Author Archives: DanutaIPVhtny

Bad News for Those of You Who, Like Us, Drank Cheap Wine Each and Every Night of Your 20s

by DanutaIPVhtny Posted on March 20, 2015

Mother Jones

Before you go out drinking tonight, a quick note on cheap wine: Yesterday, a class-action lawsuit was filed against 28 California wineries—including the creators of Trader Joes’ Charles Shaw (a.k.a. “Two-Buck Chuck”), Sutter Home’s, and Franzia, Beringer, and Cupcake—alleging that some varietals of their wines contain dangerously high levels of arsenic. According to the complaint, three independent laboratories tested the wines and found that some contained levels of arsenic “up to 500% or more than what is what is considered the maximum acceptable safe daily intake limit. Put differently, just a glass or two of these arsenic-contaminated wines a day over time could result in dangerous arsenic toxicity to the consumer.”

The origins of the lawsuit draw back to Kevin Hicks, a former wine distributor who started BeverageGrades, a Denver-based lab that analyzes wine. The lab tested 1,300 bottles of California wine, and found that about a quarter of them had higher levels of arsenic than the maximum limit that the Environmental Protection Agency allows in water. Hicks noticed a trend: As he told CBS, “The lower the price of wine on a per-liter basis, the higher the amount of arsenic.” Trader Joe’s Charles Shaw White Zinfandel came in at three times the EPA’s level, while Franzia’s White Grenache was five times higher. The lawsuit alleges that the contaminated wines are cheaper in part because their producers don’t “implement the proper methods and processes to reduce inorganic arsenic.”

A spokesperson for The Wine Group, one of the defendants, says that it’s not “accurate or responsible to use the water standard as the baseline,” as people drink more water than wine. But water is the only beverage with an arsenic baseline that is monitored by the US government, and the defendants stress that the chemical is toxic even in small doses, and is known to cause cancer and “contributes to a host of other debilitating/fatal diseases.”

Trader Joe’s told CBS that “the concerns raised in your inquiry are serious and are being treated as such. We are investigating the matter with several of our wine producing suppliers.” A spokesperson for Treasury Wine Estates, another defendant, said that its “brands are fully compliant with all relevant federal and state guidelines.”

Whether or not you should be worried about the allegations is up in the air, particularly as the lawsuit has yet to go before a judge or jury. But in the meantime, here’s a list of wines that are included in the lawsuit. (Note: Any wines without a specific year listed mean that the grapes don’t come from a single year.)

Acronym GR8RW Red Blend 2011
Almaden Heritage White Zinfandel
Almaden Heritage Moscato
Almaden Heritage White Zinfandel
Almaden Heritage Chardonnay
Almaden Mountain Burgundy
Almaden Mountain Rhine
Almaden Mountain Chablis
Arrow Creek Coastal Series Cabernet Sauvignon 2011
Bandit Pinot Grigio
Bandit Chardonnay
Bandit Cabernet Sauvignon
Bay Bridge Chardonnay
Beringer White Merlot 2011
Beringer White Zinfandel 2011
Beringer Red Moscato
Beringer Refreshingly Sweet Moscato
Charles Shaw White Zinfandel 2012
Colores del Sol Malbec 2010
Glen Ellen by Concannon’s Glen Ellen Reserve Pinot Grigio 2012
Concannon Selected Vineyards Pinot Noir 2011
Glen Ellen by Concannon’s Glen Ellen Reserve Merlot 2010
Cook Spumante
Corbett Canyon Pinot Grigio
Corbett Canyon Cabernet Sauvignon
Cupcake Malbec 2011
Fetzer Moscato 2010
Fetzer Pinot Grigio 2011
Fisheye Pinot Grigio 2012
Flipflop Pinot Grigio 2012
Flipflop Moscato
Flipflop Cabernet Sauvignon
Foxhorn White Zinfandel
Franzia Vintner Select White Grenache
Franzia Vintner Select White Zinfandel
Franzia Vintner Select White Merlot
Franzia Vintner Select Burgundy
Hawkstone Cabernet Sauvignon 2011
HRM Rex Goliath’s Moscato
Korbel Sweet Rose Sparkling Wine
Korbel Extra Dry Sparkling Wine
Menage a Trois Pinot Grigio 2011
Menage a Trois Moscato 2010
Menage a Trois White Blend 2011
Menage a Trois Chardonnay 2011
Menage a Trois Rose 2011
Menage a Trois Cabernet Sauvignon 2010
Menage a Trois California Red Wine 2011
Mogen David Concord
Mogen David Blackberry Wine
Oak Leaf White Zinfandel
Pomelo Sauvignon Blanc 2011
R Collection by Raymond’s Chardonnay 2012
Richards Wild Irish Rose Red Wine
Seaglass Sauvignon Blanc 2012
Simply Naked Moscato 2011
Smoking Loon Viognier 2011
Sutter Home Sauvignon Blanc 2010
Sutter Home Gewurztraminer 2011
Sutter Home Pink Moscato
Sutter Home Pinot Grigio 2011
Sutter Home Moscato
Sutter Home Chenin Blanc 2011
Sutter Home Sweet Red 2010
Sutter Home Riesling 2011
Sutter Home White Merlot 2011
Sutter Home Merlot 2011
Sutter Home White Zinfandel 2011
Sutter Home White Zinfandel 2012
Sutter Home Zinfandel 2010
Trapiche Malbec 2012
Tribuno Sweet Vermouth
Vendange Merlot
Vendange White Zinfandel
Wine Cube Moscato
Wine Cube Pink Moscato 2011
Wine Cube Pinot Grigio 2011
Wine Cube Pinot Grigio
Wine Cube Chardonnay 2011
Wine Cube Chardonnay
Wine Cube Red Sangria
Wine Cube Sauvignon Blanc 2011
Wine Cube Cabernet Sauvignon/Shiraz 2011

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Bad News for Those of You Who, Like Us, Drank Cheap Wine Each and Every Night of Your 20s

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In Defense of Optics

by DanutaIPVhtny Posted on July 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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Here’s a Twitter conversation this afternoon between Jamison Foser and me:

Foser: Dumbest words in politics: “Optics,” “Gaffe,” “Hypocrisy.” (That latter one is a real thing, but misused to the point of meaninglessness.)

Drum: But “optics” is just short for “how this will look to others.” Nothing really wrong with that.

Foser: “Optics” = “I cannot articulate a substantive problem with this, so I’ll just suggest others won’t like it.” It’s a house of cards.

Drum: But don’t politicians routinely consider the optics of their actions? I mean really, genuinely, think about it. It’s a real thing.

Foser: Not sure why that means anyone should care, or how that validates 99% of use of word by reporters/operatives/pundits….And I’ve really, genuinely thought about it for a couple decades.

Drum: What word would you suggest instead? The concept itself is pretty ordinary.

Foser: I don’t think we need a word for “people might not like the Congressman’s cheesesteak order.” I think we need to shut up about it.

Drum: Hmmm. It’s a slow day. Maybe I’ll blog about this since I think my disagreement is more than 140 characters long.

Foser: Then here’s another angle: To the extent “optics” claims are about “analyzing” rather than sneakily influencing reactions, I find that pointless as well. “Here’s what I think people will think” is generally dull & unimportant.

Here’s the thing: like most anything, there are good uses of the word optics and dumb uses of the word optics. To the extent that it becomes an excuse for fatuous preoccupations with Al Gore’s earth tones or Hillary Clinton’s speaking fees, then yes, it’s dumb. The world would be a better place if campaign beat reporters spent a lot less time on this kind of soul-crushing imbecility.

But that’s not the only use of the word. As I mentioned in my first tweet—though see the note below for more about this—it’s also used as a shortcut for a specifically political meaning of “how something will look to other people.” And if you object to that, then you’re just railing against human nature. Unless you’re clinically autistic, obsessing with how our actions will appear to others is fundamental to the human condition. Ditto for obsessing with other people’s appearances.

That’s especially true for anyone in the sales and marketing business, where appearances are literally what the job is all about. And who’s more in the sales and marketing business than a politician? Sure, they have actual products—universal pre-K, cutting tax rates, whatever—but most people don’t buy their products based on a Brookings white paper outlining the pros and cons. They buy it based on how it fits into their worldview, and that in turn owes more to how it’s sold than to what’s actually being sold.

So when you try to figure out why, say, Marco Rubio’s immigration reform plan crashed and burned, you’re missing half the story if you only look at the details of his plan. If you’re covering a campaign, you’re missing half the story if you don’t report about how the campaign is trying to mold public perceptions. If you’re writing a history of the Iraq War, you’re missing half the story if you don’t spend time explaining the marketing campaign behind the whole thing. For better or worse, politicians spend a lot of time thinking about how various audiences—supporters, opponents, undecideds, pundits, members of Congress, the media—will react to their proposals, and they shape their messages accordingly. If you’re reporting on politics, you have to include that as part of the story, and optics is as good a word as any to describe it.

That said, we’d be better off if there were fewer dumb appeals to optics. If you’re going to talk about optics, it should be based on either (a) ground-level reporting about what someone’s political operation is actually doing, or (b) empirical data like poll numbers about how people react to things. If all you’re doing is inventing stuff that no one on the planet would have noticed if you hadn’t been hard up for column material, then you’re responsible for making us collectively stupider and giving optics a bad name. Knock it off.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I’ve defended the word optics against critics before, which suggests that in my mind I really do think it’s OK to use it:

When someone says “optics,” for example, I know that they’re talking not just about general appearances, but about how something plays in the media and how it plays with public opinion. Using the word optics also suggests that you’re referring to a highly-planned operation managed by media pros, not just some random event on the street.

On the other hand, I don’t actually use the word very much myself, which suggests that in my heart I agree with Foser more than I’m letting on.

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In Defense of Optics

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The Dumbest Thing You’ll Read All Day About the Benghazi Suspect Capture

by DanutaIPVhtny Posted on June 17, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday, the Washington Post broke the news that US Special Operations forces—working alongside the FBI—captured Ahmed Abu Khattala, one of the suspected ringleaders of the 2012 Benghazi terror attacks, during a raid in Libya over the weekend. You might remember Abu Khattala from his appearance in an October 2012 New York Times piece in which he hangs out with a reporter at a busy luxury hotel, drinking a strawberry frappe and mocking US and Libyan authorities.

This is the first time an accused perpetrator of the Benghazi assault has been apprehended, according to American officials. The raid was conducted following “months of planning,” the Post reports, and Abu Khattala is now in US custody in a secure location outside Libya. There were no reported casualties in this operation. White House press secretary Jay Carney says that Abu Khattala’s apprehension is not the end of the Benghazi investigation.

This seems like pretty good news. But cue some idiocy, courtesy of Joe Walsh, former Republican congressman and tea party favorite:

Really makes you think…

UPDATE, June 17, 2014, 1:37 p.m. ET: Oh. Him.

Link:  

The Dumbest Thing You’ll Read All Day About the Benghazi Suspect Capture

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