Day: June 9, 2002

Chicks with dick jokesOkay, time

Chicks with dick jokes

Okay, time for some serious sociology. Or at least snarky media criticism, which often passes for serious sociology in our particular culture (well, mine, if you happen to not be reading this from the good ole’ US of A ).

But first, let me unload my official position on aesthetics: when it comes to art, there are no right answers.

None. Zip. Zero. Nada. Bupkiss.

Art, by definition, is subjective. If it weren’t, they’d call it science, and they’d have to peer-review Guide.

Stating that one particular musical composition is “better” than another is a complete absurdity. Same goes for television, theater, movies, painting, sculpture, and abstract compositions of religious icons composed solely of dung from endangered species found only in and around MOMA.

The only criteria commonly used to assess art that can be said to be objective is how many people like it. This is a painful realization. It means Britney Spears comes out ahead of Moby. It means that Independence Day is “better” than Vanilla Sky. It means that Friends is superior to Buffy.

I’m trying to point out unpleasant ideas here, if it isn’t getting through.

But that’s the way it is. So best not to worry about it. And therefore: best to approach any discussion of art with the idea that, unlike history, politics, and science — there are no right answers. There’s just the noise you’re making in your argument, and the noise the other guy is making with his. And the question is: who can shout louder.

And so: On to the shouting.

I will put it simply: I do not understand Sex and the City.

Sopranos, I get. (I have issues with it, but I enjoy it, and I wouldn’t for a second try to say it’s not an extremely well done show — and my qualms are subject for another post). Six Feet Under, I haven’t seen. But Sex and the City, I have, and damnit, it drives me nuts.

So what’s the problem? you ask. Don’t watch it. Take your own advice, and sleep soundly knowing that there are no objective measures of culture.

Surely you can figure this part out.

Yup. You got it right. My fianc

Mickey says Coleen Rowley was

Mickey says Coleen Rowley was wrong. He’s right. And wrong.

Mickey had brief entry this week on Coleen Rowley’s testimony and the issue of which is more to blame for intelligence failures : the bureaucrats at the FBI, or the laws they must follow.

While I am taking to heart Mickey’s own solemn admonishment to “Always trust content from kausfiles!” (like we didn’t already?), I think the Mickster overplays his hand slightly on this one.

He starts out OK, pointing out (correctly) that there is more than just the problem of Those Damned Bureaucrats to deal with at the FBI in his reference to a piece by Stuart Taylor in the National Journal. His money quote, referring to the need under current law for a suspect to be a member of a terrorist group to merit full surveillance, is bang on as well: “So if it’s just one guy who wants to blow up the Superbowl, we leave him alone!”

Flush with this nice turn of the phrase, though, Mickey slides over the line with his closer: “The problem is less dumb bureaucrats than dumb law.”

Well, maybe. There are a whole heck of a lot of things that went wrong here, and I’m not convinced that we’re in a position yet to point definitively to which factor was the most significant (although to be fair, Mickey’s statement only explicitly compares two of them). But here’s my list:

– A culture of caution at the FBI and other agencies where not screwing up was viewed as more important than catching the bad guys

– A particular fear of anything that resembled ethnic profiling (i.e., looking at Arabs taking flight lessons), particularly due to recent embarrassments in that area (i.e., Wen Ho Lee)

– Legal restrictions that set the bar for surveillance requests unreasonably high in a well-intentioned but misguided attempt to protect civil liberties

– Antiquated processes for analyzing incoming intelligence information which resulted in a failure to be able to add 2 and 2 and reach a number somewhere between 3 and 5.

To make matters more complex, these factors aren’t independent, but all blend together and cause nasty little feedback loops with each other: if there was a culture more attuned to catching the bad guys than not rocking the boat, wouldn’t somebody have bitched enough to get their analysis processes fixed long ago? And if there wasn’t that culture of caution, couldn’t a smart FBI lawyer have made a legitimate argument that the case Rowley complained about had met the standard of probable cause?

If that argument had been made and was rejected, then I’d put more credence in the idea that the problem is the law, not the bureaucrats. But the problem is that to my understanding, the folks submitting that request didn’t even really try — a token effort was made at best, and the request was torpedoed at worst. That suggests to me that the law may indeed be a major part of the problem — but the bureaucrats are just as big a part.

That said, Mickey is absolutely right to keep hammering on his point o’ the week: that those who just want to blame the bureaucrats are wrong. Blaming the bureaucrats is appropriate. But thinking that they are the only problem is the same kind of oversimplification that got us into this mess in the first place.

Whoo-hoo! The poll is now

Whoo-hoo! The poll is now working. Thanks to the nice folks at PulsePoll for getting back to me.

For anyone else trying this, the problem was that apparently having the default for my page set to open new browser windows for links was screwing it up (go figure). Since I’ve been thinking about resetting that to remain in the current window anyway, I just went for it.

So go vote, already!

Finally saw Attack of the

Finally saw Attack of the Clones yesterday with my lady.

Late, I know, but we had the opportunity to do so at one of the few digitial projection theatres, and so waited until we had the time to schlep over to it (it is not quite our local theatre).

So we saw it. And It Was Good.

I’m not quite sure how good yet — it usually takes a few days for the buzz to wear off for movies like this. But it was definitely better than Episode I (by far), and I think compares reasonably with the first trilogy.

Mr. Lileks has some thoughts on the matter, and I’ll add mine:

– Yoda kicks ass. Most folks knew that going in, but I’m here to tell you — Obi Wan is cool. Anakin can deal it out. But Yoda — Yoda will fuck you up.

– The dialogue wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. Only one line really made me wince with the strong urge to hire Lucas an editor. And to my pleasant surprise, there actually are some wonderfully Han Soloesque one-liners thrown in here and there (an area in which Episode I was sorely lacking).

– Surprises. I hate movies where I know exactly what is going to happen from moment to moment. Lucas keeps things interesting, and while you certainly know that Anakin and Obi Wan aren’t going to get killed by those beasties coming at them right now, the overall plot of the movie is nicely opaque. You genuinely have to think about who’s actually on the right side. (Arguably, a little too opaque — there’s one aspect of how the clones get created that still has me scratching my head).

– Digital projection was pretty neat, but didn’t totally blow me away. We had literally 2nd row seats, which turned out to be great. If there were any cracklies and scratches to be seen, we sure as heck would have seen them. There were zero, naturally. This was nice… but I will confess to being a little skeptical about how long its going to take to get theatre owners to convert, given that, as I understand it, the economics are pretty sketchy.

Anyway, all in all a darned good ride….and one that makes me really look forward to Episode III.

Hey. I think Lucas just regained my faith. Think of that!