...but I do seem to recall a version of Michael Kinsley capable of writing cogent and, yes,
his long descent into incoherent, petty sniping has not been pretty.
And: Low-Tech Cyclist:
Kinsley is right that "all is not data" and "data will only take you so far"...
but the problem is that most journalists are ignorant of a great deal of data that directly bears on the stories they write, and they misinform and mislead their readers as a result.
Maybe data will only take you so far, but if you're going to be intellectually honest, you've got to go as far as the data will take you, before venturing off on your own. If you don't even know what the data is trying to tell you because you haven't bothered to examine it, then you have a responsibility to keep your worthless conclusions to yourself and your Facebook friends, rather than sharing them with the wider audience that speaking or writing for a media outlet gives you.
It really is quite simple:
Data so that you only highlight those of the striking anecdotes that you run across or that come to your mind that are in fact typical and representative.
Detailed case studies so that you actually understand what is going on at a deep level in the anecdotes the data tell you are typical and representative.
Anecdotes to check that you are properly interpreting the typical and representative patterns you see in the data.
And at all costs avoid becoming a lazy access-journalism tool, who spends his time sucking up to the plutocrats who pay him, the sources you leak to him, and the spinners who package up the story so he doesn't have to actually, you know, work.
The piece reveals to an extent that ought to have profoundly disturbed Vanity Fair's editors that Michael Kinsley never learned the importance of (1) through (4). And so publishing the piece ought to have profoundly disturbed the editors of Vanity Fair: the only thing they have to sell is their reputation for filtering, so that if you read a story from Vanity Fair it will be smarter and wittier than what rises to the top of the algorithmic aggregation engines of Facebook and Buzzed. That this piece was not sent back carries a bad message for Vanity Fair--the editors ought to have realized that, and the fact that they apparently did not sends a second bad message: that they do not understand that they are not supposed to douse their brand with gasoline and light it on fire.
Moreover, the editors of Vanity Fair have done a third bad thing in letting this piece through: they have failed in their duty to their writers to help them build and guard their reputations.
What is it we do when we read? We have a very strong
to engage with other minds--to learn about the world in large part by listening to others, figuring out how they think, and then constructing our own
of their minds to run on our own wetware and thus turn us, to a certain degree, into highly-imperfect anthology intelligences. And one of the chief ways we have of building such a sub-Turing evocation is through reading the things that a person has written, and over time building up a picture and model of the mind behind the keyboard.
In so doing, we tend to flatten into a single timeless image what is the changing and evolving mental flow of a single author. Only specialists who have devoted more time and mental energy into keeping them separate can distinguish reliably between their sub-Turing invocation of Karl Marx in his 20s and Karl Marx in his 40s, or John Maynard Keynes in his 30s and John Maynard Keynes in his 50s. We use all of what we have written of one author in order to construct the mental image we use to interpret and make sense of any single one piece written by the author.
90% of reading takes place, after all, between the ears. Print is, to a large degree, a sophisticated multimedia device. There were plenty of people who were disappointed when Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies came out because the characters didn’t look or act anything like the characters really looked or acted like--that is, than the version they had created in their own minds. We take a very thin linear bit-stream chunked into patterns that form less than 100 different characters and build a large mental superstructure of argument, perspective, and tone on top of that. The enormous variety of even good faith readings that are possible from and that we see every day build on top of even a single text is very powerful testimony to that.
Michael Kinsley at his best was always... close to the edge: very smart but close to the ed very convincing but close to the edge of not being not philoso very snarky but close the very quickly done but close to the edge of being knee-jerk. You had to read his work with a bias toward understanding it as the product of a mind that was wise, philosophical, snarky, and quickly done... or it came across (as it always did to non-fans) as dumb, sophistic, whiny, and knee-jerk.
And so when Vanity Fair's editors publish something like , they are, I think, being rather cruel...
Niccolò Machiavelli on his library: Niccolò Machiavelli (1513):
(December 10):
On the coming of evening, I return to my hous and at the door I take off the day's clothing, covered with mud and dust, and put on garmen and reclothed appropriately, I enter the ancient courts of ancient men, where, received by them with affection, I feed on that food which only is mine and which I was born for, where I am not ashamed to speak with them and to ask them the reas and they in thei and for four hours of time I do not feel boredom, I forget every trouble, I do not dread poverty, I am not entirely I give myself over to them...
Full text:
Magnificent Ambassador:
"Never late were favors divine." I say this because I seemed to have lost--no, rather mislaid-- you had not written to me for a long time, and I was wondering what the reason could be. And of all those that came into my mind I took little account, except of one only, when I feared that you had stopped writing because somebody had written to you that I was not a good guardian of your letters, and I knew that, except Filippo and Pagolo, nobody by my doing had seen them.
I have found it again through your last letter of the twenty-third of the past month, from which I learn with pleasure how regularly and quietly you carry on this public office, and I encourage you to continue so, because he who gives up his own convenience for the convenience of others, only loses his own and from them gets no gratitude. And since Fortune wants to do everything, she wishes us to let her do it, to be quiet, and not to give her trouble, and to wait for a time when she will allow somethi and then will be the time for you to work harder, to stir things up more, and for me to leave my farm and say: "Here I am."
I cannot however, wishing to return equal favors, tell you in this letter anything else
and if you judge that you would like to swap with me, I shall be glad to. I am living on my farm, and since I had my last bad luck, I have not spent twenty days, putting them all together, in Florence. I have until now been snaring thrushes with my own hands. I got up before day, prepared birdlime, went out with a bundle of cages on my back, so that I looked like Geta when he was returning from the harbor with Amphitryon's books. I caught at least two thrushes and at most six. And so I did all September. Then this pastime, pitiful and strange as it is, gave out, to my displeasure.
And of what sort my life is, I shall tell you: I get up in the morning with the sun and go into a grove I am having cut down, where I remain two hours to look over the work of the past day and kill some time with the cutters, who have always some bad-luck story ready, about either themselves or their neighbors. And as to this grove I could tell you a thousand fine things that have happened to me, in dealing with Frosino da Panzano and others who wanted some of this firewood. And Frosino especially sent for a number of cords without saying a thing to me, and on payment he wanted to keep back from me ten lire, which he says he should have had from me four years ago, when he beat me at cricca at Antonio Guicciardini's. I raised the devil, and was going to prosecute as a thief the waggoner who came for the wood, but Giovanni Machiavelli came between us and got us to agree.
Batista Guicciardini, Filippo Ginori, Tommaso del Bene and some other citizens, when that north wind was blowing, each ordered a cord from me. I made promises to all and sent one to Tommaso, which at Florence changed to half a cord, because it was piled up again by himself, his wife, his servant, his children, so that he looked like Gabburra when on Thursday with all his servants he cudgels an ox. Hence, having seen for whom there was profit, I told the others I had no more wood, and all of them were angry about it, and especially Batista, who counts this along with his misfortunes at Prato.
Leaving the grove, I go to a spring, and thence to my aviary. I have a book in my pocket, either Dante or Petrarch, or one of the lesser poets, such as Tibullus, Ovid, and the like. I read of their tender passions and their loves, remember mine, enjoy myself a while in that sort of dreaming. Then I move along I speak with those who pass, ask news of their villages, learn various things, and note the various tastes and different fancies of men.
In the course of these things comes the hour for dinner, where with my family I eat such food as this poor farm of mine and my tiny property allow. Having eaten, I there is the host, usually a butcher, a miller, two furnace tenders. With these I sink into vulgarity for the whole day, playing at cricca and at trich-trach, and then these games bring on a thousand disputes and countless insults with offensive words, and usually we are fighting over a penny, and nevertheless we are heard shouting as far as San Casciano. So, involved in these trifles, I keep my brain from growing mouldy, and satisfy the malice of this fate of mine, being glad to have her drive me along this road, to see if she will be ashamed of it.
On the coming of evening, I return to my hous and at the door I take off the day's clothing, covered with mud and dust, and put on garmen and reclothed appropriately, I enter the ancient courts of ancient men, where, received by them with affection, I feed on that food which only is mine and which I was born for, where I am not ashamed to speak with them and to ask them the reas and they in thei and for four hours of time I do not feel boredom, I forget every trouble, I do not dread poverty, I am not entirely I give myself over to them.
And because Dante says it does not produce knowledge when we hear but do not remember, I have noted everything in their conversation which has profited me, and have composed a little work On Princedoms, where I go as deeply as I can into considerations on this subject, debating what a princedom is, of what kinds they are, how they are gained, how they are kept, why they are lost. And if ever you can find any of my fantasies pleasing, this one shou and by a prince, and especially by a new prince, it ought to be welcomed. Hence I am dedicating it to His Magnificence Giuliano. Filippo Cas he can give you some account in part of the thing in itself and of the discussions I have had with him, though I am still enlarging and revising it.
You wish, Magnificent Ambassador, that I leave this life and come to enjoy yours with you. I shall do it in any case, but what tempts me now are certain affairs that within six weeks I shall finish. What makes me doubtful is that the Soderini we know so well are in the city, whom I should be obliged, on coming there, to visit and talk with. I should fear that on my return I could not hope to dismount at my house but should dismount at the prison, because though this government has mighty foundations and great security, yet it is new and therefore suspicious, and there is no lack of wiseacres who, to make a figure, like Pagolo Bertini, would place others at the dinner table and leave the reckoning to me. I beg you to rid me of this fear, and then I shall come within the time mentioned to visit you in any case.
I have talked with Filippo about this little work of mine that I have spoken of, whether it is good to give
and if it is good to give it, whether it would be good to take it myself, or whether I should send it there. Not giving it would make me fear that at the least Giuliano will not read it and that this rascal Ardinghelli will get himself honor from this latest work of mine. The giving of it is forced on me by the necessity that drives me, because I am using up my money, and I cannot remain as I am a long time without becoming despised through poverty. In addition, there is my wish that our present Medici lords will make use of me, even if they begin by ma because then if I could not gain their favor, I shoul and through this thing, if it were read, they would see that for the fifteen years while I have been studying the art of the state, I have not s and well may anybody be glad to get the services of one who at the expense of others has become full of experience.
And of my honesty there should be no doubt, because having always preserved my honesty, I shall hardly n and he who has been honest and good for forty-three years, as I have, cann and as a witness to my honesty and goodness I have my poverty.
I should like, then, to have you also write me what you think best on this matter, and I give you my regards.
Niccolo Machiavelli, in Florence
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Looking Forward to Four Years During Which Most if Not All of America's Potential for Human Progress Is Likely to Be Wasted
With each passing day Donald Trump looks more and more like Silvio Berlusconi: bunga-bunga governance, with a number of unlikely and unforeseen disasters and a major drag on the country--except in states where his policies are neutralized.
Nevertheless, remember: WE ARE WITH HER!
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Shame on Eyal Golan!
Email a copy of "Shame on Eyal Golan!" to a friend
Eyal Golan. Photo: Wiki Commons.
For the last 15 years I have loved Eyal Golan’s music – my children know many of his songs and have spent many hours singing and dancing with me to his music (or telling me to stop singing so loud.)
As we now know, while his music is amazing, clearly the man is anything but.
Israel’s most famous singer, a household name in nearly every home, Eyal Golan was recently under investigation on allegations of statutory rape with underage girls. Reports say that Golan’s father and friends located girls at his concerts, some of which may have been underage, plied them with drugs, and the girls then had sex with Golan. While recent news reports indicate that he may not be charged, he is clearly far from a decent person. Deviant behavior took place, and children are forever traumatized as a result of their encounter with this brilliant singer and his family.
Now, as surely he always wanted, the whole world knows his name – likely this is the first time Sephardic superstar Eyal Golan has been , which is considered the bible of entertainment publications. In a world where Michael Jackson, a man considered by some to have been a child molester, has a ride dedicated to him at Disney, perhaps this behavior should be considered normal.
In recent years, we have seen so many fallen heroes – from Lance Armstrong to Tiger Woods, Pee Wee Herman to Michael Vick – that it should be no surprise that an Israeli living legend has now fallen to Earth.Related coverage
is a website that analyzes the weekly reading of the Torah for people who do not take every word in the Torah...
Just because someone is marketed a certain way, it doesn’t mean that their public persona reflects the real person. Eyal Golan may be a great singer – but keep him far away from your daughters. As a parent who makes a living as a marketer, I am cognizant of the dictum made famous by NBA legend Charles Barkley who said in his famous Nike commercials: “I am not a role model. I am not paid to be a role model. Parents should be role models. Just because I can dunk a basketball doesn’t mean I should raise your kids.”?
Marketers create brands, and I do so on a daily basis for many celebrities – and will continue to do so – but parents set rules and values.
Why would anyone have allowed their young daughters near this uber-star? Enjoying Eyal Golan’s music shouldn’t be reason enough for anyone to leave their kids alone with him.
While conclusions have yet to be drawn, his claim to be unaware of the girls’ ages is completely unconvincing and despicable.
There is no question at all that Eyal Golan is guilty in the court of public opinion. Shame on you Eyal Golan.
The lyrics of
“Mi Shemaamin – ×?×(TM) ×(C)×?×?×?×(TM)×?”? are “There is one mighty God – He gives us everything in this world. Between darkness to a sun beam – We only need to choose the path.”?
Eyal Golan chose the path of evil and darkness.
Despite having been married to a former Miss Israel, fathering two kids, and being adored by the public, fame led him to evil and darkness.
Ronn Torossian is the CEO of 5WPR, and the winner of the 2013 Silver Stevie Award for PR Executive of the Year by the American Business Awards. He has attended more than 20 Eyal Golan concerts.
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