Michele Bachmann's 'alternate universe'.

The WP's Dana Milbank, like other MSM pundits, can't bring himself to dismiss Michele Bachmann (shown left) as the whackjob she is. But he deserves some credit for at least highlighting the gas pains she's giving the G.O.P. leadership, and highlighting the Minnesota congresswoman's peculiar grasp of U.S. history.

Here's Milbank on his WP blog:

Party leaders, intimidated by the Tea Party activists, have little control over Bachmann. They denied her the party leadership post she sought, but when it came to her plan to upstage the authorized GOP response Tuesday night, the most House Speaker John Boehner could do was grumble that it's 'a little unusual'.

Bachmann is more than a little unusual. Her greatest hits are now legendary: Her suggestion that President Obama and the Democrats are "anti-American," her caution that the census could be used to create internment camps, her accusation that Obama is running a "gangster government" and her request that people be "armed and dangerous" to fight climate-change legislation...

'It is my firm belief that America is under greater attack now . . . than at any time,' she warned, voicing 'grave doubt' about the nation's survival. She presented to the assembled Iowans a novel view of American history in which the 'founders . . . worked tirelessly until slavery was no more." In Bachmann's version, "It didn't matter the color of their skin. . . . Once you got here, we were all the same'.

Hard to believe Al Franken and Michele Bachmann were elected from the same state.

Hmm. Obama is a greater threat to the Republic than were the Redcoats, Hitler, Tojo, Stalin, and the Klan? (I'd throw in the perpetrators of reality television, but that would be gilding the lily.)

To be sure, slaveowners George Washington, Thomas Jefferson et al were at least cognizant of America's "original sin." But they punted on that one, because otherwise there'd have been no Union comprising the likes of Virginia and the Carolinas.

Have I mentioned America's scandalously low world rankings in educational achievement? You could pore over the latest OECD study on that, or just have a cursory read of Bachmann's latest speeches for anecdotal proof.

Ike once said of a knuckleheaded ally that, "To the question of how dumb he is, there appears to be no conclusive answer." With Bachmann, it's as though she took her civics lessons from a second-hand Cliff Notes with three-quarters of the pages ripped out.

And which of us didn't once do that? But our better instincts kept us from seeking high political office.

 

Photo: AP

 

 

Finding fault with the 'Tiger Mom'.

Larry Summers recently found himself on the same panel at the Davos summit as author Amy Chua, she of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother controversy. (We authors should all wish for such controversy - the U.S. born-and-raised author has shot to sales superstardom.)

 
Larry Summers, Amy Chua and David Brooks.

Summers, former U.S. treasury secretary, Harvard president and Obama economic advisor, now a Harvard prof (did we mention his cameo in hit Facebook drama, The Social Network?), knows a thing or two about teaching methods, which are somewhat at odds with the super-strict Chua.

Summers told Chua:

It is not entirely clear that your veneration of traditional academic achievement is exactly well placed. Which two freshmen at Harvard have arguably been most transformative of the world in the last 25 years? You can make a reasonable case for Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, neither of whom graduated. People on average live a quarter of their lives as children. That’s a lot. It’s important that they be as happy as possible during those 18 years. That counts too.

Chua, as has been widely reported, counsels parents to withhold from their kids participation in school sports, sleepovers, playdates and other trivial pursuits in order to focus exclusively on academic proficiency.

The NYT's David Brooks has taken his own whack at Chua, arguing that single-minded focus on marks at the expense of the socializing function of school is severely misguided.

Practicing a piece of music for four hours requires focused attention, but it is nowhere near as cognitively demanding as a sleepover with 14-year-old girls. Managing status rivalries, negotiating group dynamics, understanding social norms, navigating the distinction between self and group — these and other social tests impose cognitive demands that blow away any intense tutoring session or a class at Yale.

Yet mastering these arduous skills is at the very essence of achievement. Most people work in groups. We do this because groups are much more efficient at solving problems than individuals...

Participating in a well-functioning group is really hard. It requires the ability to trust people outside your kinship circle, read intonations and moods, understand how the psychological pieces each person brings to the room can and cannot fit together.

This skill set is not taught formally, but it is imparted through arduous experiences. These are exactly the kinds of difficult experiences Chua shelters her children from by making them rush home to hit the homework table.

Chua would do better to see the classroom as a cognitive break from the truly arduous tests of childhood. Where do they learn how to manage people? Where do they learn to construct and manipulate metaphors? Where do they learn to perceive details of a scene the way a hunter reads a landscape? Where do they learn how to detect their own shortcomings? Where do they learn how to put themselves in others’ minds and anticipate others’ reactions?

Points taken. I always think of Port Huron, Mich. as the town where Thomas Edison spent only a few months in school before striking out on his own at 16. 

Chua strikes fear into some parents because of their understandable misgivings about their kids' over-indulgence in computer games (though the science is unresolved on whether the games are actually a socializing ritual, and teach problem-solving skills), and worry about declining U.S. educational outcomes relative to other nations. As I've blogged before, the U.S. now ranks 17th, 30th and 31st in literacy, science and math, respectively. The angst-meter mightn't register so high if Chua was of Austrian heritage rather than Chinese, a people now seen as posing a threat to America's hegemony.

Bottom line: Obviously we need both inspiration to creativity in the classroom and more attention to the basic skills in literacy, numeracy and science that once comprised all too much of the curriculum before the backlash to that cramped vision dating from the Sixties.

 

Photos: Chua and Summers, AP; Brooks, NYT handout.

 

 

 

Motown is back...

The most popular auto brands in the U.S. are Ford, Chevrolet and Toyota, in that order. Toyota - it of the 12.4 million recalled vehicles since 2009 - having slipped to third place last year.

GM sells more vehicles in North America than any automaker (Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac, GMC). And Ford, even without the now-defunct Mercury brand, has displaced Toyota (Toyota, Lexus) for the #2 spot.

 
Flags flying high in Detroit.

The Ford and Toyota brands are now evenly matched in favorable consumer regard, according to Consumer Reports, a long trip back from the "Rusty Ford" era of the 1970s. Ford has leapt 35 points in the CR survey, and Toyota has plunged 46 points, to a "statistical dead heat" of 144 and 147, respectively. And yes, both Ford and Toyota are way out ahead of the likes of BMW, Mercedes, Volvo and other costlier brands on "factors that consumers say matter most: safety, quality and value," CR reports.  

Ford and Chrysler gained market share in 2010 while GM slipped. But for GM, that's the inevitable result of shedding half its brands, the low-volume Pontiac, Saturn, Saab and Hummer. Just the same, GM's robust 2010 profit will be its first full-year profit since 2004. GM is now a viable enterprise, because it finally has disciplined itself to sell only vehicles it is certain to profit from. That's after decades of keeping an excess of factories running, and dumping the excess production on the unprofitable fleet and rental markets. That practice also depressed resale values - a further inhibitor of buyer interest in GM products. An ever-so-brief stay in bankruptcy in 2009 has not only rescued GM but set it up to become one of the world's most sustainably profitable automakers, a status only the likes of Toyota, Honda and BMW were long thought capable of. 

Ford will report a staggering 2010 pre-profit of about $8 billion tomorrow, its biggest profit in a decade. That's a tripling in profit since 2009, despite a modest 19% increase in unit sales, which spells a huge increase in profit per vehicle sold. Again, Ford and its Detroit peers are learning how to make money in good times and bad, rather than counting on sporadic fat profits at the top of the cycle and then wallowing in losses during the inevitable long industry slumps.

Ford's F-Series pickup (shown left) remains the best-selling vehicle of any kind in America, posting a stunning 28% gain last year. (The F-Series has had U.S. truck leadership for 34 years in a row.)

GM's restyled Camaro, reintroduced in 2009 after a seven-year haitus, has overtaken Ford's signature Mustang. This is a sidelines contest, muscle cars being a small part of the market. But that each vehicle could post healthy sales -Camaro sales were up 32% last year, Mustang sales gained 11% in yet another weak year for overall North American vehicle sales - is a triumph. Particularly for the Camaro, which was absent from the market for so long.

  

The Chev Camaro edged out Ford's Mustang in muscle-car leadership in 2010. (2011 models shown.)

I'm torn on the Camaro-Mustang rivalry, which dates from the 1960s. I've long been rooting for Ford as the world's best-run automaker, but the head-turning Camaro is built by, excuse me, the world's most skilled automakers, in Oshawa, Ont. (The Harbor and J.D. Power surveys will bear me out on GM Oshawa's industry-leading productivity and quality performance, respectively.)

Oh, and the Chev Volt hybrid that GM has so much riding on - and debuts in showrooms later this year - has won three major Car of the Year awards. The challenge here will be Volt's $41,000 (U.S.) base price, far more moolah than consumer are accustomed to handing over for a Chev-branded econobox. Obama's $7,500 tax rebate should help. The trick for GM is to vastly lower its production costs - and selling price - on the Volt before the tax rebate program expires.

 
Then-Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm with the Chev Volt plug-in hybrid.

Asian vehicles alone still command 46.3% of the U.S. market. That would be Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Hyundai. (The surging Hyundai is now the world's fourth-largest automaker.) So there's lots of ground yet for Detroit to regain. Which is great news for North American-based automakers, since they've learned how to make money on today's low, recession-era volumes, and are poised for even bigger profits as the North American economy recovers. 

The numbers finally are heading in the right direction for the Motor City, after decades of mismanagement, in a turnaround whose speed and strength few would have imagined possible as recently as the late 2000s.

 

Photos: Company handouts.

 

    

...so can we scrap the 'economic disaster porn' already?

Noreen Malone in New Republic calls out photographers and writers who slobber over the economic wreckage of America's most-abandoned inner cities, Detroit conspicuous among them.

Pictures are naturally more memorable than a well written, even-handed magazine story about the scope and tragedy of Detroit's economic woes could ever be. But that's precisely the problem. These indelible pictures present an un-nuanced and static vision of Detroit. They might serve to 'raise awareness' of the Rust Belt's blight, but raising awareness is only useful if it provokes a next step, a move toward trying to fix a problem. By presenting Detroit, and other hurting cities like it, as places beyond repair, they in fact quash any such instinct. Looked at as a piece of art, they're arresting, compelling, haunting...but not galvanizing. Our brains mentally file these scenes next to Pompeii rather than a thriving metropolis like Chicago, say, or even Columbus.

The cure for giving up on Detroit is go and look at it. I've blogged and written in the Star on my surprise at Detroit's continued aesthetic virtues, in stark contrast to decades of negative media reports. Certainly there's blight, but the ingenious street grid, the inventory of both historic landmarks and smart new office towers and major-league sports venues, and a robust hinterland in Southeast Michigan and Southwestern Ontario powerfully suggests that a Pittsburgh-like revival is in store for America's former fifth-largest city with the application of some business and political will.

The well-publicized Detroit:

 
And the town don't see so much of:

 
Belle Isle Park, designed by Frederick Law Olmstead.

 
Comerica Park, home of the Detroit Tigers, in the foreground.

 
Greektown.

 
Annual Electronic Music Festival.

 
Detroit Institute of the Arts.

 
Rosa Parks light-rail station.

 
Annual Jazz Fest.

 
Skyline from across the Detroit River in Windsor, Ontario.

 
"Kettle" sculpture at Campus Martius park.

 

 Water Maze at GM's world headquarters on the Detroit River shoreline.

 
Hitsville, U.S.A., birthplace of Motown.

 
Sculpture at Hart Plaza.

 
Annual Arts, Beats and Eats Festival in the Royal Oak shopping and nightclub district. 

 

 

What's holding back women - and society.

The NYT buries the lede in a report on record-high stress levels among college freshmen. Here's the third paragraph:

Every year, women had a less positive view of their emotional health than men, and that gap has widened.

Then we return to our regularly scheduled program, namely that fear of not finding a job, rising tuition and other factors that come up in every recession are stressing out freshmen, a term for which no gender-neutral term has yet been, er, conceived, it appears.

Further alone, the Times attempts to address the big story:

For many young people, serious stress starts before college...The gender gap on that question was even larger than on emotional health, with 18% of the men saying they had been frequently overwhelmed, compared with 39% of the women.

There is also a gender gap, studies have shown, in the students who seek out college mental health services, with women making up 60% or more of the clients.

'Boys are socialized not to talk about their feelings or express stress, while girls are more likely to say they're having a tough time," said Perry C. Francis, coordinator for counseling services at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti. "Guys might go out and do something destructive, or stupid, that might include property damage. Girls act out differently.'

You could look at this as a crisis or a huge opportunity. But whichever, when half the population is over-stressed about school and life generally, that's worth urgent study. The crisis is obvious: Society is being deprived of the best talents of half the population. And the opportunity is the wealth of creativity unleashed by removing the impediments to female self-fulfillment, in academe and elsewhere.  

 

 

By which logic, so did James Earl Ray.

The NYT's marvelous Gail Collins, in a column on Utah's plan to make the Browning the state's official gun:

It is generally not a good policy to dwell on the strange behavior of state legislators since it leads to bottomless despair. If I wanted to go down that road, I’d give you Mark Madsen, a Utah state senator who tried to improve upon the Browning Day celebrations by suggesting they be scheduled to coincide with Martin Luther King Day since “both made tremendous contributions to individual freedom and individual liberty.”

 

 

Enjoy your day.

 
(Getty Images)

 

 

Journalism 101.

Some enjoyable rules from Guardian writer Tim Radford's "25 Commandments for Journalists":

* No one will ever complain because you have made something too easy to understand.

* The classic error in journalism is to overestimate what the reader knows and underestimate the reader's intellegence.

* Metaphors are great. Just don't choose loopy metaphors, and never, never mix them. Subs on the Guardian used to have a special Muzzled Piranha Award, a kind of Oscar of incompetence, handed to an industrial relations reporter who warned the world that the Trades Union Congress wildcats were lurking in the undergrowth, ready to dart out like piranhas, unless they were muzzled. George Orwell reports on the case of an MP who claimed that the jackbooted fascist octopus had sung its swansong.

* People will always respond to something close to them. Concerned citizens of south London should care more about economic reform in Surinam than about Millwall's fate on Saturday, but mostly they don't. Accept it. On 24 November 1963, the Hull Daily Mail sent me in search of a Hull angle on the assassination of President Kennedy. Once I had found a line that began "Hull citizens were in mourning today as..." we could get on with reporting what happened in Dallas.

* Beware of all definitives. The last horse trough in Surrey will turn out not even to be the last horse trough in Godalming. There will almost always be someone who turns out to be bigger, faster, older, earlier, richer or more nauseating than the candidate to whom you have just awarded a superlative. Save yourself the bother: "One of the first..." will usually save the moment. If not, then at least qualify it: "According to the Guinness Book of Records..."The Sunday Times Rich List..." and so on.

* There are things that good taste and the law will simply not let you say in print. My current favorites are "Murder acquitted" and (in a report of an Easter religious play) "Paul Myers, who played Jesus Christ, emerged as the star of the show." Try and work out which one has the taste problem, and which one will cost you approximately half a million per word.

 

 

The marginally employable Mr. Olbermann.

Back in the mists of time, when I was learning the journo trade, I was "disabused" of my romantic notion that the most highly prized writers and illustrators were the most brilliant ones. Uh no. The contibutors most highly prized by editors were those who (a) reliably met deadlines and (b) were easy to get along with. I don't imagine that prima donnas are easily suffered in any walk of life.

 

Because Keith Olbermann's departure from the airwaves was abrupt, and his "Countdown" lead MSNBC in ratings, there's been much talk of a right-wing conspiracy to squelch this voice of progressivism. As so often is the case, there is no conspiracy. The abrupt parting of ways was, in fact, about a year in the negotiating.

At each of Olbermann's many places of employ, he has been "high-maintenance," to say the least. As this NYT backstory recounts, Olbermann tried the patience even of his stoutest defenders with MSNBC during his eight-year tenure at the network. I particularly like the closing sentence in the NYT report, quoting an anonymous source at NBC News saying, "Give us a bit of credit for getting eight years out of him. That's the longest he's had anywhere."

I only raise this - and I've been a fan of Olbermann - because it's been a lack of humility that has done in so much great talent over the decades. At some point, a director finds an actor just too much trouble for her latest film (for which the actor would otherwise be perfect), or a veep leaves out an extraordinarily talented person from a team project she's assembling because of "people issues." (The passed-over individual would be at everyone else's throats). Too many bosses, myself included when I was one, kept a mediocre but easy to deal with person on board when a daring innovator would have better served us all, save that the genius would soon have driven us over the edge.

So if you're wondering why mediocrity seems too often to rule the day, here's a reason. The alternative just isn't worth the day-to-day grief. This is hardly an apology for ubiquitous mediocrity, just an explanation.

Photo: MSNBC handout

 

 

Happy Republic Day.

Best wishes on Republic Day, when India celebrates the coming into force on this date, Jan. 26, 1950, the new Constitution of India, three years after India gained its independence.

 

Republic Day celebrations are held in the state capitals. Of world renown is the grand parade held in New Dehli, the national capital. The parade begins near the Raisina Hill near the President's Palace (the Rashtrapati Bhavan), proceeds along the Rajpath, past the India Gate, and culminates at the historic Red Fort. There is a special Republic Day dance - a swirl of India's national colors - and the honoring of India's ethnically diverse armed forces with medals of valor. (Shown below).

  

Shown below is a copy of the original Preamble to the Indian constitution, first unveiled 60 years ago. 

 

 Source: Wikipedia Commons.