Why I'm excited about a Will Ferrell film.

In 2006, between starring in the films Anchorman: the Legend of Ron Burgundy and Talladega Nights: the Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Will Ferrell did a comedy-drama called Stranger than Fiction. Stranger than Fiction was a remarkably good film. Some couldn't get over the fact that Ferrell was starring in a film that had serious dialogue in it, rather than films with lines like "I love lamp," "It works seventy percent of the time, everytime," and "If you're not first, you're last," but for those who did, it was a strangely good film.

If you were like me, and you were able to see Ferrell outside of Adam McKay's world, you probably saw a film that was a remarkably serious and thought-provoking film. Ferrell's performance was nuanced, playing a tightly focused caricature of a corporate man caught in the corporate world.

And that is why I'm excited about Ferrell's new film, Everything Must Go. The synopsis reads:

"When an alcoholic relapses, causing him to lose his wife and his job, he holds a yard sale on his front lawn in an attempt to start over. A new neighbor might be the key to his return to form."

Will Ferrell is a talented actor. Period. Although I find it hard to stomach some of his work, he has an impressive list of accomplishments. Most recently, he starred in a Broadway play titled You're Welcome America. A Final Night With George W. Bush. In it's first week on Broadway, it broke the Cort Theater house record and took in $846,507.05 in ticket sales. Also, it opened to "mostly positive" reviews, take that for what it is worth. I saw the play in a recorded performance for HBO, and although it had some slow parts, and much of what he was doing on stage was familiar based upon his previous comedic sketches, it was still pretty darn funny.

As well, this week it was announced that Ferrell will be the 14th recipient of the Mark Twain Prize, handed out non-regularly since 1998 by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Past recipients have included Bill Cosby, Bob Newhart, Neil Simon, and Whoopi Goldberg.

So cheers, here is to the defense of Will Ferrell! Don't hate Ferrell, just hate some of the dumb movies he's done. But make sure you go see Everything Must Go, I think it will be well worth it.

We just can't have nice things in this country.

Joel Klein has a fascinating, lengthy article in the Atlantic this past month, and while I agree with the majority of what he writes, I think he misses the boat on a few points.

Klein proposes using something called "teacher value-added," which tests students in grades annually in math and English, grades 3 through 8, and allows for analysis of a student's year-to-year progress by tying it into an individual teacher's performance. He adds,

"In essence, you hold constant other factors—where the students start from the prior year, demographics, class size, teacher length of service, and so on—and, based on test results, seek to isolate the individual teacher’s contribution to a student’s progress. Some teachers, for example, move their class forward on average a quarter-year more than expected; others, a quarter-year less. Value-added isn’t a perfect metric, but it’s surely worth considering as part of an overall teacher evaluation."

Klein, as Chancellor of the city of New York's schools, attempted to implement these standards as a means of judging teachers, especially on tenure. But when Klein attempted to implement this plan, teacher unions fired back, ensuring that anything of the sort would not pass in the New York legislature. Klein writes,

"As a result, even when making a lifetime tenure commitment, under New York law you could not consider a teacher’s impact on student learning. That Kafkaesque outcome demonstrates precisely the way the system is run: for the adults. The school system doesn’t want to change, because it serves the needs of the adult stakeholders quite well, both politically and financially."

Although I have some reservations about standardized testing, it may be the only way to judge which teachers are successful at their job, and which teachers are failing. Critical thinking, evaluation of the material, and applicability to the real world should certainly be the ultimate goal of educational policy, but there is no way to objectively measure if the students are garnering the ability to do these tasks. What can be measured is whether an African American 12th grader is reading on a 12th grade level, and not on the same level as a White 8th grade student, which is the norm now.

Klein proposes many solutions that make a lot of sense. I'd recommend the entire article, it is a fantastic read. Where my main problem with the article lies, is when Klein writes about competition within the school system, writing:

"Public education lacks both kinds of accountability. It is essentially a government-run monopoly. Whether a school does well or poorly, it will get the students it needs to stay in business, because most kids have no other choice. And that, in turn, creates no incentive for better performance, greater efficiency, or more innovation—all things as necessary in public education as they are in any other field.

A full-scale transition from a government-run monopoly to a competitive marketplace won’t happen quickly. But that is no reason not to begin introducing more competition. Many middle-class families have plenty of choice (even beyond private schools): they can move to another neighborhood, or are well-connected enough to navigate the system. Those families who are least powerful, however, usually get one choice: their neighborhood school. That has to change."

What Klein forgets to add, or omits, rather, is that many aspects of our society today our run by government monopolies. No one is calling for a privatization of criminal justice in this country, and while some states have begun to privatize roads and other aspects of transportation, for the most part, the transportation sector remains in the public's hands. Just because the industry becomes privatized does not necessarily mean it will become better. One way to look at improving education is through housing policy.

Poor people cannot choose to just move to a different school district. Many families in New York City, for example, are relying on charter schools that use lotteries to determine if a child gets a good education or not. Certainly, you should have problems with the idea of a lottery determining a child's future.

But alas, section 8 housing vouchers have been shown to work in improving education, if they are implemented properly with adequate funding. There is a intimate link between education and housing policy, and it certainly has not been explored properly in the past.

five worth fighting for

I have no endgame. Five of my favorites:

I love Congress, and so does the Onion.

A fantastic piece from the Atlantic on poverty and the role of housing policy.

David Brooks continues his schtick as intelligent, yet sometimes crazy.

economist Hernando de Soto argues that the financial crisis happened because we don't know anything (or something like that).

This is an extremely important topic, and I'm thrilled that a professional athlete is showing that "tough men" can support gay marriage too, but who the hell is Sean Avery?

Eeyore the plumber

Is Eeyore literature's archetypal outsider? And why do we love him so? The Guardian writes:

I think it's partly because, as well as being the most depressing individual in the Pooh books, he is also the funniest. Melancholy often teeters on the brink of absurdity, and Eeyore regularly falls over the edge. Take the classic scene in The House at Pooh Corner when Eeyore tumbles into the stream after the irrepressible Tigger bounces up behind him and takes him by surprise. The image of Eeyore, floating around in circles with his feet in the air, trying to maintain his sombre demeanour, is desperately funny and sad.

And then there's his truly glorious sarcasm (of which there are too many instances to catalogue here), whose hilarity is heightened further by the way that it sails straight over the other characters' heads.

But the key thing that makes Eeyore a great character is that essential literary ingredient: conflict. Eeyore is profoundly conflicted. He craves love – indeed, he's always lamenting his outsider status – but he struggles to give and receive it. When it's offered to him, he puts out his hoof and waves it away. There are many occasions when Pooh and Piglet, who love Eeyore unconditionally, pay him a visit only to be greeted with a barrage of sarcasm. Nowhere is this more poignantly displayed than the scene in The House at Pooh Corner where Piglet realises that Eeyore has never had a bunch of violets picked for him. When he finds Eeyore to deliver the bunch, however, he gets shooed away. "Tomorrow," says Eeyore. "Or the next day."

am I cool now?

Hipster runoff, why do you always have the best advice for graduates who want to live alt lives?

mission creep or: how I learned to stop worrying and love the imperial presidency

Ross Douthat's column in the New York Times this morning does a smash-up job of conflating the foreign policies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. In spinning an old conservative tale, Douthat attempts to link the Bush and Obama war legacies. What Douthat is arguing is essentially continuity. After Obama failed to be the "white dove" that conservatives claimed he would be, conservatives began to spin the tale that Obama is simply continuing the Bush-era policies, and that those policies were right all along. But the conflation is off the mark, there are changes in policies that distinguish Bush from Obama, and pretty important policy changes at that. The most important change is some form of "competence." A few more to ponder:

Obama officially ended the practice of torture. Bush-era detainee policies are a stain on this country's reputation, and a violation of almost any international law you can think of.

Obama ended our military mission in Iraq. The fiasco that is the Iraq War. Who would have thought that al-Qaeda wouldn't be in Iraq - until we invaded.

Obama took a backseat approach to Libya, allowing NATO to be the principal decision maker. I don't think Bush's hubris would have allowed him to take the backseat to other countries in this conflict.

Obama plans to decrease our military commitment in Afghanistan. I guess we'll see.


In a general sense, Obama didn't follow through with his campaign promises to decrease our foreign presence in the world, he even started a third "war." But Obama's changes in the practice of torture and the end of military combat in Iraq were important steps. Obama's constituents are still waiting on the close of Guantanamo Bay and further plans to decrease the United States' commitment to Afghanistan, and I certainly hope that these will follow what has already happened. At least Obama has distanced himself from Bush-era foreign policy, if only in the name of competence. In general, however, what Douthat points out has some merit. It should at least begin the discussion on United States' foreign policy, and our role in the world. What Douthat writes at the end is especially important, and something I certainly wish he had focused more on, instead of the partisan conflation that he chose to write about:

"The next president won’t have that luxury. In one form or another, the war on terror is likely to continue long after Osama bin Laden’s bones have turned to coral. But we’ll know that the Bush-Obama era is officially over when somebody presents us with the bill"

It's very important that we begin to talk about the fiscal irresponsibility of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, especially when you consider the impact that they had on the debt that has been accrued in the past 10 years.

This is not a Bush-Obama discussion, it is one that should work outside of the partisan framework that Douthat uses. The differences, while significant, are minute compared to the bigger picture of the United States' role in the world.

The problem with libertarianism

Peter Moskos is currently guest-blogging for Radley Balko, who is currently exploring Eastern Europe (October can't come soon enough). Moskos is an Ivy-League trained Sociologist who spent a year as a police officer in Baltimore's Eastern District. Out of that came Cop in the Hood, which is a first-hand qualitative study of our ineffective drug policies and criminal justice system.

Moskos is a Harvard sociologist who now teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. In a recent post on Balko's blog, the Agitator, Moskos outlines his skepticism of libertarianism as an ideology. I think Moskos hits the nail on the head here,

"Perhaps less government is the solution to many specific problems. But I refuse to believe anything is the solution to all problems. I’m willing to accept (or at least debate) libertarian positions on any policy issue. I’m not willing to consider libertarianism as the Correct Ideology."

What is important to understand here is that there is a distinction between the theoretical and practical. What bothers me, and why I tend to agree with Moskos, is that libertarians hold their ideology regardless of its effects. Therefore, libertarianism is always the answer. But when it comes to applying ideology to practice, we have to understand that there are real repercussions, and that sometimes the ideology that we hold is not the answer to the problem. So while libertarianism may seem appealing in the theoretical, it leaves no room for the practical.

Osama Bin Laden

It is fitting that the first post, on a supposedly political blog, would be about Osama Bin Laden. Or as Fox News would say, Usama Bin Landen. Here's a round-up of the best coverage:


Noam Chomsky's reaction to Bin Laden's Death

Peter Bergen's, "Five Myths about Osama Bin Laden"

David Frum and Gleen Greenwald, debating the legality of the "hit"

Radley Balko on why "Osama Won"

Tim Fernholz and Jim Tankersly estimating the cost of Bin Laden at $3 trillion

New York Times reporting from the inside

Have to love local Fox affiliates sometimes


Remind me to write about these more, when it is not Mother's Day.