Jonah Goldberg does a number on the Ann Coulters of the left. I don't mean entertainers like Michael Moore. I mean supposed intellectuals who can't make the most elementary political distinctions.
In this case, the faux intellectuals are big-shot academics who lumped together everyone ever called a "conservative" (e.g., Hitler, Reagan) and then tried to find patterns in the "conservative" personality. Political bias (and ignorance) aside, the basic statistical methodology is ridiculous, since it assumes that "conservative" is an objective and consistent category like "male" or "45-year-old."
As someone who believes social science can and does discover new truths about how people live and think, I find this sort of idiotic research particularly appalling. It teaches the general public that social science is bullshit. (It also demonstrates that university press offices can be really stupid about what they choose to publicize.)
And, of course, I've written a whole book arguing, with copious examples, that--far from defining "liberal" and "conservative" minds--attitudes toward social and economic change cut across the traditional left-right spectrum.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on July 24, 2003 • Comments
The NYT has hired David Brooks as an op-ed columnist. He'll write twice a week, starting in early September. Sounds like they're trying to add some political balance to the page, while keeping the style lively. Brooks is a terrific writer, and his big-government conservatism shouldn't upset the Times base--even though he doesn't think GWB is the devil.
It may be noteworthy that opinion editor Gail Collins, a Raines protege, reports not to Bill Keller but to Arthur Sulzberger Jr. The new regime may extend beyond the newsroom.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on July 24, 2003 • Comments
The New York publishing world is apparently buzzing about why Random House gave the NYT Magazine access to RH chief Peter Olson, resulting in a story that made him look mean. (It's conventional wisdom in the publishing biz that he's Darth Vader. The only question is why he let a reporter follow him around.)
I, however, was interested in the article's unconscious demonstration that publishing execs, both old school and new, are making a fundamental business error. Here are the relevant quotes. First, from the old school:
"When I started in publishing, in 1946," Roger Straus of Farrar, Straus & Giroux recalled, "it was a very different business. It was a profession for gentlemen, and they weren't running their businesses for large profits. They were interested in good literature. Now, the goal is to get larger. The easiest way to increase the look of your balance sheet is to buy another company."
Now, from the new:
"Books are a flat business," [Bertelsmann CEO and Olson's boss] Gunter Thielen says. "The only way you can grow is through acquisitions. And Peter is very interested in growth."
Boy this is dumb. Growth through acquisition is not growth, at least not in the sense of rising value. Growth through acquisition is merely exchanging one asset (cash or equity) for another (a company). The balance sheet effect is a classic financial flim-flam, as I learned as a lowly college sophomore taking accounting from the amazing Uwe Reinhardt. In publishing, the executives are apparently fooling not just their stockholders but themselves.
Growth through acquisition is not the same as internal growth. An acquisition may increase productivity if you can consolidate certain overheads or, as is the case sometimes when big tech companies buy tiny ones, bring on talented employees who can be more productive in a larger enterprise. But neither story seems to hold for book publishing.
Otherwise, the only way that acquisitions increase your company's real value is if you somehow buy things for less than they're worth. That's a hard trick to pull off, especially repeatedly, and book publishing doesn't seem like the place to find financial sharpies.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on July 24, 2003 • Comments
Standing in the supermarket line the other day, I was struck by competing celebrity-gossip headlines: On the cover of one tabloid was happy news of the impending wedding of J.Lo and Ben. On the cover of a second was the news that the glamour couple is in trouble.
"It's just like Iraq," I thought (proving once again that I am seriously weird). One report says everything's going to hell. Another says things are looking great. The evidence is conflicting enough to provide either story line, and both sell papers. The only way the poor reader will know which is right is to wait and see what happens.
Personally, I give Iraq better odds than J.Lo and Ben. Not that that's saying much.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on July 24, 2003 • Comments
Two bits of good news from today's followup visit to the Boothe Eye Care & Laser Center. First, I now see about 20/20 in each eye. (To be precise, I can read all but one letter on the 20/20 line.) And, even more miraculously, the visit took only an hour and a half!
Posted by Virginia Postrel on July 24, 2003 • Comments
Reuters completely changed the tone of and added new material to a story Deanna Wrenn filed on Jessica Lynch's homecoming. Opinion Journal reprints a damning piece Wrenn originally wrote for her home paper, the Charleston Daily Mail. You need to read the whole thing, because the details are damning. Here's the lead:
CHARLESTON, W.Va.--This is from a story that Reuters news service ran this week with my byline:
Jessica Lynch, the wounded Army private whose ordeal in Iraq was hyped into a media fiction of U.S. heroism, was set for an emotional homecoming on Tuesday. . . . Media critics say the TV cameras will not show the return of an injured soldier so much as a reality-TV drama co-produced by U.S. government propaganda and credulous reporters."
Got problems with that?
I do, especially since I didn't write it.
Here's what I sent last week to Reuters, a British news agency that compiles news reports from all over the world:
ELIZABETH--In this small county seat with just 995 residents, the girl everyone calls Jessi is a true heroine--even if reports vary about Pfc. Jessica Lynch and her ordeal in Iraq.
"I think there's a lot of false information about her story," said Amber Spencer, a clerk at the town's convenience store.
Palestine resident J.T. O'Rock was hanging an American flag and yellow ribbon on his storefront in Elizabeth in preparation for Lynch's return.
Like many residents here, he considers Lynch a heroine, even if newspaper and TV reports say her story wasn't the same one that originally attracted movie and book deals.
Read the whole thing. What happened to Wrenn, and to her sources, is truly scandalous.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on July 24, 2003 • Comments
My apologies for the long absence of new posts. We've been in Pennsylvania, visiting Steve's mom. Full-blown blogging will resume tonight, though I'll try to post some odds and ends during the day.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on July 24, 2003 • Comments
This NYT profile Mohamed Dia, whose line of hip-hop-inspired clothing has made him a rich man, suggests that a dose of American culture can be good for France--and, especially, for its black immigrants.
Mr. Dia wears his own brand of clothing, which is sold in four Dia stores in France and is carried in 700 others. Sales are projected at $19 million to $22 million this year, up from $13 million in 2002. He drives a black Mercedes and has bought an apartment in Paris for his mother. In an effort to break into the American market, Mr. Dia is negotiating to open a store on 125th Street in Harlem with a special line for the United States. He will open the shop with Wyclef Jean, the Haitian-born hip-hop singer and composer.
In a country where class, education and pedigree still count, Mr. Dia is emblematic of a small new group of French entrepreneurs--hip, young and determined to escape the tough suburbs of the immigrant poor.
In Mr. Dia's case, the road to success came via New York. "America is a place where you can still dream," he said. "In America, if you want to succeed, you give yourself the right to do it and no one stops you. In France that can't happen."...
[H]is mother arranged for him in 1994 to spend the summer with cousins who ran an African food shop in Harlem. Arriving first in Baltimore with a friend with relatives there, Mr. Dia was stunned by the level of racial integration he witnessed.
"My first shock was to see so many black policemen in the airport" he said. "I couldn't understand it at all. In France out of 100 policemen, maybe one is black. I thought all blacks in America lived in the ghetto. Then I saw blacks with two cars and beautiful houses. I thought I was in the middle of a movie."...
Slowly, Mr. Dia came to realize that in America, destiny was not automatically determined by skin color or family history. "When I saw blacks making money, in responsible positions, I saw that I had a chance," he said. "I said, 'Why not me?'"
Dia's picture of America is more optimistic than even I would generally adopt, but it just goes to show that opportunity is relative--and that successful (and unsuccessful) entrepreneurs tend to see more possibilitis than the average person.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on July 24, 2003 • Comments
My latest NYT column looks at how state bans on direct-shipments of wine hurt consumers by limiting online sales. The Federal Trade Commission has done a report on the subject and is looking at state barriers to competition in a number of different online businesses.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on July 17, 2003 • Comments
The surgery on my right eye went well, and they didn't even keep me hanging around the waiting room for ridiculous amounts of time either yesterday or on today's post-op visit. I anticipate near-20/20 vision by the time the healing process is over. But I won't be blogging any more until tonight at the earliest.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on July 15, 2003 • Comments