Ross Douthat's White-Guy Confidence
His "nothing to see here" NYT columns are calming, but wrong, wrong, wrong.
Sree’s newsletter is produced w/ Zach Peterson (@zachprague). This cartoon by Matt Wuerker’s (@wuerker) cartoon is smarter than any Ross Douthat column.
🗞 TUNE IN: Our NYT Readalong guest this week is Tara DePorte, Exec. Director of the Human Impacts Institute (@HumanImpacts). Watch this episode (Sunday, 8:30-10 am ET or recorded), and our archives, at http://readalong.link/youtubeplaylist. The Readalong is sponsored by Muck Rack. Interested in sponsorship opportunities? Email sree@digimentors.group and neil@digimentors.group.
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I LIKE READING CONSERVATIVE NEWSPAPER OPINION PIECES. I don’t drink coffee, so they serve as a morning wake-up shot. The Wall Street Journal’s right-wing opinion page and its mostly-wrong takes on taxes, foreign wars, the role of government, etc, have gotten my day started for years. And there was a time I liked reading Ross Douthat’s conservative takes in the famously liberal NYT editorial pages.
He started as a young buck in 2009, filling the slot that had been occupied by conservatives from previous generations like William Safire and Bill Kristol. As the youngest columnist in the paper’s history, he brought a fresh perspective that was often provocative and wrong, but never boring (in 2009, he was a hit at the convention of SAJA, the South Asian Journalists Association, talking about his career with our mutual friend V.V. Ganeshananthan @V_V_G).
In recent years, however, he’s turned into a watered-down, religious-conservative version of Jordan Peterson, the deplorable men’s rights and conspiracy-peddling Joe Rogan pal.
A couple of weeks ago, he decided to write about the Jan. 6 insurrection and to raise an alarm. Not about the threat to democracy by Trump and his co-conspiracists, but by the rest of us!
He wrote:
It’s worth asking whether the people who see potential insurrection lurking everywhere are seeing a danger rising entirely on its own — or in their alarm are helping to invent it.
MSNBC anchor Jonathan Capehart (@capehartj) had the right response, as usual, in a 3-min takedown of Douthat:
If there’s one thing I and millions of others have grown tired of, is being told are rooted-in-reality fear for our fragile democracy is “alarmist.” We were told we were being alarmist when we warned folks to take a certain Queens-born builder’s red-hot, racist rhetoric seriously, that he was a threat to the presidency, the Constitution, American values and basic decency, and he proved our fears warranted time and time again.
His “nothing to see here” columns are calming for many and give Republicans cover to continue to do real harm to the US and the world.
Douthat’s white-guy confidence means he learned nothing from his own underestimation of Trump. Despite this column during the 2016 campaign:
Even as he admitted he underestimated Trump, he made a wrong prediction:
Of course, I'm not completely humbled. Indeed, I'm still proud enough to continue predicting, in defiance of national polling, that there's still no way that Trump will actually be the 2016 Republican nominee.
One would think that being so demonstrably wrong so often would, in fact, lead to one being humbled at least a couple of times. But, that’s not Douthhat’s thing at all. He’s become a master of picking and choosing where the scientific method of problem-solving and logic apply, and where they do not, and it appears to be a trend that will continue apace. It’s a thought space that many of the more occasionally-more-palatable conservative writers occupy all the time.
Late last year, Douthat penned a treatise on abortion, and it’s a glowing example of “well, logic deems thus” without actually discussing the topic in a thoughtful way. It follows the Douthat method to perfection — read the whole thing and you won’t find much new. Importantly, there is no deep discussion on the toll of childbearing in America, our utter lack of a social support system, and the real reasons women actually have abortions, how difficult the decision is, and the many factors that lead to that decision.
There you have it: Proof that columnists (and, yes, newsletter writers) should all have expiry dates.
— Sree / Twitter | Instagram | LinkedIn | YouTube / Cameo
Some of my Republican friends responded to my recent essay about “the last straw” and I hope to share some of their thoughts in a future newsletter. If you’d like to be included, LMK.
A Word to Bills Fans from Armory Square Ventures
Bills fans learned this week that 13 seconds can change everything.
It left us with a lot to consider.
But we, too, #BillsMafia are excited for Buffalo's future.
In solidarity, and in anticipation of what next year might bring,
- The team at Armory Square Ventures
Read Something
The “metaverse” is not new, no matter what the tech bros say on Twitter. It’s been around for a long time, and now some of the originals are trying to keep it from becoming Facebook-ized.
Tech Tip w/ @newyorkbob: Pinball Wizardry Tilts Connected Machines in Players’ Favor
By Robert S. Anthony
Each week, veteran tech journalist Bob Anthony shares a tech tip you don’t want to miss. Follow him @newyorkbob.
In the old days, “upgrading” a pinball machine meant lifting the glass lid, blowing the dust out of the gears and flippers and, er, washing the balls. Today the upgrade process includes another step: Inserting a memory card.
Yes, they look, buzz, ring, vibrate and tilt the same as they did last century, but today’s computer-assisted pinball machines now offer colorful video screens and high-fidelity music and can alert owners over the Internet if they tilt and can’t get back up running. Now they’ve taking connectivity a step further—to your smartphone.
Stern Pinball, purveyors of pinball prowess since the 1970s, recently added Stern Insider, a service which lets players log into pinball machines and take their scores and progress with them. By downloading a free smartphone app and scanning a personal QR code at the machine, players can participate in online events and challenge distant colleagues.
“It’s about player engagement, said George Gomez, Stern’s executive vice president and chief creative officer during a post-CES 2022 virtual press event organized by ShowStoppers. “Pinball machines were very late to the [online] party.”
Stern, based in the Chicago suburb of Elk Grove Village, Ill., offers sophisticated pinball machines featuring licensed music, voice-overs and imagery from famous bands and movie franchises like The Beatles and Avengers: Infinity Quest. Earlier this year Stern added the band Rush to its lineup of Wi-Fi and Ethernet-connected machines.
Gomez said the design of the Rush machine, meant to evoke the feel of a Rush concert, received “a lot of participation from the guys in the band” thanks to the timely assistance of a friend of the band: Ed Robertson, lead singer of Barenaked Ladies.
Stern’s connected pinball machines allow owners to offer specials and promotions and track machine usage, said Gomez, who noted that many older Stern pinball machines can be upgraded to Stern Insider for about $200 a unit.
“If it has an LCD [screen] in the back box, it’s compatible,” he said.
When asked the Covid-19 pandemic had affected sales, Gomez said the results were mixed. He said the pandemic seemed to cause more individuals to bring pinball machines into their homes, so much so that the company was having trouble filling the orders. “We’re facing the same manufacturing challenges the rest of the world is facing,” he said.
The basic Stern Insider plan, which lets players track scores and achievements, compete for prizes and participate in online forums is free, but an all-access plan, which adds access to limited-edition merchandise, behind-the-scenes content and other features, is $40 a year.
Data Points
It’s something I’ve talked a lot about in this space, and it bears repeating when the data backs it up — it’s been a very very tough couple of years, and people are hurting.
Odds & Ends
🩺 Be sure to check out our “She’s On Call” podcast, with surgeons Sujana Chandrasekhar, MD (@DrSujanaENT), and Marina Kurian, MD (@MarinaKurian) — watch the live show on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.
🗞 TUNE IN: Our NYT Readalong guest this week is Tara DePorte, Exec. Director of the Human Impacts Institute (@HumanImpacts). Watch this episode (Sunday, 8:30-10 am ET or recorded), and our archives, at http://readalong.link/youtubeplaylist. The Readalong is sponsored by Muck Rack. Interested in sponsorship opportunities? Email sree@digimentors.group and neil@digimentors.group.
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