Robert David Sullivan

Horrible murder reminds me why I prefer scripted shows to reality TV

It's fun to gossip about people we don't know. They could be movie stars, politicians, victims of freak accidents, or reality-TV characters (who become celebrities by being famous).

I like to gossip about fictional TV characters.

There's no way to be tasteless or irresponsible or just batshit crazy when speculating about the heroes and villains on The Good Wife or Justified. I don't feel like an ass for snarking about the bedroom habits of characters on 30 Rock or hoping that someone on Breaking Bad is tortured and killed. They're not victims of sensationalistic journalism, and it's impossible to smear them.

Plus, everyone who watches a TV series (or sees a play, reads a novel, etc.) is on the same page: We know what the author wants us to know about a character and no more. We all have access to all the truth that exists. We're free to imagine more, but we can't get self-righteous and claim certainty that Breaking Bad's Walter White had lousy parents or that Community's Abed is a secret anti-colonialist Kenyan.

But a lot of people think it's a waste of time to offer opinions about fictional characters. They'd rather offer opinions about real people they don't know.

Is Louis Vuitton tempting the Barbra Streisand Effect?

Via Boing Boing: Luxury handbag maker Louis Vuitton wants the benefits but not the blowback from being a status symbol. As the blog Eyeteeth reports:

Dutch artist Nadia Plesner got in hot water with Louis Vuitton in 2008 for depicting an African child with one of its high-end bags on one arm and a chihuahua in the other (below) as part of her campaign urging divestment from Sudan over the conflict in Darfur. Now the company is suing her again: this time, the luxury goods company has filed a copyright infringement suit at The Hague that will penalize her 5,000 Euros for each day a likeness of its Audra bag in her painting Darfurnica remains on her website. The company has been tallying her penalty since Jan. 28.

Is this really worth the bad publicity for Vuitton? Surely it must realize that it's tempting the Barbra Streisand Effect, in which trying to suppress something only brings it more exposure.

Darfurnica (detail), Nadia Plesner, 2010

Tweet of the day

alltheseposes John Anthony

The #MBTA is on fire yet again. They'd easily balance their budget if they sold graham crackers, marshmallows and chocolate in stations.

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I think there should be some variety here: stir-fry in Chinatown, fondue in the Back Bay, and sizzling fajitas in East Boston. We could also make a play for the Republican National Convention by offering book-burning parties.

Whites double back to Boston as inner suburbs get some color

Via Matthew Yglesias, here is a prescient cartoon (click it to enlarge) done by Tom Toles in 1998:

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You can see the success of this "plan" in Boston by looking at new Census data. Go to this map and click on various census tracts; you can see that the white population in the South End, Roxbury, and Mission Hill (all near the Orange Line) has increased over the past decade while the number of African-Americans has declined or been stagnant. Then go to this map and click on tracts in Everett, Malden, and Revere; the black population has soared while whites have gone elsewhere.

This isn't really a conspiracy, of course. It's just a matter of higher-income groups rediscovering the advantages of living in the heart of the city (now that crime has gone down and pizza shops have been replaced by cocktail bars). The question is what will happen to inner-ring suburbs as their relatively low housing costs attract more and more immigrants and low-income residents. They're likely to become more dependent on state aid in order to provide education and other public services. My fear is that they will face a political alliance between prosperous Boston and well-off suburbs (all of them able to generate income from high property taxes and lucrative commercial property) that will impose "fiscal discipline" on less fortunate communities.

Why are American Catholics so gay for gay rights?

Please forgive the re-post; the previous version had a bad URL.

I'm not shocked, and certainly not disappointed, by a poll showing that most American Catholics disagree with their own church on gay rights. Though evangelical Protestants sometimes think they can make common cause with the once-reviled papists on "pelvic issues," the Vatican can't deliver many votes in American elections.

Why are American Catholics so gay for gay rights?

I'm not shocked, and certainly not disappointed, by a poll showing that most American Catholics disagree with their own church on gay rights. Though evangelical Protestants sometimes think they can make common cause with the once-reviled papists on "pelvic issues," the Vatican can't deliver many votes in American elections.

Why do so many American Catholics disregard their marching orders on sexual matters? I'm struck by one piece of data near the end of the report by the Public Religion Research Institute: 69 percent of polled Catholics say that one's sexual orientation cannot be changed, higher than the 63 percent among all Americans (and presumably much higher than the corresponding figure among evangelical Protestants).

The Catholic Church may have itself to blame for this, since social scientists are nearly unanimous in concluding that de-gayification programs are bunk, and the Vatican generally accepts the validity of scientific research. For example, I'm sure there are some Catholic creationists, but the Church does not have any problem with the theory of evolution (or the idea that the Earth has been around for 4 billion years), merely arguing that however we got here, God must have started the process. Kentucky's Creation Museum is a product of the Protestant Bible Belt; most Catholic priests would be embarrassed by it.

While more conservative Protestant denominations can simply tell gays to "stop being that way," Catholics find it harder to overlook the evidence that sexual orientation is unchangeable. The Church says, "We know you can't stop being that way, so just don't ever have sex," but most Catholics find this an unrealistic (and even cruel) position, so they reject it, much as they long ago decided to ignore the Church's ban on birth control.

It's remarkable that American Catholics don't follow the Vatican line, but the headlines may oversell the idea that Catholics are more gay-friendly than the US as a whole. Here are the PRRI's top bullet points on its press release:

Excuses, excuses

Just touching base with regular readers...

Longer posts are coming soon! I've been preoccupied with the Census data for Massachusetts released on Tuesday, a poll showing that American Catholics are really gay for gay rights, a study purporting that liberals and conservatives don't agree on what's funny, the Big Love finale, and my continuing effort to put together a list of essential sitcom episodes.

I've also wasted a lot of time checking Facebook and Twitter to find out what other people are doing for fun. This probably isn't a good way to deal with writer's block.

Why shy people cheer the death of the telephone

In one of its trend pieces that I hope to be true, the New York Times has declared that the telephone is falling out of favor. Pamela Paul makes the case:

“I literally never use the phone,” Jonathan Adler, the interior designer, told me. (Alas, by phone, but it had to be.) “Sometimes I call my mother on the way to work because she’ll be happy to chitty chat. But I just can’t think of anyone else who’d want to talk to me.” Then again, he doesn’t want to be called, either. “I’ve learned not to press ‘ignore’ on my cellphone because then people know that you’re there.”

“I remember when I was growing up, the rule was, ‘Don’t call anyone after 10 p.m.,’ ” Mr. Adler said. “Now the rule is, ‘Don’t call anyone. Ever.’ ”

Phone calls are rude. Intrusive. Awkward. “Thank you for noticing something that millions of people have failed to notice since the invention of the telephone until just now,” Judith Martin, a k a Miss Manners, said by way of opening our phone conversation. “I’ve been hammering away at this for decades. The telephone has a very rude propensity to interrupt people.”

I have a feeling that Paul, and most of her sources, are men and women with a healthy amount of self-confidence. That's because the article never hints at the biggest problem people like me have with the phone. It's not intrusiveness. In fact, my instrument (as Ernestine always called it) has never been busy enough for me to complain about it.

No, shy people hate the telephone for a simpler reason: You can't see how the person on the other end is reacting to what you're saying! If you have a lot of self-esteem, this isn't a problem (I'm guessing). You just assume that the other person wants to talk with you — or, in the occasional adversarial call, is afraid not to talk with you. Not seeing the person's face isn't a huge disadvantage, and it can even make things easier not to see him rolling his eyes or distracting himself by checking Facebook.

Census Bureau: Reports of dying counties are greatly exaggerated

The press release is a couple of weeks old, but I've just discovered that the director of the US Census Bureau has stern words against the phrase "dying counties," which I used in a post a few weeks ago to tweak the notion that the Republican Party's base is in dynamic, job-creating parts of the nation. Robert Groves wrote on his blog that journalists are reading too much into "natural decrease" numbers, which mean that a county has had more deaths than births in a given period:

Jumping from observations of counties that show no natural increase in a year to labeling them as “dying” is quite a leap. Natural increase can affect the population size but in-migration and out-migration can also affect the size of a county. Together, the ups and downs of county populations are part of the dynamic nature of our country. A year of loss does not mean an inevitable course to death.

Groves also includes this chart, which surprised me. It shows that not much more than a third of all US counties have had uninterrupted growth over the past half century. It seems that many, perhaps most, of all "dying counties" are able to cheat death eventually:

Blog and Twitter updates, begorra

It's St. Patrick's Day, one of three times a year that I avoid Boston bars (New Year's Eve and July 4 being the others), so I'll be doing literal and technological housecleaning today. (Besides, I'm only half-Irish, and my French-Canadian half insists on poutine to accompany any heavy drinking.) A few updates:

• I've started a second Twitter account, @HubStats, to focus on newsy data of interest to my Bay State and more stats-crazed followers. I'll still be tweeting my usual nonsense at @RobertDSullivan.
• I'm updating my "What Each State Does Best in Presidential Elections" post as I find new information and interesting stories about each state.
• My posts about television, which are cross-posted at Extra Criticum with different comment threads, have been a lot of fun to write, and I'm thinking of continuing the discussion of what makes a great sitcom episode. Any suggestions on specific shows to cover are appreciated!
• My posts about music, however, may be on hold for a while. The odd thing is that some of the posts get a lot of traffic (the one about Human Sexual Response's "Jackie Onassis" is the most-viewed item I've ever posted), but I think that's a function of search-engine luck rather than genuine interest. A lot of acquaintances have told me they just don't like them, and my layman's approach may not appeal to people who actually know a lot about music.
• I'm still on the lookout for work, which may lead to some entertainingly humiliating blog posts. But I'd also love to help a Boston-area nonprofit in genuine need of someone with writing/editing/proofreading/HTML skills. Nothing with mindless "busy work," though; that's what temp agencies are for.

 

Kerfuffle on "white flight" from Democratic Party is premature

Some good pundits are getting way too worked up about the chart below, from Lee Drutman and Progressive Fix. It shows that most states have experienced recent declines in Democratic Party affiliation in proportion to its white population. In other words, the whiter the state, the steeper the drop:

The generally level-headed Matt Yglesias takes this very seriously:

I used to hold to the view that the growing non-white share of the electorate would, over time, tip elections to Democrats. I now think the system will remain near equilibrium and what we’ll instead see is white voters growing more Republican as Democrats are more and more seen as the party of non-whites.

Jonathan Chait thinks that Yglesias is overlooking the Democratic bent of today's younger voters, but Jamelle Bouie cautions that "Chait is probably underestimating the extent to which a large number of whites will become more conservative as the nonwhite population grows."

I may be missing something here, but this seems to be a lot of weight to put on Gallup polling data that do not necessarily reflect how people will actually vote in 2012. Moreover, the data does not show Democratic Party affiliation but change in Democratic Party affiliation over two years. I'm not saying that having an African-American president has had zero effect on white voters' perception of the Democratic Party, but I think the economy is the main factor here. White voters' support for Democrats went up when the economy cratered under a Republican president, and it went down when the economy did not seem to get much better under a Democratic president. This is a pretty unsurprising trend, and it's premature to think that the past two years represents some kind of long-term realignment.

So what accounts for the racial differences in attitudes toward the Democratic Party during Obama's first two years? My guess is that nonwhite voters (especially African-Americans) are simply loyal to the Democratic Party in good times and bad. Over the past half-century, African-Americans have voted overwhelmingly for Democratic presidential candidates in just about any economic climate (and not only when an African-American has headed the ticket). Given that the Democrats continue to be seen as stronger on civil rights and urban policy, I'm not shocked that the party has not slid in popularity among nonwhites.

It doesn't follow that polling changes among white voters over a brief period of economic crisis represents some massive change in the political landscape. If the country enjoys peace and prosperity but Democrats continue to lose ground among white voters, then I'll be worried.

 

Is a Twitter account like a loaded gun?

James Poniewozik wonders if social norms will kill Twitter — or Twitter will change social norms. The impetus for the discussion is Aflac's firing of "duck voice" GIlbert Gottfried after the comedian tweeted irreverent comments about last week's earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Poniewozik points out that Gottfried was pretty much following the rules of what it takes to be a success on the 140-word circuit:

The problem here is that on Twitter it's easy to get in deep trouble for stepping just this side across the line of practices that make you popular on Twitter — and that you're rewarded for, up until the second that you're not. Authors are urged by their publishers to interact, get in the mix and display a provocative voice. Journalists are encouraged to use social media and display "authenticity" — just don't make it too authentic...

What I have to wonder is, in the long run, will Twitter claim more and more careers early — or will it ultimately change our standards for what we consider firing offenses?

So is a popular Twitter account like Chekhov's gun, something that will inevitably blow up and end someone's career?

I can't get outraged about Gottfried's tweets. I've worked in newsrooms for many years, so I've heard, repeated, and come up with a lot of tasteless jokes. (I remember that Charles Stewart case prompted a lot of gallows humor among journalists because it had so many grotesque and farcical elements.) But they generally came after at least some of us expressed genuine horror and concern at a tragedy. The jokes came when it was time to ease back into the work routine (as opposed to calling it a day and getting drunk somewhere because life is horrible and miserable).

I wouldn't tweet these jokes (or put them in a blog), though I'd probably have a different sensibility if I were a professional comedian. I do see a lot of cringeworthy jokes by people on Twitter and Facebook who probably should be more careful, given how closely employers keep tabs on Internet activity these days. I'm not among the people who say that social networks have destroyed face-to-face relationships, but sick jokes (like penis snapshots) are among the things best delivered in a more old-fashioned way.