The British want their 2012 Olympic opening ceremonies directed by DANNY BOYLE?
Which of Boyle’s previous landmark works do you think will serve as the model?
The movie that takes us on an unsparing journey into the most horrible depths of heroin addiction, and then ends by mocking bourgeois suburbia as a shallow and superficial life?
The zombie movie whose central lesson is that the only thing more thoroughly evil than rabid remorseless flesh-eating zombies is people?
Or the cute and cuddly story of a little boy who tries to charitably give away a duffel bag full of cash, only to discover that we’re all so evil that every grownup he approaches about it tries to take the cash for himself?
It’s a tossup!
My vote? Wenlock eats Mandeville’s eye out, then Mandeville rips Wenlock’s limbs off. For the opening act.
In the Corner, Jim Manzi’s comment on Grover Whitehurst’s proposals for education reform is that it’s really no longer a matter of arguing over what would help; it’s just a question of figuring out how to make it happen in the face of entrenched union opposition. Manzi thinks that’s a good sign:
It is striking how far thoughtful, mainstream liberal wonk opinion has moved on the question of educational reform….When one side of the political divide loses its own ideological belief in a specific position and defends it based purely on interest-group power, this often creates an opportunity for real change.
It seems to me that education reform is ripening as political issue for Republicans, if they are willing to seize it, as they did welfare reform 20 years ago. Like welfare reform, this would probably imply being willing to engage on the policy detail, and to work with Democrats in order to create a bipartisan solution with staying power. It looks to me like there is lots of common ground to be found.
I think that’s right, but it will all hinge on the willingness of enough Democrats to buck the teacher union mafia, just as welfare reform hinged on the willingness of enough Democrats to buck the social-services union mafia twenty years ago. Fortunately, there are reasons to think that could happen. And the best part is, today the people turning against the unions are not just any Dems, they’re the social justice Dems, who bring to the table their unique cultural power to annoint and legitimize things within the Left.
I am shocked – shocked! – to discover that political manipulation of education is going on in here!
Your NCLB and RTTT grants for supporting national standards, monsieur.
(Guest post by Greg Forster)
Over on NRO, Heritage’s Lindsey Burke and Jennifer Marshall warn that the Obama administration is finding even more ways to use federal influence to push “voluntary” national standards on the states.
So much for Checker’s apparently serious assertion that the standards “emerged not from the federal government but from a voluntary coming together of (most) states, and the states’ decision whether or not to adopt them will remain voluntary.” Bwa ha ha!
David Figlio’s study (with Cassandra Hart) on how the Florida Tax-Credit Scholarship program impacts public schools is finally out. Guess what? His detailed statistical analysis finds that competition from school choice improves public schools. (Here’s some local news coverage.)
But that was no surprise to anyone who’s been following the research. Early last year I counted up the studies and here’s what I got:
Removing the double-count for studies that had findings in multiple locations, that made it 16 studies finding school choice improves public schools to zero finding they hurt public schools. (The one null finding was in DC, where the program pays enormous cash bribes to the public system – apparently on the princple that children are the chattel property of the government school system – in order to deliberately neutralize its effect on public schools.)
As always, critics are trying to make hay out of the fact that in the Figlio/Hart study, a tiny, population-limited, regulation-cramped choice program produces only moderate-sized benefits. Well, geniuses, if the benefits of a tiny, population-limited, regulation-cramped program are too small for you, can you think of any way you might make the program’s impact bigger?
“They teach you to predict the weather at a box company?”
(Guest post by Greg Forster)
Sorry I’m so late to the party. I just saw the finale last night.
First let me gloat that I made (I believe) only one specific, concrete prediction, and after over a year of appearing to be falsified it was at long last fulfilled in the finale. The Axiom conquers all.
(OK, OK, it was only sort of fulfilled. But we all know that “moving on” for Daniel is going to include killing bad guys and winning Charlotte. Right?)
More generally, I feel vindicated in having maintained for so long that the real key to the whole show is the question of whether Locke was right to put his faith in the fundamental goodness of “the island.” I didn’t really get it all articulated at the time, but that was the reason I was struggling near the end to figure out, in retrospect, how Smokey fit in with Locke’s story over the course of the show. I wanted to know why they had chosen to incarnate Smokey in Locke’s body. Why remove Locke from the show when he was the lynchpin holding it all together? Now I see – they did it to set up the confrontation in the end between the spiritual Locke (Jack) and the physical Locke (Smokey). Jack had to finally admit, to himself and everybody else, that Smokey wasn’t Locke because he (Jack) was Locke.
On one level, I got what I wanted out of the finale. What I wanted was 1) a knock-down, drag-out knife fight for the fate of the world on the edge of a slowly crumbling cliff, and 2) a noble death. Check and check. I’m a happy guy.
But I think the ending is satisfying on a deeper level, too. I don’t need to know anything more than I now know about Dharma, Widmore, childbirth, chosen ones, etc. (It still bugs me that Walt appeared to Locke, but I can deal.) Those were all just skins the show shed, one after the other. On a show like this, it’s foolish to expect too much from the skins. What you have to do is follow the snake. Or maybe a better image is the old cups and balls routine – the ball moves from cup to cup, but it’s the ball you need to keep your eye on.
Jay is right that the soap opera stuff can’t hold up the show by itself. You need a larger drama to give the soap opera stuff meaning. Well, the larger drama was whether the island was good or bad, and on that it delivered just fine.
I’m not saying it’s the ending I would have written myself. I happen to think that “rejoining your loved ones” and learning to “move on” from the past, simply by themselves, is a contemptible vision of heaven. Even if that’s just the prelude to whatever “comes next,” what makes the afterlife attractive on this vision is having a chance to start again – a do-over. But what makes you think you won’t just screw it all up again – especially given infinite time – and just end up in the same place? Jacob committed the same folly – he kept bringing people to the island to show Smokey that people are basically good, and the people disappointed him every single time. You aspire to an eternity of endless do-overs? That’s the Buddhist conception of hell. I happen to believe that there’s a hell even worse than that, but the Buddhists are right when they say that if the afterlife is just more of the same forever, with periodic opportunities to start over with a fresh slate, then existence is suffering and annihilation is heaven. (It’s ironic that the show had the symbols of all the world religions in the church window. The world religions don’t really all teach the same thing, but there are some things they do all agree on, and the repudiation of this show’s vision of heaven is one of them. They all, in radically different ways, claim to offer an escape from the hell that is our own broken nature.)
But none of that detracts from my enjoyment of the show, because I don’t watch shows to have my own worldview affirmed. The enjoyment of narrative lies precisely in having the opportunity to explore a universe other than the one we really live in. Achilles is a horrible monster committing barbarism motivated by egocentrism in the service of unjust aggressors, but that doesn’t detract from my enjoyment of the Illiad. (I have gotten much help on this subject from C.S. Lewis’s An Experiment in Criticism.)
And if you don’t like my analysis, here’s my wife’s, which I think may find some agreement. “I figured out the secret ending,” she said to me this morning. “It’s the subliminal messages they put in the finale that say BUY ALL THE EPISODES ON DVD AND YOU CAN FIGURE IT ALL OUT.” She suggests that they put in references to all the world’s religions “not so that they’ll be equally happy but so that they’ll all be equally frustrated.”
Don’t miss this solid gold story of Chris Christie v. the dishonesty of activists claiming to represent teachers.
Buildup: Teacher in the audience challenges Christie’s statements about teacher pay, saying if his figures were right she’d be making $83,000, and she doesn’t make nearly that much. Christie replies that she does if you count benefits. She fires back that she has a master’s degree and lots of experience and she isn’t adequately paid for these. Christie remarks that if she doesn’t think she’s paid what she’s worth, she’s free to do something else with her life, and moves on to the next questioner.
Kicker: Public records show that the teacher in question makes just under $85,000 base salary. Oops.
Is it me, or has the primary and special-election season that is now winding down down represented a major leap forward in excellence for the quality of campaign communications? I don’t just mean production values, although after the introduction of the “Demonsheep” those did go up dramatically. I mean, in addition, at least in some places there was a puncturing of the ordinary cheap and forumlaic insincerity. This was shocking and refreshing, and I’d like to honor it. So I’m giving out the following three awards.
The John Adams Award
For excellence in the strategic use of ironic self-effacement to embarrass your egomaniacal jackass of an opponent
If you took U.S. History 101, you probably know that in 1800 John Adams and Thomas Jefferson allowed their surrogates in the press to circulate truly horrible fictions about one another. At one point, Jefferson’s papers circulated the rumor that Adams had sent one of his functionaries over to England to collect four women, two of whom were to serve as Adams’s mistresses and two for the functionary (as his compensation for making the trip).
Rather than blow a gasket and work himself into high dudgeon, Adams commented, “If it is true, then he has cheated me out of my two and kept them all for himself!”
In that spirit, I bestow the John Adams award upon Mickey Kaus, blogger turned candidate for the Democratic Senate nomination in California, for his deftly ironic use of candid self-effacement to repeatedly humiliate his opponent, Barbara Boxer. His public statements have been consistently barbed and effective, but this and this were what moved me to create an award to give him.
“The box was on the defensive for the entire debate.”
The Gen. Anthony McAuliffe Award
For candor above and beyond the call of duty
Before the Battle of the Bulge, Gen. McAuliffe recieved the following communique:
To the U.S.A. Commander of the encircled town of Bastogne
The fortune of war is changing. This time the U.S.A. forces in and near Bastogne have been encircled by strong German armored units. More German armored units have crossed the river Our near Ortheuville, have taken Marche and reached St. Hubert by passing through Hompre-Sibret-Tillet. Libramont is in German hands.
There is only one possibility to save the encircled U.S.A. troops from total annihilation: that is the honorable surrender of the encircled town. In order to think it over a term of two hours will be granted beginning with the presentation of this note.
If this proposal should be rejected one German Artillery Corps and six heavy A. A. Battalions are ready to annihilate the U.S.A. troops in and near Bastogne. The order for firing will be given immediately after this two hours term.
All the serious civilian losses caused by this artillery fire would not correspond with the well-known American humanity.
The German Commander
McAuliffe sent back the following reply:
To the German Commander
NUTS!
The American Commander
In that spirit, I bestow the Gen. Anthony McAuliffe award upon Les Phillip, candidate for the Republican nomination for the U.S. House in Alabama District 5.
Test yourself:
How many of the references did you catch? (Jim Geraghty says that’s William Ayers’ wanted poster they flash near the end.)
The Ronald Reagan Award
For fearlessness in the mocking of buffoonery
Reagan won a close election in 1980 in large part because he wasn’t afraid to display his contempt for Carter’s contemptible behavior. This was captured in our historical memory in that famous debate, when Carter repeated for the umpteenth time his shameless lies about Reagan’s record on Medicare, and Reagan smiled and said, “there you go again.” (Never mind that we’d be living in a much better world now if Reagan really had wanted to slash Medicare; the fact is, he didn’t, and people knew it.)
In that spirit, I bestow the Ronald Reagan award upon Carly Fiorina. The Demonsheep was clever and funny, and it broke a lot of conventions in a way that got everybody paying attention, but it was also deeply amateurish and forced. The follow-up ad, though, was far superior.
Congratulations to the winners. My fervent hope is that I’ll have more awards to give out come November!
Under the latest amazing plan, it’s not just the Germans who will be paying for 45-year-old Greek hairdressers to retire to the beaches of the Agean. You and I have that privilege now, too, via a special deal that funnels US taxpayer dollars to the Greece bailout via the IMF.
But it gets better. Real Clear Markets (with story attribution to Investor’s Business Daily) reports the following jaw-dropper:
Greece was told that if it wanted a bailout, it needed to consider privatizing its government health care system. So tell us again why the U.S. is following Europe’s welfare state model.
The requirement, part of a deal arranged by the IMF, the European Union and the European Central bank, is a tacit admission that national health care programs are unsustainable. Along with transportation and energy, the bailout group, according to the New York Times, wants the Greek government to remove “the state from the marketplace in crucial sectors.”
Let’s save the schadenfreude for another time. (Like maybe a time when we might be more able to rise to the challenge of resisting the temptation to indulge our schadenfreude.) Inquiring minds want to know: who demanded this requirement?
The Obama administration?
The Germans?
The French?
The EU bureaucracy?
Is there anyone who could plausibly be behind this without being an astonishing hypocrite?
Over the weekend, ALELR ran the numbers on Technorati and posted the Top 20 Education Blogs on his blog, Intercepts. Coming out on top – Joanne Jacobs. But what do you expect given that she’s married to royalty?
Tied for #10? Jay P. Greene’s Blog and . . . Intercepts.
I say we settle this like men – on the field of honor. There can be only ten!
Posted by Greg Forster 
Jay P. Greene's Blog 