That and other fun on tap in next year’s (possible) McConnell-led Senate.
Whatever happens in November, the cultural politics of the country are clearly moving away from the right. It appears to be endangering a spasm of legislative hysteria in a number of deep red states. First, we had this rash of new laws painting religious people who don’t like gays as a minority in need of special protection. Now Kansas is considering forcing cities to notify residents of the dangers of the fluoride in the drinking water.
There’s been a rollicking debate in the generally non-rollicking and pretty small world of academics, political types and journalists about why academics are so obscure and boring and why they won’t get in the game and start contributing and carrying their weight in our country’s public debates. That was the framing at least of the Times piece by Nick Kristof which (though iffy in itself) kicked off the conversation off. Here’s one response, for instance, from Daniel Drezner, a very publicly outspoken academic, who was in the curious position of having the publisher of his main outlet, Foreign Policy, not only agree with Kristof’s thesis but further crap on academics who try to write for a popular audience as “opaque, abstract, incremental, [and] dull” and goes on to say he’s going to stop publishing them anymore.
As a general matter, I think Drezner and a bunch of other generally youngish academics are right in their pushback when they say that contrary to Kristof’s claims, academics are actually a lot more involved in public debates today than they have been in a while. And a lot of that is because of the Internet and the paths to contact with the larger public has made possible. Think about Juan Cole. A vast contribution to the public conversation about the Middle East, entirely because of the Internet. There’s really little precedent in recent decades for anything like him in his area of study. And there are many other academics who have made public names for themselves via online writing, though in many cases writing themselves out of the academy in the process of doing so. If they manage both, it’s most likely they have tenure, which likely puts them well into their thirties or beyond.
As I thought about this though, I couldn’t help but see it through the particular prism of the decisions I made in my own life which cut pretty hard to the core of this discussion.
I was supposed to be a history professor. And a good bit of my decision to leave grew out of my growing sense of the deeply conventional, channeled nature of the profession, one in which I found paradoxically little outlet for creativity or novelty.
Obamacare as a key GOTV tool in 2014? If Dems have their way, it could play a role in at least one hotly contested Senate race. Dylan Scott explains.
The Tea Party primary challenger in the Kansas Senate race, a radiologist, posted on Facebook x-rays of what were apparently his own deceased patients (in other cases he appears to have obtained them through his hospital privileges), mocking and making light of the wounds that ended their lives. Beyond the sociopathy that gets you to do something like that, I have to imagine HIPAA (which sometimes complicates even rather trivial communication by medical professionals) makes this a big big no-no.
From Arizona’s very conservative junior senator on Arizona’s rebrand anti-gay bigotry as religious freedom law …
I hope Governor Brewer vetoes SB 1062
— Jeff Flake (@JeffFlake) February 22, 2014
More here.
Tymoshenko speaking live now. Video after the jump …
From the AP …
“KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine’s border guard service says that a leading governor and a mayor from the president’s eastern base have fled to Russia.
A spokesman for the border guard service, Oleh Slobodyan, told The Associated Press that Kharkiv regional governor Mikhaylo Dobkin and Kharkiv Mayor Hennady Kernes left Ukraine across the nearby Russian border Saturday.
Two young men, Arron Keahey and Brice Johnson met on the mobile app Meetme and decided to get together for sex. Or that’s what Keahey thought. Now Johnson, 19, faces federal hate crimes charges for beating Keahey within an inch of his life. “I invited this guy over, right, at first it was basically like a joke that went too far and too wrong,” Johnson told a relative in a jail house phone call. “I invited him over because he was a fag or whatever.” Here’s the story.
From one of Ted’s biggest hits “Stranglehold“
You ran the night that you left me
You put me in my place
I got you in a stranglehold, baby
You better trust your fate
…
You ran the night that you left me
You put me in my place
I got you in a stranglehold, baby
That night I crushed your face