A few things

Sorry for the light blogging lately- I've been a little busy on a few other things, but will be able to ramp us up back to the glacial schedule we've all enjoyed before.

First off, I want to say how much I look forward to Wednesdays, when the Times gives us two of its best commentators.  No, not Mo Dowd and Thomas Friedman.   Regular readers know my thoughts on Friedman, and I think anyone who enjoys this blog probably has similar feelings toward Dowd, she of the vamped-up conventional wisdom. (Do I find myself attracted to her?  Yes.  Am I proud of that?  No.)  The pleasure comes from their Opinionator section, which is so incredibly superior to their regular stable of writers that it is embarrassing for everyone.  Anything that includes regular pieces by Dick Cavett is clearly going to be aces in my book.

But today we have the always-compelling Bob Wright talking about Christian missionaries and how their proselytizing techniques inflame tensions between Christian and Muslim communities.  Now, this could easily come across as knee-jerk relativism: yes, Muslims get really angry and burn things all the time, but did you know Christians are bad too?  But Wright spares us that, and looks at how the "camel nose under the tent" technique of using the Koran to prove Jesus' supremacy can do nothing but make things worse.   Obviously there are crazy people on both sides, and there is a strong tendency in Islam to take slight provocations (such as cartoons half a world away) and use it as an excuse to blow shit up.   I certainly would never say "but the Christians brought that on themselves!"   But there is something to be said about the relationship between discretion and valor, and, more importantly, minding your own damn business and tending only to your own soul. 

Blessedly far away from the tribulations of the pious, we have the delightful Olivia Judson talking about evolution on islands.  In and of itself, this is a fascinating topic, but Judson takes it is several unexpected directions.  She first lyrically expands the definition of an island: "Although “island” tends to conjure images of small bodies of land surrounded by water, such as Bermuda, or the Falkland Islands, this is not the only kind of island out there. Lakes are islands of water surrounded by land. Caves are islands of darkness surrounded by light. Oases are islands of fertility surrounded by sand. In short, an island is any self-contained patch of habitat within some larger sea."

This is not just dreamy prose.  All of these islands are important to evolution, as their ecological isolation leads the process down strange and unexpected paths.  Judson goes on to issue a warning about how our stewardship of the environment- building roads, clear-cutting forests, etc- is creating many more tiny islands, and how it is messing up the ecosystem.  I can't do it justice, but please read it.  She is an excellent writer, and makes complicated topic understandable and beautiful. 

We'll have some Yemen stuff soon, I promise. 

Is there anyone who thinks "Best Actress" is sexist?

Yes.  But I don't imagine there are many others.  The "point" of this Times op-ed is that it is sexist to segregate "actor" and "actress", because there would be an outcry if we had Best White Actor and Best Black Actor (Blactor).   This is wildly dumb.  The author, Kim Elsesser, admits that the categories have been gender-separated from the get-go, but that was probably because women had just gotten the right to vote and were still second-class.

But separate is not equal. While it is certainly acceptable for sports competitions like the Olympics to have separate events for male and female athletes, the biological differences do not affect acting performances. The divided Oscar categories merely insult women, because they suggest that women would not be victorious if the categories were combined.

Really?  It does, like, categorically?  Does anyone believe this?  One could argue that, say, the best WNBA team would get smoked by the Nets, but is there anyone out there who thinks that different categories mean that Meryl Streep couldn't compete against Paul Walker or someone?

There was a time, of course, when acting wasn't something that women were allowed to do.  That was before the history of movies.   The reason it is separate, I would imagine, is that the whole thing is a meaningless back-slapping affair, and most of the point is to have a lot of beautiful people dressed up nice.  You can have more beautiful people if you have more categories.   Yes, one could expand Best Actor to 5 men and 5 women, or any combination of 10, but then you lose a lot of what makes the Oscars fun: seeing people get super-excited and cry or laugh or hug if they win.  The whole thing is goofy, pointless fun (or a pointless drudge if you don't care).

I hate- hate- people who proudly say "Well, I'm not PC" and use that as an excuse to be an asshole.  No one is "PC" anymore.  It is practically a strawman.  But articles like this give ammunition to those who see liberals as a bunch of whiny, elitist, ivory-tower idiots, who invent enemies and cry wolf at the most meaningless slights.  New York Times, I am begging you: please stop printing stuff like this.

Kristof on Yemen

Nick Kristof talks about child marriage in Yemen (something your current author was on years ago- scroll down on that link for several posts).   It is a good column, and appropriately heart-wrenching and moving.  He also makes the important connection between oppression of women and political violence.

Kristof does god's work, and I hate to be critical of him.  He is kind of the anti-Friedman, in that he gets dirty and avoids golfing with billionaires as a way to do research.  I really think he is a great guy.  Kristof is established enough to take the easy road, and refuses to.  But.  Was there anything more predictable than this column?  If he is going to write about Yemen, it is going to be about a child bride who overthrows her shackles.  Honestly, reading him often gives me heart-warmth fatigue.  Kristof, in a take on the war reporter's line, is pretty much "Has anyone been raped and is still inspirational?".   To be fair, he seems to recognize this.

I understand that the above is pretty ungenerous. 

In the South

Robert Worth continues his work on Yemen in a Times article about the Southern Movement. (h/t: Wilken C) I think this is an important article, because as I've argued here and other places, I think the Southern Movement is potentially the most dangerous of all the three rebellions, with the best chance of tearing Yemen apart.  But the relatively minimal amounts of violence heretofore associated with it have relegated the Movement to a sidestage, mentioned with an off-handed shrug after al-Qaeda and the Huthi rebellion.

(A note: I am going to be saying "the south" and "the movement" here, but it is far more diverse and less unified than this might imply.  Also, geographically, "the south" is also the east, but I will use the political shorthand.)

I think Worth does an excellent job of painting the mood of the south, of how the movement went from a call for more economic rights and less oppression to an open secession movement.  I don't think that this was inevitable, but the ham-fisted reaction of the government, treating the south and is leaders with the same violent disregard as they did to the Huthi movement, reinforced their own loose caricature and helped to unify the opposition.

Friedman + Yemen = Christmas in February

Some years ago, a friend of mine and I ran a site dedicated to fisking the columnists at the New York Times.  Our ethos was: why should such a great paper have such mediocre, boring, and lazy writers, on the most valuable page of editorial real estate in the world?   Also, we wanted to swear a lot.   More recently, of course, I was doing Waq al-Waq, a far more serious look specifically at Yemen.  So imagine my delight when today, Thomas Friedman, he of the mustache that launched a thousand ships, popped up in San'a.   I am almost dizzy with snarky lust.   It's like I get two Super Bowls today.

So I don't know if this is going to be more about Yemen or Friedman or what.   For the record, most of this is always in sadness rather than anger.  I like Friedman, think he is a good guy, and rarely outright disagree with him.  But there is no one who resorts more quickly or lazily into hacky tropes and surface-level investigations.  It is maddening.

OK, ready?


Yemen’s former prime minister, Abdul Karim al-Iryani, got right to the point when I arrived at his Sana home for dinner: “So, Thomas, did it take Abdulmutallab to finally get you here?”

 Bam!  Right off the bat we get my least-favorite Friedmanism- the "See Who I Talk To?"  It is as if this Pulitzer Prize winning, rich, best-selling author always has to remind us that he is famous and important and people know his name and have him over for dinner.  However, I do like that he is using that as a frame for talking about his shortcomings in Yemen.  So this is a wash, I guess.