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Alyssa

Actors Are Not Characters

By Alyssa Rosenberg on May 14, 2010 at 10:54 pm

David Boreanaz is not Seeley Booth. He’s not Angel, either.

I know. It’s okay. Take a deep breath. I’ll give you a minute to absorb this.

Ready to move on? Okay. When David Boreanaz told People magazine that he had cheated on his wife, I expected his fans to be sad, or outraged, or even just not care. And some of them reacted that way. But what I didn’t expect was the sizable contingent of fans who were happy. Excited. One might even say gleeful. This reaction struck me as odd, not to mention in poor taste, so I asked someone more steeped in Bones fandom than I what was up. She told me that the fans who were rejoicing were the “Demily” fans: those who want David Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel, the actors, to be romantically involved. In real life. Not just on the show. Go ahead – Google “Demily.” There are whole sites devoted to this. Pictures, quotes, fanfic, videos, the works. Now, let’s get one obvious issue out of the way: it simply doesn’t make a lot of rational sense that Boreanaz cheating on his wife with someone else would somehow set up a happily ever after with his costar.

But what I find really odd and, honestly, rather abhorrent is this whole concept of treating real people as though they were fictional characters: ‘shipping them, writing fanfic about them, talking about them like close personal friends, etc. It’s natural for viewers to associate actors with their characters to some extent, and, especially on TV shows that run for years, these associations can grow pretty strong. It can be tempting to think that a character’s behavior, mannerisms, tastes, and even personality are reflected by the actor in real life. And sure, actors always bring something of themselves to roles, but at the end of the day, actors are being paid to do what someone tells them to do and say what someone tells them to say. That’s really the whole point of acting.

So just because a couple has great chemistry on TV – well, it means absolutely nothing. Sure, odds are they don’t hate each other. They might be friends. But let’s not leap to writing creepy short stories about their secret love. Why do fans want these things to be real? Why this level of not only interest in actors’ lives, but strong feelings about them? Is it that people want to think of their favorite TV shows as realistic, in some way, and so since they can’t convince themselves that Boreanaz is actually an FBI agent, they convince themselves that he’s actually in love with Deschanel? And this sort of thing is by no means limited to Bones fans. A similar thing happened when news broke of Bradley Whitford’s divorce – fans immediately began hoping he’d marry Janel Moloney, even though Moloney is in a committed relationship and the show on which they’d appeared together (The West Wing) has been off the air for years. Disney and the CW make use of this impulse by encouraging their young stars to date, or “date,” in a very public manner. Just look at the string of young pop stars linked to the Jonas brothers, or the dating frenzy among the Gossip Girl cast.

Or is the problem actually what Aaron Sorkin wrote about in the wake of Newsweek‘s piece about gay actors?

The problem has everything to do with the fact that we know too much about each other and we care too much about what we know. In one short decade we have been reconditioned to be entertained by the most private areas of other people’s lives.

When we’re used to consuming this ongoing stream of entertainment based on strangers’ lives, it’s perhaps too easy a leap to start writing the stories ourselves when real life isn’t going the way we’d like.

Climate Progress

Offshore Drilling Lobbyist: BP Disaster Could Lead To A ‘Communist Party Member Sitting On Everything’

By Brad Johnson on May 14, 2010 at 8:25 pm

Offshore Operators CommitteeAs the BP-Halliburton oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico grows, President Barack Obama vowed to change the “cozy relationship” between government and the oil and gas industry. The Minerals Management Service (MMS), a 1700-person bureau in the Department of the Interior that manages $13.7 billion per year in revenues from drilling leases, will be restructured, though in ways that fail to solve essential problems.

In an exclusive interview with the Wonk Room, top offshore drilling lobbyist Allen J. Verret raised concerns that this “chaotic situation” in the Gulf of Mexico could lead to the “opportunity for draconian measures to be taken against the oil and gas industry that fit the adminstration’s plans.” Verret worries greatly that the Obama administration’s response to this “watershed moment” will fit the pattern he sees of government taking over private commerce:

Recently the government is running automotive companies, running financial companies, running banks. They’re getting more in the business of running commerce, much to the dismay of the business owners. . . . You’re going to have a Communist Party member sitting on everything.

Verret is the executive director of the Offshore Operators Committee (OOC), a coalition of Gulf of Mexico offshore drillers that negotiates with the federal agencies that oversee the industry. With the American Petroleum Institute, the OOC helps write the rules for the industry that the MMS enforces. BP officials Marshall Maestri, Scherie Douglas and Randy Josacek chair OOC’s legal, drilling and pipeline subcommittees.

Verret believes that the objections that API and his organization raised to mandatory safety and environmental rules proposed last year are “twisted” by the “liberal” media. “We have no problems with good regulations,” he told the Wonk Room in the telephone interview, but “none of these agencies have the expertise to do the things they’re given the authority to look over.” Despite his fears of creeping socialism, Verret recognized that “you can over-regulate and you can under-regulate an industry.”

The laws which govern the way business coalitions like his write the rules under which they operate are the 1946 Administrative Procedure Act and the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act.

Politics

Boston archdiocese promises to help lesbian mothers find a new Catholic school for their son.

By Amanda Terkel on May 14, 2010 at 7:30 pm

Sean O'Malley St. Paul Elementary School, a Roman Catholic school in Massachusetts, recently revoked the admission of an eight-year-old boy due to the fact that his mothers are lesbians, saying their relationship “was in discord with the teachings of the Catholic Church.” In response, Catholics United collected more than 2,500 signatures of people telling Boston Cardinal Sean O’Malley to put a stop to discrimination in his schools. Now, the head of education for the Boston Archdiocese has offered to help the women find a new Catholic school for their son:

“We believe that every parent who wishes to send their child to a Catholic school should have the opportunity to pursue that dream,” [superintendent Mary Grassa] O’Neill said.

The parent, who has remained anonymous to protect her child from publicity, called the archdiocese’s response “compassionate” and said O’Neill apologized. But the woman said she was uncertain she would enroll her son in another Catholic school because she needed to learn more about their educational programs. She added: “I will be a little bit more guarded in my questioning so I’ll be able to have a real clear picture where they stand.”

O’Neill also clarified that the Boston archdiocese “doesn’t bar children of same-sex parents from attending Catholic schools, and that it will develop a policy in the coming weeks to make that clear.”

Politics

Over 77 Percent Of All Arizonans Support Comprehensive Immigration Reform

By Andrea Nill Sanchez on May 14, 2010 at 6:23 pm

Since Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ) signed SB-1070 into law last month, polls have shown that 52 percent of Arizona voters continue supporting the drastic — and likely unconstitutional — immigration law. However, a poll released today by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and National Council of La Raza (NCLR) shows that Arizonans overwhelmingly support action on the federal level in the form of comprehensive immigration reform and, if given the choice, prefer it over both increased border security and SB-1070:

CIRpoll

The results reflect polling at the national level as well. While a slim majority of Americans support Arizona’s immigration law, an overwhelming majority — across party lines — support comprehensive immigration reform. More specifically, a recent CBS/NY Times poll shows that 57 percent of all Americans believe immigration laws should be set by the federal government and 64 percent support some sort of legal status for undocumented immigrants already living in the country. A Univision/Associated Press poll which was also released today confirms those results and also shows that, amongst Latinos, 86 percent favor a “legal way for illegal immigrants already in the United States to become U.S. citizens.”

Ultimately, Americans are fed up with the nation’s broken immigration system. Only 17 percent of Americans believe the federal government is doing all it can do on the issue while 78 percent believe it could be doing more. Support for SB-1070 is undoubtedly a manifestation of widespread frustration. However, the fact that the majority of Americans also support comprehensive immigration reform shows that there are two ways forward on the issue: 1) local legislative efforts that challenge the Constitution and turn entire regions into police states, or 2) a comprehensive approach that doesn’t just secure the border, but also turns undocumented immigrants who meet certain requirements into productive citizens and taxpayers who could contribute trillions of dollars to our national GDP.

Yglesias

Endgame

By Matthew Yglesias on May 14, 2010 at 6:14 pm

The air you breath is real:

— Greek’s financial problems are primarily about a bad tax system.

— James Fallows’ 2008 account of Chinese internet service.

— Texas and New York will unite to stop Ezra Klein’s smug California attitude.

— Shaun Donovan speaks out against the mortgage interest tax deduction.

— David Frum’s electoral arguments for Republican moderation are unconvincing.

Another one from the new Broken Social Scene, “Texico Bitches” has emerged already as my second-friend song by a Canadian indie rock band with “Bitches” in the title. Stars’ “Bitches in Tokyo” takes the cake, however.

Yglesias

Factcheck on Immigration and Wages

By Matthew Yglesias on May 14, 2010 at 5:31 pm

FactCheck.org has an excellent item on the immigration/wages connection. It’s difficult for me to think of an issue where there’s a better gap between the academic research and popular understanding. But as FactCheck explains, there’s a nearly universal consensus in the literature that immigration grows the economy and increases both average wages (as in higher wages on average) and the wages of the average American worker (as in the median goes up). Many studies also find a negative impact on the wages of people who don’t have a high school degree, although some researchers dispute even that. What’s more, the negative impact appears to be particularly concentrated on the wages of other immigrants.

If you try to think about it for a moment or two, you should see that these are all pretty intuitive findings. If two percent of the population was irrevocably teleported at random to Mexico on Monday morning, that would lead to a decline in overall living standards. It’s true that if this were a peasant society with a fixed supply of arable land and 80 percent of the population working in agriculture that things might look different, but that’s not the case. Even “unskilled” people have some skills, and adding to the pot makes us better off, especially because some “unskilled” people actually possess skills that are quite rare—cities with lots of Mexican immigrants have, for example, good Mexican food. But cohorts of immigrants have very similar skills to each other so pulling up the gate might help recent Mexican immigrants.

But of course when you look at the politics of this issue, none of this is reflected. The people clamoring to “control the border” aren’t recent low-skill immigrants from Mexico. It’s very rarely native born high-school dropouts either. Rather, the people upset about immigration tend to be white high school graduates, a group that has a lot of conservative opinions about many issues but generally benefits from high levels of immigration.

Security

Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon: Politicians Who ‘Love Their Job’ ‘More Than Their Country’ Led Arizona Astray

By Andrea Nill Sanchez on May 14, 2010 at 5:30 pm

Over the past month, the state of Arizona has come into the national spotlight since it enacted the nation’s harshest immigration law, SB-1070. In another controversial move, this week Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ) signed into law a bill that will ban ethnic studies in public schools. A couple weeks ago, the Arizona legislature approved a “birther bill” that would require President Barack Obama to show his birth certificate and prove his own citizenship status. A sharp critic of Arizona’s nativist efforts has been Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon. Today, Gordon sat down to talk with the Wonk Room about what has led Arizona to take such drastic measures.

Gordon described a “perfect storm” consisting of three factors. First, the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine radicalized the political discourse. Second, beefed up border security along the California and Texas borders with Mexico redirected smugglers and cartel operatives toward Arizona. And lastly, the economic recession. Gordon explains that “politicians who love their job a lot more than they love their state or their country” exploited the three factors and led Arizona into the predicament it’s in now:

This became a perfect storm….we had the ending under Reagan of the Fairness Doctrine, which not only allowed both sides of an issue, it required both sides of an issue to be discussed. [...] Language that was spoken in the dark rooms, but not out in front became acceptable. And it became acceptable on television and radio. Particularly the extreme right radio. [...]

The second in Arizona was the fact that we are right on the border when Texas and California were tightened up. [...] It made Arizona the gateway and continues to do so because it is an impossible border to secure.

As a result of that, and the issue of the economy, the three came together and were exploited politically by individuals like Hayworth, and Russell Pierce — the local senator — and the governor [Jan Brewer], and those that love their job a lot more than they love their state or their country. The more extreme these issues became, the more leadership these individuals took on and scared off other more moderates, particular Republicans.

Watch it:

Gordon also listed another element which has exacerbated the extremism that is present in Arizona. When President Barack Obama was elected president, he appointed then governor of Arizona, Janet Napolitano (D), to serve as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. According to Gordon, when Napolitano left, her successor (Brewer) filled the void left behind by appointing a lot “extremists” who “hijacked” the system. The Wonk Room previously reported that Napolitano stated that she vetoed bills similar to SB-1070 “at least twice.”

Politics

Maine GOP Forced To Apologize After Convention-Goers Vandalize An Eighth-Grade Classroom

By Amanda Terkel on May 14, 2010 at 5:20 pm

Although Maine is known for its two moderate Republican senators — Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins — last week’s state GOP convention showed the growing influence of far-right activists. An “overwhelming majority of delegates” voted to “scrap the the proposed party platform and replace it with a document created by a group of Tea Party activists.” Maine Politics called it “a mix of right-wing fringe policies, libertarian buzzwords and outright conspiracy theories.”

The Republican convention was at the Portland Expo, but participants went to the nearby King Middle School to hold their caucuses. While there, they went through eighth-grade teacher Paul Clifford’s items, opened sealed boxes, stole a prized poster, and vandalized the room with Republican slogans. Some details on what they did:

– For seven years, Clifford has had “a collage-type poster depicting the history of the U.S. labor movement” on his classroom door. He uses it “to teach his students how to incorporate collages into their annual project on Norman Rockwell’s historic ‘Four Freedoms’ illustrations.” When Clifford returned to his classroom on Monday, after the GOP caucuses, the poster was gone; in its place was a sticker reading, “Working People Vote Republican.”

– Republicans opened a “closed cardboard box they found near Clifford’s desk” and later objected to the fact that it contained copies of the U.S. Constitution donated to the school by the American Civil Liberties Union.

– After the caucuses, “rank-and-file Republicans who were upset by what they said they had seen in Clifford’s classroom” began calling the school, objecting to student art they had seen and a sticker on a filing cabinet reading “People for the American Way — Fight the Right.”

Although some of these callers said they supported the fact that Clifford’s poster had been stolen, the Maine Republican Party’s leadership has taken a more conciliatory approach, apologizing to the school and promising to return any stolen materials it finds. “King Middle School was kind enough to allow the (party) to use their facilities and we are deeply concerned about the lack of respect shown to the faculty,” said Maine GOP Executive Director Christie-Lee McNally. Local Knox County GOP Chairman William Chapman agreed that the vandalism was inappropriate, but added that it was disturbing that there was “nothing” in Clifford’s room “that appeared to give a more balanced view.”

Even some students are appalled by the GOP caucus-goers’ behavior. Simon Thompson, a graduate of Clifford’s eighth-grade class, wrote an open letter saying that Maine Republicans had gone too far:

I am an unapologetic graduate of Paul Clifford’s eighth grade English class at King Middle School. I participated in the “Four Freedoms” expedition, and I made a poster decrying war quite similar to the one with which the Republicans took issue.

I am not brainwashed, I am not a puppet, I am not anti-American or anti-religious, and I am certainly not stupid. Paul Clifford’s class taught me to think critically, to deductively reason and, if anything, to appreciate America for all the freedoms with which I am ensured on a daily basis.

Clearly, the Knox County Republicans — who took a cherished, pro-Labor poster from Clifford’s room and who now are making slanderous and uninformed claims about Clifford — have a different agenda.

The Portland Press Herald also said that it received “several” e-mails from students “decrying the behavior of their weekend guests.” “I am not being brainwashed in his class under any circumstances,” wrote one student. “I am being told that I have the right to my own opinion. … These people were adults and they were acting very immaturely.”

Yglesias

The EPA’s New “Tailoring Rule”

By Matthew Yglesias on May 14, 2010 at 4:44 pm

epa 1

The basic idea of EPA regulation of greenhouse gas emissions was supposed to be a political squeeze play. As a means of preventing catastrophic global warming, EPA regulation is worse than a statutory carbon pricing scheme. In terms of negative impact on business activities, EPA regulation is also worse than a statutory carbon pricing scheme. Consequently, the threat of EPA regulation was supposed to bring industry to the table to form a positive-sum compromise around a bipartisan statutory carbon pricing scheme. And with support for creating such a scheme spanning from the Republican Party’s presidential candidate to the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate, as of November 2008 the odds looked good.

Obviously, things have changed. And though EPA regulation isn’t a great idea, it’s still better than letting the planet burn. What’s more, under the Clean Air Act the EPA is actually required to do something about the situation. So yesterday they finally released their “tailoring rule,” the next forward step to Clean Air Act regulation. Brad Plumer explains what it’s all about. I’m crossing my fingers that some Senate Republicans will come to their senses and revive hopes for cap-and-trade, but I’m not expecting it to happen.

Security

Egypt Cites US ‘Emergency Law’ To Defend Its Own

By Guest Blogger on May 14, 2010 at 4:30 pm

Our guest blogger is Brian Katulis, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.

EGYPT/MUSLIMBROTHERHOODThe ill wind of political repression continues to blow in Egypt — earlier this week, the Egyptian government approved a two-year extension of an emergency law that’s been continuously in effect since 1981, despite repeated promises to repeal it. The emergency law lets the Egyptian government limit key freedoms, arrest people without charge, and hold prisoners in indefinite detention.

Extending emergency rule is the latest in the string of troubling moves by the Egyptian regime to crack down on political opposition and keep Egypt’s political space closed to alternatives, including a ban announced earlier this spring on Skype’s voice over Internet protocol, a move that the Project on Middle East Democracy‘s Lydia Khalil points out is about squelching dissent more than it may be about profits and bandwidth.

These disconcerting steps motivated me to join with a diverse group of people (some of whom I fundamentally disagree with on many other foreign policy issues) in signing this letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asking that the United States pressure Egypt to clean up its act on human rights and democracy.

I’ve had a special fondness for Egypt ever since I studied Arabic there back in the 1990′s, and then later worked with brave Egyptians pushing for political reform when I was with the National Democratic Institute, long before the Freedom Agenda was even a glint in George W. Bush’s eye.

Why is it important to support political reform in Egypt now? A change in leadership appears on the horizon, and this presents an opening to move beyond our addiction to dictators and autocrats that has plagued the Middle East for decades. Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s 82-year old president, has had health problems, and as Michael Wahid Hanna and others have recently warned, a possible succession struggle looms.

The Obama administration expressed its disappointment in the emergency law decision, but actions speak louder than words. What will the Obama administration do in the coming months as more Egyptians stand up for democracy and freedom? Will it stand behind the words that will be part of its forthcoming national security strategy that include supporting “universal values” around the world? Or will it follow in the footsteps of its predecessor, the Bush administration, whose signature “Freedom Agenda” is now regarded by many Egyptians as kalam fadi, empty words?

In reaction to mild statements of disappointment from the Obama administration about the emergency law renewal, Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif compared the emergency law to America’s Patriot Act, saying the Egyptian government “was having difficulty finding the proper balance between protecting the nation and preserving civil liberties, comparing the challenge to President Obama’s difficulties in closing down the prison at Guantánamo Bay.”

As I noted in 2007 when I was in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad just as then-President Pervez Musharraf lifted a much shorter period of emergency rule, leaders around the world tend to follow America’s actions — and some autocrats had perfected the tricks of the trade by following the Bush administration’s example: Unilaterally declare executive powers because of extraordinary circumstances, seek to quell opponents by painting them as in the same camp as terrorists and flood the airwaves with a message of fear in a desperate attempt to cover up what has been essentially a pretty poor record at bringing terrorists to justice. The Bush administration followed that approach for many years, using the war on terror as an excuse to trample on basic rights at home, making the freedom agenda seem all the more hollow.

On Egypt, the Obama administration will have an opportunity in the coming year to make up for the past mistakes of several previous administrations. Will President Obama stand by the words he expressed in his Cairo speech last year — his “unyielding belief” that people yearn for basic rights and freedoms — and that his administration will “support them everywhere”? Egypt is going to be an important test case — and most Egyptians are hoping that these words weren’t just more kalam fadi from another American president.

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