Over at The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates talks about why he largely abstains from cable news appearances and why this is in and of itself a problem:

The outlines of the problem are becoming clear--I'm a snob. More seriously, it's my impression that much of cable news is rigged. Complicated questions are forced into small spaces of time, and guests frequently dissemble in order to score debate points and avoid being intellectually honest. Finally, many of the guests don't seem to be actual experts in the field of which they're addressing, so much as they're "strategists" or "analysts." I strongly suspect that part of the reason this is the case is talking on TV is, itself, a craft and one that requires a skill-set very different than what is required of academics. I'm sure many academics themselves share the disdain for the format that I've outlined. Finally, the handful of scholars who regularly appear on the talk shows, generally aren't of the sort that hold my interests.

With that said, it's very difficult to inveigh against these shows when you refuse to participate. The discomfiting fact is that cable news reaches a ton of people, many of whom--presuming they're interested--could use the information (emphasis added).

As an academic who is occasionally asked to be on TV/radio after the producer has gone through their top ten options, I have similarly mixed feelings about the skill mismatch. Speaking from my own experience, I find that my biggest weakness in these venues is that I genuinely want to answer the question asked of me.

You'd think this would be a good thing, but it's not, because it means that you're a hostage to the interviewer's ability to ask good questions. Usually if you're asked to be on a program, you know what the news hook is, and you should (obviously) know your overarching take on the issue. The problem, for me at least, is that no interviewer asks, "So what do you think?" Instead, they'll ask a more specific question -- which I then try to answer specifically. I've rarely been able to integrate a specific answer with the larger theme I want to stress in the appearance.

I suppose I could just admit my failings and abstain from these kinds of media appearances. One of my 2011 resolutions, however, is to try and get better at doing this sort of thing.

I'll have my list of proposed resolutions for the rest of the foreign-policy community tomorrow.

Your humble blogger kindly requests all readers to take this very brief two-question survey. 

It's a matter of life and death... and, er, undeath.  Irregardless, it should be far less tortuous than this. 

There's a follow-on blog post that will come from this, I promise. 

The most important thing to read in political science today was not written by a plitical scientist.*  Instead, check out Christopher Beam's Slate essay about how a standard politics story would read if written by someone who cares a lot more about structural factors in political life than bulls**t narratives the human element.

There is already an IPE version of this kind of story, but I can't find it.  I know a Financial Times reporter (or maybe it was The Onion) had something out there on the interwebs that writes up a standard G-8 meeting.  To update it for the G-20: 

Today the Group of Twenty Nations issued a series of meaningless exhortations which will be ignored as soon as the heads of government leave the summit city. 

President Barack Obama said, "it is critical to global stability that we agree on these vital economic issues of the day.  Unfortunately, because we all face serious domestic constraints during this global economic downturn, there's not a chance in hell that we'll be able to abide by these pledges." 

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, standing next to Obama, gave the slightest of Gallic shrugs in an effort to draw the press corps' attention to him. 

Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva dissented as well, arguing, "These words will have meaning for next year's very important summit, which will be held in Brasilia, I hasten to add." 

The communique promised action on the Doha Round, financial regulation, redressing macroeconomic imbalances, and reapportioning power within the international financial institutions.  A prior, leaked draft of the communique also pledged greater efforts to create a global tax on the Tooth Fairy and leprechauns, as well a greater subsidies for Santa Claus.  Chinese premier Hu Jintao objected, however, arguing that the communique should stick to moderately unrealistic pronouncements and not edge over into complete and total fantasy. 

In light of this and this, readers should be able to replay this report for several years to come. 

UPDATE:  Hat tip to William Winecoff for finding Alan Beattie 's generic column on international institutions, which really does outshine my own feeble efforts: 

An ineffectual international organisation yesterday issued a stark warning about a situation it has absolutely no power to change, the latest in a series of self-serving interventions by toothless intergovernmental bodies.

“We are seriously concerned about this most serious outbreak of seriousness,” said the head of the institution, either a former minister from a developing country or a mid-level European or American bureaucrat. “This is a wake-up call to the world. They must take on board the vital message that my organisation exists.”

The director of the body, based in one of New York, Washington or an agreeable Western European city, was speaking at its annual conference, at which ministers from around the world gather to wring their hands impotently about the most fashionable issue of the day. The organisation has sought to justify its almost completely fruitless existence by joining its many fellow talking-shops in highlighting whatever crisis has recently gained most coverage in the global media.

“Governments around the world must come together to combat whatever this year’s worrying situation has turned out to be,” the director said. “It is not yet time to panic, but if it goes on much further without my institution gaining some credit for sounding off on the issue, we will be justified in labelling it a crisis.”

The organisation, whose existence the White House barely acknowledges and to which hardly any member government intends to give more money or extra powers, has long been fighting a war of attrition against its own irrelevance. By making a big deal out of the fact that the world’s most salient topical issue will be placed on its agenda and then issuing a largely derivative annual report on the subject, it hopes to convey the entirely erroneous impression that it has any influence whatsoever on the situation.

The intervention follows a resounding call to action in the communiqué of the Group of [number goes here] countries at their recent summit in a remote place no-one had previously heard of. The G[number goes here] meeting was preceded by the familiar interminable and inconclusive discussions about whether the G[number goes here] was sufficiently representative of the international community, or whether it should be expanded into a G[number plus 1, 2 or higher goes here] including China, India or any other scary emerging market country that attendees cared to name.

The story was given further padding by a study from an ambulance-chasing Washington think-tank, which warned that it would continue to convene media conference calls until its quixotic and politically suicidal plan to ameliorate whatever crisis was gathering had been given respectful though substantially undeserved attention.

*Unfortunately, that's not an uncommon occurrence.   

Last month, both on this blog and on my Twitter feed, I defended the notion that political scientists would be uber-interested in John Heilemann and Mark Halperin's Game Change:  Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime.  I was generally sympathetic to Jack Shafer's defense of their sourcing methods in Slate.  And, in that spirit, I ordered Game Change, ready to dig deep into campaign gossip and the flawed nature of politicians. 

Well, I've finished the book -- as well as the 20-minute shower I needed to take after reading the book.  And I hereby retract any and all enthusiasm for Game Change-- because I don't know which parts of it are true and which parts are not. 

[Um... does anyone care anymore?--ed.  This is the #10 #15 book on Amazon's bestseller list, so I'm going to say yes.]

My problem is not, exactly, with the sourcing -- it's with the gullibility of Heilemann and Halperin when dealing with their sources.  So, just to be clear, the political scientist in me doesn't loathe this book because of the narrative structure -- it's because I don't trust Heilemann and Halperin's BS detector. 

It was on page 89 that I began to wonder just how much Game Change's authors double-checked their sources.  This section of the book recounts entertainment mogul David Geffen's "break" with Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign -- most publicly, in this Maureen Dowd column. 

And so, we get to this paragraph in Game Change:

The reaction to the column stunned Geffen.  Beseiged by interview requests, he put out a statement saying Dowd had quoted him accurately.  Some of Geffen's friends in Hollywood expressed disbelief.  Warren Beatty told him, She's going to be president of the United States--you must be nuts to have done this.  But many more congratulated Geffen for having the courage to say what everyone else was thinking but was too afraid to put on the record.  They said he'd made them feel safer openly supporting or donating to Obama.  Soon after, when Geffen visited New York, people in cars on Madison Avenue beeped their horns and gave him the thumbs-up as he walked down the street (emphasis added). 

I'm calling bulls**t on the bolded sentence.  David Geffen is a powerful mogul, but he's not a photogenic celebrity in his own right.  I'm pretty confident in asserting that no one driving down Madison Avenue would recognize Geffen walking down the street.  I have complete confidence that no more than one person did this. 

Furthermore, even if there was a small chance that someone did recognize Geffen on the street, how would a honking horn indicate sympathy with Geffen's political inclinations as opposed to, say, a sentiment more like, "Yo, David, will you listen to my demo?!" 

So, who is the "deep background" source of this little anecdote for Game Change?  It has to be Geffen -- he is, after all, so vain.  And so we arrive at the first key question:  what does it say about the veracity of Game Change that Geffen related a completely implausible, ego-boosting story about himself to Heilemann and Halperin and it gets printed in the book? 

This leads to the second key question:  what other "telling anecdotes" of dubious provenance got put into this book?  The Geffen anecdote is has zero impact on the juicy stories told in the rest of the book -- but how can I be certain that Heilemann and Halperin vetted those sources with greater scrutiny? 

I don't doubt that most of Game Change is accurate -- and I couldn't put the book down as I was reading it.  I just don't trust what I read.   

Having now seen Avatar, I'm not surprised that the political reviews of the film either go in the direction of Adam Cohen's paean to its cultural sensitivity in the New York Times ("The plot is firmly in the anti-imperialist canon, a 22nd-century version of the American colonists vs. the British, India vs. the Raj, or Latin America vs. United Fruit") or Analee Newitz's takedown of Avatar as the uber-example of White Man's Guilt at IO9 ("Watching the movie, there is really no mistake that these are alien versions of stereotypical native peoples that we've seen in Hollywood movies for decades"). 

It's because, for all the 3D wonder that is evident on screen, this is a movie with two-dimensional characters and two-dimensional storytelling -- and you will either embrace those dimensions or not.  What you can't do is escape them when watching the film.  Any time your brain tries to inject possible subtleties into the story, director James Cameron is lurking around the corner to whack you over the head with some 3D crowbar to make it absolutely clear what is right and what is wrong.  This is screenwriting that makes George Lucas' second Star Wars trilogy look multi-layered by comparison. 

[WARNING:  SPOILERS AHEAD].  To demonstrate the absurdities that Cameron is willing to go, here are two plot points that make absolutely no sense whatsoever:

1)  The Omaticaya clan of the Na'Vi is forced to flee because the humans have destroyed their Hometree.  The movie takes great pains to show how the humans wreaked unbelievable amounts of carnage in the process.  So, what's the very first thing the Omaticaya do after becoming refugees?  Bury their dead?  Care for their sick?  Nope.  Why, they drop everything to attempt to save the life of the human scientist played by Sigourney Weaver!  Never mind that, based on the movie, Weaver's character has contributed exactly nothing to saving the Omaticaya.  This is exactly what a people stripped of their homeland would attempt to do!! 

2)  The movie makes it very clear that the only reason humans are on Pandora is to acquire the "unobtanium" on the planet -- the richest source of which happens to be under the Hometree.  So, after the destruction of Hometree, do the evil rapacious humans proceed to stripmine the ground to get at the mineral?  No, that would be too logical -- they decide they must wipe out the rest of the Na'Vi in a "pre-emptive" strike.  Because suddenly it's much more important to exterminate out the indigenous population than to extract the resources!   

Charli Carpenter, who liked the movie more than I did, correctly concludes, "the brilliance of this film is not that it makes you think - it doesn't. You will enjoy it more if you don't try. However, it does makes you feel."  Unless you try to think about it -- then you're in trouble. 

I'm probably too much of a technological Whig to care for narratives like this one, but just once, I'd like to see a film that embraces the complexities of how indigenous cultures incorporate new ideas and new technologies into their societies.  In other words, some movie producer really needs to hire Tyler Cowen as a technical consultant. 

The following is an exchange between myself and someone who had clearly taken over a friend's e-mail account, and was attempting to get me to wire money to them.  All of the text is true; only the names have been changed to protect the innocent: 

12:13 PM Scammer: hi there

 me: Hello

12:14 PM Scammer: how are youi?

  you

 me: OK... how's your daughter Bubbles? [Not her real name --DD]

12:16 PM Scammer: did you got my message?

12:17 PM me: No, is Bubbles OK?

 Scammer: yeah

12:18 PM I need your help?

12:19 PM me: What's wrong?

12:20 PM Scammer: well i had a visit to a resort centerin Wales, England..

  got mugged by some hoodlums

  all cash and credit cards were stolen

12:21 PM me: Oh, no

  That's horrible!

12:22 PM Scammer: i need your help?

  thank GOD that i wasn't hurt and i still have my passport with me

 me: Well, sounds like things will work out then!

12:23 PM Just call the credit card companies!

 Scammer: have already canceled my credit cards and my bank account was frozen due to security reason

12:24 PM the mian issue is that i'm financially straned right now and my return flight leaves in few hours time but i need few cash to sort out some bills before coming over

 me: Have you contacted your husband Bubba?

12:25 PM Scammer: we are both stuck together

12:26 PM i need you to loan us few cash?

  will def refund it as soon as we arrive back tomorrow

 me: But surely Bubba can use the $500 he always keeps in his security pouch!

12:27 PM What flight are you on?

 Scammer: Virgin Atlantic Airline

12:28 PM me: Have you tried contacting them to advance the money? I hear they do that in situations like these

 Scammer: they can't do such thing

 me: Sure they can! They did it when I was mugged in Edinburgh last month!

12:29 PM Scammer: i need your help?

 me: What do you need?

12:30 PM Scammer: $1,000 is all we need

 me: In which currency?

12:32 PM Scammer: 600 pounds is all we need

 me: Oh, dear....

  How soon do you need it?

12:33 PM Scammer: we need it now

  the next available fluight leaves in 2hrs time and we got to be at the airport in 1hr time

12:34 PM me: But I don't see how I could get money to you that quickly

 Scammer: you can have it wired to me vis Wetsern Union

  do you know any WU outlet nearby?

 me: Hold on, I'll check....

12:35 PM Scammer: ok

12:36 PM me: Why, yes! There is one right near Fahrfivgnugen, MA, on Swindler Street! That's only 5 minutes from here!

 Scammer: ok

  will you leave for the WU outlet now?

12:37 PM don't really have much time to waste

 me: Well, where am I supposed to wire it EXACTLY?

 Scammer: yeah!

  all you need is just my info

  a sec...

 me: Which is?

12:38 PM Scammer: wire it in my name to
5 King Street, Cardiff, South Glamorgan CF10 1SZ, United Kingdom

 me: OK, I'll head out in two minutes...

  Wait, there's someone knocking at my door

  Oh, no, they've got a gun!!!

12:39 PM Scammer: alright

 me: Help!!!

  They're asking me for all my money and credit cards!!!

  I'm doing what he says!!!

  I'm sorry, now I have nothing.

  When you get back to the States, could you wire me some cash so I could get gas for my car please?

 Scammer: f*** you

12:40 PM you kidding me???

I'm kicking myself that I didn't come up with something more original than that.

Any suggestions for the future?  [UPDATE:  thanks to alert reader S.C. for the link to this site.]

When we last left off with Tom Coburn's jihad against public funding for political science, Coburn was arguing that, "Theories on political behavior are best left to CNN, pollsters, pundits, historians, candidates, political parties, and the voters, rather than being funded out of taxpayers' wallets."

After the blog mockery that this observation received last week, I see that Coburn is doubling down on this strategy: 

[T]he Oklahoma Republicans office was not shy in its point-by-point rebuttal, with jokes about tweed jackets and the cushy life of the average college professor, and questions about whether ivory-tower political scientists aren't overmatched by the semiprofessionals on the cable and network talkfests.

"The irony of this complaint is that real-world political science practitioners employed by media outlets - [George] Stephanopoulos, [Peggy] Noonan, James Carville, Karl Rove, Paul Begala, Larry Kudlow, Bill Bennett (the list goes on) - may know more about the subject than any of our premier political science faculties," Coburn spokesman John Hart said.

Well, one could respond with jokes about the uber-cushy life of the average U.S. senator, or proffer jokes about Coburn's belief that he's a human lie detector, or just marvel at the vast foreign policy knowledge that Stephanopoulos, Noonan, Carville, Rove, Begala, Kudlow, and Bennett possess. 

But I honestly don't see the point anymore.  Matt Blackwell at the Social Science Statistics blog explains why:

In the 111th Congress, Coburn has had very little success with his amendments [batting 3 for 29, or .103--DD]...

Seven of the rejections are instances when Coburn's amendment was tabled without discussion. Most of the rejections have been of proposed budget cuts or banning funds from certain projects And this is just in this year. Out of all the roll call votes on Coburn-sponsored amendments in the Senate over his tenure, only 8 out of 68 have actually passed....

Tom Coburn knows that putting out no-win amendments is a great way to take positions in the Senate without committing to anything. Minority amendments are a costless signal of the blandest kind--even a political scientist can see that.

My top ten notes, quotes, flotsam and jetsam from four days at the American Political Science Association's annual meeting in Toronto, Canada:

1)  I predict a bevy of papers over the next six months with titles like:

• "The Political Economy of International Roaming Charges."
• "States, Social Revolutions, and Why AT&T Sucks."
• "A Rational Choice Explanation of Why Your American Cell Phone Does Not Work in Canada."
• "An Empirical Test of Limited iPhone Usage in a Foreign Land." 

2)  Someone had the whimsy to locate a Hooters restaurant right next to the conference center.  And no, I do not know who went there.

3)  Pehaps related to the Hooters thing, the book room at APSA had a new wrinkle this year -- free five minute massages from a local massage school.  And hell yes, I took advantage of this offer! 

4)  Said by a book editor as someone was buying one of his press' books:  "Yeah.... good luck slogging through that one." 

5)  Books available for just three bucks at the conference -- indicating that these titles had either jumped the shark or never caught fire: 

• Thomas Friedman's Hot, Flat and Crowded
• Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine
• Andrew Bacevich's The Limits of Power
• Noam Chomsky's Failed States
• John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.

6)  Overheard:  "I have to tell you my Cornel West and Ronald Reagan anecdote." 

7)  Someone asked a female political scientist with an ankle tattoo whether it was Tibetan.  She replied, "No, it's Elvish." 

8)  In conversation:  "Things I do not worry about disappearing:  death, taxes, and [a prominent political scientist's] ego." 

9)  I was puzzled and saddened by the paucity of panels about the financial meltdown and Great Recession.  I was really puzzled and saddened by the low attendance at the few panels that addressed this topic. 

10)  The most gratifying thing I heard at the conference:  "Your zombie post was awesome!!!"