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Mother Jones
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A couple of days ago I watched Othello for the first time.1 By chance, I had never seen or read it before. But that Shakespeare. He sure had us humans figured out, didn’t he? Here is Emilia, responding to Desdemona’s plea that she had never given Othello cause to doubt her fidelity:
But jealous souls will not be answer’d so;
They are not ever jealous for the cause,
But jealous for they are jealous: ’tis a monster
Begot upon itself, born on itself.
Why do I mention this? Because of Aaron Carroll’s tidy little summary of some Brendan Nyhan research on how to persuade people that the MMR vaccine is safe:
When they gave evidence that vaccines aren’t linked to autism, that actually made parents who were already skittish about vaccines less likely to get their child one in the future. When they showed images of sick children to parents it increased their belief that vaccines caused autism. When they told a dramatic story about an infant in danger because he wasn’t immunized, it increased parents’ beliefs that vaccines had serious side effects.
Basically, it was all depressing. Nothing was effective.
So that’s that. They believe not for cause, but believe just to believe. ‘Tis a monster begot on itself, born on itself. Of course, it’s possible that Nyhan simply didn’t find the right intervention. Or that an intervention from a researcher has no effect, but the same intervention from a family doctor might. Still, Carroll is right: it’s all kind of discouraging. It’s nothing new, but still discouraging.
1It was the 1965 movie version with Laurence Olivier in blackface. Kind of disconcerting. But Frank Finlay was great as Iago.
UPDATE: More here from Dan Kahan, including a reminder that (a) vaccination rates in the US actually haven’t declined over the past decade and (b) freaking out about a nonexistent problem is genuinely unhelpful. Also this:
The NR et al. study is superbly well done and very important. But the lesson it teaches is not that it is “futile” to try to communicate with concerned parents. It’s that it is a bad idea to flood public discourse in a blunderbuss fashion with communications that state or imply that there is a “growing crisis of confidence” in vaccines that is “eroding” immunization rates.
It’s a good idea instead to use valid empirical means to formulate targeted and effective vaccine-safety communication strategies.
Much more at the link.
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Mother Jones
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Julia Ioffe says Angela Merkel was right: Vladimir Putin has lost his marbles. Here is her reaction to his televised press conference earlier today:
Slouching in a fancy chair in front of a dozen reporters, Putin squirmed and rambled. And rambled and rambled. He was a rainbow of emotion: serious! angry! bemused! flustered! confused! So confused. Victor Yanukovich is still the acting president of Ukraine, but he can’t talk to Ukraine because Ukraine has no president. Ukraine needs elections, but you can’t have elections because there is already a president. And no elections will be valid given that there is terrorism in the streets of Ukraine. And how are you going to let just anyone run for president? What if some nationalist punk just pops out like a jack-in-the-box? An anti-Semite?
….The American political technologists they did their work well. And this isn’t the first time they’ve done this in Ukraine, no. Sometimes, I get the feeling that these people…these people in America. They are sitting there, in their laboratory, and doing experiments, like on rats. You’re not listening to me. I’ve already said, that yesterday, I met with three colleagues. Colleagues, you’re not listening. It’s not that Yanukovich said he’s not going to sign the agreement with Europe. What he said was that, based on the content of the agreement, having examined it, he did not like it. We have problems. We have a lot of problems in Russia. But they’re not as bad as in Ukraine. The Secretary of State. Well. The Secretary of State is not the ultimate authority, is he?
And so on, for about an hour. And much of that, by the way, is direct quotes.
Other sources aren’t quite as scornful as Ioffe, but they’re close. The Guardian described Putin’s remarks as “impromptu and occasionally rambling.” The New York Times said he was “clearly furious.” Adam Taylor of the Washington Post called it “a series of half-truths, circular reasoning, and bravado.”
In any case, the main actual news of the press conference is that Putin said he saw no need to send forces into eastern Ukraine “yet,” but reserves the right to do so in the future. So that’s the latest.
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Mother Jones
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Russian President Vladimir Putin has agreed to a German proposal for international observers to review the tense standoff in Ukraine’s Crimea area, a Kremlin news service dispatch indicated Monday.
The proposal for a “contact group” of mediating foreign diplomats and an observer delegation to assess Moscow’s claims that ethnic Russians are threatened with violence under Ukraine’s new leadership was made by German Chancellor Angela Merkel during a late Sunday phone call to Putin, her spokesman told journalists in Berlin on Monday.
Is this for real, or is it just a stalling tactic? There’s no telling, of course. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s at least semi-real, since it could provide a convenient excuse to call a halt to things. And that’s something Putin probably wants. I don’t know what his long-term plans in Crimea are, but I doubt that he has any appetite for a military incursion into the rest of Ukraine. That’s not because he’s voluntarily showing a sense of restraint. It’s because Russia just doesn’t have the military to pull it off. A few thousand troops in South Ossetia or Crimea is one thing, but even a minimal military presence in eastern Ukraine would be orders of magnitude more difficult and expensive. Unless Putin has truly gone around the bend and is willing to risk another Afghanistan or another Chechnya, that’s just not in the cards.
A lot of American pundits are pretty cavalier about Russia’s military capabilities, assuming they can do anything they want simply because Putin is such a tough guy. But it’s just not so. The Russian military might be up to an intervention in eastern Ukraine, but it would take pretty much everything they have. This is not the Red Army of old.
It’s also the case that although Putin may put on a brave show, he’s well aware that intervention in Ukraine would unite the West against him in no uncertain terms. Those same pundits who are so cavalier about Russian military strength are also far too willing to take Putin’s bravado at face value. That’s a mistake. He doesn’t want Russia cut off from the West, and neither do his oligarch buddies. He may be willing to pay a price for his incursion into Crimea, but he’s not willing to keep paying forever. As long as Western pressure continues to ratchet up, at some point he’ll start looking for a way out.
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Mother Jones
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I happen to have read two things that struck me in the past hour. The first is from a back-cover blurb for a book that arrived in the mail:
Mettler powerfully and convincingly demonstrates how partisan polarization and plutocratic biases have shaped _________ policy in recent years and why reform is so urgent.
I’m convinced already. Does it even matter what this book is about? You could write this sentence about practically anything these days. For the record, though, the book is Degrees of Inequality. The author is Suzanne Mettler and the second blank is “higher education.” Then there’s this:
There is one great advantage to being an academic economist in France: here, economists are not highly respected in the academic and intellectual world or by political and financial elites. Hence they must set aside their contempt for other disciplines and their absurd claim to great scientific legitimacy, despite the fact that they know almost nothing about anything.
Bracing! This is from the introduction to Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century. Only 544 pages to go.
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Here Are Two Sentences to Ponder Over Instead of Fretting About Ukraine
Mother Jones
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Wesley Lowery takes a look today at who all of Mitt Romney’s donors are supporting these days. As Lowery says, this shouldn’t really be taken as a look at “Romney money.” It’s more a look at who’s getting some love from wealthy mainstream Republicans. The answer, it turns out, is unsurprising:
- Jeb Bush
- Scott Walker
- Paul Ryan
This makes sense to me. If I had to pick a top three, this would be it, with the order depending a lot on who decides to get serious about running. I think Paul Ryan would be very formidable, with strong appeal to both tea party types and mainstream types, but it’s unclear if he has any interest in 2016. Jeb Bush is a classic candidate who, again, has some appeal in both camps, but has to decide if he thinks he can overcome the obvious baggage of being a Bush. Scott Walker has to win reelection this year—and show that he can do it handily—before he takes any further steps.
As for the rest of the field, I continue to think that (a) Chris Christie is toast, (b) Rand Paul is a vanity candidate, and (c) the rest of them are going to tear each other limb from limb fighting for the title of king of the wingnuts. Naturally I reserve the right to change my mind later and pretend that I never wrote this.
STANDARD CAVEAT: Yes, it’s ridiculous to be talking about this so far ahead of the election. I apologize. But my excuse is that this is invisible primary stuff, and that really does matter this far out. Besides, talking about the “invisible primary” marks you as a sophisticate, and I wanted an opportunity to do that.
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Here’s Who the Money Men Are Backing So Far in the Republican Field
Mother Jones
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Let’s talk about something completely trivial for a bit: Arthur Chu, the polarizing Jeopardy! champion currently on a 7-game winning streak. Caitlin Dewey explains why so many people don’t like him:
Since time immemorial — read: September 1984 — “Jeopardy!” has followed a simple pattern: Contestants pick a category; they progress through the category from top to bottom; they earn winnings when they, through their hard-earned and admirable intellect, get the questions right.
Chu has turned that protocol upside down … and shaken the change out of its pockets. For one thing, he sometimes plays to tie, not win, thereby guaranteeing he brings a lesser competitor to challenge him the next day. He skips around the board looking for Daily Doubles, gobbling them up before competitors find them, in the process monopolizing all the high-value questions. Most unforgivably to many, Chu tries to squeeze in the most questions per round by pounding the bejesus out of his buzzer and interrupting Alex Trebek.
It’s the bolded comment I’m curious about. I understand why people could be annoyed by Chu skipping around the board so aggressively. Aside from a sense that he might be taking unfair advantage of his experience vs. a pair of newbies, it makes it a little harder to follow the game at home. I also get why some people might not like the idea of playing to tie. Both of these complaints may be overstated—Chu isn’t the first guy to go searching for Daily Doubles, and playing to tie only affects a few seconds of game play—but I understand them.
That said, what’s up with the complaint that he tries to ring in aggressively? That doesn’t even make sense. Everyone tries to ring in aggressively. Being fast on the buzzer is one of the cornerstones of the game. It might even be more important than knowing lots of answers. (Pretty much everyone who makes it onto the show knows lots of answers.)
So where does this come from? Am I missing something?
POSTSCRIPT: I myself initially found Chu a little annoying, though mostly for his affect more than his actual game play. But I’ve warmed to him just because he’s so damn good. He’s a serious buzzsaw at the game, and it’s hard not to admire that. I noticed last night, though, that the other contestants were starting to mimic his strategy. I wonder if that will be his undoing before long?
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Do People Really Dislike Jeopardy Champ Arthur Chu Because He Hits the Buzzer Too Hard?
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