There’s something really comforting to me about looking back at a piece I wrote four or five years ago and thinking, “God, what a clumsy piece of crap.”  If that sounds strange, consider the alternative: I feel like I used to look over stuff from a few year previous and think, “Huh, that’s as good as or better than anything I’ve done lately.”

I expect we don’t agree on a whole lot—beyond not caring much for the Bush administration—but I’ve long thought Rachel Maddow was the sharpest, most engaging personality on the regular bobblehead circuit. So I’m glad to hear she’s finally getting her own show. Might even make it worth keeping a TV when I move into new digs this weekend.

Thomas Frank unleashes a volley of overstuffed, Laphamesque prose to kvetch about the creation of a Milton Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago. Frank graciously allows that, since we’ve got K-Mart chairs of marketing, it might not be totally beyond the pale for a school to similarly honor a Nobel Prize–winning former professor. But he chafes at the center’s mission statement, which stipulates that its research program will:

reflect the traditions of the Chicago School and typify some of Milton Friedman’s most interesting academic work, including his . . . advocacy for market alternatives to ill conceived policy initiatives.

Apparently, this proves that the center will be an ideologically driven hack shop. This may seem a little premature, as Frank notes the MFI hasn’t actually begun operating yet. But making his attack now does give Frank the opportunity to cast vague aspersions without actually having to directly impugn any well-regarded scholars by name, which would probably come across as less convincing. Still, it’s an odd inference: Does Frank (or anyone?) think that looking for market solutions to social problems is an unworthy research program?  Suppose an institution launched a Robert Hale Center to investigate the hidden coercive effects of market institutions, or a Pigou Institute devoted to studying instances of market faillure.  Surely Frank would—correctly—dub anyone who objected to these programs a rigid ideologue. In reality, of course, I’d never dream of denying that market failures exist and merit study. Thomas Frank draws a salary, after all.

Incidentally, it takes a bit of chutzpah to roll out the hoary line about free-market economic thought as an “orthodoxy” (you know, back in the 19th century) while using the headline “We’re Not All Friedmanites Now”—indirectly reminding us how much more recently Keynesian ideas enjoyed a near hegemony. The point, of course, essentially the same as it is when conservatives bitch about liberal academia: It’s inconvenient when large numbers of highly educated, respected specialists hold views that run contrary to your preferred political agenda. And since Frank is in no position to actually debate economics with Gary Becker (just as, naturally, I’d expect to get flattened in a one-on-one with, say, Paul Krugman) you need some other account of the prevalence of their views—in this instance, the malign influence of funders combined with some kind of tribal groupthink.

I notice, incidentally, that my old friend Todd Seavy goes on a tear against Frank today as well. This seems about right:

Virtually every column he writes takes one of two juvenile forms: either he (1) accuses conservatives of deliberately harming people or screwing things up to advance their sinister agenda or, even more annoyingly, (2) picks some bizarre boondoggle associated with Republican politicians but in no logical way an outgrowth of conservative (and certainly not free-market) ideology (waste and ineptitude at the Department of Labor, in one recent column), then claims, like a child yelling “Tag! You’re it!” that since the boondoggle is nominally “conservative” (or in the case of the Department of Labor, was merely spoken of in a positive way once by religious-right activist Paul Weyrich), said boondoggle is not merely conservative but in fact a perfect representation of conservatism at its best, thus proving all conservatives (like me) to be evil morons (like Thomas Frank).

Todd also suggests, not implausibly, that the genuinely sinister selfish agenda here may be The Wall Street Journal’s, as it’s probably a net benefit to conservatives if Frank becomes a high-profile representative of “the left.”

Just when Obama’s economic rhetoric is giving me hives, I see something like this and get, if not a thrill running up my leg, a little more at ease:

But you know, the truth is that my education was a pretty standard, liberal arts education. So I was exposed to thinkers on the left. At the same time, I was reading Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayak [sic], and I was growing up when Ronald Reagan was ascendant. So the political culture of my formative years was much more conservative.

It partly explains why, if you look at not just my politics, but also I think who I am as a person—in some ways, I’m pretty culturally conservative. I was always suspicious of dogma, and the excesses of the left and the right. One of my greatest criticisms of the Republican Party over the last 20 years is that it’s not particularly conservative. I can read conservatives from an earlier era—a George Will or a Peggy Noonan—and recognize wisdom, because it has much more to do with respect for tradition and the past and I think skepticism about being able to just take apart a society and put it back together. Because I do think that communities and nations and families aren’t subject to that kind of mechanical approach to change. But when I look at Tom DeLay or some of the commentators on Fox these days, there’s nothing particularly conservative about them.

A commenter over at Spencer’s notes a fun fact I was heretofore unaware of: Guitarist Robert Quine of the Voidoids was actually the nephew of legendary philosopher W.V.O. Quine.

Possibly less fun, but still sort of entertaining factoids for you all: David Berman of the Silver Jews is, as I may have mentioned here previously, the son of none other than influential GOP lobbyist Rick Berman. Also, historian and New America Foundation fellow Ted Widmer used to be known as Lord Rockingham of the boston rockers The Upper Crust.

Ygz makes a sound point about the folly of categorizing foreign actors as “pro-American” or “anti-American” when, for the most part, they’re following their own interests—and whether those interests coincide or conflict with ours is secondary. Actually, I’ve always thought the especially ingenious bit—which I suppose I tacitly endorse with that “ours” in the last sentence—was the way the tiny coterie of people who make potentially incendiary foreign policy decisions have managed to get themselves equated with “America.”  How many ordinary citizens had any particularly strong view, ex ante, about the desirability of ousting Mohammed Mossadeq, say? But to criticize that set of policy choices is “anti-American,” somehow, rather than “anti- the choices of the particular group of people in power at the time.”

Apparently some folks I know slightly have been working on a new film adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s short story “Harrison Bergeron.” I have mixed feelings about this: On the one hand, I’m a fan of original story, and I even have a soft spot for the 1995 Showtime version. The latter deviated massively from Vonnegut’s plot—as it would have to, given that it’s a feature-length movie drawn from a three-page yarn—but preserved the spirit of macabre farce. As for the new film, if nothing else, I’m happy anytime someone is cutting the Kronos Quartet a paycheck.

To judge by the trailer, though, this new version—titled 2081—has been rejiggered as a slick, high-serioso dystopian drama, in which the protagonist delivers (apparently straight) such cringeworthy lines as: “I am an abomination… of the able! I am an exception… to the accepted!” And this is doubly weird, because while everyone remembers “Harrison Bergeron” for its cutting reductio of the egalitarian leveling impulse—handicapping weights for the strong, concentration-shattering headphones for the bright—the socialist Vonnegut was pretty clearly taking the piss out of Randian übermensch fantasies like this as well. Recall what happens when Harrison Bergeron actually makes his appearance in the story:

“I am the Emperor!” cried Harrison. “Do you hear? I am the Emperor! Everybody must do what I say at once!” He stamped his foot and the studio shook.

“Even as I stand here –” he bellowed, “crippled, hobbled, sickened – I am a greater ruler than any man who ever lived! Now watch me become what I can become!”

Harrison tore the straps of his handicap harness like wet tissue paper, tore straps guaranteed to support five thousand pounds.

Harrison’s scrap–iron handicaps crashed to the floor.

Harrison thrust his thumbs under the bar of the padlock that secured his head harness. The bar snapped like celery. Harrison smashed his headphones and spectacles against the wall.

He flung away his rubber–ball nose, revealed a man that would have awed Thor, the god of thunder.

“I shall now select my Empress!” he said, looking down on the cowering people. “Let the first woman who dares rise to her feet claim her mate and her throne!”

A stunningly gorgeous ballerina takes him up on the offer, and they literally begin to defy gravity as they dance together. Did I mention that Harrison is 14, by the way? Now, I have no idea whether this was the specific target Vonnegut had in mind, but this reads for all the world like a spoof of Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead—certainly, in any event, of the whole heroic-rebel-versus-the-oppressors trope.

I hate to assume too much from the trailer, but it sure looks as though the filmmakers recognized one half of the satire—though jettisoning Vonnegut’s trademark absurdism—then played the other half deadpan. Which, in a world big enough for both Fail Safe and Dr. Strangelove, they’re entitled to do, I suppose.

It seems especially apt that the film will feature Julie Hagerty, whose most famous role was in a film based on the straight 1956 thriller Flight Into Danger. You’re more likely to have heard of the version Hagerty starred in: Airplane! In this case, the trailer implies they’ve gone in the other direction: from black comedy to—well, to something that probably isn’t meant to be funny, anyway.

For a while now, as regular readers know, I’ve been a frequent contributor to the remarkable, super smart tech news site Ars Technica. A few months ago they became part of the Condé Nast imperium, which has allowed them to begin expanding their coverage in a variety of ways.  And, as it turns out, I’m going to be one of those ways: As of next week, I’m joining Ars full time as their Washington Editor.

As some of you may recall, I polled my readers last month, in somewhat vague terms, as to whether I should be focusing on journalism or more long-form essayish writing. At the time—though for obvious reasons I couldn’t be terribly specific about the choice I was making—there did seem to be a general preference for the latter. I hope nobody’s too disappointed that, professionally anyway, I’ve opted to go in the other direction for now. But since the people have spoken, and because my head will explode if I’m doing all tech, all the time, my hope is also that here in this space, I’ll be able to get back to the sort of rambling philosophical thumbsucking that characterized the blog’s earlier days.  I’ve missed it too.

Needless to say—and much as I’ve enjoyed the eclectic (if impecunious) life of the freelancer—I’m pretty excited about the shift, both because it’s always a kick to be part of a rapidly growing organization full of smart people, and because it’s a chance to really drill deeply into some issues I care about without sacrificing the immediacy of daily reporting. There may be another fallow stretch here as I adjust to La Vida Ars and move into a new apartment, but I’m hoping that by the end of the month, you’ll be seeing more regular updates here (and, of course, much more from me at Ars).  I hope those of you who are at all interested in the techier side of my writing here—emphatically including privacy issues—will pop over and check it out.

Whew! Deprived of a blog outlet, Matt Yglesias had been constrained to Twittering mini post-synopses for the past week.  I was worrying the backed up ideas might cause an aneurysm. Fortunately for him—and for those of us who’d missed the geniuine article—he’s back blogging at his new home on ThinkProgress.

I found myself this weekend in one of those perennial conversations about which contemporary bands are likely to hold up over time: Which albums of the past five years, say, are we still going to be listening to a decade out? But as I was mulling this a little later, I was suddenly struck by one of those things that was probably already obvious to everyone else: There are a handful of strange inflection points where rock nerd culture and mass culture are in eerie synchrony for a few moments before skittering off in their respective ways for a bit—and one of them was my early teens.

Usually in any given year, there’s the stuff we all hear on the radio or out at a pub, and there’s the stuff the critics and the obsessives are gushing over. Over time, some of the stuff the nerd culture had been fixated upon is dismissed as fad, and some filters out to a broader audience and gets absorbed into the canon. So, for instance, looking back at 1988–89, we can point to a handful of phenomenal rock albums released  in a brief period—candidates for the short list of stuff we’d beam out to the stars to convince the advanced civilizations not to wipe us out just yet. Daydream Nation. Disintegration. On Fire. The astonishing one-two punch of Surfer Rosa and Doolittle. That’s probably as uncontroversial a critics’ list as one could ever make, but excepting the Cure album, you probably weren’t going to hear any of them on a commercial radio station, or find them within spitting distance of a top-40 chart. You had to be a bit of a rock nerd yourself just to be aware of them at the time. Which seems par for the course, more or less.

But now jump forward three or four years. Poll your local rock nerd about the standouts from that period and—after pointedly mentioning Slanted & Enchanted first and grumbling something about how “Bleach was better”—he’ll probably name Nevermind, Siamese Dream, and maybe Automatic for the People. That is to say, the same huge-Billboard-hit albums every suburban 15-year-old was statutorily required to own in the early 90, with singles in almost oppressively heavy rotation. And maybe this is an “outsight” of my own, but it’s actually kind of stunning in retrospect how unusual this is. I can’t think of any other two or three year span—certainly not in my lifetime—where the rock nerd’s list overlaps so strongly with mass culture. (Ironically, partly out of sheer contrariness, I resisted getting into most of these until years later, effectively wasting history’s assistance in my formative years.)  So I find myself wondering: What, exactly, happened there?  Pure fluke, or something else?

It also occurs to me that, owing to the cultural fragmentation online distribution makes possible, the two categories I’m invoking here aren’t obviously even applicable anymore. I look at Billboard’s Top 200 Albums for last year and basically draw a blank. There’s maybe half a dozen in the second half of the list I’ve actually heard in full, but in only a few other cases could I name—or, for that matter, even hum—a song from the album. I thought I’d fare better with the top singles list, but nope, not a one that rings a bell until “Rehab” about halfway down. Whereas for the parallel lists from the mid-90s, almost everything is at least kinda-sorta familiar. This is not because I’ve become an old fart and stopped listening to new music, but because I’m getting my recommendations from Pandora and Last.FM and a bunch of niche blogs that only turn up stuff that’s already reasonably well-tailored to my preferences. Which is to say, “Top 40″ is probably well on its way to becoming one more niche genre, populated by artists the vast majority of the listening population regards as obscure.

If I felt like getting my curmudgeon on, I suppose I could fret that this poses a threat of lock-in as we all increasingly live in the bubbles of our own past tastes. But that would pretty obviously be wrong and, indeed, ridiculous. In 1995, you had to be part of a pretty specific cultural and geographical milieu to even be aware of, say, No Wave or IDM. Good luck actually hearing any examples if you happened to live in Boise—or hell, even learning the names of the albums to look for. Sure, our musical encounters are a little less random, but they’re potentially massively more diverse, as are our chances of following a chance encounter with something interesting to the source. Hell, there’s a free iPhone app that lets you hold your phone near the speaker when you hear something novel, identifies the song on the spot, and gives you a link to buy it immediately.

It probably does make the weird alignment of the early 90s less likely though. Back then, with few other options, the music nerds were still at least watching MTV—if only 120 Minutes. Now—with MTV relegated to producing reality shows—we don’t have the same kind of central culture hubs. To the extent that we do, they can’t count on captive audiences. For the reasons mentioned above, it’s gotten much easier to develop a more specific, personal musical taste, and much younger, at that.  And once you’ve done it, it’s much easier to defect from the common cultural pool. Which means not only are mass level cultural cascades generally less likely, but the people whose participation would make it possible for good niche stuff to go mainstream are also the most likely to have gotten the hell out of Dodge already. Though given the increased ease of defection, hey, so what?