Three men promised to stun revelers with outlandish stunts on New Year's Eve, but only two came through. Rhys Millen, 36, attempted to drive a truck through a back flip at the Rio. The truck twisted midair, causing it to roll on landing. Robbie Knievel, son of Evil, successfully jumped the Mirage Volcano. But the night belonged to Robbie Madison, who soared 96 feet into the air to land on the Las Vegas version of the Arc de Triomphe, then free-fell more than 50 feet before hitting the ramp to end the jump.This is Textual Healing, so we ought to say something grandly inspirational about humanity's longing to forever push the limits of experience. A deep thinker might note that the daredevil, as an object of fame, is a strange symbol of what society holds dear. That we reward those who publically risk death and dismembermet for glory says something profound and a little disturbing about how we see the world. But the Grind, thankfully, has no deep thinkers on staff. All we can muster when confronted by a deed of such massive testicular fortitude is something along the lines of, "Whoa. Dude... Man... Whoa...Dude."
Paul Krugman, in his never-ending quest to write about anything but economics, delivers a comically simplistic explanation for everything that has gone wrong in America. Yup, it's the Republicans' fault. Because all Republicans are racist.
"Forty years ago the G.O.P. decided, in effect, to make itself the party of racial backlash," he says without explaining what he means. "Everything that has happened in recent years" is a consequence of that decision."
To support this contention, Krugman pulls a 1981 quote from Republican strategist Lee Atwater. "In 1981 Lee Atwater, the famed Republican political consultant, explained the evolution of the G.O.P.’s 'Southern strategy." Here's the quote:
“You’re getting so abstract now you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites.”
Huh? What does that even mean? Your guess is as good as ours. But from that single line, a wildly out-of-context fragment of a statement delivered over 25 years ago, Krugman concludes that the GOP's distrust of big government is all racially motivated. Republicans don't like big government, he says, not for any genuine concerns about high taxes or intrusion into people's lives, but because it government "takes your money and gives it to Those People."
No one could have any other reason for voting GOP? Ever? Not one? There isn't a a single voter who, even once, voted for lower taxes because, for instance, he wanted to keep more of his own money?
Of course, Republicans are racist. So are Democrats and Independents. Everybody; white, black, red, yellow or brown, is racist in some way. We live in a racist world, unfortunately. But suggesting that all of modern conservatism, from Buckley to Reagan and beyond, exists solely as a plot to keep the back man down is offensive and absurd. This kind of wanton invective poisons our political discourse and is just the pointless demonizing we hoped would go out of style with incoming of a new administration. It's not only unkind to write that all Republicans hate black people, after all, it is patently untrue. Millions of them voted for one in the last election.
The other New York Times editorial has David Brooks celebrating the year's best essays. (Everyone gets one year-end retrospective, we suppose, and this is his.) Brooks especially likes a story by Michael Lewis that appeared in Portfolio. The piece describes two financial analysts, Meredith Whitney and Steve Eisman, who knew early the U.S. financial system was in trouble. This makes want to pay very, very close attention to whatever Whitney and Eisman say next. The story also questions why the people who shouldn't get jobs on Wall Street so often do. Lewis asks, "Was there ever any correlation between the ability to get in and out of Princeton and a talent for taking financial risk?”
We'll go with "No".
