Inessentials

In what might turn into a recurring series, I thought I would mention a couple myths about the current election. These myths are ones I’ve heard reported from various news sources or editorials, but simply aren’t true. Repeated often, but not true.

Myth #1: Obama has a problem with Latino voters, an area where McCain is making inroads.

Actually, Latinos are polling for Obama at 62% and for McCain at 28%. By contrast, the sitting president captured over 40% of the Hispanic vote in 2004.

Myth #2: Obama has a problem with support from white women. Female supporters of Hillary Clinton are flocking to McCain.

Actually, despite a few public announcements by white women who were campaigning for Clinton, women are overwhelmingly supporting Obama, 51% to 38%, and white women support Obama by 6 points. By contrast, Kerry’s final lead among women was only 3%.

Myth #3: McCain flip-flopped on off-shore drilling.

Actually, there’s no reason to assume that McCain changed his policy position for political reasons (what I think is meant by “flip-flopping”). It’s perfectly consistent to have the position, “no off-shore drilling except when demand is so high that it pushes gas to over $4 per gallon.” McCain deserves the benefit of the doubt here.

I’ve not been posting much recently, in part because I’ve been busy (both with work and with summer) and in part because I’ve been using Twitter, a great little tool for reducing your life to bite-size fragments that are easily digestible. I’ve got a couple posts I’ve been meaning to develop, but they take more work than I’ve been able to put in so far. Until then, enjoy the rest of the internet. Oh yeah, and the outdoors.

Exactly how bad is The Happening, M. Night Shyamalan’s latest thriller? Some say, it’s really, really bad (beware: lots of spoilers) (via jl!). And pretty much everything they say in the review is right.

But what was so amazing watching this film in a packed theater on opening night was how incredibly good some moments were. There’s an amazing scene at the beginning that - better than the horror films that dwell on this point too extensively - shows the incredible frailty of the human body in beautiful and frightening ways. A couple lines of dialogue just sparkle. Shyamalan can pull into a tight head shot like Spielberg and infuse commonplace objects with dread like Hitchcock. He really has a masterful touch.

What’s so infuriating about the film is how infrequently these moments occur. The acting is dreadful, the dialogue is written by eighth graders, the plot is laughable, there’s no twist, it’s preachier than the end of Psycho. It is really, really awful, but with really, really wonderful moments.

Compare that to The Incredible Hulk, which opened on the same day, in which nothing of interest ever happens. The movie is painful to sit through, not because it tried and failed, but because there’s not a single idea in the neighborhood. Edward Norton is at his smug worst, the action scenes are a mess, there’s no reason to care, the CGI is boring. It’s a weak knock-off of the Bourne films and the Spidey flicks, but without any of the magic that made those films work. There is one nice scene where we follow soldiers tracking a monster in NYC, and William Hurt and Tim Blake Nelson do nice supporting work, but overall the movie dulls everything it comes into contact with. Half-way through the film I was checking the clock. It made me wish there was a Happening right then and there.

So which is worse? The abysmal failure or the boring monstrosity? I think Hulk was much, much worse. I’d rather see an inventive director make a film that doesn’t work at all than see a miserable movie about a … well, about nothing. There’s no creativity within a thousand miles of Hulk, but it’s very near there in Happening. That’s also why Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales, which is an utter failure as a film, is still much more engaging than nearly anything else to come out recently.

Watching a film fail can be entertaining. Watching Hulk smash stuff is not.

How did I not hear about this sooner?

Apparently, some states have passed laws allocating their electoral college delegates based on the national popular vote. According to the consensus reading of the U.S. Constitution, states can decide how to allocate the people who really vote the president: the members of the electoral college. Most states give all their votes to the person with the popular vote in the state. A few divide their votes based on the state’s popular vote. But now, a few states will allocate their votes based on how the nation decides, rather than the state.

What does this mean? If enough states did this, then whoever won the national popular vote would become president of the United States. So no more 2000 elections situations. It also means that a state could give all of its votes to a person who did not win the popular vote in that state.

I’m really not sure what I think about this. Is it better or worse than the current system? I can see a bit of both.

I’ve been interested for a while in the support that Barack Obama has been garnering from many conservative thinkers. (E.g., conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan, those discussed in this “Obamacon” article.) While the vast majority of conservatives will either vote for McCain, vote third-party, or not vote at all this November, a number of prominent conservatives have come out in (sometimes cautious, sometimes enthusiastic) support of Obama. Why is that? There are a few reasons that I can see.

1. Libertarian goals: For conservatives with libertarian ideals (those who want to restrict government involvement in all areas of life, save for national defense and police protection), the two most important issues this elections cycle are leaving Iraq and rolling back the Patriot Act. On these two issues, Obama is the clear choice over McCain, who still supports the war and has recently been talking as if he now supports the Patriot Act, a change from his earlier position.

2. Bootstrapping biography: American conservatives are often drawn to stories that fall into line with Horatio Alger stories of a person who defeats all odds to rise to a successful (read: wealthy and powerful) life despite the most pitiful birth. Upward economic and social mobility is at the heart of America’s self image, and Obama’s life story fits that nicely.

3. Redrawing the political map: Some conservatives are tired of the political entrenchment that has characterized the Clinton-Morris and Bush-Rove years. Not interested in a protracted ground war over arbitrary boundaries, they want to shake up electoral politics the way they think Reagan did in 1980. The best chance of that happening is with an Obama presidency. Apparently the thought is by shaking things up, there can be a new scramble for congressional districts along new divisions.

4. Rhetoric and uplift: Some conservatives are entranced by Obama’s speaking ability and awed by his massive turnout at campaign events. Like Chris Matthews, they get a shiver down their leg when he speaks. I’m not sure how this counts as a reason for supporting someone, but it gets mentioned.

5. Values votes: Obama is comfortable talking about the values he finds important, and is quite eloquent in talking about them. (See 2 & 4.) Many of these values (hard work, personal drive, care for others, importance of family) are the ones that draw people to conservatism. Perhaps McCain also finds these important, but he is less comfortable talking about them in a political setting.

Each of these reasons assumes that the particular conservative understands well the reasons that they believe in conservatism and can identify those reasons in others and make their choice accordingly. Most voters, however, are probably not that clear, though, on what they believe, why, and how that applies. For them (and I think this is the majority), they are more clear on the positions they support and only have an inkling of the principles that lead to those positions. So (except for those choosing based on 1), they probably won’t identify with Obama. That’s why I’m not expecting some mass exodus from the Republican party or a major shake-up in American politics.

Here’s some news.

My eye has been doing considerably better, as judged in the most practical way: I’ve been able to read for about two weeks, as long as it’s in relatively short stretches and not at certain times of the day. Other than a little soreness, it’s not been painful. Somehow, after I take the eye drops, I get the most foul, sour taste in my mouth. My eye is still sensitive to light, so I wear my sunglass pretty much everywhere I go. When I’m at home or teaching class, I close all the shades and keep the lights low, so I can be sunglasses free. I’ve got another eye appointment this morning and a meeting with a specialist later this week to see if we can find an underlying cause.

Having lost my time to prepare for my class has meant I’m not that much ahead of the students. I have in my mind where the class is going, but filling in the details is time consuming. Add in doctor’s appointments and taking care of the puppy means I don’t have much time to slack off while Nicole is away at work.

Panther has been doing really well recently. She’s smart enough to do as she’s told, and smart enough to try and fake you out when she’s going to do something bad. Her latest trick occurs when we take her outside to go to the bathroom without her leash. She walks the boundary of where she knows she is allowed to be, holding her head up in the air like everything is nonchalant. She goes a couple paces beyond where you would think she would run, but then she doubles back and takes off running. She’s reaching the point where she can outrun me for the first 15 yards, which is a bit dangerous with all the cars in our condo complex. But she always gets distracted by something (like a leaf) or forgets you are following here, so she slows down and gets caught. This week we begin our formal training with her on commands.

The weather here has been extremely hot and humid the last couple days. Yesterday it broke for an hour with some thunderstorms, but the weather didn’t clear up. It’s just as hazy and hot today.

It’s time to get ready for class today. Panther is happily playing with a cardboard tube, remnant of a toilet paper roll. My eye drops are in. I’m caught up on the news. No excuses left.

UPDATE: My eye appointment went well. My vision is pretty poor, but the inflammation is finally way down. I can stop taking the dilating drops, and only have to take the steroid drops every two hours. I’ve never had to do something every waking hour for a month until now. I won’t miss it.

The summer class that I am teaching begins tomorrow. Fortunately, I’ve been able to read a bit the last couple days. That means I won’t be writing lectures solely from the memory of what I think the authors said. Now while that would be a fun experiment, I’d rather not have to do that. The other alternative was to see if Yale would pay to have someone read to me. I’m pretty sure they would, but I’m glad it hasn’t come to that.

Looks like I’ll just have to do this the old-fashioned way: prep at the last minute.

The iritis that has been plaguing me for nearly three weeks will hopefully be in remission when I meet the doctor again tomorrow. Last week there had been so little improvement, that I was put on new medication that would keep my left eye dilated all the time. The biggest problem with this is that while my eye is dilated, it is nearly impossible to read. I can cover my left eye, squint with my right eye, and force myself through a few lines of text. But that is tiring and frustrating and slow. I have found that near the end of the twelve hour cycle before I need my next application, my eyesight is clear enough in low-light settings that I can read for a couple hours. Also, it seems easier to read text on a computer screen than in printed form. I’m not sure why, but it could be the screen text is larger or is in greater contrast to the background.

I’m getting more and more anxious to get this fixed, because I begin teaching a month-long course starting Monday. So far, it has been difficult to prepare for it, since reading has been so difficult. Plus, I had hoped to finish the first chapter of my dissertation in May, but I have barely touched it in three weeks.

There’s the anxiety about prepping my class, but there’s also the general frustration about having lost a good deal of my eyesight. Nicole and I left at intermission to a play we got free tickets to because I couldn’t tell what was happening on stage very well. Reading subtitles on our TV is very difficult. Random things that I need to read during the day (like instructions on potting a plant or the names on street signs) are very difficult in bright light.

The funniest thing about this whole situation is probably that it makes me look like some kind of drunk or junkie. I wander around in the middle of the day with my dark sunglasses on, even when it’s cloudy or I go indoors. My perception is a little out of whack, so I sometimes stumble around. My arm is bruised from where they’ve been drawing blood samples to figure out what the underlying cause of this condition is. I look like I’m either a recovering heroin addict or in a constant state of being seriously hungover. 

UPDATE: The eye appointment today was encouraging. There is less “activity” (inflamed cells). After discussing it with the doctor, she agreed that I could begin taking the dilating drops only at night, which will hopefully mean I’ll be able to read during the days. I will still be taking the steroid drop every hour, which is annoying, but worth it to have this bout over.

Yesterday I did something I had never done before: I called in for an on-air radio contest. Then, the unthinkable happened: I actually won. I was caller number nine. But since the radio station is based out of New York and I live in Connecticut, I was ineligible.

Nicole thinks I’ve the golden touch. I think I’m cursed. Now I know how Midas felt.

To those for whom this makes sense and matters, the RSS feed for this site has changed. It is now

feed://www.inessentials.com/blog/feed

So update accordingly.