An Interesting Idea

Writer Leah Libresco Sargent reviews a book in the latest edition of National Review on how the efforts to use social media algorithms to keep users scrolling have “flattened culture.” I haven’t read the book, by Kyle Chayka, but Sargent’s opinions on the same issues are interesting in themselves.

Other books and articles have shown us that social media algorithms are designed to keep our eyes on the app, and that they exploit some of humanity’s most atavistic traits to do so. We evolved to keep an eye out for danger, so we are drawn to bad news. It’s more informative than good news in terms of identifying threats. That’s why many of the articles we read have clickbait ads at the bottom such as one that tells us sugar doesn’t cause diabetes - this does! Or that doctors beg Americans not to eat this food. Often accompanied by grotesque pictures that have little to do with the subject at hand but which activate the part of the brain that wants to slow down and see the wreck, they are junk science at best. But the advertiser doesn’t care if these ads are true - only that you click on it.

Chayka says that social media as it currently exists is just a more genteel version of the same thing, designed to grab eyeballs with less grotesque but equally intriguing lures. Sargent says both hide an identical hook, and neither proprietor gives a durn about the impact of their offerings. Her suggestion that we think of Big Tech offerings as another so-called sin industry - like alcohol, tobacco or pornography - probably goes a little too far. But creating the idea that social media is best used, if at all, in sparing doses by grown-ups would probably make a bunch of things better.

All Warm and Fuzzy

That feeling you get when you see your preferred football team’s logo painted for the Super Bowl…on the home field of your longtime hated rival.

The Sophie’s Choice Election

In the Norman Styron novel and Meryl Streep movie of the name Sophie’s Choice, the title character carries with her a dark secret. On being sent to the Auschwitz death camp, she was told she could keep one of her children and she sent her daughter Eva to the gas chambers.

I can’t be the first person to compare an election to the horrible choice forced on the fictional Sophie Zawistokawa. But I think this election merits it. We seem overwhelmingly likely to be forced into a 2020 sequel in the presidential election, and we will probably have to experience January 2025 through January 2029 with either a sack of raging overbronzed suet behind the Resolute desk or a President who gets told “Good boy” when he finishes signing a bill without a nap.

Much is made of how the primary voting system allows the people to speak on their candidates, taking the choice out of the proverbial smoke-filled rooms of the days of undemocratic (small D) party bosses selecting the “right person” (non-political use of the term ‘right’). But no smoke-filled room ever produced two men so completely unsuitable for the office of President or so uniquely incapable of doing the job.

Recently, Republican candidate Nikki Haley was asked if she would accept a vice-presidential spot on a ticket with Mr. Trump. She said she wasn’t running for second place (a significant overestimation of the vice-presidential role). That was smart, because saying, “My body couldn’t stand the weight loss of all of the barfing I’d do whenever I was on stage with this offal” might have looked bad. Yes, she worked in his administration, but as the Ambassador to the United Nations in New York. Not Washington. 

Even though he’s likely to win the nomination, Mr. Trump couldn’t let Ms. Haley say she wouldn’t take the job - he had to say it wouldn’t be offered. At a rally in New Hampshire, he said she wasn’t “presidential timber.” Sticking with that metaphor, Mr. Trump isn’t either. Unless “presidential timber” describes an empty shell of bark on the forest floor that crumbles when touched.

President Biden is simply a different kind of awful. His reversal of what he believed to be Mr. Trump’s unfair border policies has resulted in a deluge of people crossing the border unprocessed - in numbers large enough that Senator John Fetterman equated them to “essentially Pittsburgh showing up at the border.” Pres. Biden, in a brief Q & A with reporters, said there is indeed a problem at the border, and he’s been saying so “for the past ten years.” He said - ostensibly to Congress, otherwise that reporter’s on the hook for a lot of dough - “Give me the money.” But there isn’t any money, Mr. President. You gave it away at the beginning of your term in a third Covid-relief package that brought us Saturday Night Fever-era inflation rates.

President Biden could truly serve the country by selecting a running mate that could be President, since he’s almost certain to become unable to perform his duties should he win in November. But acknowledging that Vice President Kamala Harris couldn’t do the job would require him to admit to a mistake and to piss off most of his base. No modern politician has that kind of courage, so it won’t happen. It would get him my vote, though, because I could claim I did not vote for a senescent grifter, I voted for the competent understudy. 

If Mr. Trump truly loved the country he wants to make great, he’d step aside for either Ms. Haley or Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Either of them would build on his seemingly unintentional first-term victories and have the advantage of 1) Not mounting a batshit insane revenge party and 2) Not being batshit insane. But again, he’d have to admit mistakes, see reality and act for the greater good of someone other than himself - courage and vision impossible for a modern politician.

The choice in my headline is this lousy pun: Vote for awful? Or vote for offal? On the page, the words sound the same but mean different things. The horrid reality of November 5, 2024 is the reverse: They sound different but mean the same thing: Four years of dreary rage.

Cooties!

So my preferred football team, the Kansas City Chiefs, did not beat the Oakland, um, LA, um, Oakland, um, Las Vegas Raiders in a Christmas Day football game. On the one hand, this is depressing. On the other hand, even when the Raiders win they lose, because they still have to be the Raiders.

But in the wake of the loss, we have opinions from two men I usually enjoy ignoring: Sports trolls Clay Travis and Skip Bayless. Both suggest the blossoming romance between star Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce and singer/songwriter Taylor Swift had become a “distraction.” See, when guys turn their minds from pure football to things like girls, they stop thinking straight or being able to play well. Or so this thinking says. You may remember it from when you were six and did your best to exclude the opposite sex from anything you could because they were icky. But then you grew up.

Unless, apparently, you think like Messrs. Bayless and Travis. Travis, in fact, goes on to dredge up the Yoko Ono comparison. But Ms. Ono did not break up the Beatles - their own egos did a much more thorough job than she ever could have. And Ms. Swift has not jinxed the Chiefs. A less gifted offensive coordinator, an iffy receiving corps that has a bad case of the yips, defenses that are collapsing on Kelce because one defender apiece can handle the other guys? Yeah, those things have jinxed the Chiefs.

Sports reporters will explore some of those issues in upcoming stories. But not Mr. Bayless and Mr. Travis, who are too busy proving to the world they don’t have girl germs like Travis Kelce does.

Internalize

I have done internships as a part of the educational requirements for both of my professions and degrees. At one, I had a bed in the corner of the rec room in my uncle and aunt's house -- which was great, because that internship paid squat. In another, I rented a "studio" that had started life as parts of several rooms in a bungalow and had a heating system that excited no atoms or molecules into heat-energy producing motion ever.

Interning is about gaining job experience in a situation where you can fly or fall with people around you who will guide you about the falling. Political internships involve even less actual work within the field, although statements made by legislators and politicians frequently share similarities with the work of untrained 19-year-olds. They are dodgy, incomplete, marginally accurate and largely defensive about the inadequacy of the work itself.

Earlier today I read a news item that some 40 White House interns wrote a letter -- unsigned, natch -- taking the President of the United States to task for not demanding Israel stop trying to kill Hamas terrorists. Now, they didn't phrase it that way, but that's because they're young and don't know very much.

I got into a nice late middle-aged rage about the gall of young people who know so many things and who have yet to let time and experience help them unlearn them so they can know stuff that's real and true.

I wondered about the proper response to the interns, but turns out Noah Rothman at National Review has the right idea: Fire the lot of them. Yes, the letter is anonymous, so some interns who held back might be let go and it's not particularly fair they get sent packing along with their willfully blind co-workers. But it's just an internship, they're very young and have the time to get over this, and maybe it can show the folly of knowing your co-workers are about to do something stupid and not standing up to call them out on it.

One of the funniest things about these silly people is that they are writing this letter as "the fall 2023" interns. Meaning their service is about up anyway. So rather than speaking truth to power, they are more like leaving power a note to find after the custodian cleans out their desks.

Every now and again society shows us how dumb an idea it is to listen to people without experience. They may be the brightest human beings in many a moon, but without experience they, as former President Reagan said, "know so many things that aren't so."

Cureth post-Thanksgiving!

One of the time-honored traditions of Thanksgiving is the "food coma." People eat enough to get sleepy and then doze away the afternoon watching football or placeholder soap opera episodes. Or, of late, they prepare to talk with their family members who think differently about how wrong those members are, knowing that the ties of blood will prevent their being sat outside on the porch with the smallest possible slice of pumpkin pie.

Nicholas Culpeper offers a solution for the former; the solution for the latter is better candidates so we can discuss them instead of howling about them. Ask the Past brings us his Culpeper's Last Legacy from1655, where he writes that there are various cures for this "lethargie." Among them are burning brimstone under the nose, frequent provocations to sneeze with "white Helleborne," shaving the head and pouring "Vinegar of Roses" upon it, preferably letting it "drop down from some high place upon the crown of his Head." Ladies either never suffered from lethargie, or had different cures such as shaving their husbands' heads while they slept and pouring rose vinegar on it from the balcony.

For my money, the most likely method to work is "burning assa foetida to wake him." The name alone awakens my inner middle schooler to tell me a thousand jokes and explain the origin of the phrase, "that smells like ass." Given that it's nicknamed "devil's dung," I can't imagine anyone could sleep through the stench.

A Voice About Nothing

I’m somewhat concerned to still be posting about one of my favorite football players and the world’s biggest pop star, but interesting things still crop up. For example, on Thursday The View’s resident sage, Joy Behar, opined that she doesn’t want to see Taylor Swift end up with Travis Kelce. The reason? Some tweets Kelce made in his early 20’s, back when Twitter was just a place people sometimes tossed out random thoughts.

It seems the young Kelce spelt not well, and, moreover, made judgmental statements about women’s appearance. Such tweets offend the author of SheetzuCacaPoopoo: My Kind of Dog and SheetzuCacaPoopoo: Max Goes to the Dogs. Said she, “He’s illiterate is more to the point. He’s obsessed with the girls looking good, that was his thing.”

Now, evidence suggests Ms. Behar was never a young man. Her only child is a daughter, but she does have a grandson nearing the teenage years. The number of young men “obsessed with the girls looking good” is sizable, and if she was previously unaware of that he may demonstrate it to her soon.

But all of this is moot, because these are the tweets from a dozen years ago. Had that young man come calling at a concert a dozen years ago, I suspect Scott and Andrea Swift might have shown him the door too. In Joy Behar’s world, though, dozen-year-old tweets define who you are forever. Even if you learn to spell.

It’s in memes all over social media, but it’s true: Thank goodness I didn’t have an online youth.