Those of us over a certain age recall the “Little House on the Prairie” television series and many of us read several of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books upon which it was loosely based. An interesting New Yorker profile by Judith Thurman examines the story behind the story.

Wilder scholarship is a flourishing industry, particularly at universities in the Midwest, and much of it seeks to sift fiction from history. The best book among many good, if more pedestrian, ones, “The Ghost in the Little House,” by William Holtz, a professor emeritus of English at the University of Missouri, explores a controversy that first arose after Wilder bequeathed her original manuscripts to libraries in Detroit and California. It is the work of a fastidious stylist, and, in its way, a minor masterpiece of insight and research. Holtz’s subject, however, isn’t Laura Ingalls Wilder. It is her daughter and, he argues, her unacknowledged “ghost,” Rose Wilder Lane.

[...]

Rose saw her mother as a literary apprentice, not as an artist, even though she had always encouraged Wilder’s writing—first the journalism, then the juveniles; they were a less strenuous and more profitable source of income for an elderly woman than chicken farming. But, whatever art may be, the Little House books fulfill its purpose as defined by Horace: “to entertain and to inform.” Mother and daughter essentially divided that labor. One has to suspect that the delicious minutiae of the books’ famous how-to chapters on molding bullets, pressing cheese, digging a well, making a rag doll, drying plums, framing a house, and smoking a ham, among dozens of daily activities, were mostly Laura’s contribution. (In my favorite of many Christmas scenes, little Grace gets an elegant new coat and hood, trimmed in swan’s down; her father shot the bird, her mother cured the skin and did most of the sewing, and her older sisters pieced out the lining from scraps of blue silk.) It was what Laura knew, loved, and had proved, in her columns for the Ruralist, that she could write about.

Rose had proved that she could romanticize whatever material she was given. She did some minor tinkering with “Pioneer Girl,” but, once it was decided to fictionalize the memoir as a children’s story—the idea had come from an editor who rejected the memoir—she took a more aggressive role. It varied in intensity from book to book, but she dutifully typed up the manuscript pages, and, in the process, reshaped and heightened the dramatic structure. She also rewrote the prose so drastically that Laura sometimes felt usurped. “A good bit of the detail that I add to your copy is for pure sensory effect,” Rose explained in a letter.

John Miller, a thorough biographer and historian who, like Holtz, compared the manuscripts with the published texts, came to a different conclusion about the collaboration. In the introduction to his book “Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder,” he writes, “Wilder demonstrated a high degree of writing competence from the beginning, and her daughter’s contribution to the final products, while important, was less significant than has been asserted.” (The four pages of manuscript that he reproduces arouse more questions than they settle, however. In Laura’s scribbled margin notes to Rose—points of fact about geography—she misspells definite as “deffinite” and remarks that her husband “don’t remember” the distance between two towns.) A concise, recent biography by Pamela Smith Hill, “Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Writer’s Life,” is more overtly partisan. Hill accuses Rose of insensitivity to her mother’s “imaginative vision,” and, at times, of arrogance, condescension, bullying, self-aggrandizement, and even plagiarism. (Rose secretly wrote an adult novella of her own, “Let the Hurricane Roar,” which was widely admired and sold briskly. The substance and characters were pillaged from “Pioneer Girl.” Laura apparently never read the book, and considered it a betrayal.)

The cumulative evidence suggests that sometimes Laura stood her ground and sometimes she was cowed into submission, but most often she solicited and welcomed Rose’s improvements. When Rose left the farm, in 1935, the editing of the five books yet to come was done by correspondence. “I have written you the whys of the story as I wrote it,” Laura told her in a letter that accompanied a draft of volume four, “On the Banks of Plum Creek,” “but you know your judgment is better than mine, so what you decide is the one that stands.” Rose, for her part, could be an insufferable didact. She played down her authority, even as she hammered it home: “I’m trying to train you as a writer for the big market,” she had told her mother in 1925. (Laura had written an article about her Ozark kitchen, which, heavily revised, had appeared in the magazine Country Gentleman.) “You must understand that what sold was your article, edited. You must study how it was edited, and why. . . . Above all, you must listen to me.”

Truth is both stranger and more interesting than fiction here. But rather more sad.

via Jason Kottke

Russell Jacoby laments that it has become almost impossible for intellectuals to sustain themselves without institutional backing:

Yes, a few souls manage to hustle and do quite nicely, for instance, Christopher Hitchens. Yes, a few magazines like the “New Yorker” pay a living wage, but for most to survive, if not flourish, requires a working (and willing) spouse, family money or an academic position (or its equivalent such as a slot in a think tank or policy outfit). Yes, Scialabba has a chair at Harvard, but his sits behind a desk on the ground floor of the building which he superintends. Only the most resolute can juggle for years a day job and night time of writing. For almost everyone else, the choice is to join an institution or die on the vine.

In the wake of government harassment of professors in the 1950s, Albert Einstein was asked about the situation of scientists and famously replied, “If I would be a young man again and had to decide how to make my living, I would not try to become a scientist or scholar or teacher. I would rather choose to be a plumber or a peddler in the hope to find that modest degree of independence still available under present circumstances.” Even for the 1950s the reference to a peddler is dated, yet the point remains salient. What are the costs of the institutionalization of intelligence?

[...]

The Internet allows new voices , but it also undercuts the traditional magazines and newspapers that at least pretended to pay. The Web forces more people to join in the rat-race to earn a living or find an academic or neo-academic position – or vanish.

I’ve been living the so-called “life of the mind” since at least the early 1990s, sometimes with institutional backing (a university or a think tank) and sometimes without (blogging and freelance writing in conjunction with other jobs or as a full-time job).  And, yes, plumbers make more per hour.

Then again, I knew that going in.  And I had no interest in fixing clogged toilets for a living.

There is more terrific intellectual discourse out there on the Web than I can possibly keep up with.  That it pays nothing or little is, I suppose, a pity.  But that it nonetheless gets produced would seem evidence of a non-problem.  The public gets the benefit of the work and the producers of the work get enough reward — even if it’s psychic rather than monetary — to continue producing it.   And they still manage to feed themselves, somehow.

And, frankly, discounting institutions seems rather silly.  Saying that one can’t make a living thinking unless one works for a university, think tank, or magazine is rather like the old Monty Python sketch about how the Romans never did anything for the people “apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order.”  After all, those places employ tens of thousands of people.

Image: Defense Tech

Matt Yglesias has discovered the facts that 1) each state gets two Senators and 2) some states are bigger than others, a condition that has obtained since the inception of our current system in 1789.  There was, as some may recall having read, this thing called the Great Compromise whereby delegates representing sovereign states under the extant Articles of Confederation agreed  they would have a bicameral legislature wherein one house represented people and another represented said states.  This compromise, incidentally, was a diminution of the power the smaller states had under said Articles.

Anyhoo, it has come to Matt’s attention and he’s none too happy about it:

The point is that this is an unfair and bizarre way to run things. If you consider that the mean state would contain two percent of the population, we have just 34 Senators representing the above-average states even though they collectively contain 69.15 percent of the population. The other 66 Senators represent about 30 percent of the people. If the Iranians were to succeed in overthrowing their theocracy and set about to write a new constitution, nobody in their right mind would recommend this system to them.

Probably not — but we might have been better off recommending something like that to the Iraqis.  Some form of strong federalism or even confederalism makes a lot of sense in cases where states are comprised of geographically bound subgroupings with a strong sense of separate identity and history of autonomy.

The problem in the United States is that our current system no longer reflects the reality on the ground.  Most of us are now highly mobile with no strong sense of place-related identity.  Most Californians or New Yorkers or Virginians probably just think of themselves as Americans and only incidentally as residents of their states. This is least true, however, in the less populated states, which tend to be comprised of residents with intergenerational roots and therefore much more provincial.

An aircraft that would have been “Air Force One” except that President Obama wasn’t on board staged an ill-fated photo op in New York City yesterday morning.

It was supposed to be a photo opportunity, a showcase of Air Force One alongside the sweep of New York City skyline. But as the low-flying Boeing 747 speeded in the shadows of skyscrapers, trailed by two fighter jets, the sight instead awakened barely dormant fears of a terrorist attack, causing a momentary panic that sent workers pouring out of buildings on both sides of the Hudson River.

“I thought there was some kind of an attack,” said Paul Nadler, who sprinted down more than 20 flights of stairs after watching the plane from his office in Jersey City shortly after 10 a.m. “We ran like hell.”

In fact, the blue and white plane with “The United States of America” emblazoned on its side was one of two regularly used by the president. It was soaring above Lower Manhattan, Staten Island and Jersey City so government photographers could take pictures near the Statue of Liberty for publicity purposes.

Aides to President Obama, who was not on board, said he was incensed when he learned of the event Monday afternoon. The White House later issued a formal apology.

Witnesses described the engine roar as the planes swooped by office towers close enough to rattle the windows and prompt evacuations at scores of buildings. Some sobbed as they made their way to the street.

Methinks Obama needs some better PR people, stat.   And New Yorkers need to lighten up a bit; it’s been more than seven years.*

____________
*To be clear: I don’t begrudge momentary alarm at seeing a plane where it isn’t supposed to be.  But breaking down sobbing is a decided overreaction.

Gordon Biersch Somerfest pints

Burkhard Bilger explores the rise of craft beers for The New Yorker.

“When you’re trying to create new brewing techniques and beer styles, you have to have a certain recklessness,” Jim Koch, whose Boston Beer Company brews Samuel Adams, and who coined the term “extreme beer,” told me. “Sam has that. He’s fearless, but he’s also got a good palate. He doesn’t put stuff into beer that doesn’t deserve to be there.”

The debate goes back, in one form or another, nearly five hundred years. According to the Bavarian Reinheitsgebot, or Purity Law, of 1516, beer can be made with only three ingredients: water, hops, and barley. (Yeast was left off the list because brewers didn’t know it existed; beer was naturally fermented, like sourdough bread.) German brewers still observe a version of the Reinheitsgebot, but Belgian brewers, just across the border, have cheerfully renounced it. Their krieks, wits, lambics, and gueuzes are among the world’s most remarkable beers, yet they’re often made with fruits or spices, or fortified with sugar, to become as potent as wine.

In America, brewers have long followed the German model: our major industrial breweries were all founded by German-Americans. But Calagione and others have lately wandered over to the Belgian side—and kept on going. “I’d probably be arrested, tarred and feathered, if I stepped off a plane in Berlin,” Calagione told me. Extreme brewers have helped turn American brewing into the most influential in the world. But they’ve also raised a basic question: When does beer cease to be beer?

A recent Esquire article on award winning chili recipes revealed the author’s discovering that, despite having grown up with very strict rules as to what constituted chili (no beans, etc.), “it’s all chili, and it’s all good.”  The same’s basically true of beer.

Gordon Biersch, a national brewery chain with at least two locations in the DC area, has a range of terrific brews made according to the German purity laws, including an outstanding German-style hefeweitzen.  But those Belgian Wits and blondes and abbey ales are terrific, too.

via Ezra Klein

The original referred to Biersch as a “local” brewery chain but, in fact, it began twenty years ago in Palo Alto, CA and is available nationally. I’d never encountered them before stopping in their DC location.

The next episode of OTB Radio, our BlogTalkRadio program, will record and air live tonight from 7-8 Eastern.

Dave Schuler will be joining me tonight to talk about recent events in the news.  Possible topics include:

• The New Yorker cover flap

• McCain and Obama’s evolving Iraq and Afghanistan plans

• Freddie and Fannie bailout

• Alternative energy solutions just around the corner?

Please join us. We’ll also be taking your calls at (646) 716-7030.

You can play the show, subscribe to its feed, or share it with your friends via the widget below:

(Note: The playback automatically updates to the most recent show available. Older shows can be accessed at the show archives.)

Good line, purportedly from Jon Stewart:

Obama is not upset about the cartoon that calls him a Muslim extremist. Who gets upset about cartoons? Muslim extremists.

via Steve Garfield.

See “New Yorker Obama Terrorist Cover” for background and commentary on the story.

UPDATE:  Amusingly, I see via Memeorandum, the hubbub goes on.  Obama is continuing to beat this dead horse:

Democrat Barack Obama said Tuesday that the New Yorker magazine’s satirical cover depicting him and his wife as flag-burning, fist-bumping radicals doesn’t bother him but that it was an insult to Muslim Americans.

“You know, there are wonderful Muslim Americans all across the country who are doing wonderful things,” the presidential candidate told CNN’s Larry King. “And for this to be used as sort of an insult, or to raise suspicions about me, I think is unfortunate. And it’s not what America’s all about.”

Obama blamed himself for not being forceful enough in challenging some of the rumors about him, including that he is Muslim. Obama is Christian.

This is bizarre on so many levels.  First, Obama clearly knows that the cover was a satire and one which is helping him.  Second, he seems to be implying — while touting all the fine things Muslims do — that “Muslim” is some sort of slur.

Meanwhile, even those on the Left are defending the New Yorker.  Editor Katrina vanden Heuvel and others at The Nation :

[A]s comedian Bill Maher observed, “If you can’t do irony on the cover of The New Yorker, where can you?” I tend to agree.

[...]

It’s interesting how through time, especially in these last years, images seem more powerful, troubling, provocative and threatening than words. Why is that? Hard to fully fathom. Perhaps the speed with which images, unmoored from their original home and context, zip around the 36/7 Internet? Whatever the full range of reasons, it seems to me that one fact is that a caricature is almost by definition provocative, often offensive. It’s a misrepresentation, an exaggeration for effect, a parody.

While I understand why many object to this cartoon–and to images which they believe reinforce stereotypes (and there are many at The Nation who found the New Yorker cartoon offensive), I believe satire–even if it flops or offends –has a place in our culture and politics.

She then has some of the magazine’s cartoonists weigh in. Steve Brodner’s take is especially keen:

So basically we have the Wolf Blitzers pretending not to get this to rev up ratings which rely, largely, on the “outrage of the day.” However, in that process a dialogue is forced, satire is discussed, the truth about Obama is put on the table. And so, even if it’s taking the long way to get there, Barry Blitt’s strong image does what we need it to do: put these issues up for discussion and in a very real way, educate America.

Christopher Hitchens has a withering piece for The Mirror. Some excerpts:

Satire, according to Jonathan Swift, is “a mirror wherein every man will commonly discern every face but his own”.

[...]

Ludicrous as it might seem to have John McCain enlisted as an art critic, and obvious as it should be that the New Yorker would never do anything deliberately to hurt the Democratic nominee, it remains the case that a Newsweek poll has just found 12 per cent of voters believing that Obama is a practicing Muslim and another 12 per cent (possibly the same 12 per cent) convinced that he used a Koran for his swearing-in ceremony at the United States Senate. These are of course exactly the sort of people who do not read the New Yorker, or go in very much for the ironic and the satirical, so that as usual the aesthetic effort is somewhat lost on what ought to be its target audience.

[...]

If reassurance is what was wanted, it would have been nice to hear Barack Obama agreeing with the New Yorker’s people that the cover was (a) a joke and (b) a pro-Obama joke and then adding (c) that he and his wife “got” the said joke. No such luck. A statement of extreme lugubriousness from Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton announced that “most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive – and we agree”. So in other words, the Obama team disagrees strongly with those readers who don’t see it as tasteless and inoffensive, as well as those who interpret it as an attempt to draw the sting from a whispering campaign against Obama. Take that, you broad-minded and humorous rabble! Satire can do no more.

Finally, Salon’s Gary Kamiya makes the unkindest cut of all:

It’s official: The Bush era has made liberals so terrified of right-wing smears it has caused them to completely lose their sense of humor. Much as I hate to repeat one of Rush Limbaugh’s flat, stale and unprofitable applause lines, that’s the only conclusion I can draw after witnessing the left-wing blogosphere’s bizarre reaction to the New Yorker cover. . ..

[...]

I don’t know what lugubrious planet these people are on, but I definitely don’t want any of them writing material for Jon Stewart.

[...]

If you satirically depict Obama as an Islamist terrorist, in this view, you are only reinforcing and giving broader currency to right-wing smears. Since the essence of satire is exaggerating negative stereotypes, this means that satire itself is off limits. Or, at least, all satire except that which the cowering — but oh so semiotically sophisticated — left-wing commentariat deems to be sufficiently broad-brush and polemical to pass its funny test.

If nothing else, this controversy has apparently revived the word “lugubrious.”

Bruce Ackerman has read a novel and heard unsubstantiated rumors and from these concocted a Constitutional crisis which he’s convinced the folks at Slate to publish.

New Yorker writer Jane Mayer’s new book, The Dark Side, opens with a shocker. Apparently sometime in the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan issued a “secret executive order” that in the event of the death of the president and the vice president “established a means of re-creating the executive branch.” Reagan’s order violated the express terms of the Constitution and governing statutes.

Does a similar order exist today? We aren’t told. But we do know that Dick Cheney participated in the secret “doomsday” exercises under the Reagan order, and given his central role at present, it is imperative for Congress to find out.

Congress last considered the problem of a dual vacancy in the presidency and the vice presidency when Harry Truman was in the White House. In the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, lawmakers stipulated that if both positions are empty, power passes first to the Speaker of the House or, if she, too, does not survive, to the president pro tem of the Senate. But relying on James Mann’s earlier book Rise of the Vulcans, Mayer reports that Reagan “amended the process for speed and clarity … without informing Congress that it had been sidestepped.” We don’t know how. But if the order bypasses the speaker and the Senate president pro tempore in favor of an official in the executive branch, we have a recipe for a constitutional crisis.

Well, yeah.  But, as Ackerman acknowledges, the Bush Administration has explicitly stated that they’ll follow the Succession Act.  And there’s the Supreme Court, which would surely uphold a duly passed, six-decade-old statute if it conflicted with a “secret” executive order from a dead executive.

Now, as it happens, I think the 1947 process is a dubious one. It simply makes no sense to have an elected president of one party succeeded by someone, potentially of the opposition party, elected only by the residents of one Congressional District.  I’d much prefer, say, the Secretary of State or the Secretary of Defense to take over.  We should change the law to that effect, in theory, but there’s generally not much impetus to pass legislation on purely theoretical matters that no voter is likely to decide the next election on, let alone if said legislation would shift power, however theoretical, away from the legislative branch.

Still, a Constitutional crisis, it ain’t.

via Dave Winer’s FriendFeed

The liberal blogs are in a tizzy about the cover of the July 21 New Yorker, an illustration by Barry Blitt which shows the Obamas in terrorist outfits, doing a fist bump with a big portrait of Osama bin Laden over their mantle with an American flag burning in the fireplace:

Given that this is the liberal New Yorker and that the magazine is aimed at liberal urbanites, it’s rather obvious that this is poking fun at conservatives, not the Obamas.  It’s provocative, sure, but how better to generate buzz and sell extra copies at the newstand?  Quick:  What was the last New Yorker cover that generated any discussion at all? No, I don’t remember, either.

That was essentially Kevin Drum’s initial reaction, too.  He quickly changed his mind:

Maybe it’s because this kind of satire just doesn’t work, no matter how well it’s done. But mostly it’s because a few minutes thought convinced me it was gutless. If artist Barry Blitt had some real cojones, he would have drawn the same cover but shown it as a gigantic word bubble coming out of John McCain’s mouth — implying, you see, that this is how McCain wants the world to view Obama. But he didn’t. Because that would have been unfair. And McCain would have complained about it. And for some reason, the risk that a failed satire would unfairly defame McCain is somehow seen as worse than the risk that a failed satire would unfairly defame Obama.

HuffPo’s  Rachel Sklar is similarly thoughtful:

Presumably the New Yorker readership is sophisticated enough to get the joke, but still: this is going to upset a lot of people, probably for the same reason it’s going to delight a lot of other people, namely those on the right: Because it’s got all the scare tactics and misinformation that has so far been used to derail Barack Obama’s campaign — all in one handy illustration. Anyone who’s tried to paint Obama as a Muslim, anyone who’s tried to portray Michelle as angry or a secret revolutionary out to get Whitey, anyone who has questioned their patriotism— well, here’s your image.

As one might expect, some were less nuanced.  Duncan “Atrios” Black takes the cake with, “Shouting ‘n****r’ is ok as long as you mean it ironically.”  John Aravosis gets honorable mention with:

Okay, what do we do about this? I want suggestions. This is what we have to deal with in America, as Democrats. A liberal media that bends over so far backwards to be “fair” that it becomes just as bad as FOX News. A liberal publication like the New Yorker thinks it’s funny to make Mrs. Obama some radical black panther, Barack Obama basically a terrorist (you’ll note that he looks just like Osama bin Laden on the wall), and they’re even burning the American flag in the Oval Office (that’s supposed to be the White House, get it?). They put Osama bin Laden on the wall of the Oval Office. And this is funny? Is the New Yorker so out of touch that they don’t realize that much of America, or at least too much of America, harbors these very concerns about Obama and his wife? I’m sure the New Yorker thinks they’re actually poking holes in the myth by making light of the stereotypes. Yeah, and tell us how this pokes fun at the stereotype? It reinforces it.

Taylor Marsh wonders, “Is the appreciation for political satire dead?”

The only way to combat a myth is to broaden it, hype it, make a satirical target out of it. The cover of The New Yorker does just that, but does it make the further statement? Does it go far enough, instead of simply repeating the smears in another form? Where’s the slap at the smear artists, which is obviously who the artist is mocking? The [Village Voice] Hillary image [featured and discussed in the post] has the same problem. It doesn’t depict the fighter rising from the battle. Is simply repeating wingnut talking points enough or does that provide more fuel for the smears instead of mocking them?

Barack Obama wasted no time in fanning the flames out outrage — and Team McCain joined in:

The Obama campaign quickly condemned the rendering. Spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement: “The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama’s right-wing critics have tried to create. But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree.” McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds quickly e-mailed: “We completely agree with the Obama campaign, it’s tasteless and offensive.”

Whether the image is “offensive” is a matter of opinion, I suppose.  Certainly, it’s far less so than any number of editorial cartoons that come out every day.  (Consider the work of Ted Rall, for example.)  But, yeah, it’s probabably “tasteless.” The cover of the New Yorker is simply different than a political cartoon inside a paper.

I do, however, think it will achieve its desired effects.  First and foremost, it’s already generating more buzz than any issue in the magazine’s recent history.  More importantly, though, it will lead to a round of discussion of the “Obama is a Muslim” nonsense on the various talking heads shows.  This, in turn, will force Republican operatives to state, over and over, that they don’t think Obama is a Muslim, a terrorist, an America hater, and so forth.  That’s probably the only way this silly meme goes away.

Memeorandum has tons more reactions: QandO, Top of the Ticket, HorsesAss.Org, Pajamas Media, American Power, Ketchup and Caviar, Taylor Marsh, BLACKFIVE, Blue Girl, Red State, Polimom Says, Macsmind, Gateway Pundit, Riehl World View, The Plank, The Page, Roger L. Simon, Althouse, JammieWearingFool, Doug Ross, The Strata-Sphere, The Volokh Conspiracy, Moonbattery, The Daily Dish, Blog of the Moderate Left, AMERICAblog News, Feministe, Wake up America, Pensito Review, The Raw Story, Michelle Obama Watch, Buck Naked Politics, Newshoggers.com, Ben Smith’s Blogs, The Corner, NO QUARTER, Scripting News, THE ASTUTE BLOGGERS, Flopping Aces, TalkLeft, The Confluence, FOX Embeds, Eunomia, The Sundries Shack, Sister Toldjah, TBogg, Pandagon, Macsmind and Viking Pundit

Ezra Klein jumps on a growing meme the home ownership isn’t all it’s cracked up to be and that the government should stop subsidizing it.

He points to Paul Krugman, who argues in today’s NYT that it’s time to rethink our decades-long bipartisan consensus that home ownership should be encouraged. While everyone stresses the advantages of owning your own home, like building equity and creating a stake in one’s community, not enough emphasis is placed on the disadvantages.

• If housing prices fall, you can lose money

• The cost and difficulty of selling a house makes it harder to move for a new job

• If gas prices suddenly double and you live a long way from work, it sucks

That’s really only two reasons, since the last merely restates the third: Owing ties you down.

Not mentioned in Krugman’s column, but more certain than the others:

• When you own your own home, you’re responsible for maintenance and will inevitably spend much more in “upgrades” than if you rent.

Anyway, I see from Ezra’s “link blog” that James Surowiecki wrote almost exactly the same article for the New Yorker back in March. Better yet, Andrew Oh-Willeke wrote all of this in a May 2006 blog post, before the subprime lending crisis hit, putting him way ahead of the curve.

Klein, Surowiecki, and Oh-Willeke all note that easy lending exacerbated these issues, since so many people are now mortgaged up to their eyeballs, buying ever-bigger homes, and now feeling the crunch as the economy has slowed down. Back in the days when one had to put 20 percent or more down to buy a home, people were much more insulated from these effects.

Ezra argues, “[T]oday, owning a home looks a whole lot more like renting. Fairly few homeowners actually ‘own’ anything. Rather, they have a sizable mortgage, and they pay money to a bank. That’s not all that different than paying money to a landlord.” But that’s not right. Having lived a somewhat nomadic existence, I’ve “owned” and rented numerous times. Every time I’ve done the latter, I’ve lost money. The landlord got X dollars a month and, at the end of our relationship, I left with nothing. Conversely, every time I’ve taken out a mortgage, I’ve built sizable amounts of equity which I was able to extract from the house upon selling it and then reinvest later. Indeed, there have been years when my house earned more money than I did.

Since moving into our current house nearly two years ago, my wife and I have “lost” money, in that the house would currently sell for perhaps 5 percent less than we paid for it. Then again, we’re still far ahead of where we would be had we rented all these years. And we went into the current mortgage with open eyes; the housing bubble was already bursting but we wanted to move to a nicer house and neighborhood and figured we’d rather be “stuck” in this house than the one we left.

Beyond the economics, there’s a huge psychic value to owning your own place. You don’t have to worry about your landlord selling the place out from under you or “going condo.” You can paint the walls any color you damn well please, rip out the carpets and put in hardwood floors, have all the pets you want, and just generally live your life with greater autonomy. And I’ve never once raised my rent!

But, yes, it’s more expensive and you’ve got less ability to chuck it all and move to Mexico. And, if you bought into more house than you could afford and suddenly need to move, you risk emerging in worse financial shape if prices plunge.

All told, though, I recommend home ownership highly.

That said, however, I agree with Ezra on the public policy question: “Does it make economic sense for home buyers to be subsidized by renters?” No, it doesn’t.

Now, one could argue the degree to which they are. Home owners pay more property taxes than their renting counterparts, which means we pay much more for the public schools, even if we have no kids going to the public schools. And, since high earners, who pay the lion’s share of income taxes, are also likely to be homeowners, we’re paying a disproportionate amount for public services, even those which subsidize ourselves like the added infrastructure costs of supplying roads, utilities, and whatnot to the suburbs.

Even so, the most obvious subsidy, the ability to write off home mortgage interest, has always struck me as silly. There’s not much doubt that it artificially tips the scales not only in the rent vs. buy calculation but even encourages people to buy larger homes than they could otherwise afford since a portion of one’s monthly mortgage payment is actually “paid for” by the taxpayers. There’s no good rationale for that.

While gays still can’t marry in New York, marriages performed out-of-state will now be recognized when they come home.

Same-sex marriages legally performed elsewhere will be recognized in New York in response to a state court ruling this year, Gov. David Paterson’s spokeswoman said Wednesday. State agencies, including those governing insurance and health care, must immediately change policies and regulations to make sure “spouse,” “husband” and “wife” are clearly understood to include gay couples, according to a memo sent earlier this month from the governor’s counsel.

Gay marriage is not legal in New York, and the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, has said it can only be legalized by the Legislature. But the memo, based on a Feb. 1 New York Appellate Division court ruling, would recognize the marriages of New Yorkers who are legally wed elsewhere. The appellate judges determined that there is no legal impediment in New York to the recognition of a same-sex marriage. The state Legislature “may decide to prohibit the recognition of same-sex marriages solemnized abroad,” the ruling said. “Until it does so, however, such marriages are entitled to recognition in New York.”

Massachusetts is currently the only U.S. state that recognizes same-sex marriage, but its residency requirements would bar New Yorkers from marrying there. New York residents could instead flock to California, where gay couples will be able to wed beginning June 17 — unless that state’s Supreme Court decides to stay its own ruling. Upon their return home, in the eyes of the state, their unions would be no different from those of their heterosexual neighbors.

The most populous state in the country will soon perform gay marriages and the polling evidence indicates that a majority of Californians are fine with that, meaning it’s unlikely to change through plebiscite or constitutional amendment. Now, the third most populous state and the home of the largest city in America will legitimate the act on the opposite coast. Objectively, this means gay marriage will be legal across the country sooner rather than later.

New York gays will soon demand the right to marry without flying across the country. It’s hard to make an argument against them if the state is recognizing other marriages between same-sex couples.

Further, the federal courts will use these precedents as a basis for finding a right to same-sex marriage in the Equal Protection clause, arguing that the cultural norms claim that had previously justified denying gays the right to marriage is no longer valid.

It’s not exactly news that the Republican Party is in the doldrums at the moment. It lost control of both Houses of Congress in the 2006 elections, its president is at historic lows in the polls, it has lost a string of special elections and its incumbent Congressmen are retiring in droves, and the odds are better than even that they’ll lose the White House in the Fall.

As usually happens when one of the two major parties is in a down cycle, the pundits and activists alike come out of the woodworks proposing a plan to save the party — invariably by making it more suitable to their own particular preferences. The latest entrants in this fray are a superb long piece in the New Yorker by George Packer, “The Fall of Conservatism — Have the Republicans run out of ideas?” (via memeorandum) and a call by moderate California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for a “rebranding” of the GOP (via Glenn Reynolds).

Packer provides a look at the rise and fall of the modern Republican Party, which begins with Goldwater’s massive defeat in 1964 and a quick turnaround leading to Richard Nixon’s stunning blowout victory four years later.

[The Nixon] Administration adopted an undercover strategy for building a Republican majority, working to create the impression that there were two Americas: the quiet, ordinary, patriotic, religious, law-abiding Many, and the noisy, élitist, amoral, disorderly, condescending Few.

A more charitable characterization would be that the overwhelming majority of Americans saw their culture under assault from an urban elite and a sympathetic Supreme Court. But the battle lines are about right no matter how one looks at it.

Political tactics have a way of outliving their ability to respond to the felt needs and aspirations of the electorate: Democrats continued to accuse Republicans of being like Herbert Hoover well into the nineteen-seventies; Republicans will no doubt accuse Democrats of being out of touch with real Americans long after George W. Bush retires to Crawford, Texas. But the 2006 and 2008 elections are the hinge on which America is entering a new political era.

This will be true whether or not John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, wins in November. He and his likely Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, “both embody a post-polarized, or anti-polarized, style of politics,” the Times columnist David Brooks told me. “McCain, crucially, missed the sixties, and in some ways he’s a pre-sixties figure. He and Obama don’t resonate with the sixties at all.” The fact that the least conservative, least divisive Republican in the 2008 race is the last one standing—despite being despised by significant voices on the right—shows how little life is left in the movement that Goldwater began, Nixon brought into power, Ronald Reagan gave mass appeal, Newt Gingrich radicalized, Tom DeLay criminalized, and Bush allowed to break into pieces.

[...]

After Reagan and the end of the Cold War, conservatism lost the ties that had bound together its disparate factions—libertarians, evangelicals, neoconservatives, Wall Street, working-class traditionalists.

This isn’t a new observation — after all, the Soviet Union fell seventeen years ago now! — but it has in fact been difficult to keep that coalition together without a common enemy. Then again, the GOP has won two of the four presidential elections wrested control of the Congress for several years during that span. So, clearly, they must have had something to offer besides warmed over 1960’s bromides.

Rcently, I spoke with a number of conservatives about their movement. The younger ones—say, those under fifty—uniformly subscribe to the reformist version. They are in a state of glowing revulsion at the condition of their political party. Most of them predicted that Republicans will lose the Presidency this year and suffer a rout in Congress. They seemed to feel that these losses would be deserved, and suggested that, if the party wins, it will be—in the words of Rich Lowry, the thirty-nine-year-old editor of National Review—“by default.”

[...]

Pat Buchanan was less polite, paraphrasing the social critic Eric Hoffer: “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”

I tend to agree with both Lowry and Buchanan. The party became the enemy it preached against for so many years, embracing big government solutions, a moralistic foreign policy, and a huge appetite for pork. The K Street Project, the cover-up of the Mark Foley scandal, the Duke Cunningham mess and similar events demonstrated that holding on to and capitalizing on power was more important to some of the party’s leadership than the principles they had campaigned on.

At the same time, though, young activists are always disappointed in their leaders. Even when there’s no corruption involved, politicians naturally engage in compromise, logrolling, and the other distasteful but necessary facets of governing.

Packer also engages in some unfair jibes, such as:

By the end of the century, a movement inspired by sophisticated works such as Russell Kirk’s 1953 “The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot” churned out degenerate descendants with titles like “How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must).”

Rather obviously, these aren’t aimed at the same audiences. The former was for the elites, the latter for the masses. Surely, there was plenty of nonsense in the 1950s (say, the various tracts of the John Birch Society) and plenty of quality nowadays (including some books cited elsewhere in Packer’s piece). A mass political movement will always have both highbrow intellectualism and populist red meat.

Schwarzenegger, campaigning last week with John McCain, had some advice: The party should be, well, more like Arnold.

“The Republican idea is a great idea, but we can’t go and get stuck with just the right wing,” Schwarzenegger said. “Let’s let the party come all the way to the center. Let those people be heard as much as the right. Let it be the big tent we’ve talked about. Let’s invade and let’s cross over that (political) center,” he said. “The issues that they’re talking about? Let them be our issues, and let the party be known for that.”

He observed that his own political opponents, including former Democratic Gov. Gray Davis, tried to define him in much the way McCain is being defined by Democrats – as joined at the hip with Bush. “It didn’t work,” he laughed. But “how does (McCain) beat the Democrats? By offering a better future. He needs to offer hope, he needs to go in and show he can solve the problem in Iraq and have better relations with other countries again … and bring the economy back.”

But Schwarzenegger didn’t need rebranding; his “brand” is a larger-than-life persona he created over the years. McCain can’t very well run as an action hero. Packer ends his piece, though, by noting that McCain might just well manage to win as, well, John McCain.

McCain appeared to a warm reception. I had seen him in New Hampshire, where he gave off-the-cuff remarks with vigor; when he is stuck with a script, however, he is a terrible campaigner. Looking pallid, he sounded flat, and stumbled over his lines—and yet they were effective lines, ones that Obama would do well to study. “I can’t claim we come from the same background,” McCain began. “I’m not the son of a coal miner. I wasn’t raised by a family that made its living from the land or toiled in a mill or worked in the local schools or health clinic. I was raised in the United States Navy, and, after my own naval career, I became a politician. My work isn’t as hard as yours—it isn’t nearly as hard as yours. I had an easier start.” He paused and went on, “But you are my compatriots, my fellow-Americans, and that kinship means more to me than almost any other association.”

That’s the right message and a powerful one. But, really, it’s not as different from Nixon’s as Packer’s revisionism would have us believe. McCain is trying to forge a common definition of what it means to be “American” and identifying himself as the candidate most able to protect those values. He’s got an uphill fight, going against a younger man with a lot less baggage, but he’s got a puncher’s chance.

What’ll be interesting, whether McCain wins or loses in the Fall, is what lessons the GOP takes from his campaign. If he loses, one suspects we’ll see calls for a return to a harder line conservatism, which could well relegate the Republicans to regional status for a while. If he wins, I suspect we’ll still see calls for a harder line conservatism, since McCain will have run under the conservative banner, but there will also be more push for a bigger tent.

Hollywood legend and longtime NRA spokesman Charlton Heston had died after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease.

Robert W. Welkos and Susan King for the LAT:

Charlton Heston, the Oscar-winning actor who achieved stardom playing larger-than-life figures including Moses, Michelangelo and Andrew Jackson and went on to become an unapologetic gun advocate and darling of conservative causes, has died. He was 84.

Heston died Saturday at his Beverly Hills home, said family spokesman Bill Powers. In 2002, he had been diagnosed with symptoms similar to those of Alzheimer’s disease.

With a booming baritone voice, the tall, ruggedly handsome actor delivered his signature role as the prophet Moses in Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 Biblical extravaganza “The Ten Commandments,” raising a rod over his head as God miraculously parts the Red Sea. Heston won the Academy Award for best actor in another religious blockbuster in 1959’s “Ben-Hur,” racing four white horses at top speed in one of the cinema’s legendary action sequences: the 15-minute chariot race in which his character, a proud and noble Jew, competes against his childhood Roman friend.

Heston stunned the entertainment world in August 2002 when he made a poignant and moving videotaped address announcing his illness.

Late in life, Heston’s stature as a political firebrand overshadowed his acting. He became demonized by gun-control advocates and liberal Hollywood when he became president of the National Rifle Assn. in 1998. Heston answered his critics in a now-famous pose that mimicked Moses’ parting of the Red Sea. But instead of a rod, Heston raised a flintlock over his head and challenged his detractors to pry the rifle “from my cold, dead hands.”

Like the chariot race and the bearded prophet Moses, Heston will be best remembered for several indelible cinematic moments: playing a deadly game of cat and mouse with Orson Welles in the oil fields in “Touch of Evil,” his rant at the end of “Planet of the Apes” when he sees the destruction of the Statue of Liberty, his discovery that “Soylent Green is people!” in the sci-fi hit “Soylent Green” and the dead Spanish hero on his steed in “El Cid.”

The New Yorker’s film critic Pauline Kael, in her review of 1968’s “Planet of the Apes,” wrote: “All this wouldn’t be so forceful or so funny if it weren’t for the use of Charlton Heston in the [leading] role. With his perfect, lean-hipped, powerful body, Heston is a god-like hero; built for strength, he is an archetype of what makes Americans win. He represents American power — and he has the profile of an eagle.”

For decades, the 6-foot-2 Heston was a towering figure in the world of movies, television and the stage. “He was the screen hero of the 1950s and 1960s, a proven stayer in epics, and a pleasing combination of piercing blue eyes and tanned beefcake,” David Thomson wrote in his book “The New Biographical Dictionary of Film.”

Heston also was blessed by working with legendary directors such as DeMille in “The Greatest Show on Earth” and again in “The Ten Commandments,” Welles in “Touch of Evil,” Sam Peckinpah in “Major Dundee,” William Wyler in “The Big Country” and “Ben-Hur,” George Stevens in “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” Franklin Schaffner in “The War Lord” and “Planet of the Apes” and Anthony Mann in “El Cid.” “Four or five of those men would be on anybody’s all-time great list,” Heston said in a 1983 interview. “And if I picked up one scrap, one piece of business, from each of them, then today I would be a hell of a director.”

CNN adds:

Heston’s wife of 64 years, Lydia, was at his side at the time of his death, according to the family statement. Heston is survived by a son, a daughter and three grandchildren. “We knew him as an adoring husband, a kind and devoted father, and a gentle grandfather, with an infectious sense of humor,” the family said. “He served these far greater roles with tremendous faith, courage and dignity. He loved deeply, and he was deeply loved.”

[...]

Heston was also known for his political activism. He was a high-profile supporter of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his civil rights movement. He attended King’s 1963 March on Washington and stood near the podium as King delivered his “I have a dream” speech. He was president of the National Rifle Association from 1998 to 2002, a role that cast him as a conservative.

While I’ve seen many of his movies, the moment that stands out in my mind was when he shamed the executives of Time-Warner for releasing Ice-T’s “Cop Killer” by the simple and powerful device of reading its lyrics aloud to them. He recounted the event at a 1999 speech at Harvard Law School:

A few years ago, I heard about a — a rapper named Ice-T who was selling a CD called “Cop Killer,” celebrating the ambushing and of murdering police officers. It was being marketed by none other than Time/Warner, the biggest entertainment conglomerate in the country — in the world. Police across the country were outraged. And rightfully so. At least one of them had been murdered. But Time/Warner was stonewalling because the — the CD was a cash cow for them, and the media were tiptoeing around because the rapper was black. I heard Time/Warner had a stockholders meeting scheduled in Beverly Hills, and I owned some shares of Time/Warner at the time, so I decided to attend the meeting.

What I did was against the advice of my family and my colleagues. I asked for the floor. To a hushed room of a thousand average American stockholders, I simply read the full lyrics of “Cop Killer” — every vicious, vulgar, instructional word:

I got my 12-Gauge sawed-off. I got my headlights turned off. I’m about to bust some shots off. I’m about to dust some cops off.

It got worse, a lot worse. Now, I won’t read the rest of it to you. But trust me, the room was a sea of shocked, frozen, blanched faces. Time/Warner executives squirmed in their chairs and stared at their shoes. They hated me for that. Then I delivered another volley of sick lyrics brimming with racist filth, where Ice-T fantasizes about sodomizing the two 12-year-old nieces of Al and Tipper Gore:

She pushed her butt against my –

No. No, I won’t do to you here what I did to them. Let’s just say I left the room in stunned silence. When I read the lyrics to the waiting press corps outside, one of them said, “We can’t print that, you know.” “I know,” I said, “but Time/Warner is still selling it.”

Two months later, Time/Warner terminated Ice-T’s contract. I’ll never be offered another film by Warner Brothers, or get a good review from Time magazine. But disobedience means you have to be willing to act, not just talk.

The entire speech, “Winning the Cultural War,” is worth reading in full. A small portion of the audio is also available at the link.

Allie has more, including some video clips from Heston’s most famous movie roles, at Gone Hollywood.

Linda Chavez argues that, of the Republican candidates seeking the presidency, only John McCain and Rudy Giuliani are qualified.

Many of the Republicans, whatever else their appeal, simply don’t have the experience to lead America during wartime. Mitt Romney doesn’t have the gravitas needed; he’s too eager to please, willing to shape his positions according to the polls.

Much the same can be said of Mike Huckabee.

Ron Paul is a bona fide crank. Last week we learned, for example, that he not only opposes the war in Iraq, but that he regards the Civil War as a mistake as well.

And Fred Thompson? He should go back to “Law and Order.”

That’s the entirety of her argument against the rest of the field. Granting the limitations of an 800-word syndicated column, that’s a rather shallow dismissal.

Gravitas was thrown around a lot in the 2000 cycle but it’s a self-fulfilling modifier. If one thinks someone has what it takes to be president, you think he has gravitas; otherwise, you don’t.

That Romney seems to change his positions on major issues in short order, conveniently aligning himself with the electorate to which he’s seeking to appeal, is a much more reasonable basis for rejecting him. It’s rather hard, though, to make that particular charge stick against Huckabee. After all, his positions on many social issues are well to the left of the GOP base.

That Paul is a “crank” is perhaps not a particularly difficult case to make. But the fact that he “opposes the war in Iraq” is hardly a major piece of evidence in that regard; indeed, that puts him decidedly in the American mainstream. And, while I disagree with Paul that quickly ending slavery could have been accomplished by having Uncle Sam simply pay owners for their slaves, the belief that an internecine battle in which over half a million Americans were killed should have been avoided is hardly the height of insanity.

Chavez’ dismissal of Thompson doesn’t even qualify as half-assed. Why, exactly, should he go back to acting?

Indeed, while devoting more time to her two favorites, she doesn’t exactly tell us why she thinks they’re qualified. She thinks we live in a dangerous world and need serious men to lead us. But what makes them serious? She doesn’t say.

Couldn’t one just as easily retort that McCain is an old geezer who’s out of touch with his party? Or that Giuliani is a one-trick pony with a tendency toward fascism?

It’s probably true that most of us ultimately make such judgments at a gut level and apply intellectual reasoning post hoc. We instinctively gravitate towards certain candidates and find ourselves put off by others. But those in the professional punditry business ought at least do us the service of offering up some analysis.

Photo source: Charlie Neibergall/AP.

The span of I-35 bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis last night was rated structurally deficient two years ago, Dan Browning reports in the Star Tribune.

The highway bridge that collapsed into the Mississippi River on Wednesday was rated as “structurally deficient” two years ago and possibly in need of replacement. That rating was contained in the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Bridge Inventory database.

Jeanne Aamodt, a spokeswoman for the Minnesota Department of Transportation, said the department was aware of the 2005 assessment of the bridge. “We’ve seen it, and we are very familiar with it,” she said. Aamodt said the department plans its bridge repairs using information from the Bridge Inventory database. Many other bridges nationwide carry the same designation that the I-35W bridge received, Aamodt said.

Tony Snow confirmed this report in his press conference this morning.

The White House said Thursday that an inspection two years ago found structural deficiencies in the highway bridge that buckled during evening rush hour in Minneapolis. White House press secretary Tony Snow said the Interstate 35W span rated 50 on a scale of 120 for structural stability. “This doesn’t mean there was a risk of failure, but if an inspection report identifies deficiencies, the state is responsible for taking corrective actions,” he said.

Stephen Flynn — who flogs this issue for a living, I should note — says this failure is part of a general collapse in the American infrastructure.

According to a report card released in 2005 by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), 160,570 bridges, or just over one-quarter of the nation’s 590,750-bridge inventory, were rated structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. The nation’s bridges are being called upon to serve a population that has grown from 200 million to over 300 million since the time the first vehicles rolled across the I-35W bridge. Predictably that has translated into lots more cars. American commuters now spend 3.5 billion hours a year stuck in traffic, at a cost to the economy of $63.2 billion a year.

It is not just roads and bridges that are being stressed to the breaking point. Two weeks ago New Yorkers were scrambling for cover after a giant plume of 200-plus-degree steam and debris shot out of the street and into the air. The mayhem was caused by the explosion of a steam pipe, installed underground in 1924 to heat office buildings near Grand Central station. In January 2007, Kentuckians and Tennesseans woke up to the news that the water level of the largest man-made reservoir east of the Mississippi would have to be dropped by 10 ft. as an emergency measure. The Army Corps of Engineers feared that if it didn’t immediately reduce the pressure on the 57-year-old Wolf Creek Dam, it might fail, sending a wall of water downstream that would inundate communities all along the Cumberland River, including downtown Nashville.

The fact is that Americans have been squandering the infrastructure legacy bequeathed to us by earlier generations. Like the spoiled offspring of well-off parents, we behave as though we have no idea what is required to sustain the quality of our daily lives. Our electricity comes to us via a decades-old system of power generators, transformers and transmission lines—a system that has utility executives holding their collective breath on every hot day in July and August. We once had a transportation system that was the envy of the world. Now we are better known for our congested highways, second-rate ports, third-rate passenger trains and a primitive air traffic control system. Many of the great public works projects of the 20th century—dams and canal locks, bridges and tunnels, aquifers and aqueducts, and even the Eisenhower interstate highway system—are at or beyond their designed life span.

In the end, investigators may find that there are unique and extraordinary reasons why the I-35W bridge failed. But the graphic images of buckled pavement, stranded vehicles, twisted girders and heroic rescuers are a reminder that infrastructure cannot be taken for granted. The blind eye that taxpayers and our elected officials have been turning to the imperative of maintaining and upgrading the critical foundations that underpin our lives is irrational and reckless.

If it’s true that “many other bridges nationwide” are so poorly rated, my guess is that this will become a priority in a big hurry.

UPDATE: A new report says the warnings go back 17 years.

Minnesota officials were warned as early as 1990 that the bridge that plummeted into the Mississippi River was “structurally deficient,” yet they relied on a strategy of patchwork fixes and stepped-up inspections.

“We thought we had done all we could,” state bridge engineer Dan Dorgan told reporters not far from the mangled remains of the span. “Obviously something went terribly wrong.”

Questions about the cause of the collapse and whether it could have been prevented arose Thursday as authorities shifted from rescue efforts to a grim recovery operation, searching for bodies that may be hidden beneath the river’s swirling currents.