According to this LAT report, the spat between Susan Estrich and Michael Kinsley over whether the LAT runs enough women op-ed writers (a.k.a. enough of Estrich's friends) keeps getting nastier. Estrich has revealed herself as a poorly read, though well-connected, hack--people who are interested in ideas know who Charlotte Allen is--while Kinsley has demonstrated why magazines are generally more interesting than newspapers: Magazine editors (and Kinsley is one, despite his current job) are paid to have vision and confidence, not to bend to pressure groups.
The whole silly brouhaha reminds me of how the LAT used to handle this question: through rigid, numerical quotas. I remember visiting Bob Berger, the op-ed editor, back in the early '90s. An old-style newspaperman, Bob didn't like the paper's demands that he demonstrate "diversity" on the op-ed pages. I especially remember his complaint that he not only had to find gay writers but gay writers who would mention that they were gay. No gay foreign policy experts need apply.
Of course, you don't get to be an editor in a giant, bureaucratic newspaper if you don't do what you're told. Bob not only complied but posted a chart on his door to prove what a good job he was doing. It showed each day's op-ed page as a line of five boxes, one for each article slot. The boxes were colored either blue or pink.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on March 11, 2005 • Comments
In response to all the buzz generated by Rod Dreher's question, "Is Dallas Good for Smart People?" opinion editors elsewhere are copying the idea, lining up pro, con, and maybe for questions like:
Is Boston good for aspiring models?
Is Manhattan a good place to raise children?
Is San Francisco good for conservatives?
Is Chicago good for vegetarians?
Is Silicon Valley good for artists?
Is Washington good for fashionistas?
Is Los Angeles good for pedestrians? (I may write in the affirmative.)
The funniest thing about the discussion in Dallas is how everyone assumes that the city should be good for intellectuals. (It's fine for "smart people.") Dallas is a city for normal people--people who focus on the reality at hand, not its deeper meaning; people who like their women pretty, their men successful, their children near at hand, their work productive, their religion inspiring. Intellectuals are weird. The only way to be an intellectual haven is either to have a very large population--large enough so that even a small percentage can constitute a critical mass--or to be a pretty strange city.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on March 11, 2005 • Comments
Salman Rushdie is supposed to come to Dallas to speak tomorrow night. But the airlines won't take him, because he's too dangerous (or, to put it more precisely, his enemies are). A plea has gone out for a private plane.
UPDATE: Problem solved, though with a side trip through Austin.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on March 10, 2005 • Comments
This I.D. Magazine article asks the question and gets answers from, among others, my friend Andrew Zolli. Short answer: It's somebody who observes the present more carefully then most people.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on March 09, 2005 • Comments
Salon has an interesting interview with Dave Eggers, whose comments on procrastination remind me of some of my blogging bursts. It's hip and trendy to disparage Eggers as overhyped, but he is not only a talented writer but a remarkable entrepreneur, having completely bypassed the literary establishment to create a new one--an accomplishment that struck me when I was reading Michael Chabon's hilarious and penetrating intro to McSweeney's Issue No. 10. (Full disclosure: Dave's brother Bill, who writes good wonky books, is an old friend and former colleague of mine. But I don't know Dave.)
Posted by Virginia Postrel on March 09, 2005 • Comments
On the Glenn Mitchell Show Monday, I mentioned that Dallas isn't exactly a blogosphere capital. That doesn't mean, however, that there are no non-corporate blogs (other than this one, sometimes) in Dallas. The most famous Dallas blog is, of course, Mark Cuban's, which slipped my mind because I never read it. Some Dallas blogs I do read include two by Dynamist readers: Alan K. Henderson and John Lanius. I also periodically check in on Fayrouz Hancock, an Iraqi-Australian living in Dallas. Law blogger Stuart Buck used to live in Dallas. And Austin Bay lives, appropriately, in Austin--but I'll put him on the list as an honorary member because his blog and site are very good.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on March 09, 2005 • Comments
The WaPost reports that Leon Kass and friends are promoting what they call an "offensive bioethics agenda." Parsing the Post's skimpy details, it looks like they want to separate their anti-research agenda from the convictions of Sam Brownback and other religious pro-lifers. They seem to think they'll be stronger politically without their religious allies, a peculiar calculation. But I've long argued that there are two completely distinct worldviews here: one (the traditional zygotes-are-persons view) that supports the end (longer, healthier lives) but not the means (embryo research) and another (the Kass view) that opposes the end and, only incidentally, the means (embryo research). If there's one thing Leon Kass isn't, it's pro-life.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on March 08, 2005 • Comments
"The key to making an invention useful is turning a technology into a tool," writes the LAT's Michael Hiltzik in this profile of Movable Type creators Ben and Mena Trott.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on March 07, 2005 • Comments
In his Sunday NYT column, Daniel Akst nails what's really going on with Wal-Mart:
The recent bankruptcy filing of Winn-Dixie Stores, the supermarket chain, would seem to be the latest evidence that Wal-Mart, dreaded by competitors as retailing's 24-hour-a-day death star, has lost none of its price-cutting potency. The company's apparent invincibility is part of what galls its critics, whose opposition led to the cancellation of a proposed Wal-Mart in Queens.
The conventional criticism of Wal-Mart is that it's an insatiable capitalist juggernaut, reaping private benefit at the expense of the public good. The view retains some currency, I suspect, because many of Wal-Mart's critics haven't really shopped there.
The funny thing is that, for quite a while, this view has had the situation almost exactly backward. Instead of producing private benefit at public expense, Wal-Mart has been producing public benefit at private expense. And the equation is likely to become ever more lopsided.
Like the airlines, whose investors generously provide low fares and convenient service while forgoing gains for themselves, Wal-Mart has kindly mustered considerable capital from investors with the goal of providing all kinds of basic goods under one roof at convenient locations and amazingly low prices. These investors must be charitably minded because they aren't the main beneficiaries of Wal-Mart's business.
For several years now, the shareholders, who have more than $200 billion tied up in the company, have not done especially well. Since the end of 1999, Wal-Mart stock is off 23 percent, while Target is up 43 percent and Lowe's is up 95 percent.
The big winners during this period were the juggernaut's customers, who gained by having Wal-Mart drive down the price of consumer goods. Assuming that Wal-Mart investors are more affluent than its shoppers, the system offers a progressive transfer from rich to poor--from capital owners to less prosperous American consumers and hard-working Chinese factory hands. It's like Robin Hood, only with parking.
If that sounds like unalloyed praise, you should really read the whole thing. This piece is, after all, by someone who actually shops at Wal-Mart from time to time.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on March 07, 2005 • Comments
One of Dallas's intellectual high points is the excellent local NPR interview show hosted by Glenn Mitchell. Fred Turner, Jerome Weeks (who is probably a little ticked at me for dissing the DMN's boring book reviews), and I will be on the Glenn Mitchell Show Monday at 1 p.m., following an interview with Vaclav Klaus. The show is available in streaming audio.
Posted by Virginia Postrel on March 06, 2005 • Comments