December 21, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
Addiction is what happens when your solution to a problem is the same thing that caused the problem in the first place.
This defintion is not original with me, and I can’t remember where I heard it. But I was reminded of it again when I heard the NRA’s official response to the massacre in Newtown.
Decades ago, I spent a lot of time hanging around compulsive gamblers. For most of them, gambling had started as something that was exciting and fun and often social. The trouble began when losses started to mount up. Instead of cutting back, these gamblers would bet even more. They would, to use the currently popular phrase, double down.
From a distance, it might seem irrational – man who earns $1,000 a week betting $5,000 on a football game when he’s already $5,000 in debt. But for the gambler in that situation, the bet is perfectly logical and rational. For one thing, he knows that winning is always possible. He knows this from his own experience – even losing gamblers win some of their bets. In fact, if only he had bet the Falcons last week, as he had been thinking of doing, rather than the Giants, he wouldn’t be in this mess. Besides, given his salary and expenses, there’s no other way to get out of the hole. So betting several thousand on the games this week is a logical solution to the problem caused by his betting in previous weeks.
The US has the highest rate of gun death of any industrialized country. The NRA’s solution to this problem is more guns. The logic is clear. As their statement said, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” More guns – unrestricted manufacture and sale of them – means more good guys with guns. Just as the gambler looks at all debts from his past gambling losses, America looks at all the guns piled up from its past gun policies – guns so available that bad guys have no trouble getting them. And just as the gambler sees the solution as more gambling, the NRA sees the solution as more guns. After all, you can’t make 300 million guns disappear. What else is there except for everyone to carry gun?
I remember the gambler who one afternoon tried to coax me into lending him $2 so he could make a bet at the track. He told me he had been laid off from his job, he had family difficulties (a child with serious medical problems), and he was deeply in debt. But with $2 to bet on a horse – and he knew how to handicap the horses, he was certain of that – when the horse won, he’d have a little more capital to bet on the next race, maybe an exacta, and so on. I questioned his logic and the likelihood of that happening. “What else can I do?” he said.
This Time It’s Different . . . Or Is It?
December 20, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
Immediately after the Newtown killings I wrote a despairing post with the title, “Game Over - Guns Win.” Peter Moskos, who had a post with a similar title - “Gun Rights? Your Side Won” – reminds me that nearly two years ago he had basically the same post (here) with this cartoon by Tom Tomorrow.
This time it’s different, but only in the sense that columnists and politicians are at least talking about guns and gun laws. Even the NRA says it’s getting into the act (“prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again”).
Will the results be different this time? Apparently some people think so. Which people? The ones buying AR-15s and other weapons like there’s no tomorrow. Or like there’s an actual gun law tomorrow. Maybe they’re right. Or maybe, as in the past, the familiar kabuki play will run its course. (See this Tom Tomorrow cartoon of the generic debate – or as we now say “conversation” – that used to follow each massacre but then went out of fashion till Newtown brought it back.)
Posted by Jay Livingston
Immediately after the Newtown killings I wrote a despairing post with the title, “Game Over - Guns Win.” Peter Moskos, who had a post with a similar title - “Gun Rights? Your Side Won” – reminds me that nearly two years ago he had basically the same post (here) with this cartoon by Tom Tomorrow.
(Click on the cartoon for a possibly more legible version.)
This time it’s different, but only in the sense that columnists and politicians are at least talking about guns and gun laws. Even the NRA says it’s getting into the act (“prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again”).
Will the results be different this time? Apparently some people think so. Which people? The ones buying AR-15s and other weapons like there’s no tomorrow. Or like there’s an actual gun law tomorrow. Maybe they’re right. Or maybe, as in the past, the familiar kabuki play will run its course. (See this Tom Tomorrow cartoon of the generic debate – or as we now say “conversation” – that used to follow each massacre but then went out of fashion till Newtown brought it back.)
“In Which” Craft
December 20, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
Student writing. I’ve gotten used to the random apostrophe that makes it’s appearance in some plural’s but not others. But now, in the last couple of years, I’ve been seeing a rise in the gratuitous “in which ” where “which” would do. On the final exam Monday one student wrote.
My guess as to the origins and appeal of “in which” is the same as my guess about “for Robert and I.” It sounds more upscale, more sophisticated. If you’re taught that educated people say, “It is I” instead of the more common, “It’s me,” and “Robert and I went swimming” rather than “Robert and me went swimming,” you might assume this more general rule: if you’re not sure, and if the objective pronoun sounds ordinary, switch to the subjective pronoun.**
In the same way, educated people also say “in which.” Stiffly formal English required “in which” so that speakers and writers could avoid ending a sentence, or even a clause or phrase, with a preposition.*** Not “the town I live in” but “the town in which I live.” The first one sounds like the way ordinary people talk, but the second, with its “in which,” sounds like the way educated people talk.
My hunch is that this use of “in which” will not catch on. But then I would have said the same thing about “between you and I” (or in the Easy Aces’ version, “entre nous and me”).
(An earlier post on talking sophisticated – duplicity instead of duplication, idyllic instead of ideal, etc. – is here )
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* The course is taught by a good writer who, I think, emphasizes clear and simple language and warns against pretentious sounding writing.
** The real problem is that English does not have a disjunctive pronoun – the equivalent of the French moi. “C’est moi” and “pour Robert et moi.” In strictly correct English, we would have to use I in the first phrase and me in the second.
***A silly rule probably based on the silly idea that English is really Latin.
Posted by Jay Livingston
Student writing. I’ve gotten used to the random apostrophe that makes it’s appearance in some plural’s but not others. But now, in the last couple of years, I’ve been seeing a rise in the gratuitous “in which ” where “which” would do. On the final exam Monday one student wrote.
The workers had a specific task in which they did and left.I get a half dozen or more of these “in which” constructions each semester. Montclair students are not the best writers, and I thought that this might be a local thing. But I recently came across a blog post by a graduate student in a writing course at an expensive private university.*
It seems that memes and videos of violent and/or grotesque images are constantly posted to social media sites in which people find humorous and are quick to like, repost, retweet and share.Maybe she meant to say, “sites in which people find humor” and then changed it to “humorous” and forgot to delete the “in.” If so it’s just a proofreading error. But maybe it isn’t. The examples I see from my students are not proofreading errors. The students apparently like the way “in which” sounds. But why?
My guess as to the origins and appeal of “in which” is the same as my guess about “for Robert and I.” It sounds more upscale, more sophisticated. If you’re taught that educated people say, “It is I” instead of the more common, “It’s me,” and “Robert and I went swimming” rather than “Robert and me went swimming,” you might assume this more general rule: if you’re not sure, and if the objective pronoun sounds ordinary, switch to the subjective pronoun.**
In the same way, educated people also say “in which.” Stiffly formal English required “in which” so that speakers and writers could avoid ending a sentence, or even a clause or phrase, with a preposition.*** Not “the town I live in” but “the town in which I live.” The first one sounds like the way ordinary people talk, but the second, with its “in which,” sounds like the way educated people talk.
My hunch is that this use of “in which” will not catch on. But then I would have said the same thing about “between you and I” (or in the Easy Aces’ version, “entre nous and me”).
(An earlier post on talking sophisticated – duplicity instead of duplication, idyllic instead of ideal, etc. – is here )
--------------------------------
* The course is taught by a good writer who, I think, emphasizes clear and simple language and warns against pretentious sounding writing.
** The real problem is that English does not have a disjunctive pronoun – the equivalent of the French moi. “C’est moi” and “pour Robert et moi.” In strictly correct English, we would have to use I in the first phrase and me in the second.
***A silly rule probably based on the silly idea that English is really Latin.
Talking Sense About Gun Laws
December 19, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
Both Chris Uggen and Ezra Klein have sensible things to say about guns – much more sensible than my rant of a few days ago. They both argue that no legislation can prevent mass killings like the one in Newtown, though restrictions on assault rifles and other weapons might reduce the number of deaths in such incidents. But these mass killings, although newsworthy, account for a small fraction of all gun deaths. What new laws might be able to do is reduce the far more frequent gun deaths – the less newsworthy street-crime and gang killings.
Posted by Jay Livingston
Both Chris Uggen and Ezra Klein have sensible things to say about guns – much more sensible than my rant of a few days ago. They both argue that no legislation can prevent mass killings like the one in Newtown, though restrictions on assault rifles and other weapons might reduce the number of deaths in such incidents. But these mass killings, although newsworthy, account for a small fraction of all gun deaths. What new laws might be able to do is reduce the far more frequent gun deaths – the less newsworthy street-crime and gang killings.
The Naked (Lunch) and the Dead
December 18, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
Glenn Reynolds has a USA Today op-ed scorning gun control laws (and really scorning people who want gun control). Here’s the lede:
Reynolds is a law professor and presumably knows a lot about the law and maybe a lot about guns, but apparently he doesn’t know a lot about Burroughs. If he did, he might not have given the naked lunchman pride of place in his argument.
As TBogg at FiredogLake reminds us, Burroughs is not exactly the poster child for loose gun laws. In fact, he is prime anecdotal evidence for why having easy access to guns might not be such a great idea.
When Burroughs was living in Mexico in 1951, he shot his wife in the forehead. He was playing a game they called “William Tell.” He was, of course, drunk.
That’s one version. In a second version, given after Burroughs’s lawyer arrived on the scene, Burroughs “claimed he misfired while showing the gun to a friend he was trying to sell it to.”
After two weeks in jail, Burroughs was released on bail and eventually went back to the US. Mexico tried him in absentia. He was convicted and given a two-year suspended sentence.
Posted by Jay Livingston
Glenn Reynolds has a USA Today op-ed scorning gun control laws (and really scorning people who want gun control). Here’s the lede:
“After a shooting spree,” author William Burroughs once said, “they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it.” Burroughs continued: “I sure as hell wouldn't want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.”
Reynolds is a law professor and presumably knows a lot about the law and maybe a lot about guns, but apparently he doesn’t know a lot about Burroughs. If he did, he might not have given the naked lunchman pride of place in his argument.
As TBogg at FiredogLake reminds us, Burroughs is not exactly the poster child for loose gun laws. In fact, he is prime anecdotal evidence for why having easy access to guns might not be such a great idea.
When Burroughs was living in Mexico in 1951, he shot his wife in the forehead. He was playing a game they called “William Tell.” He was, of course, drunk.
At first the killer declared that in the said gathering, after there had been a great consumption of gin, he tried to demonstrate his magnificent marksmanship, emulating William Tell, and to that end he placed a glass of liquor upon the head of his wife, and aiming over the glass, at a distance of two meters, he fired, but as a consequence and result of the state of drunkenness in which he found himself, he missed the shot lamentably and injured the forehead of his wife with a bullet.
That’s one version. In a second version, given after Burroughs’s lawyer arrived on the scene, Burroughs “claimed he misfired while showing the gun to a friend he was trying to sell it to.”
After two weeks in jail, Burroughs was released on bail and eventually went back to the US. Mexico tried him in absentia. He was convicted and given a two-year suspended sentence.
It is believed Bill’s wealthy parents dispensed thousands of dollars in legal fees and bribes to Mexican authorities. [More details are here.]As for the Norman Mailer allusion in the title of this post, it’s a good thing he only had a knife and not a gun.
Game Over - Guns Win
December 14, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
It’s still too early to know what went on in the Newton CT elementary school shooting. Right now, the report is that 25 are dead, at least 18 of them children.
I’m waiting for the reaction of the “gun rights” activists – if only third grade teachers (and maybe third graders too) carried guns in class every day, lives would be saved.
They’re right. Weaponized teachers and students might have killed the shooter before he had killed so many.
Let’s face it, the logic of the gun lobby has won – not just in court but in everyday life. If you create a world where every person, no matter how angry or demented, can easily get a gun it makes sense for everyone to be armed, the deadlier the weapon the better. And we have created that world.
So spare me the “terrible, terrible tragedy” version. How many terrible, terrible tragedies do we need before we see that starting decades ago, we began setting the stage for this drama? Why are we surprised each month, each week, when the scenario is played out?
How did we get to this world where there are so many guns around that it’s a fairly simple matter to buy one, legally or illegally, or steal one (as in the Oregon mall shooting earlier this week).
Blame the NRA? I do not know the history or the research on this, but a Marxist voice in my left ear is whispering, “Follow the money.” The NRA is merely the ideological superstructure built on the economic substructure of the the gun industry. It’s not the NRA that produces, sells, and makes a handsome profit from the millions of guns.
You can’t sell, of course, if nobody wants to buy. But gun economics may be a variant of Say’s law: supply creates its own demand. If you increase the supply of guns – especially if they fall into the hands of robbers, drug, dealers, and other bad guys – the more you will increase the demand from people who want guns for protection. The more guns that are out there, the less effective will be any attempts to restrict them.
There are now hundreds of millions of guns in circulation. Even if public opinion shifted to overwhelming support for gun control, even if laws were passed, attempts keep guns out of the hands of people with bad motives would be futile. That might have worked a few decades ago. Not any more.
The gun people have won. They always knew that guns were deadly and dangerous. That’s why they want them for protection – guns are far more effective than knives or other weapons. The gun people have also known that a relatively few people use them to commit horrible slaughter. But to the gun rights absolutists, these are acceptable losses.
If the the NRA, and other gun lovers thought that this loss of life were not acceptable, they would have taken a different position on proposed laws. The innocent victims are just so much collateral damage in the noble battle for freedom (and profits).
I wonder if the gun lovers will talk about their wonderful freedom to the parents in Newtown, Connecticut.
(An earlier post on policy and acceptable risks is here.)
Posted by Jay Livingston
It’s still too early to know what went on in the Newton CT elementary school shooting. Right now, the report is that 25 are dead, at least 18 of them children.
I’m waiting for the reaction of the “gun rights” activists – if only third grade teachers (and maybe third graders too) carried guns in class every day, lives would be saved.
They’re right. Weaponized teachers and students might have killed the shooter before he had killed so many.
Let’s face it, the logic of the gun lobby has won – not just in court but in everyday life. If you create a world where every person, no matter how angry or demented, can easily get a gun it makes sense for everyone to be armed, the deadlier the weapon the better. And we have created that world.
So spare me the “terrible, terrible tragedy” version. How many terrible, terrible tragedies do we need before we see that starting decades ago, we began setting the stage for this drama? Why are we surprised each month, each week, when the scenario is played out?
How did we get to this world where there are so many guns around that it’s a fairly simple matter to buy one, legally or illegally, or steal one (as in the Oregon mall shooting earlier this week).
Blame the NRA? I do not know the history or the research on this, but a Marxist voice in my left ear is whispering, “Follow the money.” The NRA is merely the ideological superstructure built on the economic substructure of the the gun industry. It’s not the NRA that produces, sells, and makes a handsome profit from the millions of guns.
You can’t sell, of course, if nobody wants to buy. But gun economics may be a variant of Say’s law: supply creates its own demand. If you increase the supply of guns – especially if they fall into the hands of robbers, drug, dealers, and other bad guys – the more you will increase the demand from people who want guns for protection. The more guns that are out there, the less effective will be any attempts to restrict them.
There are now hundreds of millions of guns in circulation. Even if public opinion shifted to overwhelming support for gun control, even if laws were passed, attempts keep guns out of the hands of people with bad motives would be futile. That might have worked a few decades ago. Not any more.
The gun people have won. They always knew that guns were deadly and dangerous. That’s why they want them for protection – guns are far more effective than knives or other weapons. The gun people have also known that a relatively few people use them to commit horrible slaughter. But to the gun rights absolutists, these are acceptable losses.
If the the NRA, and other gun lovers thought that this loss of life were not acceptable, they would have taken a different position on proposed laws. The innocent victims are just so much collateral damage in the noble battle for freedom (and profits).
I wonder if the gun lovers will talk about their wonderful freedom to the parents in Newtown, Connecticut.
(An earlier post on policy and acceptable risks is here.)
Surveys — Questions and Answers
December 10, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
Neil Caren at Scatterplot lifts up the rock that is the New Family Structure Study (NFSS) – the basis of Mark Regnerus’s controversial research on children of gay parents – and discovers some strange creatures wriggling about underneath:
We all rely on surveys – pollsters, social scientists, market researchers, government agencies, businesses. We try to make our questions straightforward. But the question we ask is not always the question people answer. And people’s answers – about what they think and what they did – are influenced by external factors we might not have considered. Especially if the survey is a one-off (unlike the GSS and other surveys with frequently asked questions), we have to be cautious about taking the results at face value.
(Previous posts on this problem are here and here.)
Posted by Jay Livingston
Neil Caren at Scatterplot lifts up the rock that is the New Family Structure Study (NFSS) – the basis of Mark Regnerus’s controversial research on children of gay parents – and discovers some strange creatures wriggling about underneath:
. . . 85 people reported living at least four months with their “mother’s girlfriend/partner.” However—and this is where it gets tricky—a different question (S8) asked, “Did you ever live with your mother while she was in a romantic relationship with another woman?” Eight people who reported in the calendar that they lived with their mother’s girlfriend answered no to this question.So ten percent of the people who said they lived with the mother’s girlfriend also said on a different question that they did not live with the mother’s girlfriend.
We all rely on surveys – pollsters, social scientists, market researchers, government agencies, businesses. We try to make our questions straightforward. But the question we ask is not always the question people answer. And people’s answers – about what they think and what they did – are influenced by external factors we might not have considered. Especially if the survey is a one-off (unlike the GSS and other surveys with frequently asked questions), we have to be cautious about taking the results at face value.
(Previous posts on this problem are here and here.)
All Happy Family Christmas Letters Are Alike
December 9, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
A Facebook friend asked about the origins of the Christmas letter – you know, those cheerful year-end summaries that seem to have been written by some omniscient third person telling you about everyone in the family. Her question made me wonder about other aspects of this custom, not just when it arose. Where did it start (socially more than geographically)? What has been the pattern of diffusion? What are the demographics?
I imagine that soon Hallmark will be selling a convenient standard-form version where all you have to do is fill in a few blanks, sort of like Mad Libs.
In case you are unfamiliar with the genre, here is one I got recently.
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Coming Soon
Posted by Jay Livingston
A Facebook friend asked about the origins of the Christmas letter – you know, those cheerful year-end summaries that seem to have been written by some omniscient third person telling you about everyone in the family. Her question made me wonder about other aspects of this custom, not just when it arose. Where did it start (socially more than geographically)? What has been the pattern of diffusion? What are the demographics?
I imagine that soon Hallmark will be selling a convenient standard-form version where all you have to do is fill in a few blanks, sort of like Mad Libs.
In case you are unfamiliar with the genre, here is one I got recently.
It seems like only yesterday that we were mailing out last year’s Christmas letter, but here we are a year later, once again sharing with our friends what the Loman family has been up to.
Willy had the car fixed, and it’s running just fine. Truth be told, Linda would prefer him to work closer to home, but you can’t keep a salesman off the road. We’re glad to be all together at home for the holidays, even if Christmas here in Brooklyn is different from what it is where most of you are. I long to hear those traditional carols. Hap jokes that the song he hears most in the yule season here is “We’re doing our Christmas shopping at Robert Hall this year.” Hap and Biff – they do bring such joy to our world.
We’re looking forward to the new year to bring us some new developments. America is the land of opportunity, and the Loman men are looking to make the most of it. Willy, ever the dreamer, has some really promising ideas, and his boss Howard is taking a keen interest. Willy might even give Bernard (our neighbor Charley’s boy) a break and bring him in to take care of some of the legal details.
Biff has big plans too, and he has the patience to wait for the right person to open the door. Modest Biff doesn’t want us to say so, but being a star athlete and good-looking doesn’t hurt either when you’re trying to lure the venture capitalists.
We also stop and remember those who are no longer with us to celebrate the holiday. We can never forget Willy’s brother, Uncle Ben, who walked into the jungle at seventeen, and when he walked out, by God he had rice. (We still quote Uncle Ben’s words of wisdom – with great rice comes great responsibility. )
But we also remember the good times. I think I heard the boys chuckling again about the time Biff went to Boston as a surprise to Willy who was there on a sales trip and had no idea Biff was coming. Oh, those pranksters. They’re just irrepressible.
We hope all is well with our friends in this special season. We’re glad that the Christmas holiday gives us a moment away from the everyday busy-ness and allows us to think about the important areas of life where attention must be paid.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year
The Lomans
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Coming Soon
- Season’s Greetings from Jason, Medea, and the Boys
- The Portnoy Family Holiday Letter
- The Gambino Family Christmas Offering (You Can’t Refuse)
- and others
Explaining the Election
December 6, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
In the view of many conservative journalists and bloggers, Obama won the election because his campaign was strategically canny – clever, even deceptive, and focused so as to maximize his electoral count. Some Republicans, maybe half of them, have another explanation: ACORN stole the election for Obama. That one seems less persuasive since ACORN hasn’t existed for a couple of years. (The HufPo story on that poll is here.)
But how about this wild guess: Obama won because his policies were favored by a majority of the people.
Posted by Jay Livingston
In the view of many conservative journalists and bloggers, Obama won the election because his campaign was strategically canny – clever, even deceptive, and focused so as to maximize his electoral count. Some Republicans, maybe half of them, have another explanation: ACORN stole the election for Obama. That one seems less persuasive since ACORN hasn’t existed for a couple of years. (The HufPo story on that poll is here.)
But how about this wild guess: Obama won because his policies were favored by a majority of the people.
Sixty-five percent of voters back increased taxes for Americans making more than $250,000 a year, while 31 percent oppose, according to a Quinnipiac University poll . . .
Voters overwhelmingly oppose cutting Medicaid spending, 70-25 percent. Voters surveyed also oppose gradually raising the Medicare eligibility age, 51-44 percent, and don’t support cuts to military spending by a margin of 55-41 percent. Those surveyed also said a “no-taxes” pledge isn’t a good idea, 85-10 percent. [From Politico.]
SNAP Judgment
December 5, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
Mayor Booker’s decision to go on the SNAP diet has gotten a lot of coverage in the press. His hometown paper, the Star-Ledger, had him on the front page.
If this is really what the mayor bought with his food stamps, there’s one stereotype he’s not putting to rest – the Coastal elitist. Yes, he’s got the Goya garbanzos and frijoles, and he’s got the yams.
But organic extra virgin olive oil? Really, Cory.
Posted by Jay Livingston
Mayor Booker’s decision to go on the SNAP diet has gotten a lot of coverage in the press. His hometown paper, the Star-Ledger, had him on the front page.
But organic extra virgin olive oil? Really, Cory.
Accentuating the Negative
December 5, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
Cross-posted in slightly edited form at Sociological Images
Try not to think about an Oldsmobile.
I’ve been thinking about Oldsmobile. I mentioned it in passing in the previous post, and since then I’ve been wondering about “Not Your Father’s Oldsmobile” – the brand’s swan song. Matthew Yglesias at Slate thinks that the campaign alienated the regular customers, the ones who bought a new Olds every few years, saying to them in effect, “You’re a geezer, an Oldster, and have been for a while – sans youth, sans sex, sans taste, sans everything except your crummy car.”
The tag that completed the famous set-up line was, “The new generation of Olds.”
The target of the campaign was to attract young car buyers, but it missed badly. Why? My guess is the futility of negation. Saying what something is not doesn’t give people a clear picture of what that something actually is. But that’s not the problem here. The message was clear, especially with that tag about generations.
The problem is that direct negation can reinforce the idea you are trying to deny – as in the paradoxical command to not think about an elephant. “I am not a crook,” said Richard Nixon in his televised address about Watergate. It’s his most remembered line, and when he spoke it, the TV screen might as well have had an overlay flashing the words “Game Over.”
If the denial contradicts general perceptions (i.e., the brand), people might not hear it at all, or worse, they might hear the opposite. Ever since fact-checking went public in a big way a few years ago, we’ve seen corrections to the lies that politicians have told about one another. But as
Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler have shown (here), corrections can boomerang, especially when they clash with ideas the reader already has.
So what’s a struggling car company to do about its doddering demographics? They can’t go back to 1905 and “Come away with me Lucille.”*
Unfortunately, the hip hop dudes were walking to their Escalades, Beamers, and Lambos. Not a Cutlass to be seen.
Maybe putting the idea into the youth idiom of the day (the late 1980s) would have worked:
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* Times change, cars change, language changes. This pretty waltz from 1905 concludes with lines that by mid-century would have seemed amusingly suggestive:
Posted by Jay Livingston
Cross-posted in slightly edited form at Sociological Images
Try not to think about an Oldsmobile.
I’ve been thinking about Oldsmobile. I mentioned it in passing in the previous post, and since then I’ve been wondering about “Not Your Father’s Oldsmobile” – the brand’s swan song. Matthew Yglesias at Slate thinks that the campaign alienated the regular customers, the ones who bought a new Olds every few years, saying to them in effect, “You’re a geezer, an Oldster, and have been for a while – sans youth, sans sex, sans taste, sans everything except your crummy car.”
The word “generation” was key. If you recall, each commercial featured a celebrity and one of his or her offspring. This is why the campaign is so damn silly.That’s from the ad man who claims to have created that tag. He also has some war stories from the shoots, including one about William Shatner’s daughter’s nipples (here). But I digress.
The target of the campaign was to attract young car buyers, but it missed badly. Why? My guess is the futility of negation. Saying what something is not doesn’t give people a clear picture of what that something actually is. But that’s not the problem here. The message was clear, especially with that tag about generations.
The problem is that direct negation can reinforce the idea you are trying to deny – as in the paradoxical command to not think about an elephant. “I am not a crook,” said Richard Nixon in his televised address about Watergate. It’s his most remembered line, and when he spoke it, the TV screen might as well have had an overlay flashing the words “Game Over.”
If the denial contradicts general perceptions (i.e., the brand), people might not hear it at all, or worse, they might hear the opposite. Ever since fact-checking went public in a big way a few years ago, we’ve seen corrections to the lies that politicians have told about one another. But as
Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler have shown (here), corrections can boomerang, especially when they clash with ideas the reader already has.
Can these false or unsubstantiated beliefs about politics be corrected? . . . Results indicate that corrections frequently fail to reduce misperceptions among the targeted ideological group. We also document several instances of a “backfire effect” in which corrections actually increase misperceptions among the group in question.
So what’s a struggling car company to do about its doddering demographics? They can’t go back to 1905 and “Come away with me Lucille.”*
Maybe putting the idea into the youth idiom of the day (the late 1980s) would have worked:
Your father’s Oldsmobile . . . . NOT!(Now you know why I never went into advertising.)
------------------
* Times change, cars change, language changes. This pretty waltz from 1905 concludes with lines that by mid-century would have seemed amusingly suggestive:
You can go as far as you like with meYou can hear that line in the opening of this video (after the 15-second intro). To sing along karaoke style, fast forward to about 3:25.
In my merry Oldsmobile.
“Lincoln” and Party Images
December 3, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
I saw “Lincoln” over the weekend. The period-piece aspects of the movie were easy to slip into – the clothes and speech, the hair style and whiskers – except for one. It was the Republicans who wanted to end slavery; the Democrats were the party of the racists. I couldn’t get today’s party images out of my mind. Yet this wasn’t some bizarro world. It was US history.
Brand images are sticky. In the late 20th century, Oldsmobile tried to shed its codger image. “Not your father’s Oldsmobile,” they said. You don’t see that ad anymore. You don’t see any Oldsmobile ads at all these days. Or Oldsmobiles. Efforts to change the brand don’t always go well.
Some Republicans are now calling for the party to change its image – “not your rich white uncle’s GOP.” John Sides at WaPo’s Wonkblog has discouraging data for those hopeful Republicans. In the 1950s, the public saw the GOP as the party for the rich.
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*The link will take you to an audio of the famous 1981 Atwater interview where he discusses the strategy of finding issues that, while not explicitly about race, still attract anti-Black voters. In the good old days, says Atwater, you could simply say, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” Nowadays, you have to be more creative.
Posted by Jay Livingston
I saw “Lincoln” over the weekend. The period-piece aspects of the movie were easy to slip into – the clothes and speech, the hair style and whiskers – except for one. It was the Republicans who wanted to end slavery; the Democrats were the party of the racists. I couldn’t get today’s party images out of my mind. Yet this wasn’t some bizarro world. It was US history.
Brand images are sticky. In the late 20th century, Oldsmobile tried to shed its codger image. “Not your father’s Oldsmobile,” they said. You don’t see that ad anymore. You don’t see any Oldsmobile ads at all these days. Or Oldsmobiles. Efforts to change the brand don’t always go well.
Some Republicans are now calling for the party to change its image – “not your rich white uncle’s GOP.” John Sides at WaPo’s Wonkblog has discouraging data for those hopeful Republicans. In the 1950s, the public saw the GOP as the party for the rich.
Consider this poll question: “When you think of people who are Republicans, what type of person comes to mind?” . . . 31 percent picked words like “wealthy” and “business executive” while only 6 percent chose “working class” and its kindred.Sixty years later, that image has not changed. In a 2012 poll
most (54 percent) said that the Republicans were better for Wall Street; only 13 percent said this of Democrats.In the 1860s, the Republicans were the party of civil rights. With help from strategists like Richard Nixon and Lee Atwater,* they managed to succeed in changing that image, but it took a century. It seems a bit optimistic of conservatives to think that they will lose the Mr. Moneybags image in a few short years.
*The link will take you to an audio of the famous 1981 Atwater interview where he discusses the strategy of finding issues that, while not explicitly about race, still attract anti-Black voters. In the good old days, says Atwater, you could simply say, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” Nowadays, you have to be more creative.
No Satisfaction
November 28, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
Cross-posted at Sociological Images
Liberal women want more sex.
Mark Regnerus has been fooling around with the New Family Structures Survey. (His blog post is here.) Back in June, Regnerus used the NFSS data to conclude that gay parents are bad for children. Now, he runs the regressions and finds that liberalism leaves women sexually dissatisfied.
Those liberal women, they try and they try and they try; they can’t get no . . . satisfaction. Hey, hey, hey – that’s what they say
The differences held even with controls for how much sex the woman had had recently. Nor did adding other possible explanatory variables dampen the effect
To test this idea, Regnerus controlled for religious attendance. When he did, “political liberalism finally went silent as a predictor.” Churchgoing liberals were no more insatiable than were their sexually content, politically conservative co-worshipers.
So here’s the scenario. All women want transcendence. Since liberal women are not religious, they seek transcendence in sex and don’t find it. They’re dissatisfied, but they cling to the idea that sex will bring them transcendence if only they have more of it. So they keep looking for transcendence in all the wrong places. Conservative women seek transcendence in religion and in everyday activities. And that works.
Conclusion: Religion is deeply satisfying; sex, not so much.
This explanation, with its attribution of psychological-spiritual longing, makes some huge assumptions about what’s going on inside women’s heads.
The sociological explanation is much simpler. It looks not to deep inner longings for transcendence but to social norms, beliefs, and values. It rests on the assumption that people’s desires are shaped by external forces, especially the culture of the social world they live in. In some social worlds, sex for women is good, so it’s OK for them to want more sex. In others, sex for women has a lower place on the scale of values. It is less of a “focal concern.”
These differences make for differences in who is content with what – a liberal, East Coast man and a WASP woman from the Midwest, for example.
On one side, three times a week is “constantly.” On the other, three times a week is “hardly ever.” Can we really say that the difference here is about spiritual transcendence?
In some social worlds, a woman can never be too thin or too rich. In those worlds, women diet and exercise in a way we might find obsessive. But that’s what their culture rewards. They want more thinness, more money. Some cultures hold that sex is a good thing – certainly more pleasurable than dieting and exercising – therefore, more is better. In some social worlds, that’s the way some people feel about money (never too rich). Are these desires really about seeking transcendence, or they about cultural values?
And there’s one other explanation that may not have occurred to Regnerus: maybe conservative men are better lovers; they satisfy their conservative bedmates in ways liberals can only dream of.
(UPDATE). Lisa Wade of Sociological Images has suggested a much better explanation: Liberal men are such good lovers that when you ask their liberal partners if they want more sex, the answer is, “Do I ever. Wouldn’t you?” But conservative men are so incompetent in bed that when you ask their partners if they want more, the answer is, “No thanks.”
Posted by Jay Livingston
Cross-posted at Sociological Images
Liberal women want more sex.
Mark Regnerus has been fooling around with the New Family Structures Survey. (His blog post is here.) Back in June, Regnerus used the NFSS data to conclude that gay parents are bad for children. Now, he runs the regressions and finds that liberalism leaves women sexually dissatisfied.
Question:“Are you content with the amount of sex you’re having?”The differences were clear.
The possible answers:
- Yes
- No, I’d prefer more
- No, I’d prefer less
The differences held even with controls for how much sex the woman had had recently. Nor did adding other possible explanatory variables dampen the effect
the measure of political liberalism remains significantly associated with the odds of wanting more sex even after controlling for the frequency of actual intercourse over the past two weeks, their age, marital status, education level, whether they’ve masturbated recently, their anxiety level, sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, depressive symptoms, and porn use.Regnerus says he was puzzled and asked an economist friend for her explanation. She, like Regnerus, is a serious Christian, and saw it as a matter of seeking “transcendence.” Liberal women want to have more sex because they feel the lack of sufficient transcendence in life and seek it in sex. Conservative women find transcendence in the seemingly mundane – “sanctifying daily life” – so they do not need sex for transcendence. Or as Regnerus puts it, “Basically, liberal women substitute sex for religion.”
To test this idea, Regnerus controlled for religious attendance. When he did, “political liberalism finally went silent as a predictor.” Churchgoing liberals were no more insatiable than were their sexually content, politically conservative co-worshipers.
So here’s the scenario. All women want transcendence. Since liberal women are not religious, they seek transcendence in sex and don’t find it. They’re dissatisfied, but they cling to the idea that sex will bring them transcendence if only they have more of it. So they keep looking for transcendence in all the wrong places. Conservative women seek transcendence in religion and in everyday activities. And that works.
Conclusion: Religion is deeply satisfying; sex, not so much.
This explanation, with its attribution of psychological-spiritual longing, makes some huge assumptions about what’s going on inside women’s heads.
The sociological explanation is much simpler. It looks not to deep inner longings for transcendence but to social norms, beliefs, and values. It rests on the assumption that people’s desires are shaped by external forces, especially the culture of the social world they live in. In some social worlds, sex for women is good, so it’s OK for them to want more sex. In others, sex for women has a lower place on the scale of values. It is less of a “focal concern.”
These differences make for differences in who is content with what – a liberal, East Coast man and a WASP woman from the Midwest, for example.
On one side, three times a week is “constantly.” On the other, three times a week is “hardly ever.” Can we really say that the difference here is about spiritual transcendence?
In some social worlds, a woman can never be too thin or too rich. In those worlds, women diet and exercise in a way we might find obsessive. But that’s what their culture rewards. They want more thinness, more money. Some cultures hold that sex is a good thing – certainly more pleasurable than dieting and exercising – therefore, more is better. In some social worlds, that’s the way some people feel about money (never too rich). Are these desires really about seeking transcendence, or they about cultural values?
And there’s one other explanation that may not have occurred to Regnerus: maybe conservative men are better lovers; they satisfy their conservative bedmates in ways liberals can only dream of.
(UPDATE). Lisa Wade of Sociological Images has suggested a much better explanation: Liberal men are such good lovers that when you ask their liberal partners if they want more sex, the answer is, “Do I ever. Wouldn’t you?” But conservative men are so incompetent in bed that when you ask their partners if they want more, the answer is, “No thanks.”
Facts and Faith
November 27, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
Marco Rubio was asked in a GQ interview, “How old do you think the earth is?” Rubio, who came to national prominence at the GOP convention, didn’t answer the question.
Alex Knapp at Forbes disagrees.
The real trouble comes when policy-makers base policy on what they would like the facts to be rather than what they are.
------------------------
* I hope it’s obvious. If not, try this analogy:
“Do you think texting while driving is dangerous?” “I’m not a highway engineer, man. That’s a dispute among drivers.” or
“Do you think that smoking causes cancer?” “I’m not a physician, man. I think that’s a dispute among tobacco users and corporations.”
The GQ interview has gotten a fair amount of attention. The right-wing blogger response (see Breitbart.com for an example) is to ignore Rubio’s evasive answer and instead to focus on the question. Their response is to ask, "How dare the liberal leftist media ask a Republican this question?" Presumably, these Rubio defenders would have the same reaction to the texting and smoking questions.
Posted by Jay Livingston
Marco Rubio was asked in a GQ interview, “How old do you think the earth is?” Rubio, who came to national prominence at the GOP convention, didn’t answer the question.
I’m not a scientist, man. I can tell you what recorded history says, I can tell you what the Bible says, but I think that’s a dispute amongst theologians and I think it has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States. I think the age of the universe has zero to do with how our economy is going to grow.Rubio seems to think that if you admit that you’re not a scientist, then science doesn’t matter and that the age of the earth is not a matter of scientific fact. Instead, it is “a dispute among theologians.” The fallacy of that position – faith determining facts – should be obvious.* But what about his second point - that believing in a geological falsehood is irrelevant to having an effective economic policy?
Alex Knapp at Forbes disagrees.
Large parts of the economy absolutely depend on scientists being right about either the age of the Universe or the laws of the Universe that allow scientists to determine its age.The age of the earth is important. If the earth is only 9,000 years old, you couldn’t be reading this right now. Knapp explains why, starting with a galaxy 13 billion light years away. Light from that galaxy took 13 billion years to reach Earth.
Marco Rubio’s Republican colleague Representative Paul Broun, who sits on the House Committee on Science and Technology, recently stated that it was his belief that the Universe is only 9,000 years old. Well, if Broun is right and physicists are wrong, then we have a real problem. Virtually all modern technology relies on optics in some way, shape or form. And in the science of optics, the fact that the speed of light is constant in a vacuum is taken for granted. But the speed of light must not be constant if the universe is only 9,000 years old. It must be capable of being much, much faster. That means that the fundamental physics underlying the Internet, DVDs, laser surgery, and many many more critical parts of the economy are based on bad science. The consequences of that could be drastic, given our dependence on optics for our economic growth.This sounds convincing at first. But I think I agree with Rubio. You can be ignorant or even deliberately wrong about earth science and still make good economic policy. Alexander Hamilton didn’t know how old the earth was, and he probably didn’t believe in evolution either. In fact, even today, most of us, most of the time, could get by thinking the earth was flat. For the daily commute and even a long drive to Thanksgiving with relatives, we don’t really need to consider the curvature of the earth.
The real trouble comes when policy-makers base policy on what they would like the facts to be rather than what they are.
------------------------
* I hope it’s obvious. If not, try this analogy:
“Do you think texting while driving is dangerous?” “I’m not a highway engineer, man. That’s a dispute among drivers.” or
“Do you think that smoking causes cancer?” “I’m not a physician, man. I think that’s a dispute among tobacco users and corporations.”
The GQ interview has gotten a fair amount of attention. The right-wing blogger response (see Breitbart.com for an example) is to ignore Rubio’s evasive answer and instead to focus on the question. Their response is to ask, "How dare the liberal leftist media ask a Republican this question?" Presumably, these Rubio defenders would have the same reaction to the texting and smoking questions.
Thanksgiving Repost
November 22, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
Sociological Images (here) put up my Thanksgiving post from six years ago. Unfortunately, they had to leave out the opening, which was about the new Energizer Bunny balloon. Sociological Images is much more scrupulous about copyright, and the picture was something I'd grabbed from Google Images. Beside, a year later, that balloon is no longer news.
The post was a Durkheimian look at the Macy’s parade as totemistic ritual – one that unifies and energizes the social group. So the new Energizer Bunny balloon had a double meaning for sociologists.
The original 2006 post is here.
Posted by Jay Livingston
Sociological Images (here) put up my Thanksgiving post from six years ago. Unfortunately, they had to leave out the opening, which was about the new Energizer Bunny balloon. Sociological Images is much more scrupulous about copyright, and the picture was something I'd grabbed from Google Images. Beside, a year later, that balloon is no longer news.
The post was a Durkheimian look at the Macy’s parade as totemistic ritual – one that unifies and energizes the social group. So the new Energizer Bunny balloon had a double meaning for sociologists.
The original 2006 post is here.
Now You See It . . .
November 18, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
At the curtain calls for War Horse last night, the loudest applause was for the three people who operate the title character. I suspect that the true object of the audience's admiration was The Handspring Puppet Company that created the fantastic creatures we saw on stage.
The show makes an unusual choice. The puppeteers have no real part in the play; they are not characters. But the puppeteer who operates the horse's head is dressed like one of the Devon farmers. So it's almost impossible for the illusion to take full effect.
Seeing is believing. An, as much social and cognitive psychology has shown, believing is seeing. Or more importantly, not seeing. The wonder of the illusion on stage comes when we see a horse and not merely a horse-shaped lattice of cane. But if we continue to see the puppeteer, if we cannot unsee the puppeteer, we don't quite know what to believe.
When the horse first eats oats from a bucket, you wonder: is the horse doing this, overcoming his reluctance to get near a human (as the story has it) or is the silent farmer leading the animal to lower his head to the oats? (A bit of that scene comes at about this 0:15 mark in this montage.)
Posted by Jay Livingston
At the curtain calls for War Horse last night, the loudest applause was for the three people who operate the title character. I suspect that the true object of the audience's admiration was The Handspring Puppet Company that created the fantastic creatures we saw on stage.
Seeing is believing. An, as much social and cognitive psychology has shown, believing is seeing. Or more importantly, not seeing. The wonder of the illusion on stage comes when we see a horse and not merely a horse-shaped lattice of cane. But if we continue to see the puppeteer, if we cannot unsee the puppeteer, we don't quite know what to believe.
When the horse first eats oats from a bucket, you wonder: is the horse doing this, overcoming his reluctance to get near a human (as the story has it) or is the silent farmer leading the animal to lower his head to the oats? (A bit of that scene comes at about this 0:15 mark in this montage.)
In bunraku, by contrast, each puppet is operated by three people, but they are covered head to toe in black, though sometimes the head puppeteer wears a black kimono and no hood. They are supposed be invisible, and soon they are.
At first when you see bunraku, it seems odd. The three guys in black operating a puppet one-third their size are a distraction. But after a while, you stop seeing them. The stage usually has a dark background, but even when the scene is more brightly lit, you see only the characters in the play, not the puppeteers who operating them.
Here's a bit of classical bunraku. You don’t need to watch the whole two minutes to get the idea of seeing the operators. But that’s much too short a time for you to literally lose sight of the puppeteers. Believe me, in the real theater, you do.
And here's a more modern example.
Careers Night 2012
November 16, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
Wednesday night, the Sociology department had its annual* career night. The featured speakers were four of our graduates from the last few years:
For the students who attended, I think the evening gave them a sense that world held more possibilities than they had imagined. Our students didn’t have many questions during the official Q and A, but afterwards several stayed to talk with the speakers. What I found impressive and encouraging was that our graduates were doing work that they truly liked and found rewarding.
--------------------
* Our previous careers night was in 2009, but in principle it’s an annual event even if the reality does not always conform to that principle.
Posted by Jay Livingston
Wednesday night, the Sociology department had its annual* career night. The featured speakers were four of our graduates from the last few years:
- Alis Drumgo
- Anna Lee Kelly
- Rebekah Rhodes
- Michelle Newton
For the students who attended, I think the evening gave them a sense that world held more possibilities than they had imagined. Our students didn’t have many questions during the official Q and A, but afterwards several stayed to talk with the speakers. What I found impressive and encouraging was that our graduates were doing work that they truly liked and found rewarding.
Rebekah talking about her career path that led her to pre-school teaching.
Anna Lee with Ian, who recently declared as a Sociology major.
Michelle explaining how family court combines law and sociology.
Alis and Victoria, who will be graduating all too soon.
* Our previous careers night was in 2009, but in principle it’s an annual event even if the reality does not always conform to that principle.
Prophecy Fails Again
November 13, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
When the flying saucer didn’t come, when first one clock and then another ticked past midnight of Dec. 20th, when the world was not destroyed, the believers in Mrs. Keech’s living room were desperate for an explanation. They had met and talked and planned. They had listened to Mrs. Keech reading and interpreting the messages from Sananda of the planet Clarion, messages she transcribed in a trance.
They had prepared themselves. But nothing happened.
For hours, the believers sat there, unable to produce a satisfactory account that would make sense of what had happened but that would not undermine their world view. Their confusion was finally resolved by a message from Clarion that Mrs. Keech received at nearly 5 a.m.
Most people who have taken a sociology course will recognize this 1954 scenario. It’s the central moment in When Prophecy Fails, by Festinger, Riecken, and Schachter, published a year later.
A similar failed prediction and self-serving explanation happened after Tuesday’s election – not on the right, but on the left. Since 2008, Mark Crispin Miller has been warning that the Republicans would manipulate voting-machine technology to steal the election. The title of his book says it all: Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election & Why They'll Steal the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them).
Miller had been predicting a Romney win – a fraudulent win, but a win nevertheless. As we know, Obama won. He won the popular vote, the electoral vote, and every battleground state.
Miller’s first explanation, like those of Mrs. Keech’s group, did not quite hit the mark. And, as if following the same script, hours later he came up with an account that echoed the “you saved the world” message from the planet Clarion. (From the New York Times):
UPDATE: Robert Frank (here) suggests that there was in fact a plot to steal Ohio. He bases his speculation on two observations.
Posted by Jay Livingston
When the flying saucer didn’t come, when first one clock and then another ticked past midnight of Dec. 20th, when the world was not destroyed, the believers in Mrs. Keech’s living room were desperate for an explanation. They had met and talked and planned. They had listened to Mrs. Keech reading and interpreting the messages from Sananda of the planet Clarion, messages she transcribed in a trance.
They had prepared themselves. But nothing happened.
For hours, the believers sat there, unable to produce a satisfactory account that would make sense of what had happened but that would not undermine their world view. Their confusion was finally resolved by a message from Clarion that Mrs. Keech received at nearly 5 a.m.
Not since the beginning of time upon this Earth has there been such a force of Good and light as now floods this room and that which has been loosed within this room now floods the entire Earth.The strong faith of that small group had saved Earth from the final cataclysm.
Most people who have taken a sociology course will recognize this 1954 scenario. It’s the central moment in When Prophecy Fails, by Festinger, Riecken, and Schachter, published a year later.
A similar failed prediction and self-serving explanation happened after Tuesday’s election – not on the right, but on the left. Since 2008, Mark Crispin Miller has been warning that the Republicans would manipulate voting-machine technology to steal the election. The title of his book says it all: Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election & Why They'll Steal the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them).
Miller had been predicting a Romney win – a fraudulent win, but a win nevertheless. As we know, Obama won. He won the popular vote, the electoral vote, and every battleground state.
Miller’s first explanation, like those of Mrs. Keech’s group, did not quite hit the mark. And, as if following the same script, hours later he came up with an account that echoed the “you saved the world” message from the planet Clarion. (From the New York Times):
Having braced himself for a very different outcome, Professor Miller wrote an e-mail that sounded almost like a concession: “It simply is no longer possible to stage the sort of ‘upset victory’ that we’ve seen before, without inviting serious investigation.”Miller and his group of followers, the Election Integrity Movement, had loosed such a flood of good and light upon the election that the Republicans could not steal it, and Obama was re-elected.
By the next morning, however, his pronouncement had shifted to one of victory.
“Score one (at last) for the Election Integrity movement!” he declared, back on message.
UPDATE: Robert Frank (here) suggests that there was in fact a plot to steal Ohio. He bases his speculation on two observations.
- Karl Rove, as seen on Fox News, was genuinely surprised when Ohio was called for Obama.
- The Obama margin in Ohio was smaller than what the polls predicted. In all other swing states, the Obama margin was similar to or greater than what was shown by pre-election polls.
Either [Rove] is much less competent than anyone has reason to believe; or else he knew of some secret advantage that would tip the vote count in Romney’s favor by several points.
Less Is More
November 11, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
Cross posted at Sociological Images
In a democracy, all votes are created equal - one person, one vote – but apparently some votes are more equal than others. Obama won the electoral college vote 62% - 38%, though his margin in the popular vote was much smaller: 51% - 48%.
A similar discrepancy happened in the vote for Congressional representatives. The Republicans control the House of Representatives, where they have 54% of the seats. But if you add up all the votes for those seats, the Democrats come out slightly ahead (by about 500,000 votes). More votes but fewer seats.
That discrepancy arises from the distribution of Democrats and Republicans in a state’s Congressional districts. Take a hypothetical state with four districts, each with 200 people. The popular vote splits evenly – 400 Democrats, 400 Republicans. Here are the election results:
My first thought was that this was pure Gerrymandering. State legislatures get to draw the maps of their Congressional districts. And many more state legislatures are controlled by Republicans. In fact, some of the North Carolina districts have unusual shapes. The NC-12, the thin blue line along Interstate 85 stretching nearly to the border, was created as a “majority-minority” district so that Black votes would not be diluted. The downside for Democrats is that it packs those votes into that narrow corridor. So the Democrats take that district by over 180,000 votes. The Republicans win the neighboring districts but by much smaller margins - 23,000, 25,000, and 53,000. In those four districts, the Democrats got 53% of the vote, but Republicans took three of the four seats.
The Democratic district snaking down through the middle of the state is the 4th, which contains “the Triangle” to the north, but now has that tail stretching down. Democrats carried the district by 170,000 votes. Surrounding it is the 2nd (in pink), which Republicans carried by only 45,000 votes.
Similar differences crop up in Ohio and Pennsylvania. The popular vote is close, and in two of these states it goes to the Democrats. But Republicans get most of the seats. Republicans win their seats by less than half the margin of Democratic winners. Here is a graph of the actual returns from Ohio, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina. (The Ohio total does not include the vote from the two uncontested districts, one Democrat, one Republican. For the maps and election results, check out Politico.)
I don’t know enough about the demography and geography of these states, but I do wonder why the districts are drawn this way. A paper by Chen and Rodd (here) that uses 2000 election data argues that what looks like gerrymandering is in fact the result of “human geography.” It’s not the legislatures that pack Democrats together, it’s the Democrats themselves. They cluster in cities. As for Democrats outside of cities,
In any case, Democrats have not always been on the wrong side of the seat/vote discrepancy. John Sides at The Monkey Cage posted this graph showing the ratio for the last twenty-six elections.
Sides quotes Matthew Green on the general trends:
UPDATE (Nov. 15): John Sides at The Monkey Cage has more data on the vote/seat discrepancy. He calculates seats expected given the popular vote and compares that to the actual outcome. Even in states where districts were drawn by a bi-partisan agency or the courts, the Democrats fell 7% below the expected number of seats. In states where legislatures did the redistricting the differences were starker.
Posted by Jay Livingston
Cross posted at Sociological Images
[Note, Nov. 13: Thanks to the comment from “maxliving” directing me to the Chen-Rodden paper, I have substantially revised this post. Hat tip to Max.]
A similar discrepancy happened in the vote for Congressional representatives. The Republicans control the House of Representatives, where they have 54% of the seats. But if you add up all the votes for those seats, the Democrats come out slightly ahead (by about 500,000 votes). More votes but fewer seats.
That discrepancy arises from the distribution of Democrats and Republicans in a state’s Congressional districts. Take a hypothetical state with four districts, each with 200 people. The popular vote splits evenly – 400 Democrats, 400 Republicans. Here are the election results:
|
The Republicans have 50% of the popular vote but get 75% of the seats.
Less hypothetically, in North Carolina, Democratic candidates outpolled Republicans 2.22 million to 2.14 million. But Republicans won 10 of the 14 seats. The Democratic votes were crowded into four districts. In three of those four districts, the Democrats won big – by an average of 133,000 votes. (If the 7th district, where Democrats now have a slim lead, goes Republican, that average margin will be 177,000.) Had some of the Democrats from one of those districts been mapped into the neighboring district, they might have won both, though by smaller margins. The Republican districts had secure but smaller majorities. Republican winning margins averaged 50,000 votes, less than half the margin where Democrats won.
The Democratic district snaking down through the middle of the state is the 4th, which contains “the Triangle” to the north, but now has that tail stretching down. Democrats carried the district by 170,000 votes. Surrounding it is the 2nd (in pink), which Republicans carried by only 45,000 votes.
Similar differences crop up in Ohio and Pennsylvania. The popular vote is close, and in two of these states it goes to the Democrats. But Republicans get most of the seats. Republicans win their seats by less than half the margin of Democratic winners. Here is a graph of the actual returns from Ohio, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina. (The Ohio total does not include the vote from the two uncontested districts, one Democrat, one Republican. For the maps and election results, check out Politico.)
The Republican share of Congressional seats is far out of
proportion to its share of the vote. In Ohio and North Carolina,
Democrats received more votes, but Republicans got 70-75% of the House
seats. It certainly is possible that Republican-dominated state
legislatures drew the districts so as to cram Democratic voters into
electoral ghettos.
I don’t know enough about the demography and geography of these states, but I do wonder why the districts are drawn this way. A paper by Chen and Rodd (here) that uses 2000 election data argues that what looks like gerrymandering is in fact the result of “human geography.” It’s not the legislatures that pack Democrats together, it’s the Democrats themselves. They cluster in cities. As for Democrats outside of cities,
many rural, small-town, and suburban precincts that lean Democratic are often subsumed into moderately Republican districts. . . . There are isolated pockets of support for Democrats in African-American enclaves in the suburbs of big cities and in smaller towns with a history of railroad industrialization or universities. However, these Democratic pockets are generally surrounded by Republican majorities, thus wasting these Democratic votes. As a result, the Democrats are poorly situated to win districts outside of the urban core.Regardless of intent, the effect is to keep Democratic votes concentrated in the 4th. If that blue tail of the NC-04 were subsumed into the pink NC-02, both districts might be blue.
In any case, Democrats have not always been on the wrong side of the seat/vote discrepancy. John Sides at The Monkey Cage posted this graph showing the ratio for the last twenty-six elections.
Sides quotes Matthew Green on the general trends:
- the winning party usually gets a “boost” in the number of seats
- that boost used to be much larger
UPDATE (Nov. 15): John Sides at The Monkey Cage has more data on the vote/seat discrepancy. He calculates seats expected given the popular vote and compares that to the actual outcome. Even in states where districts were drawn by a bi-partisan agency or the courts, the Democrats fell 7% below the expected number of seats. In states where legislatures did the redistricting the differences were starker.
Republicans gained benefits across the board from controlling the redistricting process. By contrast, Democrats exceeded their expected seat share only slightly in the three states where they controlled the process
Post Parade
November 10, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
The front page of the New York Post is frequently a moral struggle. Well, not much of a struggle. The newspaper stands some obvious sinner in the pillory for Post readers to pelt with rotten vegetables. The parade includes the criminal thug, the celebrity or sports star, the politician (foreign leaders make especially good targets provided they’re someone Post readers might have heard of), and others.
But some days, the Post goes for the puerile pun, as though the headline-writing room had been staffed with boys from a middle-school playground.
And when the stars are properly aligned, you get both.
Then there’s the Daily News version. Remember the moral outrage at MoveOn.org for using “Gen. Betray Us” epithet? From Wikipedia:
(Previous Post posts are here, here, and here.)
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* If you were trying to think up names for a right wing hawk, could you come up with anything better than “Max Boot”?
Posted by Jay Livingston
The front page of the New York Post is frequently a moral struggle. Well, not much of a struggle. The newspaper stands some obvious sinner in the pillory for Post readers to pelt with rotten vegetables. The parade includes the criminal thug, the celebrity or sports star, the politician (foreign leaders make especially good targets provided they’re someone Post readers might have heard of), and others.
But some days, the Post goes for the puerile pun, as though the headline-writing room had been staffed with boys from a middle-school playground.
And when the stars are properly aligned, you get both.
Fellow Max Boot* accused Moveon.org of “desperate attempts to besmirch one of the most admired soldiers in the entire American armed forces” and argued that the ad will “backfire.”That was five years ago, and now the Daily News (hardly a left-wing rag) uses the same shameful name pun on page one. Some backfire.
(Previous Post posts are here, here, and here.)
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* If you were trying to think up names for a right wing hawk, could you come up with anything better than “Max Boot”?
“I Cannot Tell a Lie”
November 9, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
The father of our country may have been scrupulously truthful, but at least one of his namesakes has been fudging the data.
From Inside Higher Ed
As if.
Cheating is rational, and the conditions that make it rational are the same ones that make it rational for George Washington to tell a lie. To judge the quality of a student or school in some meaningful way would be just too cumbersome. You would have to get to know the person or school in some deeper way. But when you have many students to grade and many schools to rate, it’s just so much more convenient to reduce all that information to a couple of numbers. And it’s much easier to manipulate the numbers than it is to change what those numbers supposedly represent.
Posted by Jay Livingston
The father of our country may have been scrupulously truthful, but at least one of his namesakes has been fudging the data.
From Inside Higher Ed
George Washington University on Thursday became the third private university this year to admit that it has been reporting incorrect information about its new students -- both on the university's website and in information provided to U.S. News & World Report for rankings.The irony goes beyond the name. Universities all have rules about plagiarism and cheating on exams, and in the Student Handbook, accompanying the penalties and procedures section, schools sometimes add a righteous explanation: going out in the world disguised with a phony GPA is not only morally wrong, it is ultimately self-defeating.
In the case of GW, the university -- for at least a decade -- has been submitting incorrect data on the class rank of new students. For the most recent class of new students, George Washington reported that 78 percent of new students were in the top 10 percent of their high school classes. The actual proportion of such students is 58 percent.
As if.
Cheating is rational, and the conditions that make it rational are the same ones that make it rational for George Washington to tell a lie. To judge the quality of a student or school in some meaningful way would be just too cumbersome. You would have to get to know the person or school in some deeper way. But when you have many students to grade and many schools to rate, it’s just so much more convenient to reduce all that information to a couple of numbers. And it’s much easier to manipulate the numbers than it is to change what those numbers supposedly represent.
Predictions and Results
November 7, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
“Well, Howard, my predictin’ days is over,” said Muhammed Ali, even though the champ had been fairly accurate at predicting how many rounds an opponent would last.
My post yesterday quoted Peggy Noonan predicting a Romney win. On Fox last night, when one of the anchors asked Noonan if she were “surprised” by the results, she dodged the question and said only that she was disappointed. Are her predicting days over? Unlikely.
I contrasted Noonan’s “all the vibrations are right” methodology with Nate Silver’s thorough and complicated Bayesian model. Conservatives accused Silver of liberal bias (and effeminacy), and they offered their own unbiased, clear-eyed predictions.
How did the prognosticators do? Well, if somebody had bet on the Bayes, they would have cleaned up. Here’s a scorecard. I filled in some of the blanks in the grid that Neil Sihnababu posted at VoteSeeing . Right now, the electoral vote stands at 303-206, with Florida not yet called, though most experts have put it in the Obama column. Assuming that Florida is blue, Silver’s electoral prediction is perfect. As for the battleground states, they all went for Obama (again, assuming Florida). So did Nevada, adding one extra wrong prediction to Steve Forbes’s clear-eyed predictions.
You’d think that Karl Rove, George Will, and the others who did about as well as P’lod would follow Ali’s example. Or at least, they would adjust their models, if they had any. Or they would stop scoffing at science when it doesn’t tell them what they want to hear. But don’t bet on it.
UPDATE: Gabriel Rossman dresses up in his St. Paul costume (left over from Halloween, presumably) to deliver the same message. [Note for non-stats people who click on the link to Gabriel’s blog: CLT = Central Limit Theorem.]
Posted by Jay Livingston
“Well, Howard, my predictin’ days is over,” said Muhammed Ali, even though the champ had been fairly accurate at predicting how many rounds an opponent would last.
My post yesterday quoted Peggy Noonan predicting a Romney win. On Fox last night, when one of the anchors asked Noonan if she were “surprised” by the results, she dodged the question and said only that she was disappointed. Are her predicting days over? Unlikely.
I contrasted Noonan’s “all the vibrations are right” methodology with Nate Silver’s thorough and complicated Bayesian model. Conservatives accused Silver of liberal bias (and effeminacy), and they offered their own unbiased, clear-eyed predictions.
How did the prognosticators do? Well, if somebody had bet on the Bayes, they would have cleaned up. Here’s a scorecard. I filled in some of the blanks in the grid that Neil Sihnababu posted at VoteSeeing . Right now, the electoral vote stands at 303-206, with Florida not yet called, though most experts have put it in the Obama column. Assuming that Florida is blue, Silver’s electoral prediction is perfect. As for the battleground states, they all went for Obama (again, assuming Florida). So did Nevada, adding one extra wrong prediction to Steve Forbes’s clear-eyed predictions.
(Click on the table for a larger view.)
You’d think that Karl Rove, George Will, and the others who did about as well as P’lod would follow Ali’s example. Or at least, they would adjust their models, if they had any. Or they would stop scoffing at science when it doesn’t tell them what they want to hear. But don’t bet on it.
UPDATE: Gabriel Rossman dresses up in his St. Paul costume (left over from Halloween, presumably) to deliver the same message. [Note for non-stats people who click on the link to Gabriel’s blog: CLT = Central Limit Theorem.]
One More Prediction
November 6, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
In the previous post, I foolishly looked only at representatives from the New York Times (Nate Silver) and The Wall Street Journal (Peggy Noonan). I overlooked a third important publication, The Weekly World News.*
The full story is here.
But seriously folks, Neil Sihnababu at VoteSeeing, besides providing the link to unerring P’lod, has a nice table for scoring the predictionistas on the swing states as well as on the overall vote.
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* For an earlier post on the WWW and similar tabloids, go here.
Posted by Jay Livingston
In the previous post, I foolishly looked only at representatives from the New York Times (Nate Silver) and The Wall Street Journal (Peggy Noonan). I overlooked a third important publication, The Weekly World News.*
But seriously folks, Neil Sihnababu at VoteSeeing, besides providing the link to unerring P’lod, has a nice table for scoring the predictionistas on the swing states as well as on the overall vote.
--------------
* For an earlier post on the WWW and similar tabloids, go here.
Prediction Methodology - Not Too Swift
November 6, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
One of the first things I try to get students to understand is the difference between systematic evidence and anecdotal and impressionistic evidence. Or no evidence, which usually takes the form of “We don’t need studies to know that . . . .” or “Common sense tells us . . . .”
So in one corner we have Nate Silver (known in some circles as Nate the Great at Five Three Eight), systematically weighing the data from polls and other sources. He sees Obama as the likely winner.
And then there’s Peggy Noonan at The Wall Street Journal.
It all points to a big win by the Tigers. Clearly, the Giants are toast.
And then some nerd – “a man of very small stature, a thin and effeminate man with a soft-sounding voice, a poster child for the New Castrati”* – taps me on the arm and points to the scoreboard which posts the number of runs that each team has actually scored and the number of games that they have won.
Yes, Romney could win. But remember Damon Runyon’s riff on Ecclesiastes: “The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's how the smart money bets.”
And they’re betting Obama. At In-trade, a $100 bet would bring Ms. Noonan $300, and somewhat more if she bet in the UK. My own hunch is that betting a bundle on Romney right now is not too swift.
UPDATE: Another Republican speechwriter-turned-columnist, Michael Gerson, is yapping at Nate Silver. John Sides at The Monkey Cage offers an excellent critique of Gerson and a defense of data- based social science. (It is kind of depressing – Gerson and Noonan and the rest are intelligent people, and yet they force you to defend the radical idea of using systematic evidence. But then again, their party is the standard-bearer for people who think that global warming is a myth and that earth is only 7000 years old.)
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* Yes, this is what someone at the right-wing examiner.com actually wrote about Nate Silver. I am not making this up.
Posted by Jay Livingston
One of the first things I try to get students to understand is the difference between systematic evidence and anecdotal and impressionistic evidence. Or no evidence, which usually takes the form of “We don’t need studies to know that . . . .” or “Common sense tells us . . . .”
So in one corner we have Nate Silver (known in some circles as Nate the Great at Five Three Eight), systematically weighing the data from polls and other sources. He sees Obama as the likely winner.
Is it possible this whole thing is playing out before our eyes and we’re not really noticing because we’re too busy looking at data on paper instead of what’s in front of us?In front of her eyes is victory for Romney. Here are some more excerpts that show the evidence she uses as the basis for her prediction.
Among the wisest words spoken this cycle were by John Dickerson of CBS News and Slate, who said, in a conversation the night before the last presidential debate, that he thought maybe the American people were quietly cooking something up, something we don’t know about.I imagine going to the World Series. The guy at the hot dog stand says he thinks the Tigers are about to make a move. I see Detroit players’ faces, full of passion and enthusiasm; the Giants look tired and wan. The Tigers are getting hits. They even had a home run. Their pitchers are tall and strong. And then there’s the thing about caps – all those Detroit caps with the old English D. I see them everywhere.
I think they are and I think it’s this: a Romney win.
There is no denying the Republicans have the passion now, the enthusiasm.
it feels like a lot of Republicans have gone from anti-Obama to pro-Romney.
And there is Obama, out there seeming tired and wan, showing up through sheer self discipline.
All the vibrations are right. A person who is helping him who is not a longtime Romneyite told me, yesterday: “I joined because I was anti Obama—I’m a patriot, I’ll join up But now I am pro-Romney.”
And there’s the thing about the yard signs. In Florida a few weeks ago I saw Romney signs, not Obama ones. From Ohio I hear the same. From tony Northwest Washington, D.C., I hear the same.
It all points to a big win by the Tigers. Clearly, the Giants are toast.
And then some nerd – “a man of very small stature, a thin and effeminate man with a soft-sounding voice, a poster child for the New Castrati”* – taps me on the arm and points to the scoreboard which posts the number of runs that each team has actually scored and the number of games that they have won.
Yes, Romney could win. But remember Damon Runyon’s riff on Ecclesiastes: “The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's how the smart money bets.”
And they’re betting Obama. At In-trade, a $100 bet would bring Ms. Noonan $300, and somewhat more if she bet in the UK. My own hunch is that betting a bundle on Romney right now is not too swift.
UPDATE: Another Republican speechwriter-turned-columnist, Michael Gerson, is yapping at Nate Silver. John Sides at The Monkey Cage offers an excellent critique of Gerson and a defense of data- based social science. (It is kind of depressing – Gerson and Noonan and the rest are intelligent people, and yet they force you to defend the radical idea of using systematic evidence. But then again, their party is the standard-bearer for people who think that global warming is a myth and that earth is only 7000 years old.)
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* Yes, this is what someone at the right-wing examiner.com actually wrote about Nate Silver. I am not making this up.
Climate Denial and American Voluntarism
November 4, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
Cross posted at Sociological Images
At the GOP convention in August, Mitt Romney’s cavalier dismissal of global warming got the intended laughs. Today, it seems less funny.
Here’s the transcript:
That is a moral position. It tells us what is morally O.K., and what is not. If I did not choose to join a group, I make no claims on the people in that group, and it is wrong for them – whether as individuals or as an organized group, even a government – to make any claim upon me.
That moral position also shapes the conservative view of reality, particularly about our connectedness to other people and to the environment. Ideas about what is right determine ideas about what is true. The conservative rejects non-voluntary connections as illegitimate, but he also denies that these connections exist. If what I do affects someone else, that person has some claim upon me; but unless I voluntarily enter into that relationship, that claim is morally wrong. So in order to remain free of that claim, I must believe that what I do does not affect others, at least not in any harmful way.
It’s easy to maintain that belief when the thing being affected is not an individual or family but a large and vague entity like “society” or “the environment.” My single action could not possibly make a difference to something so large. To make a difference, I must willingly join with many other people. Then I will acknowledge how our small individual acts – one vote, one small donation, one act of charity, etc. – add up to a large effect. That effect is what we intended. But if we separately, individually, drive a lot in our SUVs, use mega-amounts of electricity, and so on, we deny that these acts can add up to any unintended effect on the planet.
As Fischer says, voluntarism is characteristically American. So is the denial of global warming. The incident at a recent Romney rally illustrates both (a video is here).
When a protester yells out the question, “What about climate?” Romney stands there, grinning but silent, and the crowd starts chanting, “USA, USA.” The message is clear: we don’t talk about climate change; we’re Americans.
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*Two earlier Socioblog posts on voluntarism are here and here.
Posted by Jay Livingston
Cross posted at Sociological Images
At the GOP convention in August, Mitt Romney’s cavalier dismissal of global warming got the intended laughs. Today, it seems less funny.
Here’s the transcript:
President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of theIn two short sentences, Romney gives us the broader context for the denial of global warming: the denial of society itself. He echoes Margaret Thatcher’s famous dictum
oceans and to heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family.
There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.This doesn’t mean that there are no groups beyond the family. But those larger groups are valid only because individuals, consciously and voluntarily, chose to create them. This way of thinking about the relation between individuals and groups has long been an underlying principle of American thought. Claude Fischer, in Made in America calls it “voluntarism” – the idea that the only legitimate groups are the ones that people voluntarily form or join.* The individual has a strong obligation to those groups and their members, but he has little or no obligation towards groups and people he did not choose.
That is a moral position. It tells us what is morally O.K., and what is not. If I did not choose to join a group, I make no claims on the people in that group, and it is wrong for them – whether as individuals or as an organized group, even a government – to make any claim upon me.
That moral position also shapes the conservative view of reality, particularly about our connectedness to other people and to the environment. Ideas about what is right determine ideas about what is true. The conservative rejects non-voluntary connections as illegitimate, but he also denies that these connections exist. If what I do affects someone else, that person has some claim upon me; but unless I voluntarily enter into that relationship, that claim is morally wrong. So in order to remain free of that claim, I must believe that what I do does not affect others, at least not in any harmful way.
It’s easy to maintain that belief when the thing being affected is not an individual or family but a large and vague entity like “society” or “the environment.” My single action could not possibly make a difference to something so large. To make a difference, I must willingly join with many other people. Then I will acknowledge how our small individual acts – one vote, one small donation, one act of charity, etc. – add up to a large effect. That effect is what we intended. But if we separately, individually, drive a lot in our SUVs, use mega-amounts of electricity, and so on, we deny that these acts can add up to any unintended effect on the planet.
As Fischer says, voluntarism is characteristically American. So is the denial of global warming. The incident at a recent Romney rally illustrates both (a video is here).
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*Two earlier Socioblog posts on voluntarism are here and here.
Brooklyn – Gas and Hoodies
November 3, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
This was the page one photo in the Times yesterday.
I love the “only in New York” aspect. A gas station in Williamsburg.* An orthodox Jew arguing with a White dude, each with a backup guy. A Hasid taking a cell-phone photo of a cop. Black guys in hoodies, beefy White guys in hoodies, Jews in hoodies. Cars jammed in at every angle. And the cops patiently trying to cool things down.** (It’s Williamsburg, but there are no hipsters. They don’t own cars.)
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* The $4.19.9 a gallon is not price gouging. That’s what gas costs in Brooklyn even when there’s no hurricane. In New Jersey, it’s fifty cents cheaper, but they don’t have any right now.)
** That’s probably a large part of what cops do. Maybe Peter Moskos will comment.
Posted by Jay Livingston
This was the page one photo in the Times yesterday.
(Click on the picture for a larger view.)
I love the “only in New York” aspect. A gas station in Williamsburg.* An orthodox Jew arguing with a White dude, each with a backup guy. A Hasid taking a cell-phone photo of a cop. Black guys in hoodies, beefy White guys in hoodies, Jews in hoodies. Cars jammed in at every angle. And the cops patiently trying to cool things down.** (It’s Williamsburg, but there are no hipsters. They don’t own cars.)
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* The $4.19.9 a gallon is not price gouging. That’s what gas costs in Brooklyn even when there’s no hurricane. In New Jersey, it’s fifty cents cheaper, but they don’t have any right now.)
** That’s probably a large part of what cops do. Maybe Peter Moskos will comment.
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