We know that in today’s oversaturated media environment, good journalism is often hard to find. So each Friday, our team highlights five pieces—analysis, interviews, editorials, and more—that caught our attention from both the past week and weeks prior. We may not always agree with every writer’s arguments, but we nonetheless think they are worth sharing.
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…how did Bo French—a UT grad and Republican statewide candidate for Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the oil and gas industry—mark this special moment [Texas late comeback win over Ohio State]?
He posted a picture of screaming, joyous, celebrating burnt-orange-clad students. Referring to students who appeared to be South Asian or Hispanic in the photo’s foreground, he declared, “I heard UT graduation this year looked like this. I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.” Mr. French’s not-so-subtle claim that UT has too many Hispanics and South Asians—he later said his issue is too many “foreigners”—is raw, uncut bigotry. UT admissions are based on merit, not race, and 90% of each class comes from Texas.
Some Republican leaders immediately denounced Mr. French. U.S. Sen. John Cornyn condemned his “intolerance and racism,” warning “this is how great political parties self-destruct.” State House Speaker Dustin Burrows said Mr. French’s post “crossed the line” by “demeaning people because of their race or ethnicity.” Other GOP state legislators called the post “racism, plain and simple,” “disgusting” and “well below the standard set by Christ.” One said it made him “sick.” […]
The GOP has a growing number of Bo Frenches—and not only in Texas. Conservatism and the party it dominates have an increasing number of bigoted advocates of a “heritage America” composed of white descendants of the original European settlers. There are “just asking questions” Jew-haters, misogynists who worship hypermasculinity, conspiracy nuts seeking clicks for profit, and religious bigots who won’t differentiate between Muslim terrorists and Muslim American patriots.
These people are diminishing the Republican Party, not building it. I’ll have no part of it. This November, I’ll vote for only the second Democrat in my life. The first was Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock in 1994, because I thought he would work with Republicans. The second will be Mr. French’s opponent, Jon Rosenthal. The GOP’s stables need a cleaning.
Lucy Biggers: For people who aren’t familiar with your worldview, how do you think about energy differently from the way it is often presented in the mainstream media?
Chris Wright: If you’re not in the energy business, I understand why you wouldn’t know much about it. It’s complicated. And if your energy system works, why would you even worry about it?
I’ve always looked at how energy affects the quality of people’s lives. Energy is the transformative agent that created the modern world. Human life expectancy at birth was around 30 years 20,000 years ago, and it was still around 30 years 200 years ago. It was really the large-scale arrival of coal—which provided vastly more energy and made agriculture more efficient—and ultimately the arrival of oil that enabled the development of modern medicine.
Today, average life expectancy at birth is over 70 years. That’s energy. Delivering energy produces public-health benefits that spread to everyone.
But not everyone lives a highly energized life. Only about a billion people live like you and I do, with climate-controlled rooms, lights, running water, buses, trains, and planes. About 7 billion people do not. I’ve met many of them, and I haven’t met one who doesn’t want the kind of lifestyle you and I enjoy. The only road from where they are today to that life requires massively more energy. I’ve been all in on more energy my whole life.
One of the more distressing changes in science is its infection by politics and ideology, a change visible in what I call “journal creep.” Until recently, the primary function of scientific journals was to disseminate research. Now, however, many journals have adopted an additional mission: promoting ideological, moral, or political positions. This newer mission, which endangers not only the reputation but also the practice of science, is seen clearly in a recent editorial in one of the world’s most prestigious scientific journals, Nature.
The Nature editorial centers on the tragic story of Jason Arday, a sociologist who at 37 became the youngest Black full professor ever appointed at the University of Cambridge. In July, it was revealed that Arday had plagiarized significant portions of his Ph.D. thesis at Liverpool John Moores University. This in turn prompted extensive investigations by the press. What they found was not pretty: more evidence of plagiarism, falsified research, fabricated claims on his curriculum vitae, and, most striking, a breathtaking record of biographical fabulism… On August 14, he was found dead in his flat, an apparent suicide. […]
Nature’s editorial is titled “The Death of Jason Arday Must Prompt Deep Reflection.” Unfortunately, the reflection Nature demands does not involve asking how someone with such a thin academic record and a history of exaggeration and lying managed to secure such a prestigious position. Rather, Nature is concerned with assigning blame for Arday’s downfall and death, and the blame falls on everyone but Arday himself. […]
Oddly absent from Nature’s editorial is any serious acknowledgement of Arday’s apparent fabulism, plagiarism, errors, and lies. Nor is there any attempt to grapple with the fact that Arday’s decision to publish a memoir with a major commercial publisher further drew the media’s spotlight.
It’s tragic that Arday killed himself. But the frenzy to blame every person and institution for Arday’s death save Arday himself is bizarre. That Nature should join this frenzy lays bare the extent to which even the most prestigious journals have prioritized political sloganeering over truth seeking.
Surely the most controversial part of Macklemore’s statement was name-checking CUAD (Columbia University Apartheid Divest) and Students for Justice in Palestine. Those groups hold extreme positions — I’ve written about them before, and so have people who actually know stuff. […]
Following Macklemore’s remarks in New Jersey, Sheeran got a call from New England Patriots owner…Robert Kraft. Kraft informed Sheeran that Macklemore was not welcome to perform at Gillette Stadium, which Kraft owns. […]
I don’t like this…I’m not convinced that a person’s problem is with “apartheid” or “genocide” when they see the very founding of Israel as illegitimate. But I’m also not comfortable with powerful venue owners throwing their weight around because they don’t like a guy’s politics. It’s one thing for someone to decide that Macklemore is too big of a douchebag to support — you don’t need to twist my arm to get me to not buy a ticket to this concert! And Kraft can book or not book anyone for any reason — his stadium, his rules. But I’ve long felt that we’re better off letting people say just about any intensely stupid thing that they believe. I didn’t like it when social media companies were aggressively in declaring things “hate speech”, and I don’t like Robert Kraft doing it now.
American politics is often described as a battle between liberals and conservatives, but most voters have much messier views than those partisan labels suggest. They aren’t reliably liberal. They aren’t reliably conservative. They have a mix of opinions that are almost impossible to find in any one politician. […]
To see the disconnect, let’s start with two hot-button issues that divide along conservative and liberal lines: whether to allow organized prayer in public schools and whether to allow homeless people to camp in public spaces. In a world of ideological purity, a Democratic voter would always oppose the first and support the second, while a Republican voter would do the reverse.
But it doesn’t work that way. In reality, people often have heterodox views that defy strict partisanship. […]
[O]ver the past several decades, the parties have become more polarized and rigid in their views. Anti-abortion Democrats and pro-choice Republicans in Congress once numbered in the dozens, but no longer. As a result, the country’s heterodox population is constantly forced to compromise between two options that can never fully satisfy them.
Heterodoxy comes up in issue polling again and again. Most people are comfortable simultaneously having liberal views on some issues and conservative positions on others.
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The last item suggests to me, and not for the first time, that the “liberal” and “conservative” labels have lost whatever coherent meaning they may have had. Let’s take, as an example, “whether to allow homeless people to camp in public spaces.” I am on the old-style left, which I define as strong support for unionization and for health care coverage as a human right. When it comes to homeless people camping in public spaces, I consider it a societal failure that this is where anyone lives, and we need to address it humanely. So, for me, this is not a matter of either allowing or prohibiting camping out in public spaces, but rather a question of what we need to do as a society to address the underlying issues—very often mental illness—that contribute to homelessness. Where I personally come out on this is that such people need to be in supportive housing, not camping out in the public square.
This is an old point that some say is just linguistic. But it is not merely linguistic. It is substantive.
The terms liberal and conservative as used in this post do not have the meaning that they have had for a few generations. Liberals are not progressives; conservatives are not MAGA Trumpers. We (liberals and conservatives) want nothing to do with those usurpers of the parties we once belonged to. Sensible pundits like you have got to stop using those terms to mean what they were never intended to mean. It confuses people.
The last item suggests to me, and not for the first time, that the “liberal” and “conservative” labels have lost whatever coherent meaning they may have had. Let’s take, as an example, “whether to allow homeless people to camp in public spaces.” I am on the old-style left, which I define as strong support for unionization and for health care coverage as a human right. When it comes to homeless people camping in public spaces, I consider it a societal failure that this is where anyone lives, and we need to address it humanely. So, for me, this is not a matter of either allowing or prohibiting camping out in public spaces, but rather a question of what we need to do as a society to address the underlying issues—very often mental illness—that contribute to homelessness. Where I personally come out on this is that such people need to be in supportive housing, not camping out in the public square.
This is an old point that some say is just linguistic. But it is not merely linguistic. It is substantive.
The terms liberal and conservative as used in this post do not have the meaning that they have had for a few generations. Liberals are not progressives; conservatives are not MAGA Trumpers. We (liberals and conservatives) want nothing to do with those usurpers of the parties we once belonged to. Sensible pundits like you have got to stop using those terms to mean what they were never intended to mean. It confuses people.