Meet the new boss...

Got a couple of posts in the pipeline, so hopefully this week won't be as barren as past weeks around here.

For now, though, perhaps a quick prediction.

Call me the worst sort of cynic but I'm gonna bet that this new South African party that has split from the reigning ANC will soon be just as mired in corruption as the old party. Prob. even before they manage to amass any kind of actual power.

As an aside, the article is a good example of at least one reason why newspapers are a dying industry. After the first 10 paragraphs describe the generalities of the split from the ANC and the speeches and chants at their first public meeting, the second to last paragraph almost gets interesting:

Zuma defeated Mbeki in a bitter race for the party leadership last year and is likely to be the country's next president, with general elections expected early next year. Lekota has questioned whether Zuma is fit to be president of the country and accuses Zuma, who would be South Africa's first Zulu president, of fanning tribal tension.

Wow! A bitter leadership race? Allegations he's not fit to be president? Sounds intriguing... but wait, just "fanning tribal tension"? That seems like kind of a let down.

And then this revelation in the very last paragraph of the article:

Zuma has been tarnished by corruption allegations; corruption charges were dropped on procedural grounds but could be revived. He also was acquitted of raping an HIV-positive family friend.

So the guy leading the party they're splitting off from was acquitted of raping an HIV-positive family friend? Now that's a hook you could hang a "new party splits off" story on, don't you think?

Nah, better to stick it in a brief mention in the very last sentence of the article. Wouldn't want anybody to think we were slopping around in the gutter or, you know, trying to entice readers with interesting pieces about current events or anything...

Smackdown

Bill Ayers in the NY Times: I'm not a terrorist and never hurt or wanted to hurt anyone.

Charles Lane (fn1) in the Washington Post: you def. did want to hurt people and didn't only through a combination of luck and incompetence. Stop lying.

fn1: Charles Lane was the editor of the New Republic when the Stephen Glass fabrication scandal broke. He's the guy who fired Glass. He was played by Peter Sarsgaard in Shattered Glass, the movie about the story. I have a weird love of that movie and have watched it an unhealthy number of times.(fn2)

fn2: I think my love of that movie might come from the writing style. It was written by H.G. Bissinger, the author of Friday Night Lights the book and movie and creator of the tv show.(fn3) The first season of Friday Night Lights was among the best television ever. The second season was still v. solid. The third season I've not seen as it's been shown "exclusively" on some channel only available on satellite tv. And that sucks. Though if the show is getting the money it needs to survive at all through that kind of deal, I guess that's better than the alternative. The show's been one of those "critical favorites that have trouble finding an audience" throughout its run.

fn3: After having developed something of an obsession with the tv show back in season one, I read the book and watched the movie as well. They are both also v. good.

Article on "hidden majorities" of women and minorities

Here's an article on "hidden majorities" of women and minorities that brings up the constitution's 3/5's compromise. The author here doesn't explicitly get the point of the compromise wrong but the way she brings it up kind of hints to me that she's the type who would get it wrong. And since it's a huge pet peeve of mine, I'm going to explain it here.

So often people bring up the 3/5's compromise as a sign of how awful our founding fathers were. "Look," these types of people say, "they were such racists that they codified into law that black people were only worth 3/5's of a white man!"

This gets the point of the compromise precisely backwards. Setting aside the fact that the constitution quite purposefully never mentions race, the argument was about how much slaves would count when apportioning representation. That is, the constitution establishes that we will have a census and that our representatives in the House of Representatives will be apportioned among the states based on their share of population.

(At least that's how it is now. Originally, of course, the plan was to just add more Reps for new population, keeping the ratio of people-to-Rep constant at around 30,000. Now, the number of Reps is fixed at 435 and only the apportionment between states is adjusted to match population shifts.)

So given that you were going to be doling out Representatives based on population, you are naturally going to have more power going to states with higher populations. So how should slaves count? Under the deluded "How racist it is not to count them as full people!" argument, you would count them as one each. But given that they are owned by other people, all you are doing is increasing the power of the slave-holders. If you count them as less than one per slave, you are decreasing that power.

This is why it was the anti-slave Northern states that were arguing for not counting slaves at all -- not because they thought slaves weren't people but because they didn't want to give all that power to the slaveholders that they opposed. On the other side, you had the slave-holding states arguing that slaves should count as full people -- not because they thought of slaves as their equals but because they wanted more power. Thus the 3/5's compromise. The reason they were counted as less than a full person was due to the anti-slavery side.

God how I wish people would get this straight. Getting it wrong betrays not only an utter lack of knowledge about the constitutional creation process but also a pretty shaky grasp of the logic of political representation.

After bringing up the 3/5's compromise, the author goes on to say this:

Women were counted as zero-fifths -- at least symbolically -- unable to vote nationwide until 1920 with the passage of the 19th Amendment, behind Australia
and Canada and lots of other countries.

This is just plain idiotic. Slaves weren't allowed to vote either so by this logic the 3/5's compromise was really a 0/5's compromise! Yeah! Oh wait, no. This is just the author trying to be a little more clever than she is apparently capable of being.

I also don't particularly like the snide naming of a couple of countries and the "lots of other countries" that beat us to women's suffrage. Why not point out that "lots of other countries" still don't allow women to vote? Or have other basic rights? Or you could point out that Canada is currently engaged in a debate over whether they should have the right to free speech, a right that, if you lack it, makes voting largely irrelevant.

Yes we were slower to the punch on women's suffrage than some and eons ahead of most of the globe on that and so many other issues. It's a shame we weren't born perfect but then nobody is.

All that glitters...

Fascinating Washington Post article about a Turkish immigrant millionaire's daughter's Sweet 16 bash.

Great quote from one attendee:

"Honestly, it's been challenging at times raising our daughter around all of this," says Melanie Braun, mother of Ayse's best friend Maddy. She gestures around the club. "It's not our lifestyle at all. But the Halacs are a wonderful family, very generous. I think Ahmet contributes to charities in Turkey, or something."

"Contributes to charities in Turkey or something". Priceless.

I also liked the bit about how Soulja Boy, one of the celebrity rappers paid to attend, was under the impression that it was a club appearance, not a private party. He charges more for private parties.