Dallasites are hereby encouraged to join the Run Against Violence 5K Thursday evening. It’s to benefit the family of David Cunniff, victim of one of the more outrage-inducing incidents of violence Dallas has seen in years.

(He’s a dad who took his two teenaged daughters to an Old 97s concert in Deep Ellum — not exactly some anarchist punk band. Anyway, a skinhead started messing with one of his daughters, dad tried to defend her, and the skinhead bashed his head in. Now he’s paralyzed from the neck down. More here.)

Assuming I’m not detained by breaking news, I hope to be there.

31 August 2004 | No comments

Speaking of 90-something retired diplomatic correspondents: Chalmers Roberts faces death.

31 August 2004 | No comments

Today, I received what may have been my first ever request for ChandaWatch, my quarterly updates on the Grand Slam tournament progress of Chanda Rubin — world-ranked tennis star and former high school locker-neighbor of yours truly. Since I value the needs of crabwalk.com readers so highly — particularly after imposing nothing but Wilmer-Hutchins stories on you poor folks the last week or two — I accede to the public’s demands.

Chanda won her first round match with ease Tuesday, 6-2, 6-2 over the sultry Maria Sanchez Lorenzo. Chanda’s recent knee injuries have dropped her seeding to No. 20, which lines her for for a third-round battle with…Venus Williams, her ersatz Olympic doubles partner. Godspeed, Chanda.

31 August 2004 | 1 comment

One of the greatest men I have had the pleasure of spending time with has died at age 93. His name was Fernand Auberjonois.

I visited Fernand in his Ireland home in October 1999. At the time, I was a reporter for The (Toledo) Blade with an interest in foreign affairs. Fernand had, for decades, been The Blade’s European correspondent, based in London. But to just call him a reporter doesn’t give him his due — this man truly lived a life.

Among the things he did in his 93 years: Helped start what would become the Voice of America; helped plan the Normandy invasion; was targeted by Joe McCarthy in the 1950s; became one of Switzerland’s best-selling authors; gave French lessons to Katherine Hepburn; helped develop the theremin, the cult electronic instrument; translated John Dos Passos and befriended Walker Evans; became publishing director for Time-Life Europe; and inspired the character Odo on “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.”

Now that’s a life. And he was just the sweetest old man you could imagine. (His wife Helga is great, too.) As I’d go on various foreign adventures through the years, he’d write me little notes of encouragement.

The Fernand Auberjonois brand of foreign correspondent is largely dead now. Fernand wrote primarily about diplomacy, wearing dapper suits and interviewing powerful functionaries; modern correspondents tend more towards a more populist style. But the lesson I take from Fernand’s life is that if you’re going to have to wake up every morning, you should at least try not to be boring.

“I never had the feeling I was having a hard time then, because it was all far too interesting,” he told me back then, talking about his days living hand to mouth in New York City. “That’s what life does.”

Here’s the story I wrote about Fernand back in 2000.

Here’s an appreciation of Fernand (with pictures) written by Jack Lessenberry, another old Blado.

Here’s the obituary linked above.

In other news, tomorrow night will be the one time each year when I descend into a zen-like calm, focus my energies, and direct all thoughts to a singular goal: my annual fantasy football draft. Longtime readers may remember that two years ago, my team (the Bobby Heberts) won the league, thanks to a stirring Amani Toomer effort in the finale. Last year, my Clubfoot Dempseys fared less well, although the fact I was in Zambia for most of the season certainly played a role. (As did my burning a first-round pick on Donovan McNabb when Shaun Alexander was available.)

This year, I have poured my hopes into the Bum Phillippi. (A free cola beverage to the first reader who can figure out the three Saints references in my team names.) The cheat sheets have been constructed, the rotoreaders have been scoured, and I’m ready for battle. Gooooooo, Bum Phillippi!

31 August 2004 | 2 comments

I’ll be on TXCN tonight talking about Wilmer-Hutchins.

30 August 2004 | 1 comment

The White Shadow! Wackson Jackson! The Thrilla With Hands Like a Caterpilla! And other potential new nicknames for Michael Jackson.

An album I can strongly recommend: Apollo Sunshine’s Katonah. It’s highly grinworthy — a little Flaming Lips, yes, but a lot of Beach Boys and some Neutral Milk Hotel, too. And the band sounds like they just got the best birthday present ever.

It’s no fun to spend a whole weekend designing a new web site on a Mac, then go to work and find out it looks kinda krappy on Windows IE. Screw Windows IE.

30 August 2004 | 2 comments

I had another story on today’s front page — this time a profile of Wilmer-Hutchins superintendent Charles Matthews. Turns out this isn’t the first time he’s presided over a district’s financial collapse.

30 August 2004 | No comments

Will this streak ever die? Wilmer-Hutchins, Day 5, in which the district fails to meet payroll, leaving teachers wondering how they’ll pay their bills, and the district appears to take out an illegal loan to pay short-term bills.

If I’m reading the tea leaves correctly — always a risky bet — the streak should go to six tomorrow. But it might end there.

26 August 2004 | 5 comments

Want to have fun? Tune into the Fox local news tonight (in Dallas). You’ll get to see video of a disheveled me knocking on the car window of Wilmer-Hutchins superintendent, as he speeds away in his Cadillac moments after his district went into financial default.

25 August 2004 | No comments

Steve Blow, the DMN’s metro columnist, has been doing a great series of columns lately. In 1979, he and a photographer decided, just for the hell of it, to drive the length of State Highway 16, the longest highway in Texas, and tell the stories of whomever they met along the way. Now they’re doing it again, 25 years later.

Steve’s done a great job with it — and if you get a chance, pick up the paper and look at photog Randy Eli Grothe’s then and now photos. Here’s the Sunday column that started the series; here’s today’s part two. Two more parts to come; they’ll be linked here. Finally, here’s a video Randy made along the way.

25 August 2004 | No comments

The streak lives! For the fourth consecutive day, I’ve got the lead story on today’s front page, this time coauthored with the multitalented Robert Tharp. The story: State officials have decided to launch an investigative audit into Wilmer-Hutchins’ finances. (And not to brag, but a couple state types told me this audit is a direct result of my stories.)

If all goes according to plan, there should be a fifth front-pager tomorrow, but no promises after that. Joe DiMaggio has nothing to worry about.

Since I never got around to posting it before, Chanda ended up losing to Mauresmo in Olympic singles, sadly.

25 August 2004 | No comments

Just to prove I don’t write only about Wilmer-Hutchins: here’s my story from tomorrow’s paper. (New crabwalk.com motto: Tomorrow’s news today!) It’s a highly subjective ranking of the 10 best local school rivalries. It’ll be on the cover of the Texas Living section tomorrow, with some lovely graphics drawn by the very talented Michael Hogue.

24 August 2004 | No comments

Here’s the latest chapter in the Wilmer-Hutchins saga, from today’s front page. (That would be three straight days writing the paper’s lead story — a new personal record.)

Today’s story reveals (a) a grand jury investigation into corruption at the district, (b) the finance director’s surprise acknowledgement the district is, in his words, “broke,” and (c) that state officials are meeting today to discuss intervention into the district’s affairs.

This journalism stuff is fun.

Maybe some day I’ll blog something not about Wilmer-Hutchins. Maybe.

24 August 2004 | No comments

Here’s the second story in my ongoing series on the Wilmer-Hutchins school district. It’s about a consultant’s report that found that all but one of the district’s schools had been maintained so poorly that they should all be abandoned and razed.

Update: Habla español solamente? ¡Aquí está la historia en español! (Your DallasNews.com login should work for Al Dia as well.)

23 August 2004 | 1 comment

Here’s my story from today’s front page. It’s on the Wilmer-Hutchins school district — perhaps the worst school system in Texas. (Check out the graphic linked in the story for more background. Actually, if you get a chance, pick up the print version — the story takes up two full pages inside.)

22 August 2004 | 3 comments

I can’t decide if having Suicide Prevention Week end on September 11th is brilliant or stupid.

20 August 2004 | No comments

Joshwatch: I just taped an appearance on TXCN that’ll run hourly tonight and repeat sporadically through the weekend. If you don’t know what I look like, I’ll be the guy looking very somber in a dark blue mock turtleneck.

Barring an unexpected late-night bender, I should also be interviewed live on KVIL 103.7 (“#1 for Lite Rock!”) at 7:00 a.m. Sunday morning. My apologies if the interview’s Yawn Count exceeds its Coherent Thought Count.

And pick up Sunday’s paper — I’ll have a big story on the front page. (That’s what I’m busy talking about in all these spots.) Should have another one on Monday’s front page, too.

20 August 2004 | 2 comments

Dallasites, if you get a chance, stop by the Sixth Floor Museum sometime before the end of January. (Of course, all Dallasites have already been to the Sixth Floor Museum — a.k.a. where Oswald plugged JFK — many times. It’s just about the only tourist destination of note in town, which makes it a mandatory stop when out-of-town visitors drop in. I’ve been at least a dozen times.)

Anyway, their temporary exhibit is called The Living Room Candidate, and it’s an entertaining video history of TV commercials from presidential elections past. (The non-Texans among us should head to the web site, which has most of the ads available for viewing.)

Don’t worry about the later years — go straight to the early stuff from the 1950s and 1960s. It’s fascinating to see how quickly the form evolved. Eisenhower’s commercials were almost painfully earnest — the look of a military man forced to interact with The Public and mouth political hackery with fake conviction. But it’s not surprising he won two terms: Adlai Stevenson’s ads were ludicrously dull talkers that wouldn’t hack it on air today.

But the one election you want to check out is 1964, LBJ vs. Goldwater. It’s not hard to figure out why Johnson won in a landslide. Goldwater’s ads were stuck in Eisenhower form: people sitting in chairs and talking to the camera (if occasionally looking crazed while doing it). His only innovations seemed to be fascist parodies that seem to blame the nation’s ills on outtakes of West Side Story.

But LBJ’s ads were works of art. Emotionally manipulative, sure, but works of art nonetheless.

The most famous one, of course, is the daisy ad. That’s the one that features a cute little girl picking petals off a daisy — then segues into a vision of a nuclear holocaust, while an off-camera LBJ intones biblically: “We must either love each other…or we must die.” It’s an incredibly cheap shot (that only aired once), but it is nonetheless some powerful shit.

The ads, viewed as whole, did an amazingly good job of painting Goldwater as, well, batshit crazy: a loose cannon itching to nuke the Soviets, the Chinese, the Vietnamese — hell, maybe the Belgians if he got some bad waffles one morning. Johnson clearly had real filmmakers working for him — the quality of direction is much higher.

But the best of them all is Confessions of a Republican. It’s four minutes of an actor playing a Republican who doesn’t want to vote for Goldwater. It’s amazingly effective at seeding doubts and, even though it’s clearly an actor with a script, it seems infinitely more real than the “real” people in modern ads. I mean, were I a Republican in ‘64, I think I’d be forced to think things through after seeing this. In this New Yorker article, professional quote machine Kathleen Hall Jamieson calls it the one of the most effective ads of all time. (Transcript here.)

If my eye for actors is right, the Humphrey campaign tried bringing the same guy back to do a somewhat similar ad against Nixon in ‘68. But it’s nowhere near as effective — the dialogue is much obviously politically driven, the reasoning is gone, and the air of self-evaluation has disappeared. But honestly, I think a “Confessions of a Republican”-style ad could be used by either party effectively in ‘04. Even the scripted can seem sincere.

19 August 2004 | No comments

Buy a brand-new Windows XP computer, plug in the Internet and bam: 20 minutes max before you get a virus, worm, or other malware. Pitiful. In case anyone wonders why I’m a Mac guy, here’s reason No. 3,972.

Still extremely busy. Should all be worth it come the weekend.

19 August 2004 | 3 comments

Well, what the hell do I know: Chanda and Venus have been ousted in doubles.

But she beat Cara Black (6-4, 3-6, 6-3), putting her into the third round. I doubt she’ll get past Mauresmo, though.

17 August 2004 | No comments

The schedule is up for the Austin City Limits Festival next month. A tentative suggested plan:

Friday:
4-5 p.m.: Sloan (although Neko Case is tempting)
[early dinner]
6-7 p.m.: Broken Social Scene
7-8 p.m.: Ryan Adams (but leave a little early and catch some of…)
7:15-8:15 p.m.: Rebirth Brass Band (but leave a little early and move to…)
8-8:45 p.m.: Franz Ferdinand (although Gomez is tempting)
8:45-9:55 p.m.: Los Lonely Boys
[party]

Saturday:
[sleep in late, then straggle in late to…]
2-3 p.m.: Josh Rouse
3-4 p.m.: Old 97s
4-4:45 p.m.: Bruce Robison (and hope he plays this song)
[early dinner, unless I grow remarkably more pro-Modest Mouse]
6-7 p.m.: My Morning Jacket (although Los Amigos Invisibles is very tempting)
7:15-8:15 p.m.: Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown (leaving early for…)
8-8:45 p.m.: The Neville Brothers
8:45-9:55 p.m.: The Pixies
[party]

Sunday:
[sleep in late, a hearty migas brunch, then…]
1:45-2:30 p.m.: Calexico
2:30-3:30 p.m.: The Roots (also tempting: Doyle Bramhall and Shelby Lynne)
3:30-4:30 p.m.: Ben Kweller (but leave after three songs for…)
4-5 p.m.: Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra (but leave after two very lengthy songs for…)
4:30-5:30 p.m.: Elvis Costello
5:30-6:30 p.m.: Spoon
[get in the car, drive back to Dallas, moderately sad over missing Wilco, Dirty Dozen Brass Band, David Garza, Cake, and Ben Harper in the evening]

Sorry I haven’t been posting much lately. My pace will pick up soon, I hope.

17 August 2004 | 2 comments

Here’s my story from today’s front page. Most of you will find it more interesting than most of my stuff — it’s about how test-prep companies like Kaplan and the Princeton Review are profiting from anxiety about the new SAT test that will debut in March.

16 August 2004 | 1 comment

ChandaWatch: She won her first-round singles match over the koala Samantha Stosur. But the fact it took her three sets (6-2, 6-7, 6-0) doesn’t bode well. Next up: the Zimbabwan menace Cara Black. If she gets past Black, it’ll be the 2 seed, Amelie Mauresmo, in the octofinals.

The Chanda/Venus doubles team faces the Chinese Ting Li/Tian Tian Sun duo later today.

16 August 2004 | No comments

U.S. Senate candidate (and Barack Obama opponent) Alan Keyes rocks the showtunes.

Maybe Obama and Keyes could settle this whole Senate race thing with a showtunes battle — sort of like 8 Mile but with a Andrew Lloyd Webber vibe. It might be Keyes’ only chance at victory.

12 August 2004 | No comments

Screw-loose Screw founder says he got screwed.

A large silver cross around his neck gleamed against his chest hair. He has been wearing it for a few months. “I feel doomed as a Jew,” he said. “I’ll try anything else.”

12 August 2004 | No comments

Great piece in WaPo about the perils of mixing race baiting, stand-up comics, and t-shirt manufacturing. (Well, it’s a great story — the writing’s a little awkward in a few places.)

11 August 2004 | No comments

ChandaWatch: Our Hero’s chances at a medal just improved greatly. It seems that Serena Williams, hours before she was to board a flight to Athens, backed out, claiming “lingering knee pain.”

That means Serena’s singles spot will be wasted — the deadline for replacing members of your Olympic team has passed, so Aussie Samantha Stosur will get the spot. But Serena had planned to pair with sister Venus as the top American doubles team. (They won the gold in Sydney.) So now Venus’ new doubles partner will be…Chanda Rubin!

This is excellent news on a few fronts. One, obviously Venus is a hell of a doubles partner. Two, when you’ve got an achy knee (as Chanda has had since January), doubles play is a much better fit than singles — much less lateral movement, much heavier reliance on upper-body reflexes. And Chanda’s a heck of a doubles player herself — her only Grand Slam title to date remains winning the Australian Open in doubles a few years back. So while her singles campaign probably doesn’t have much of a chance, we may see Chanda on the medals stand yet.

11 August 2004 | No comments

It’s time for a special summer edition of ChandaWatch, that hoary crabwalk.com tradition in which we track the tournament progress of Chanda Rubin — the only person in the world to be both (a) a highly-ranked women’s tennis player and (b) my high school classmate.

Normally, ChandaWatch is reserved for the Australian, French, Wimbledon, and the U.S. Open. But this is a Very Special ChandaWatch — our hero is headed to Athens.

She’ll be one of four American women competing in singles, along with the Williams sisters and one TBA. (It was Jennifer Capriati, but she dropped out today, as had Lindsay Davenport before her.)

Chanda’s been nursing a knee injury all year, which doesn’t bode well for her prospects. But when the blood of patriotism starts coursing through her veins, who knows what is possible? Play starts Sunday.

I wish I could be there to root her on; there was a slight chance earlier this year I was going to be able to cover the Olympics again, just as I did the Salt Lake City games in 2002. But alas, ‘twas not meant to be.

10 August 2004 | No comments

How does one end up with a painful cut on the back of one’s left earlobe? One has no idea what one could have done to create said cut. Said cut hurts like hell, one could tell you.

If you are the person who created said cut — perhaps as part of some jujitsu-by-night campaign to cripple crabwalk.com — one would appreciate hearing an apology. One would.

10 August 2004 | 1 comment

Dan Gillmor — Silicon Valley blogger, blog evangelist, and my copanelist at SXSW last year — has posted the entirety of his new book We the Media online, free for anyone to take. (Or you can pay $24.95 to buy a dead-tree version.)

08 August 2004 | No comments

I’d like to thank The New York Times for writing a story on Anastasia Myskina suing GQ over two topless photos it allegedly allowed a shooter to resell to a Russian magazine.

I’d like to thank the Times primarily because the article has apparently sent tens of thousands of tennis pornhounds running to Mother Google and searching lasciviously. This site has gotten more than 4,000 “myskina topless” hits in the last 36 hours — and my site is only No. 13 in Google’s rankings for the phrase.

08 August 2004 | No comments

Who knew Norman Mailer’s son was executive editor of High Times, America’s premier pothead periodical?

Here, father and son converse.

06 August 2004 | 2 comments

I’ve written before about the strange joy/frustration that comes with being a Dallas music fan the week before SXSW each March. Dozens of bands, aiming to make a Texas jaunt worth their financial while, schedule shows in Dallas on their way to Austin. It’s a concentrated burst of musical talent, the sort we don’t get too often from the tour bookers of indie rock.

The unfortunate thing is that these bands all play in a few days, leaving the music lover with a host of unpleasant choices to make. (This year, you had the Decemberists, Modest Mouse, the Unicorns, and Crystal Method playing on the same night. Then Broken Social Scene, Calexico, Polyphonic Spree, the Unicorns, and Pedro the Lion the next night. Then Sonic Youth, Trans Am, and International Noise Conspiracy the next night. A man shouldn’t have to choose between all those!)

Anyway, it looks like we North Texans will now face the joys and pains of a similar bandclog each fall, now that the Austin City Limits Festival is revealing its glories to the world. On September 17, Dallas gets My Morning Jacket and Wilco/Calexico on the same night, and I’m sure a couple other bands will get booked over the next month.

(While the Wilco shine has tarnished in my eyes over the years, there’s no doubting that will be the best “bands-ending-in-the-letter-O” double bill in years. Now if only they can get Chromeo, Cee-Lo, TV on the Radio, Bebel Gilberto, Brian Eno, Disco Inferno, Caetano Veloso, and Grant Lee Buffalo signed on.)

05 August 2004 | 10 comments

Weezer lead singer Rivers Cuomo — perhaps the most famous Harvard dropout not named Bill Gates — decided he wanted to go back and finish his degree. This is the self-effacing, confessional essay he had to write for readmission. It gets at why Weezer’s brilliant second album was followed by the crap pablum of the green album and Maladroit. Turns out it’s all Nietzsche’s fault!

Also, it contains this great line: “I studied the lives of Napoleon and David Geffen.”

05 August 2004 | 1 comment

My photographer friend Antrim Caskey took some photos at the Democratic National Convention.

05 August 2004 | 1 comment

The big news in Dallas today is the Cowboys’ releasing starting QB Quincy Carter, just a few days into training camp. It’s a pretty shocking move, as these things go, and the Cowboys are refusing to say why they did it.

But what’s interesting is how different organizations are reporting it. ESPN, since early afternoon, has been reporting that Quincy failed a drug test. Fox Sports, which I believe broke the drug angle (if my rapid Googling earlier today was accurate), says specifically it’s cocaine. Both attribute the news to unnamed “sources.” I haven’t had a chance to listen to local sports radio, but I’m certain The Ticket has been buzzing with drug talk all day.

But my employer, The Dallas Morning News, isn’t mentioning drugs at all in its story. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram doesn’t either. And the Associated Press story is mum on the subject too.

Now, the DMN, the Startlegram, and the AP all have the same sources that ESPN and Fox do. Len Pasquarelli, ESPN’s reporter, is a terrific journalist — one of my favorites dating back to his days at PFW. But he’s not so much more plugged in than our guys or the Startlegram’s guys. The DMN is hearing all the same rumors from all the same sources.

But none of the local print media has decided to write about the drug angle. They haven’t even gone the route that many out-of-town news orgs have: reporting about ESPN reporting about it. (That’s the classic journalism cover-your-ass way of getting a rumor out there — pointing and saying, “Well, somebody else is reporting it!”)

I’m not passing any judgments — I don’t know what I would do. I just think the difference is interesting. When people talk about the difference between the standards of newspapers and the standards of Drudge, blogs, and other less traditional forms of media, this is exactly the sort of gap they’re talking about.

Were I a betting man, I’d bet $100 that ESPN and Fox Sports will eventually be shown correct in this case, probably very soon. I bet a drug test is what’s fallen Quincy Carter. But I’m not sure I’d print it in the newspaper right now. We’ll see what the DMN and Startlegram do in the morning.

04 August 2004 | 2 comments

The trailer for Team America: World Police, the new marionette-based terrorism flick from Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Love that Kim Jong-Il action. That man doesn’t get enough screen time.

04 August 2004 | No comments

Had a short and not all that interesting story in today’s paper, on teacher health-care benefits. (Boy, I sure know how to sell ‘em, don’t I?)

My TV appearance went okay. I was a little off, but didn’t screw up anything too badly. You may be seeing more of me on Fox in the future, assuming their ratings can handle it. Trivia: Fox’s is the only local morning show with its own makeup artist, so I got to spend a few minutes in The Chair getting my paleness lacquered away. I think I still have a yellow tinge despite attempts to wipe it all off, so if you see me today, don’t worry: I don’t have jaundice.

04 August 2004 | 1 comment

Media update update: I’m apparently going to be on Fox 4’s morning show twice tomorrow, at 7:40 a.m. and again at 8:20. And as always seems to be the case for my TV appearances, I’ve been asked to talk about two subjects I know nothing about.

By the way, people, the comments link still works. No comments in five days makes Josh a sad boy.

03 August 2004 | 8 comments

Let’s just say, hypothetically, that you’re a skeezy lawyer who has, through a well-laid web of lies, managed to get your rapist defendants off the hook. (Perhaps like this guy I’ve been writing about — here, here, and here.) Let’s say you’ve managed to fib and twist enough to get a jury to declare a mistrial, despite videotaped evidence of your clients raping an unconscious, underaged girl. What can you do to top yourself on the Sleaze-O-Meter?

Well, here’s one idea: hire all the jurors who voted your way as $50-an-hour “consultants” to the defense team. Says the D.A.: “I think the reason they’re doing it is that they want to signal to the next jury that if you vote in favor of Gregory Haidl [el rapisto], you can get on the Haidl payroll.”

02 August 2004 | No comments

Speaking of “Law & Order” spinoffs: I love Ed Bark, the DMN’s TV columnist. He’s really quite good at what he does.

(Even if he, being mortal, can never top the divine Lisa de Moraes, the WaPo’s TV critic and one of the greatest writers of modern times. Here’s the top of her most recent column, fr’instance:

LOS ANGELES, July 23 — Childhood fantasy smashed today: Danny Bonaduce is now better looking than David Cassidy.

Bonaduce looked ripped and relaxed in a tight black T-shirt and jeans. Cassidy was eating-disorder thin, wore a baseball cap that screamed “thinning hair” and has lost all trace of lips; he looked like Cookie Monster with a face wax. Everyone felt old.

Seriously, Lisa de Moraes is the bomb. She’s the most fun columnist in America.)

Anyway, back to Ed. I enjoyed his his piece in yesterday’s paper on the warring spinoffs of “Law & Order” and “CSI.” I particularly enjoyed this paragraph:

“We haven’t had real competition. This is real competition,” says Law & Order creator Dick Wolf, whose show will be entering its 15th season of prime-time combat. Its two descendants, Law & Order: SUV and Law & Order: Criminal Intent, also are ratings hits.

I presume that’s supposed to be Law & Order: SVU, as in “Special Victims Unit.” Then again, an SUV-themed edition of L&O could be just what the networks are missing. Jill Hennessy gathering evidence from a cup holder? Chris Noth going over misleading fuel efficiency data? Michael Moriarty summing it all up for the jury: “It may have begun as a Ford Expedition, but it quickly became a death expedition”? I’m telling you: ratings gold.

02 August 2004 | No comments

Make Mine Malthus! Overpopulation panic’s eternal return, a piece in Reason.

For years, Malthus has been my own personal shorthand for illogical arguments taken to idiotic extremes. In high school, there were two kinds of debate: cross-examination (two-person team debate on issues of policy) and Lincoln-Douglas debate (solo debate on issues of value and philosophy). I was an L-D debater, in part because the cross-xers seemed so dedicated to the advancement of stupid arguments.

The most common was Malthus. Malthus, for the non-debaters among us, was a 19th-century economist who wrote a famous essay called “The Principals of Population,” in which he argued that an increase in human population meant certain global doom. He was primarily concerned with food shortages, but he used his food shortages to call for, basically, mass death. Helping poor people was evil, for instance, because keeping them alive will just encourage them to have lots of sex and spawn more poor people, furthering the world’s problems. He was a big fan of famine, plague, and war.

(The money quote: “Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague. In the country we should build our villages near stagnant pools, and particularly encourage settlements in all marshy and unwholesome situations. But above all, we should reprobate specific remedies for ravaging diseases: and those benevolent, but much mistaken men, who have thought they were doing a service to mankind by projecting schemes for the total extirpation of particular disorders. If by these and similar means the annual mortality were increased … we might probably every one of us marry at the age of puberty and yet few be absolutely starved.”)

Anyway, cross-x debate involves building arguments both in favor of and against a given topic. (Last year’s topic: Resolved: That the United States federal government should establish an ocean policy substantially increasing protection of marine natural resources. This year’s: Resolved: That the United States federal government should establish a foreign policy substantially increasing its support of United Nations peacekeeping operations. Wonky shit like that.)

If you were a lame debater who couldn’t come up with a real argument, you could always make up some stupid Malthusian line of “reasoning.” As in:

- “Well, increasing U.N. peacekeeping activities would likely reduce the global threat of war. That would likely save many lives. But Malthus says saving lives is bad because it contributes to global overpopulation. Therefore, we should not increase support for U.N. peacekeeping.”

- “Well, protecting marine natural resources would probably mean improving the quality of seafood stocks in future years. That would mean better continued access to seafood for future generations. Seafood is more likely than many foodstuffs to contain freaky bacteria that can kill an unsuspecting diner. But Malthus says that increased bacterial death is good for dealing with overpopulation. Therefore, we should protect our marine natural resources.”

You get the idea. Malthus is the hack debater’s ultimate fall back. No matter what the topic, anything — increased gum chewing! deforestation in the Pampas! a new “Law & Order” spinoff! — can be twisted into being pro-death and thus pro-Malthus.

Don’t believe me? Here’s a discussion forum for cross-x debaters. Do a search for “Malthus” — at the moment, it generates 324 hits. For the marine natural resources topic, a popular argument appears to have been “whale Malthus,” which claims that there are just too many whales and we need to start nuking them (!) to keep their numbers down, for their own good.

(While it’s not strictly a Malthus argument, I love this attempt: “He also talks about if all whals got together, not even half the whales in the world to exact, could swin in one direction and shift the tides and mess up the climate so how. It is some major stuff!” Killer whales, indeed!)

Anyway, these people are the reason I was a Lincoln-Douglas debater.

02 August 2004 | 9 comments

Media update: I’m supposed to be on KEOM (that’s 88.5 on your FM dial) tomorrow at 1:30 p.m. I’ll be talking about Navigating Your School, our back-to-school section.

Then, Wednesday morning, I’ll be on Fox 4’s morning show “Good Day Dallas,” sometime during the 7 a.m. hour. Hmm, I might need a haircut before then.

02 August 2004 | No comments