The law enforcement official said that several people running the prostitution ring knew Mr. Spitzer by the name of George Fox, though a few of the prostitutes came to realize he was the governor of New York.
Mr. Fox is a friend and donor to Mr. Spitzer. Asked in a telephone interview Monday whether he accompanied Mr. Spitzer to Washington on Feb. 13 and Feb. 14, Mr. Fox responded: "Why would you think that? I did not.”
Told that the Room 871 at the Renaissance Mayflower Hotel was registered in Mr. Fox’s name but with Mr. Spitzer’s Fifth Avenue address, Mr. Fox said, "That is the first I have heard of it. Until I speak to the governor further, I have no comment."

It's possible that Fox actually knew about it all along and for obvious reasons doesn't want to say so to the Times, but if Spitzer used Fox's name without his knowledge, even if it's not criminal (I'd guess the circumstances wouldn't rise to identity theft or fraud), that's an unbelievably shabby way to abuse a friend. Then again, it seems like par for the course here.