Half Changed World

So, a bipartisan group of senators, including Virginia’s John Warner, are announcing a compromise that will preserve the fillibuster.

Here’s the NY Times story, and the Washington Post story.  As might be predicted, bloggers on both the left and the right are screaming that their side caved.

Mark Schmidt had an interesting post this morning, arguing that a compromise would be a terrible outcome for Frist, but that a deal which allows Owen and Brown to go forward sets an extremely high standard for any future filibuster:

"That’s because in that combination, Brown or Owen would come to define the line of "extraordinary circumstances." That is, assume Brown goes through — after that, anyone with views less extreme than Brown would implicitly be considered not extraordinary. Bush could name Brown herself to the Court and Democrats would be paralyzed. And the problem with that is simply that there are no possible nominees to the Supreme Court whose views are more radical than Justice Brown."

I look forward to reading his comments tomorrow.

***

The best history of the fillibuster I’ve ever read is the opening chapters of the third volume of Robert Caro’s bio of Lyndon Johnson, Master of the Senate.   Caro summarizes how the power of the filibuster meant that (except for a few years when Roosevelt was at the peak of his power) the Senate was where bills went to die.

The first two volumes of Caro’s biography paint a pretty bleak picture of LBJ, arguing (among other things) that he blatently stole at least one election.   But in this volume, Caro describes how Johnson, as Senate Majority Leader, used his power to set the calendar to bring rambunctious Senators into line, ruthlessly blocking their bills unless they voted as he wished.  And Caro makes the case for how Johnson, SOB that he certainly was, racist that he arguably was, out of his own selfish desire to be President, did more to advance the cause of civil rights in the US than all of the noble "liberal lions" who had fought for civil rights for decades.

It’s a long book, but it’s worth reading.

From Jo(e), via Phantom Scribbler:

We showed Star Wars to D this week.  He’s still a bit young for it, but T has been waiting for this since he was born.  If you asked T what he was most looking forward to as a father, watching Star Wars with his child was pretty high up on the list.

It’s not exactly a subtle movie, so D quickly caught on that the guys in the white armor were bad (except for when the good guys are pretending to be bad), and the guy in the black suit was really bad.  He loved the lightsaber duels and the x-wing fighters and only really got scared during the trash compactor scene.  So now his fantasy games include such crossovers as the Powerpuff Girls v. Darth Vader.

We haven’t seen Episode III yet.  T isn’t sure he wants to see it, having been so badly burned by Episode I.  I’m willing to give it a shot, based on the reviews I’ve been hearing, and if I’m going to see it at all, I want to see it on a big screen.  (Neither of us saw Episode II.)  Maybe when the lines die down at the Uptown…

I’m really appreciating the conversations that the NYT series on class has helped put into motion.

Dawn wrote at This Woman’s Work:

"It’s a privilege to choose to have less without feeling completely freaked out by it…. neither of us have ever seriously worried about not having enough money to feed our kids (we both know that our parents will help us if things got dire)."

And today’s Times had an article about Della Mae Justice, a woman from East Kentucky, who grew up poor but was taken in as a teenager by middle-class cousins, and is a lawyer today.  One quote from her emphasizes that class is about more than income:

"When you’re poor and from a low socioeconomic group, you don’t have a lot of choices in life. To me, being from an upper class is all about confidence. It’s knowing you have choices, knowing you set the standards, knowing you have connections."

So, I don’t think we act rich.  We buy clothes for the boys off of ebay, and have small, at-home birthday parties.  We have a 12-year-old television and a 9-year-old car. (Last month we were quite amused that someone stuck a flyer under its windshield reassuring us that "bad credit is no obstacle!" to getting a new used car). We take books out of the library rather than buying them.

But we don’t have to.  We do it because we’d rather spend the money on other things (travel is my one big expensive taste).  And we value the freedom to earn less than our maximum potential, whether in order to spend more time with the kids, or to work at underpaid do-good jobs.  We have the privilege of choice.

Today’s book is I’m Not The New Me, by Wendy McClure.  It’s the story of her popular weightloss blog (although she doesn’t call it that) Pound and how it affected her life.  (The link is valid — but McClure is mostly blogging about the book now.  She also writes for Television Without Pity.)  I have to admit that I had never heard of Pound before I picked up the book, but I had seen the infamous 1974 Weight Watchers Recipe Cards that she found and scanned.  (If you haven’t seen them, check them out.  They’re scary.)

The book is partially about body image and weight loss, partially about the weirdness of interacting with people who think they know you because they read your site.  As the title suggests, McClure didn’t really feel like the success story her readers were looking for, and worried that she was letting them down when she plateaued short of her goal.  The book is a quick read, interesting without being profound, amusing without ever being hysterically funny. 

It made me think a bit about the different genres of blogging.  Some of them — weight loss blogs, race training blogs, infertility blogs, and some illness blogs come to mind — are organized around a specific goal and therefore have, if you will, a narrative arc that draws the reader in.  Whereas other blogs — political blogs, most parenting blogs, most craft blogs — meander around a theme or themes.  You read them because you enjoy the writing, are interested in the topic, or care about the person, but there’s not the "what happens next" hook to keep you coming back.

Our house doesn’t have a porch, and the front step is just high enough to be a nuisance for strollers and wheelchairs, not high enough to really sit on.  But it turns out to be the perfect height for two small boys to sit on.

Lots of people are picking up on the New York Times’ series on class, and in particular, their interactive calculator that lets you find where you fit on their class scale.

Both Geeky Mom and Angry Pregnant Lawyer are questioning whether they really deserve the class labels that calculator came up with.  Both of them commented that they don’t feel rich because there are people around them who consume much more, especially luxury goods.  Laura wrote:

"We’re just missing some of the markers: big house, nice car, lots of vacations. What we have instead is: lots of degrees, multiple computers, lots of books, "enrichment" activities."

The Times calculator doesn’t include consumption at all.  It’s not exactly clear how consumption and class are related. The Millionaire Next Door, Thomas Stanley argues that there’s an inverse correlation between real weath and conspicuous consumption; he claims that most millionaires drive old cars, cut coupons, don’t take extravagent vacations, etc. It’s also clear that plenty of people who are driving fancy cars don’t have a whole lot of cash assets.

The calculator also doesn’t control for location, and house values.  We make it into the top quintile on wealth, but only because we had the luck to buy our house before the market got totally out of control.  It doesn’t do us a whole lot of good unless we’re planning on moving someplace outside of a major metropolitan area.  Conversely, I know a lot of people who are easily in the top quintile for earnings, but are priced out of the housing market in much of the area.  They sure don’t feel rich.

If we wanted to make the labels more correspond with people’s subjective impression, I might call the bottom quintile "poor," the second quintile "working class," the third quintile "lower middle class," the fourth quintile "middle class," from the 80th to the 90th percentile "upper middle class," from the 90th percentile to the 95th percentile "rich," and from the the 95th to the 100th percentile "filthy rich."

***

Today’s story in the series is about how class affects health.  It compares the experiences of three New Yorkers who had heart attacks last spring.  I was seriously afraid that I was going to witness a repeat of the poor woman’s experience from that story tonight — two minutes into tonight’s PTA meeting, one of the mothers suddenly put her head on the table and said she was having chest pains.  But she wouldn’t let us call an ambulance, or even let the paramedics (who were only a block away) take her blood pressure, because "last time it cost a fortune."  She did let one of the other parents drive her to a pharmacy to get her prescription filled.  I hope she’s ok.  She’s a quiet woman who is studying for a nursing degree.  I often see her studying in the playground in the evening while her sons play.

So the New York Times is also thinking about what class means these days.  They’re kicking off one of their multi-day series of articles — today’s offering is "Class in America: Shadowy Lines that Still Divide."

The paragraph that immediately jumped out at me is:

"A paradox lies at the heart of this new American meritocracy. Merit has replaced the old system of inherited privilege, in which parents to the manner born handed down the manor to their children. But merit, it turns out, is at least partly class-based. Parents with money, education and connections cultivate in their children the habits that the meritocracy rewards. When their children then succeed, their success is seen as earned."

Yes, exactly.  And I think that’s a big piece of why concerted cultivation has become such a dominant parenting practice among middle-class parents who themselves were raised by strategies much closer to the accomplishment of natural growth, or "benign neglect" as some of my readers phrased it.

"The scramble to scoop up a house in the best school district, channel a child into the right preschool program or land the best medical specialist are all part of a quiet contest among social groups that the affluent and educated are winning in a rout."

Forty to fifty years ago, the only people who practiced concerted cultivation were those who were determined to improve their children’s status compared to their own.  (Condoleeza Rice’s family strikes me as an example of this, as does the stereotypical Jewish parents who want their children to be doctors.)  Today, most middle-class parents believe that concerted cultivation is needed just to ensure that their children are as successful as they are.  And I tend to agree.  George W. Bush got through Yale on what was called "the gentleman’s C."  That doesn’t exist anymore.  (Although of course, there are specific practices that parents do in the name of concerted cultivation that I think are unnecessary, ridiculous, and even harmful.)

I’m sure I’ll have more to say as I read the rest of the series.

Also, reading this article online, I see that the Times has attached hyperlinks to the names of most of the researchers citing, linking to their professional web pages.  This is the first time I’ve noticed them doing this — have I just been oblivious or is this something new on their part?  I definitely approve.

There’s been a lot of talk about blogrolls on several of the blogs I read lately, with some folks worrying about exclusivity/cliquishness, while others argue that they feed into hierarchies in unhelpful ways.  (A blogroll is the list of other blogs that’s off on the side of many blogs.)

I’m a fan of blogrolls. Looking at someone’s blogroll is a bit like looking at the books on their shelves, something that I do whenever I’m invited into someone’s house.  Sometimes I find something new that I haven’t heard of.  Sometimes I’ll find something that I’ve also read, and it will give me a subject of conversation.  And almost always I’ll get a better sense of who the person is and what his or her interests are — or were at some point.  (I know I’m not the only person who still has books from undergraduate courses in my house.)

So I thought I’d mention some new additions to my blogroll.

One is War on Error, which I found via her comments on Jody’s thoughtful post about class.  Looking at the recent posts, I see she writes about choices, housing prices, work, health, food, class.

I’ve added Chocolate and Peanut Butter, a new joint blog by Anne of Barely Attentive Mother and Marjorie of Unclimber.  They’ve written an interesting pair of posts in response to my discussion of Unequal Childhoods.

I’ve also added Anne’s new popular economics blog, Economom.  I was especially interested in her review of Freakonomics, for which I have a hold request at the library.

Any one want to make an argument for why I should support Viola Baskerville or Leslie Byrne for the Democratic nomination for Lt. Governor?  They both seem to be solid liberals, but I haven’t heard a convincing case yet for why I should support one over the other. 

Playing the "follow the money" strategy, the one thing that jumps out at me from the VPAP data is that Byrne is clearly the choice of organized labor. 

Speaking of money, I had previously noted that in the delegate race for the 45th, Mandela had received 2/3 of her money from a single donor.  According to the Virginia2005 blog, it’s from her boyfriend and she’s using it to buy cable TV ads.  (The things I miss by having TiVo.)