Benign Neglect?

I've read a fair amount of commentary on the speech Obama gave last week about race, some negative, some positive, but nothing irked me quite as much as this piece in today's NYT, in which Bill Kristol asserts, "The last thing we need now is a heated national conversation about race." Race, it seems, is not something that can be talked about without the conversation devolving into a shouting match. Instead of talking, he recommends dealing with the problem of racism through "benign neglect."

Now, I disagree with this on a couple levels. First, I see no reason that this has to turn into a shouting match. Besides, there are worse things than shouting matches—for instance, racism.

More importantly, however, I don't know of any other problems that we're solving through neglect. Perhaps the real reason for all the ruin in New Orleans is that FEMA was trying too hard to save it. There are few things that can be done to turn around the current economic crisis, but I don't hear a lot of economists and commentators saying we should just ignore it until it goes away. That war in Iraq? Maybe if we just don't think about it, it'll all turn out fine. Better yet, let's pitch this idea to the Sunnies and Shi'ites. Forget history and religious disagreements, it's probably an excess of dialogue that's causing them to go on killing each other.

Pharmaceutical Ads

Some things you might not know about Dr. Robert Jarvik, Lipitor spokesman and "inventor of the Jarvik Artificial Heart":

• Dr. Jarvik "holds a medical degree [but] is not a cardiologist and is not licensed to practice medicine."
• Dr. Jarvik is "about as much an outdoorsman as Woody Allen" and cannot row. In the Lipitor ads in which he's shown rowing, a body double was used for wide shots. In close-up shots, he is rowing on a platform.

Fashion

From an NYT article about the dwindling weight of male models:

“Designers like the skinny guy,” he said backstage last Friday at the Duckie Brown show. “It looks good in the clothes and that’s the main thing. That’s just the way it is now.”

Now, I don't know that much about clothing design. Fashion has always seemed to me like a hobby for the rich and prodigal, but I was under the impression that clothes were supposed to be made for the people wearing them and not the other way around. Call me naive.

A Partial Explanation of Why I Voted for Obama, Courtesy of Robert Penn Warren

Tell me a story.

In this century, and moment, of mania,
Tell me a story.

Make it a story of great distances, and starlight.

The name of the story will be Time,
But you must not pronounce its name.

Tell me a story of deep delight.

Literary Endorsements

In a NYT interview, poet laureate Charles Simic, a New Hampshire resident, reveals that he voted for John Edwards.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post is running an op-ed by Michael Chabon, who is supporting Obama.

Taking from the Sick among the Poor and Elderly to Justify His Tax Breaks for the Rich

That's really all I have to say about this. Go. Read.

Edwards Is Out of the Race

NYT:

John Edwards, the progressive Democratic candidate who made his populist, anti-poverty message a centerpiece of his campaign, has decided to drop out of the presidential primary race, and is to give a speech this afternoon at the same place where he began his campaign — in New Orleans.

This is too bad. I like Edwards, and I think he was our best hope for correcting the damage done by the Bush administration.

Quotes

• "I know how to eat grits. I speak the language. We even know how to talk about eating fried squirrel and stuff like that."
• "Where has everybody been?"
• "It’s kind of like that one time I read Vanity Fair and they had an article about a woman with breast cancer. I thought to myself, damn, I really need to get some of that into my spring collection!"
• “If you don’t work at Wal-Mart, the only job you can get around here is in fast food.”

Heckuva Job: Diplomacy Edition

As a general rule, I find Maureen Dowd's columns utterly annoying, but today's is pretty solid:

Arab TV offered an uncomfortable juxtaposition: Al Arabiya running the wretched saga of Gaza children suffering from a lack of food and medicine during the Israeli blockade, blending into the wretched excess scenes of W. being festooned with rapper-level bling from royal hosts flush with gazillions from gouging us on oil.

Violence has escalated in the West Bank. There's still no clear way out of Iraq nor any sign of political reconciliation. Meanwhile, the president has been jet-setting throughout the Middle East, where he's been showered with gold necklaces and fur robes.