By Steve Rhodes
A weekly look at the magazines laying around Beachwood HQ.
Conservative Estimate
“In the fall of 2003, Jack L. Goldsmith was widely considered one of the brightest stars in the conservative legal firmament. A 40-year-old law professor from the University of Chicago, Goldsmith had established himself, with his friend and fellow law professor John Yoo, as a leading proponent of the view that international standards of human rights should not apply in cases before U.S. courts. In recognition of their prominence, Goldsmith and Yoo had been anointed the ‘New Sovereigntists’ by the journal Foreign Affairs.”
Then he got to the White House and it was too much even for him.
Bright Eyes
“Your article made me smile because I, too, can hear my eyeballs.”
– letter to Scientific American Mind in response to this article
Change Agents
“Many attempts to change our behavior are unsuccessful,” Scientific American Mind reports. “For example, psychologist John Norcross of the University of Scranton found that only 19 percent of those who had made a New Year’s resolution to change some problem behavior maintained the change when followed up two years later.
“People have a tendency to engage in patterns of behavior – jealousy, dependency, nagging, anger, violence and withdrawal, for example – that are often destructive to their significant relationships.”
The problem? “Changing may take away the only means the person has known of dealing with distress.”
The solution? “Helping people change means helping them want to change – not cajoling them with advice, persuasion or social pressure.”
Tina Famous
Does Tina Fey really have to do American Express magazine ads (and commercials) that say “My card makes sure the funny stuff stays on my show and not on my bill”?
Ha ha ha ha ha, you’re killing me, Tina!
How much money do people need? Isn’t it enough to be fabulously wealthy? Why participate in letting crass commercialism erode our culture and put everything up for sale? And for creating an uneven playing field for those whose ethics and principles and values operate at a higher level?
Here’s an idea for an ad:
Tina Fey: For Sale.
Like the rest of ’em.
*
Sadly, the Tina Fey ad was the most interesting thing in The New Yorker’s advertiser-driven Food Issue.
*
Coming Never: The Annual Hunger Issue.
Inside Google
“Then there is the question of what all these people are supposed to do. ‘We kind of like the chaos,’ says Laszid Bock, Google personnel boss. ‘Creativity comes out of people bumping into each other and not knowing where to go.’
“The most famous expression of this is the ’20 percent time.’ In theory, all Googlers, down to receptionists, can spend one-fifth exploring any new idea. Good stuff has indeed come out of this, including Google News, Gmail, and even those commuter shuttles and their Wi-Fi systems.”
I’m sure that, as good as working for Google may be, it’s not all Rock and Roll Heaven, but man I wish they would buy a Chicago newspaper.
*
Also from The Economist: Three of the world’s biggest companies are now Chinese.
Rockin’ Rick Rubin
Pretty fascinating New York Times Magazine cover profile last week of music impresario Rick Rubin, who is now trying to turn around Columbia Records.
“I’m not sure they realize that they are selling art,” Rubin says. “Right now they could be selling any product. That’s why we have to move – we’re in the art business.”
Journalism isn’t art, but man I wish Rubin would buy a Chicago newspaper.
Back to Goldsmith
“What exactly are the legal limits of executive power in the post-9/11-world?”
The same as the limits in the pre-9/11 world. That’s the beauty of the Constitution.
It’s like free speech. It’s easy to be for it when nobody is saying anything offensive or frightening. But then, those are times when Constitutional protection isn’t even necessary. It’s when speech offends and frightens that the right to express it has to be protected.
It’s the same thing with our civil liberties and separation of powers. The only time they need protecting is when they are under threat. That’s when we find out if we really mean it or the Constitution is just a bunch of words on paper tucked away in a drawer.
*
Goldsmith, the University of Chicago scholar in this week’s New York Times Magazine, resigned nine months into his job in the White House Office of Legal Counsel because of “what he considered the constitutional excesses of the legal policies embraced by his White House superiors in the war on terror.”
But he did not go public until now. Likewise, Colin Powell played Good Soldier and even Supreme Court Justice David Souter kept his mouth shut over Bush v. Gore. Dissent, done properly, is required in a democracy. It ought not be heroic and extraordinary in a healthy society, but a routine part of our governing process. Unfortunately, we’re short of leaders who understand their duties and responsibilities to the citizens they work for.
*
In his profile of Rudy Giuliani, conventional pundit journalist extraordinaire Matt Bai channels his subject’s message as a Colonel Jessup whom we need on that wall.
He never gets around to reminding us that Jessup was convicted of crimes that resulted in the peacetime death of a soldier in his charge.
Posted on September 12, 2007