ThinkProgress Logo

Alyssa

Hollywood For Ugly People

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Sep 6, 2011 at 5:22 pm

The always-awesome Hugh Laurie (I am watching may way through Jeeves and Wooster right now, which makes me wish we had a stronger buttling tradition in America if only for the comedic value) is predictably correct on one of the major problems with American entertainment:

After parking, Laurie cut through the studio lot’s New York street set and discussed the differences between British and American TV. “I think good-looking people seldom make good television,” he said. “And American television studios almost concede before they start: ‘Well, it won’t be good, but at least it’ll be good-looking. We’ll have nice-looking girls in tight shirts with F.B.I. badges and fit-looking guys with lots of hair gel vaulting over things. So at least we’ll have achieved that base standard of entertainment.’ ” He shook his head. “I think that’s hugely misguided. The glory of American television is Dennis Franz.”

We often treat tropes like the Girl Who Takes Off Her Glasses and is Suddenly Miraculous as if they’re the product of bad writing, which frequently, they are. But they’re also a product of exceedingly lazy casting (and sometimes, bad wardrobing). A story about a woman who becomes more comfortable in her body and more sexually confident can be legitimately interesting and empowering if it’s presented in a plausible way rather than a cheap one — these kinds of stories are not inherently unengaging or irritating. And it’s just true that casts that are not filled with people who look different are more interesting to look at than those staffed with tiny variations on a single, established theme. Richard Belzer’s mix of goofy, menace, and vulnerability help make Det. John Munch so amiably, if minorly, immortal. Patricia Belcher is good at acting impatient, but her lidded eyes and wide line of a mouth also help her play perpetually exasperated.

Yglesias

The Mild Housing Boom

By Matthew Yglesias on Sep 6, 2011 at 5:21 pm

Karl Smith points out that the wild bubble in real estate prices wasn’t really matched by a crazy boom in construction:

There was a boom here, but a modest-sized one consistent with the kind of modest-sized increase in joblessness we were seeing in 2007. The real crash is the crash in prices. That led not to a crash in construction activity, but to a crash in personal spending outlays driven by the “wealth effect” and debt-overhang dynamics. All signs currently point to the idea that if unemployment went down a bit and a few more people had a bit more money in their pockets, then we’d find that we don’t have enough houses to match all the growth in population we’ve experienced. In other words, we’re not building homes because we have too many unemployed people, it’s not that we have such high unemployment because people are building too many homes.

Security

Poll: Two-Thirds Of Republicans, Tea Partiers And Fox News Viewers Think Islam Is Incompatible With American Values

By Ali Gharib on Sep 6, 2011 at 5:19 pm

According to a poll of American attitudes released today by the Brookings Institution (PDF), conservatives, Republicans, and Fox News viewers are more likely than other Americans to hold views widely considered to be Islamophobic. The study, “What It Means To Be American: Attitudes In An Increasingly Diverse America Ten Years After 9/11,” tracks views of Muslims and disaggregates them by political affiliations and views.

Overall, the survey of nearly 2,500 respondents found that 47 percent of respondents think Islam is out of step with American values, while 48 percent disagreed. Adherents of conservative political parties, movements, and media were more likely than the general populace to have negative views of Muslims and their place in American society. The report’s introduction explains:

Approximately two-thirds of Republicans, Americans who identify with the Tea Party movement, and Americans who most trust Fox News agree that the values of Islam are at odds with American values. A majority of Democrats, Independents, and those who most trust CNN or public television disagree.

The report also notes that incorrect views of Muslims’ beliefs are also on the rise. CAP recently released a report called “Fear, Inc.” that traced and documented the rise of an anti-Muslim movement spear-headed by American bloggers and self-proclaimed “experts.” While, according to the Brookings report, more than 60 percent of Americans don’t believe Muslims are trying to institute Muslim religious law — known as Sharia — across the U.S., there are an increasing number who do:

Over the last 8 months agreement with this question has increased by 7 points, from 23 percent in February 2011 to 30 percent today.

One thing that hasn’t changed is that many of Americans’ unfounded and Islamophobic views were most prevalent among those who trusted Fox News more than any other source of news. On the Sharia question, the report noted:

Nearly 6-in-10 Republicans who most trust Fox News believe that American Muslims are trying to establish Shari’a law in the U.S. The attitudes of Republicans who most trust other news sources look similar to the general population.

This chart from the report shows how Fox viewers, more so than viewers affiliated with any other news outlet, are more likely to hold incorrect and Islamophobic views:

Update

The poll on which the Brookings Institute’s analysis is based was conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). Two people from PRRI and two from Brookings worked together to author the Brookings report.

Economy

Massachusetts Government Employment Grew Twice As Fast As Private Sector While Romney Was Governor

By Travis Waldron on Sep 6, 2011 at 4:50 pm

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) continued his attempt to draw contrast between his and President Obama’s economic experience today as he delivered a speech in Nevada detailing his plan for job creation, just two days before Obama will provide his own version in front of Congress. Romney advanced the speech with an editorial in USA Today, providing a rough, if vague, outline of his forthcoming speech.

One of the tenets of Romney’s plan is reducing the federal workforce, which he claims has exploded in size and needs to be scaled back. In the editorial, Romney writes that “while the private sector shed 1.8 million jobs since Barack Obama took office, the federal workforce grew by 142,500, or almost 7%. A rollback is urgently required.” Pat Garofalo noted today why that position (among others) is wrong. But according to ABC News, Romney’s position is also hypocritical. During his term as governor, the number of Massachusetts state workers not only grew, it grew twice as fast as the private sector:

When Romney took office in January 2003, the Massachusetts state government employed 112,000 workers, according to the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development.

Four years later, the ranks of Massachusetts state employees had grown by 3,000, or a 2.6 percent increase. (Over the same period, nonfarm employment grew just 1.2 percent.)

Romney has repeatedly made it clear that he does not consider government workers part of the “real economy,” the one that has provided him with the real job creating experience that he says Obama lacks. He has also made a habit of ignoring his public sector experience, particularly his state’s ranking 47th in job creation during his term as governor, and he continually misstates the facts about public sector employment and compensation.

Now, given this bit of hypocrisy, perhaps it is time for Romney to stop including layoffs — an area in which he has plenty of experience — in his jobs plan and instead start focusing on actual job creation, an area in which is record is much less impressive.

NEWS FLASH

North Carolina Democrats: Legislature Should Focus On Jobs, Not Banning Same-Sex Marriage | Democrats in the North Carolina legislature announced their opposition to the GOP’s proposed constitutional amendment outlawing same-sex marriage during a press conference today, QNotes’ Matt Comer reports. The legislature is expected to take up the bill during a special session next week. Democratic leaders argued that the amendment is the “’wrong issue at the wrong time,’ pointing to continued economic difficulties, recent hurricane damage and other challenges facing state lawmakers and government.”

NEWS FLASH

Romneycare Vs. Perrycare | The latest Gallup Poll has a good comparison of what Govs. Mitt Romney and Rick Perry have achieved when it comes to health care policy and why Perry’s attacks against RomneyCare will trigger a rather unflattering comparison for the Texan:

Yglesias

We Can All Be Winners In Currency War

By Matthew Yglesias on Sep 6, 2011 at 4:45 pm

The Economist’s “Buttonwood” column dedicates a bunch of space to fretting about currency wars today but then teeters up to my conclusion that a little currency war is just what the doctor ordered. Consider:

It is all a bit reminiscent of the 1930s. when countries went off the gold standard, they gained a competitive march on their rivals, increasing the pressure for such countries to leave the standard as well. If one country devalued by 10%, the next might do so by 15%. QE may similarly begat more QE.

Invocations of the 1930s are meant to frighten us, I think, but consider the record of competitive devaluation in the 1930s:

The only loser in this war is France, because they didn’t ditch gold and devalue. But you can see that initially Japan gained an advantage, then Japan and Britain had an advantage, but then the US and Germany got in the party too. Good times all around. So let’s by all means repeat the experience of the 1930s in this regard.

Health

Romney’s Medicare Plan: It Will Be Similar, But Different From Paul Ryan’s Privatization Scheme

By Igor Volsky on Sep 6, 2011 at 4:42 pm

Mitt Romney unveiled his economic policy today and in case you’re wondering his position on Medicare reform is this: he’ll propose something that’s similar but different from Paul Ryan’s Medicare privatization scheme. ‘Medicare’ — one of the single biggest drivers of government spending — is mentioned just twice in the 88-page report:

Any serious attempt to rein in spending will have to include entitlement reform. This issue is among the most complex facing policymakers, but some basic principles guide Mitt Romney’s position. First, we must keep the promises made to our current retirees: their Social Security and Medicare benefits should not be affected. But second, we should ensure that the promises that we make to younger generations are promises we can keep. [...]

Similarly, with respect to Medicare, the plan put forward by Congressman Paul Ryan makes important strides in the right direction by keeping the system solvent and introducing market-based dynamics. As president, Romney’s own plan will differ, but it will share those objectives.

Romney also reiterates his proposal to block grant the Medicaid program, which Republican governors recently rejected as a one-size-doesn’t -fit all solution. As Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) recently explained at the unveiling of the Republican Governors Association’s health policy report, “not all Republican governors may want a block grant. … It’s up to the states to decide.” Indeed, as a recent Kaiser Family Foundation report has pointed out, converting the existing matching rate formula into a block grant would give states less money that they would have otherwise received and force local governments to cut eligibility to the program. Kaiser examined different scenarios for state responses to reduced federal Medicaid spending and estimated 31 to 44 million Americans could lose their health insurance coverage.

Justice

Michele Bachmann Jumps On The Anti-Education Bandwagon, Claims Department of Education Is Unconstitutional

By Ian Millhiser on Sep 6, 2011 at 4:40 pm

A few weeks ago, Texas Gov. Rick Perry said that “I don’t think the federal government has a role” in education, a position that, if taken literally, would eliminate all federal assistance to low-income students and strip millions of college students of their Pell Grants and federal student loans. At yesterday’s GOP presidential candidate’s forum, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) decided that she wants a piece of that action as well:

The Constitution does not specifically enumerate, nor does it give to the federal government the role and duty to superintend over education that historically has been held by the parents and by local communities and by state governments. To put that into the federal government, as we saw a Department of Education in the late 1970s, has eviscerated the constitutional understanding that the control of education truly lies with the parents.

Watch it:

Bachmann is once again revealing that she does not understand the Constitution. The Constitution does not need to specifically mention the word “education” to allow the United States to provide for it because it permits Congress to raise revenues and use them to “provide for the…general welfare of the United States.” Ensuring that everyone growing up in the United States has the skills they need to become productive citizens clearly fits within this grant of power.

Moreover, it is not even clear what Bachmann is talking about when she claims that the Constitution ensures that “control of education truly lies with the parents.” Although the Supreme Court held in Pierce v. Society of Sisters that states cannot forbid parents from sending their children to private schools, Bachmann seems to think that the mere act of providing federal grants to public schools somehow undermines parents’ ability to raise their children as they choose. If this were actually true, then it’s not clear why state governments don’t also step on parents’ rights when they fund and administer public schools.

But of course, Bachmann doesn’t have any real interest in developing a coherent theory of the Constitution. In Michele Bachmann’s America, there is only one rule: the Constitution says whatever Bachmann wishes it said.

NEWS FLASH

Romney Chart Falsely Blames Obama For Job Losses In 2007, 2008 | To accompany his jobs speech in Nevada this afternoon, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) released a packet that laid out his plans. On page 16 of the packet is a chart highlighting statistics from past economic recoveries and is presumably supposed to show how poor Obama’s record compares to past presidents. The chart, however, calls the period of time from 2007-2009 the “Obama recovery,” blaming him for the poor job numbers over that three-year period. As Romney surely knows, however, George W. bush was serving as president in 2007 and 2008, and Obama did not take office until January 2009.

Older

Newer

Switch to Mobile
ThinkProgress Signup Overlay Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress Skip and Continue to ThinkProgress

Sign Up