Seemed a little harsh on Maureen Dowd. I guess I've always thougth I should cut her a little slack because she's high-larious.
But right on the mark with David Brooks. He really is magically tool-licious.
Bah! It is the official position of this blog that Maureen Dowd is teh suxx0r. Says me, at least.
She's funny when she's attacking someone bad, and evil when she's attacking someone good, and she has shown no capacity for distinguishing between the two. In my book, that makes her pretty worthless.
As a newbie to Unfogged, I had not yet been made aware of MoDo's teh suxxor status.
Consider my previous comment a steaming pile of poop. Except for the part about David Brooks. He's still magically tool-licious.
Welcome, NCP, to our long and honorable traditon of making fun of David Brooks.
I cringe even at MD's attacks on people I don't like. The superficial is a blog, not a genre.
The superficial is a blog, not a genre.
BURN!!!
I had a very nice, if I say so myself, bit on MoDo on this blog, which included the lines "should I rather bleach" and "practice hip kid speech". Even SB liked it. But google and yahoo can find it not. I am sorely tempted to append a sad face here.
People like Ezra and Yglesias have an incredible amount of insight into human nature for people of their tender years. Makes me feel old and stupid, kind of like our summer associates.
If your summer associates are old and stupid, that's probably a bad sign for your firm.
Even SB liked it.
Even the liberal etc. etc.
Yes, Ben, my sentence structure sucks. That's because I'm old and stupid.
erm.
Funny thing -- this is exactly the rightwing's agenda...you'd never notice Newt Gingrich silently mouthing along in the background.
Ezra words this as if its inherently wrong for a pundit to support the rightwing agenda. But that would also seem to imply that it's wrong for a pundit to support any political agenda (b/c there's no disctinction drawn in Ezra's post). It's a little thing, but it's unnecessarily partisan. Unless someone actually has an argument that pundits can't agree with and argue for reforms that coincide with those on the platforms of major political parties.
Anyway, Brooks is of course a total maroon. I doubt he's even open to reasonable argument, and not worth engaging directly. But since I have different standards for Ezra, I'll also mention that I find a problem with this:
Were Brooks really serious about increasing the educated class, he'd mention not martial structure, but the minimum wage,
Which would be true if Brooks' desire to raise our education level was an equal or greater priority to him than not raising the minimum wage. I doubt that that is the case. Is he guilty anyway for omission? An impartial newspaper article would be, but in a limited op-ed, it doesn't seem so. After all, Brooks might think he was misleading his readers by mentioning the benefits of raising minimum wage without providing the appropriate space to all his perceived negatives effects of raising minimum wage.
1. We excuse MoDo because she's attractive. If she keeps drinking, this will no longer be an issue.
2. I honestly can't make out what MoDo is saying half the time beyond, "I was the most popular girl in high school." Which is sad, because every now and again, she write a sentence that cracks like a punch in the face.
3. I think Ezra's done much better posts, and I'm not particularly crazy about this one. Mostly for the reasons Michael notes. (Caveat: I've only read the first sentence of Michael's comment.)
4. Brooks is horrific, but what's embarrassing is that no one in the media, not even the ones put there to act as Dems, will call him on it. That's what I find most infuriating--listening to weak-wristed Dem responses to Brooks's water-carrying commentary.
Ezra words this as if its inherently wrong for a pundit to support the rightwing agenda.
No, he words it as if it were deceptive for Brooks to do it in the liberal-sounding-kinda-bipartisan way he does. It's not the rightwingery, it the insidious way in which he gets you nodding along with him until he pulls out the right-wing doublewhammy.
8: I must say I've never had a summer associate make me feel stupid. I've had one make me think "She's going to be a better lawyer than I am," but she's unusual.
Well, I refuse to actually read Brooks, so I don't quite know what I'm talking about. But in I suppose a more abstract sense, I don't get your objection, LB. It seems you object on grounds of character; Brooks is pretending to be bi-partisan, but is actually advocating a partisan platform. But this would only seem to be wrong if Brooks was pretending to be bi-partisan in bad faith, and advocating certain reforms in bad faith. Certainly the former might be true (I suspect more out of knee-jerk habit for Brooks though), but it might not, too, and I'm not at all certain that the latter is true.
Caveat:I've only read the first sentence of Michael's comment.)
Save the caveats, and the reading me if you're already emotionally overloaded, and just agree with me. You're in good hands.
I totally loved Brooks this morning. College . . .tax credits . . . tuition . . . WHAM! Moms need to stay home and stay married! And Hilllary Clinton is a feminazi!
I mean, it's all just so obvious, the way he puts it, isn't it?
Not that it makes him a bad person, but it does make him someone to warn people against. "You, there, liberal guy -- don't listen to Brooks! He's going to sweet-talk you in and then pull the right-wing wool over your eyes."
Maybe you've already seen this, but Paul Glastis just chimed in with a little more info on Brooks' hackery over at the washington monthly.
The problem with Brooks isn't that he sounds "liberal-sounding-kinda-bipartisan" and gets you to nod; it's that he sounds sane and ineffectually nice, and that that's what gets you to nod. We so deperately want to believe there is someone sane on the other side that we're willing to go far more than halfway to meet him. We're willing not to rip bad arguments to bits for the sake of comity.
If Glastris is right (thanks Michael!), Brooks has a more serious problem: You can't trust his facts. I hate that.
Glastris also points to this comprehensive takedown.
But I love David Brooks. That "bobo" thing was brilliant.
And, I might add: Anecdotal evidence is still evidence, is it not?
You all just hate me because I'm too beautiful and successful.
Shorter Maureen Dowd: I hate men. Why does no one love me?
I hate myself for saying that but christ her writing makes me want to club her with her pointy shoes.
15: Well, I was exaggerating a bit for rhetorical effect, but I'm pretty blown away by some of the resumes, especially considering that we pay half or less of what they could make on the mainland. Resume does not necessarily equal smarts, though.
Mainland? Are you in Hawaii, or where?
Dude. That's why they have amazing resumes -- who wouldn't be a summer associate in Hawaii.
I should have thought of that -- back in law school, I still spoke Samoan some, and in a Hawaiian firm there's a tiny but non-zero chance it might come up. And, you know, Hawaii.
We try pretty hard not to hire people who are looking for a cool summer vacation on the firm. It doesn't always work out that way, but somebody with an amazing resume but no plausible story about wanting to be in Hawaii long-term is less likely to be hired.
You're in Hawaii? I'll definitely sleep with you. Just send me a plane ticket.
I'd love to, but the rules as laid down by my wife are that I'm allowed to have as many girlfriends as I want as long as I don't spend any time or money on them.
30, 31: But if you're interested in a lateral offer, I'd sure as hell be a strong supporter.
Because your firm needs more litigators who spend all day fooling around online?
Hiring a lawyer other than fresh out of law school. I came into my current firm as a lateral, because I'd worked at another law firm before.
At some (most?) big firms, the normal career path is summer associate to partner all at the same firm. I don't think there's anyplace you couldn't get hired laterally, but there are certainly firms that don't do it much.
Because your firm needs more litigators who spend all day fooling around online?
LizardBreath's web addiction is indeed troubling. However, as someone who has worked with her IRL, I can tell you that she is one hell of a good lawyer.
Apparently there's a niche here for people who are good enough at what they do that they can get away with spending way too much time screwing around, yes.
"Lateral" just means "not straight out of law school."
Mmm. I did love living on a Pacific island, and I've always wanted to learn to surf.
I've never been to law school. Wanna hire me? I'm not gonna have a job in a couple months.
They must have a marketing department. How hard could PR be?
A lot of times, formal vocational training is a joke anyway -- you really learn everything on the job. As such, I support hiring Bitch as a lawyer, particularly since she already has a doctoral degree. Just scratch off the "Ph" and write a "J," if it makes you feel better.
They say it's a doctoral degree. I only bring this up to make people with real doctorates pissed, though.
(Does anyone know why that is? It's really not comparable in rigor to an academic doctorate -- if I were going to name the degree lawyers get from scratch, I'd call it a masters. Is there some history behind calling it a doctorate?)
We excuse MoDo because she's attractive.
Exactly. And she spawned the canonical Bitch-baiting thread, so that's something.
43: Kidding aside, you are more than welcome to deduce my not-so-secret identity from IP address and first name/last initial and e-mail me if you're ever so inclined. Or I'll e-mail you if so instructed. I don't post a valid e-mail here because I've never gotten around to setting up one that doesn't have my full name in it and I don't figure that anybody wants to talk to me outside of comments anyway, but I'm not very hard to find.
45: No marketing department, and working in admin here would be pretty shitty for political/personality reasons. But lots of national-security type stuff in town for Mr. B, depending on what he does, and various sorts of teaching and writing opportunities around if you don't mind being poorly paid and getting shit on from time to time.
I'm already poorly paid. No big change then! And better weather! W00t!
'Doctor' originally just meant someone who was a teacher. It's an honored academic title, basically. So you could be a doctor of the law, or a doctor of medicine, or a doctor of the church, etc.
48: Damn, that's painful to read now. Thanks a lot.
Without looking it up, I'll venture to say that the JD evolved out of the LLB in the late c19, at the same time as all the professions were shoring up their academic credentials, and around the early 1900s it began to become the required norm. I think in Britain they still have LLB though, i.e., an undergraduate education for law.
50: All things considered, it's a pretty damn nice town. Too small and parochial sometimes, too crowded sometimes, too a lot of things sometimes, but a pretty damn nice town. Way too expensive, too, but not compared to SoCal. Salaries are generally lower here, but not so much if you're working for the feds (even indirectly, I think).
They got a lot more strict about handing out the "doctor of the church" title over time.
If you're worried about global warming, I don't know if an island is your best bet. Plus: volcanos?
53: Don't some of the Ivy schools still award LLBs?
I think not (i.e., now I've looked it up, at least to the extend of Wikipedia).
There are LLM's, though, which I think you have to get after your JD's. So you get your doctorate first, then your master's. I don't know if there's another field like that.
Without looking it up, I'll venture to say that the JD evolved out of the LLB in the late c19, at the same time as all the professions were shoring up their academic credentials, and around the early 1900s it began to become the required norm. I think in Britain they still have LLB though, i.e., an undergraduate education for law.
Process not completed, anyway, until much later than that. Older lawyer I used to work with told me he graduated about '45 with an LLB, and received a J.D. unsolicited from his law school about '62. It used to be common to admit to law school students who'd completed maybe two years of college.
But volcanoes are pretty! Samoa had some of the most cartoonishly beautiful scenery -- waterfalls cascading down volcanic rocks into perfect little pools surrounded by ferns... and from what I remember of Hawaii the few times I was there, it was physically very similar.
Process not completed
This I don't doubt. When I started in my field, which wasn't a billion years ago, there were still people around without doctorates.
There were academics without doctorates? You're hardly older than I am, if you aren't younger (I know I knew, but I can't remember.)
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. My father worked as an architect in a prestigious NY firm most of his work life, and never graduated from college. But he's pushing 70.
There were academics without doctorates
Yes, and not all of them that aged, either. And I'm the same age as Weiner.
61: You're kidding, LB. Yes, there are people around with MAs and tenure. All over the place. And you're like my age w/in a year or two, right?
Hey, I have an MA. Why don't I have tenure? I published a fucking article!
64: Publications in Penthouse don't count.
64: You're a white man. They don't give people like you jobs any more.
I knew I shouldn't have loved learning!
I'm the same age as Weiner.
I could swear that somewhere in the googleyahoohole you have copped to being slightly older. Anyway, in philosophy there are still people around without doctorates, if by 'around' you mean 'one of the big-deal professors in my old department, and Chris Bertram' (and many other UK-trained philosophers).
62, 63: I guess I shouldn't be surprised, I really don't know thing one about academia. But I thought a PhD had been a minimum entry requirement for tenure track for decades.
When I was in grad school people were getting hired to tenure-track jobs not having finished their PhDs, and at least some of them didn't finish for a couple of years thereafter. But this was frowned upon somewhat, and you would certainly need to finish it before tenure.
Surprisingly not. Especially at small colleges and community colleges; it's only really recently that they've started demanding PhDs.
Community colleges still generally only require a master's.
It seems like a community college or another small institution might even be better off just hiring an MA-holder, because it'd be more likely that they would be interested primarily in teaching.
In English, that would be especially true, since so much of it is just teaching composition -- something that generally does not require having written a dissertation on Blake or something.
That's true, and it can be an advantage for those who only have MAs. On the other hand, there are an awful lot of unemployed PhDs out there, and hiring them can give a CC more prestige.
It's still true that most people at my department, at least, get the job with the Ph.D. not in hand but expected within a year or so. Formally, they're supposed to have it when they start the job (APA December, defend in April, two month long bender, move), but some guys figured out that the tenure clock doesn't start till you get the Ph.D. and delayed it just enough to be sneaky.
Yes, we spend six years here learning how best to pwn bureaucracy.
Sneaky. Do people in other disciplines do this? I've never heard of it before.
a minimum entry requirement for tenure track for decades.
Yeah, but some professorial careers last more than decades, too. Also, <insert some stuff here that would explain it better but would say too much about my career>.
Anyway, as to 75, say what? That's not true at any department I know of, and I've heard of a lot of dodges.
somewhere in the googleyahoohole you have copped to being slightly older
Well, it's within a year; I guess I'm older than you but younger than B and Apo.
Also, what is up with the unsearchability? I'm still deeply saddened about my lost MoDo ode.
I know personally three or four young men who didn't defend till a year in or so. Clock started with the Ph.D. in one of the cases. It meant he was a nine-year for our program even though he was only here eight.
No, I know about the hiring unfinished people, it's the business about holding the tenure clock till they finish, which seems bizarre. I mean, what if you take a long time to finish? They must have negotiated something.
I suspect it may have been a loophole in Institution X's regs, if only because the guy defended at a random time in October instead of a usual semester time. It wasn't like he couldn't have defended whenever.
This guy was retired long before I got to college, though ten years ago, he was still kicking around as a Loeb trustee. He had a distinguished career, and he didn't even have a Masters degree ((an American masters, that is; I'm not talking about the Oxbridge "I got my BA with honours, waited 5 years and paid 25 quid to upgrade to an M.A.) Also note the cool career as a cryptographer decoding Japanese messages during the War.
With thanks to our masterly colleague, I can say that the MoDo ode is here.
Oxford has a thing called the B.Phil* -- a two year postgraduate 'masters' in philosophy -- which used to be pretty much the standard route into academia for philosophers.
A huge percentage of the big name British philosophers of the past half century or more didn't/don't have doctorates but either have an MA or the B.Phil. For example, I seem to recall that Derek Parfitt, for example, doesn't have one. Nor, as far as I remember, does Michael Dummett.
* The B.Phil is totally badass and, in many years, has a failure rate of around 25%.