Monday Medley

What we read while finally knocking Ghana down a peg…

• Hillary Clinton is promoting her new book. Since it’s a prelude to her campaign, it’s worth considering who she might bomb, and if she would make a good candidate.

• Are there more guns in schools or fewer than years past? And on why it’s hard to be “a good guy with a gun.”

• The shortcomings of libertarianism.

• The cast of Orange is the New Black as seen on Law and Order.

• New York City will finally pay out $40 million to the Central Park Five.

• Why we only like dissidents from far away.

• Hipster juries loving convicting people, presumably ironically.

• Borges was right about soccer.

• The next big literary novel.

Monday Medley

What we read while wondering where they found this Jaden Smith kid…

• Last week was Spelling Bee week, and as if John S didn’t love the Spelling Bee enough, they made an Arrested Development reference.

• A new lobbying group that can stand up to the NRA. Of course, handguns might not be the cause of America’s high murder rate anyway.

• Where the atheists live!

• As tornadoes struck Oklahoma again, native Oklahoman Ben Montgomery delivers a story from the scene.

• Is Megan Draper going to die?

• This week in troubling criminal justice stories: How three pacifist protestors became “terrorists” and 10 facts about racial injustice in prison. On a somewhat related note, fire Eric Holder.

• Against intervention in Syria (no matter what The Onion says).

• Bradley Manning and Amnesty International.

• The heaviest sixth grade metal band ever.

• Ever wanted to see 42 takes of one scene dissected?  Here you go.

• On Nassau Coliseum.

Monday Medley

What we read while the name “Sandy” took another big hit...

• Obviously everyone is still reeling from the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, which killed 27 people, including 20 first graders. The latest in a series of mass shootings, President Obama decalred that something must change. There will be renewed calls for gun control, and debates about how to treat the mentally ill. But what can anyone really say?

• On the bright side, 26 things to cheer you up.

• Moments from last week’s 12/12/12 concert.

• D.T. Max on the origins of the title of his DFW biography.

• How gay marriage won at the ballot.

• If we were to pen a response to Sally Jenkins’ “Why I’m Not Angry at Lance Armstrong,” it would be called “Why We’re Angry at Sally Jenkins.”

• Forget everything you thought you knew about hoodies…

• What is the real legacy of David Petraeus?

• We only agree with about 19 of these.

• Mel Brooks talks about, among other things, playing Hitler.

• A short story of caveman love.

• Another reason to despise what ESPN has become.

Scattered Thoughts On Gun Control

Like everyone, I’m sad and angry about Friday’s tragedy. But I keep hearing that now is the time to discuss gun control. So, fine, let’s discuss…

 

—It’s unfortunate that so many people now dismiss the idea that there should be a window of mourning, during which political discussions ought to be tabled, after a national tragedy like Friday’s shooting. I understand why that is: Calls to postpone talk of politics are so often themselves politically motivated, a way to put off a conversation one side never intends to have, that they seem cynical. But it should be obvious that the time for policy discussions is not when people are angry, sad, depressed, scared, emotional, and irrational. This is what leads to laws like the Patriot Act. It’s not that policy discussions should never flow from a national tragedy, and obviously knowing how long to wait is tricky, but I suspect the answer is at least a few hours, maybe even a day or two.

 

—Why do so many of the same people who (rightfully) laugh at the idea that drug prohibition decreases drug use, endorse the idea that gun control will solve the problem of gun violence? Gun control does not mean that bad or crazy people won’t get guns; it means the government will get to decide who gets to have guns. This is the same government, of course, that kills foreign Muslims almost indiscriminately, that imprisons blacks at six times the rate it imprisons whites, that systematically harasses young men based on their ethnic background. But for some reason people think new gun laws would be enforced fairly and equitably.

Gun Control, Batman, and Aurora

In general, I am against gun control laws. On most days, this is an easy position to take. When I’m not confronted with the threat of a gun, it’s easy to side with more liberty as opposed to less. I’m not a gun person—I’ve never fired or even held a gun—and I don’t think most people should own them, but I don’t want the government taking away a person’s ability to defend himself if he feels it’s necessary.

But then, of course, something like what happened Thursday night in an Aurora, CO movie theater happens. Then it becomes very hard to justify opposition to strict gun control. It is utterly sickening that this keeps happening and nothing changes. Two days before a gunman in Colorado shot 71 people—killing at least 12—at the movies, a gunman in Alabama shot 17 people outside a bar in Tuscaloosa. Six days before that, four kids in Chicago were shot in a park on the South Side. Two days before that, three people, including a 16-year-old kid, were killed in a shooting at a Delaware soccer tournament. One of the victims of the Aurora tragedy narrowly avoided a similar shooting in a Toronto mall only six weeks earlier. The quaint settings of these tragedies—parks, malls, movie theaters—only add to the horror.

Monday Medley

What we read while hiding safely in a midnight showing of Ice Age 3…

• Friday’s tragedy in Aurora, CO has the town and the rest of the country mourning. One of the victims narrowly avoided a similar tragedy just over a month ago. The shooting has also reawakened the debate on gun control. As NYC Mayor Bloomberg said: “Expressing sympathy is nice…but somebody has to do something about this.” James Fallows says that more shootings are a certainty–Will Wilkinson even wonders why we don’t see more of them. Of course, the odds of anything really changing are small.

• Antonin Scalia and his working relationship with Bryan Garner, the subject of David Foster Wallace’s famous essay on English usage.

• Speaking of Justices, some interesting memoranda from Chief Justice Roberts’s days in the Reagan administration (more than one involve Michael Jackson).

• Quite the interactive graphic detailing the use of stop-and-frisks in NYC.

• BuzzFeed offers the best response to a McSweeney’s parody ever.

• The weird relationship between Chris Christie and Bruce Springsteen.

• How much money is actually kept in offshore bank accounts?

• The use of drones… in North Dakota.

• On the implications of the A/B test.