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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   35549 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022

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A couple weeks ago I dropped a couple of names on some people whose ages ranged between mid-30s and mid-60s and I was met with blank stares. Even after explaining who the people were, everyone was still drawing a blank. The names were Chandra Levy and Gary Condit. For those who are unaware, Chandra Levy was a US Department of Corrections employee who disappeared in the spring of 2001. Her disappearance made national news when it was revealed that she had previously been an intern for California Congressman Gary Condit, and there was evidence that they had had an affair. There was never anything approaching evidence that he was involved in her disappearance, but his continued denial of any intimate relationship in the face of nearly overwhelming evidence gave him the aura of a man who wasn't telling the truth, and speculation ensued.

If you're too young to remember the case, I'm bringing it up because it was huge at the time. The New York Times ran over 50 stories about it between May and September. To put this in context, the other big news stories during that period were the Microsoft antitrust suit, the Bush tax cuts, the Andrea Yates child-drowning case, and the president's monthlong August vacation. It's hard to gauge the coverage of most of these, but Yates merited fewer than 20 articles, and the rest of these weren't exactly corkers. The Levy disappearance was easily the biggest news story of that summer, until 9/11 pushed it off of the front page. Even then, it had enough staying power to remain in the background for years afterward, as new developments arose. Condit sought reelection but lost the primary in March. The body was found in May. A man who had previously been convicted of attacking other women in the area where the body was found was convicted in 2006, but was released ten years later after appeals revealed that the prosecution's case was terrible. As recently as last year, the Times was still following the case, this time about how the prosecutors are facing malicious prosecution charges.

It was a big story. It may have only dominated the public consciousness because it was the only interesting thing in an otherwise uninteresting time, but it dominated nonetheless. It's no longer front-page news, but developments still merit mention by the Newspaper of Record. And yet plenty of people who were certainly old enough to remember draw a blank 20 years later. The same is true of the 1979 Ogaden War, or the Bhopal disaster; it seems to have vanished from the collective consciousness, apart from the aforementioned updates and the occasional podcast dedicated to these sorts of things. Now imagine trying to explain to someone how big a news story was a hundred years after the fact. Are you familiar with the Hall-Mills murder? It was easily the biggest murder story in American history until the Lindbergh Kidnapping, and was much bigger than any popular crime story since the OJ Trial. Yet today it only gets a mention in true crime books and podcasts and such. If someone frozen in 1922 were to wake up today and asked about the resolution of the case, he may be incredulous to find out that no one has any idea what he's talking about. Even big political events barely merit discussion. Teapot Dome may be mentioned in every US history book, but good luck finding anyone who can explain what the scandal was (and it was one that jeopardized Harding's presidency, though he would die before it was resolved). So no, there's no one article you can point to that will fully express the magnitude of an issue to someone 100 years in the future.

Very true. Another data point: Very few people today know or care about the hot 1896 political question of bimetallism, which gave occasion to "the greatest political speeches in American history" that enraptured the DNC.

In one sense no, in another sense we care very much about monetary policy, international trade, the distribution of advantages between finance, industry, and agriculture. We don't talk about Gold vs Silver because it's irrelevant, we moved to fiat money, but we argue about all the issues that made Gold vs Silver important today. Not a political ad this year doesn't mention either inflation, trade, or big banks/pharma/business.

A man who had previously been convicted of attacking other women in the area where the body was found was convicted in 2006, but was released ten years later after appeals revealed that the prosecution's case was terrible.

Considering that this is an extensive writeup, I'm surprised that you omitted the fact that he was an illegal immigrant from El Salvador. I assume this is relevant, because it very likely prompted many normies to block the whole incident out so as to avoid wrongthink.

By the way, just to nitpick: the Ogaden War took place 1977-78. Was it ever extensively covered in Western media? I'd be surprised somewhat.

I doubt his immigration status was relevant to the story fading away. It was a liberal organization, the Washington Post, that led the charge to get the DC police to take a closer look at the guy. More importantly, though, when these things are done, they're done. When the FBI released their final report in the Gaby Petito investigation last January, it made the news, but the interest wasn't nearly as big as it had been last fall. The New York Times ran over ten stories about the Petito disappearance during September and October of last year, and the story of the FBI report is the only one they've run since then. That's not quite a 1 to 1 comparison because the Petito mystery was solved and the Levy mystery wasn't, but people move on from popular crime stories easily.

If liberals really couldn't cope with an illegal immigrant being the perp, they wouldn't have blocked it out, but focused on what a terrible case it was. The only real evidence the police had against the guy was the testimony of a jailhouse snitch who had a history of telling stories to curry favor with law enforcement. The initial story the informant gave police (back in 2001) was that Condit had paid the perp $25 grand as a hit job on Levy. The assertion is ridiculous for reasons I shouldn't have to explain, and the DC police rightly told the guy to pound sand until the Post started asking questions years later. When it was revealed post-conviction that the informant had perjured himself on the witness stand the prosecution was forced to drop the charges, since the guy had no credibility at this point and the rest of the case was garbage. Not that anyone could have known all of this in 2008, but cases that revolve around jailhouse informants and other questionable kinds of evidence are generally pretty shoddy.

As for the Ogaden War, I apologize for getting the year wrong; I knew it was the Carter Administration but whiffed on the exact date. Anyway, one year ago today we were in the midst of the Gabby Petito obsession and, as I alluded to earlier, the Times mentioned Petito's name in 16 articles, though some of these were bare mentions (e.g. "While most of us are obsessing over Gabby Petito, the Yankees are still in a pennant race", etc.) and others are only peripherally about her (e.g. articles about other missing people), so I'd say there were at least ten depending on what you count and as high as 18 if you count every article that mentioned her name, ever. In the first 2 months of the Ogden war, July and August 1977, the Times ran over 50 articles about the conflict. Granted, some of these were world news briefs, and the Times traditionally focuses more on hard news and less on popular crime stories, but the difference is still stark. I don't want to suggest that this war was on everyone's mind to the same extent the Petito case was (what the Times didn't provide was more than made up for by the tabloids), but it had serious Cold War implications and was certainly a big deal at the time.

When the FBI released their final report in the Gaby Petito investigation last January, it made the news, but the interest wasn't nearly as big as it had been last fall.

I suppose the report didn't reveal any further juicy details?

It was a liberal organization, the Washington Post, that led the charge to get the DC police to take a closer look at the guy.

I have to say that sounds genuinely surprising. Maybe his legal status was only confirmed by the authorities later?

By the way, just to nitpick: the Ogaden War took place 1977-78. Was it ever extensively covered in Western media? I'd be surprised somewhat.

I suggest Biafran war as a better example. Possibly millions died in famine; there was a dramatic airlift; the Médecins Sans Frontières was established as a direct response. Today? Some people have heard about MSF/Doctors Without Borders, probably nobody about Biafra.

Yeah. As far as I know, the Ogaden War was only ever brought up in Western media in the context of detente, as a Conservative talking point against it (due to the extensive Soviet airlift operation organized to assist Ethiopia).

Only Warren Zevon fans, mores the pity.

I was wearing an N95 working in a crawlspace all day today, and remembered that only last year there were people on the motte loudly exclaiming that they didn't even notice wearing two masks, and people who didn't want to jog masked were grandma-murdering moral defectives.

Of course, there were also people saying that wearing one for five minutes literally killed them (they got better), but after spending a miserable day in one I'm more sympathetic to them.

It's crazy how stuff like that just vanishes and everyone pretends their extreme opinions on it never happened. Or just honestly but conveniently forget all about it.

I have been wanting to do an effort post on the Culture War clashes of yesteryear that have since fizzled for various reasons. This is a couple of good examples, to which I might add turn-of-the-century hysteria over carpal tunnel disabling knowledge workers at keyboards and file sharing vs. the RIAA and MPAA.

I'm curious if anyone has any other battles-gone-cold they can remember.

I have been wanting to do an effort post on the Culture War clashes of yesteryear that have since fizzled for various reasons.

Some good ones I think of from time-to-time:

  • incandescent bulbs vs. fluorescent

  • Terri Schiavo

  • stem cells in general

  • Israel/Palestine (comes in waves; gets forgotten for five years then comes back)

  • creationism

incandescent bulbs vs. fluorescent

I guess we ended up side-stepping that, since LEDs took over.

This is probably a Metaphor For Something.

Yes, LEDs ended up being much better peformance-wise and were introduced shortly enough following fluorescents that the weird culture war element of it fizzled. But back in the day there were a lot of bizarre op-eds written about it

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especially related to the potential for mercury exposure

I get the feeling that the risk of mercury in general is far overstated.

Aside from that, did you ever experience other issues with CFLs? I know there were many people who claimed they caused headaches. The light seemed to always bother my eyes when they were first turned on. And they seemed like a really poor choice for rooms I was only in briefly, as they'd burn out after relatively few uses over the course of a year or so (storage room/pantry). And being from a household where we tended to turn off/on lights when leaving/entering a room, the lifespan seemed to be cut to the order of a few months.

CFLs were a waste.

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Their main problem was that they took anywhere from 10-120 seconds to reach their full brightness; more in the cold. So every time you'd turn the light on, you'd be disgusted by this dim, wan light until you gave it time to warm up.

The lumen per watt efficiency was quite good, so they were well-suited for fixtures where they would be left on for hours at a time. I had one in my basement that I just left on 24/7. Now LED lights equal them in efficiency and beat them in every other way.

They did? I still have CFLs from when they first got popular. They just keep going.

file sharing vs. the RIAA and MPAA

I guess people did just kinda forget. The RIAA just hasn't been quite that aggressive until recently (Twitch), and back then, almost no one thought of trying to get the hosting for pirate sites yoinked. I think the pirates have proven too hardy to exterminate, and the big media corporations have preferred the tactic of "retreat behind paywalls and requiring internet connections" thanks to the rise of digital distribution and content streaming.

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I've thought there would be a market for a newspaper that only reported 6 month ago's news. It would report the stories that were important half a year ago, and give us a good summary of where the story went, which facts people had wrong, etc. The "Breaking" story with the benefit of hindsight, would be very interesting to read. It would be a good way to see which stories were actually important when they broke, and which ones were just flashes in the pan.

I don't think "thing which people argue about" is by definition culture war. What makes it culture war is that there's no room for disagreement.

Carpal tunnel syndrome isn't culture war unless saying "I doubt that carpal tunnel syndrome is very common" is, not only thought to be wrong, but considered by the other side to condemn you as a person and to justify retaliation against you.

Carpal tunnel syndrome isn't culture war unless saying "I doubt that carpal tunnel syndrome is very common" is, not only thought to be wrong

This was specifically a reference to the battles over policies the late 2000 Clinton administration promulgated via OSHA, only to be reversed by the incoming Bush administration in 2001 [1] [2] [3]. In a quieter era, this was a reasonably sized political fight that was largely pushed aside by events in the fall of 2001.

Ultimately I feel like the Clinton policies (explicit focus on ergonomics) have largely won out on, if not by OSHA fiat, then economics: workplaces like assembly lines are typically designed to minimize short- and long-term injury risks and office workers can generally get standing desks and such. But we're not all using 2000s-vintage ergonomic keyboards either, nor are office workers on these newfangled "computers" getting benched with career-ending typing injuries regularly: rates of carpal tunnel have been largely flat.

I'd still say that it's not culture war for the reason I gave: You're not a bad person if you disagree over it.

Net Neutrality is a fun one. I'm not sure everyone have actually forgotten about it, like, if you mention it on reddit (where it was the subject of a bunch of all-time top posts) people just ignore you instead of asking what it was.

It's especially ironic in that Redditors have done a 180 and now are all for companies using their power to discriminate

Fight For The Future definitely still cares about it. There are people beating the drum to get Gigi Sohn confirmed for the FCC, but it seems like that has stalled.

turn-of-the-century hysteria over carpal tunnel disabling knowledge workers at keyboards

Uh, that one is real, it just turns out that for most people fixing your posture and keyboard setup to prevent carpel tunnel is trivial.

So no, there's no one article you can point to that will fully express the magnitude of an issue to someone 100 years in the future.

Now that's blackpilling. More or less what I subconsciously expected, but the sheer amount of your examples, and how foreign they all sound ("Ogaden War"? "Bhopal disaster"? Are you a visitor from a parallel universe?) blew my mind.

Still, there is some way you have learned all these were big stories. Or all they all from memory?

I remember Bhopal, I didn't know about the Ogaden War, the only mention I heard of that was lyrics in this song from 1985 (a one-hit wonder from Latin Quarter).

There's more tanks than food in the Ogaden

It looks like Moscow got it wrong again

It's always funny just what cross-section of history people know. Like, to me, the Bhopal Disaster is just a thing that happened. I don't know when I learned about it, I can't remember a time I didn't know about it. I could probably give a vaguely accurate summary of it without even checking Wikipedia. I don't understand how anyone could not know about it.

Never heard of the Ogaden War, though.

And I know I've heard the name Gary Condit before, but I don't remember anything about Chandra Levy.

Meanwhile, I bet there's some historical moment that you have deep knowledge about and that I have literally never even heard of.

I can thank the Yes Men for teaching me about the Bhopal disaster.

Torso murders!

Most of the things listed above may have vanished from the public consciousness, but they still have enormous impact within their own particular niche communities. You aren't a good chemical plant worker unless Bhopal is in the back of your mind every time you get the urge to neglect your daily scrubber monitoring paperwork. I suspect the same is true for congressmen with mistresses, African statesmen, and insanity defense lawyers with respect to their relevant now-forgotten events

Similarly, programmers tend to know about Therac-25.

Seconding Bhopal: I have to remind myself that it's not common knowledge outside of industrial safety or PlainlyDifficult followers, despite being the largest industrial disaster of the century by at least one and possibly two orders of magnitude.

((But then again, there's a lot of people who don't remember much about the Beruit explosion, and it rhymed with a couple other (distant) followers for big industrial accidents.))

Focusing too much on individual incidents can be tricky, though. Colgan Air 3407 has had a massive aviation impact and is part of the reason the commercial pilot shortage got so sharp so fast, but the reason it did and similar or larger incidents didn't. Is that because the action came about as a result of the multiple incidents all together? Or because the action had other, non-incident motivations? Does the distinction make sense in this case? If not, does it make sense in broader cases? Was Skyline Towers a warning for Willow Island, or were they two different aspects of a same underlying problem? Was Hyatt Regency uniquely dangerous, or just unusually obvious?

I've heard of all of these events apart from the Hall-Mills murder. However, all it takes to convince me that something called "Hall-Mills murder" was, indeed, a huge issue in 1922 consuming the newspapers at the same intensity as the OJ case did in 1995 is, indeed, some stranger on an Internet forum noting so, in this very post I'm replying to. I don't need to Google, I don't need to check the Wikipedia, I don't need to know who Hall or Mills were, assuming they are people - I'm ready to believe this any which way. I will do this after sending this post, but even before sending, I'm good to go.

There's an awful lot of Big Names and Sensational Cases from the past which we have forgotten, or never heard about. Just randomly reading old books will turn up references where it's assumed everyone knows what is meant, because it was the Current Affairs Hot Story of the time, but if you aren't familiar with the names then it's frustrating - who were these people? what was this event?

Just pulling from Chesterton, he mentions "Colonel Ingersoll's atheistical lectures". Who was Ingersoll? Pretty much the Richard Dawkins of his day:

Robert Green Ingersoll (August 11, 1833 – July 21, 1899), nicknamed "the Great Agnostic", was an American lawyer, writer, and orator during the Golden Age of Free Thought, who campaigned in defense of agnosticism.

Or, during his tour of America, there was a huge murder trial in Oklahoma in 1920, the Hamon murder trial which involved a very prominent politician:

Jacob Louis Hamon Sr. (June 5, 1873 – November 26, 1920) was an American attorney, oil millionaire, railway owner, and political figure. He was Chairman of the Oklahoma Republican National Committee, and after statehood, state chairman of the Republican National Committee. By 1920, he had become quite wealthy and an influential player in Republican Party politics. He allegedly swung enough Republican votes to assure Warren G. Harding would be the Republican candidate for President, and subsequently become the President-elect. It was rumored that Harding would name Hamon to an important post in the new administration. His murder, and the subsequent trial of his mistress, was national news in 1920.

So, how many people heard of this before? And yet this was a national sensation reaching up to involve even the president.

Let me quote some Chesterton to give a flavour of the publicity:

The posters in the paper-shop were placarded with the verdict in the Hamon trial; a cause célèbre which reached its crisis in Oklahoma while I was there. Senator Hamon had been shot by a girl whom he had wronged, and his widow demanded justice, or what might fairly be called vengeance. There was very great excitement culminating in the girl’s acquittal. Nor did the Hamon case appear to be entirely exceptional in that breezy borderland. The moment the town had received the news that Clara Smith was free, newsboys rushed down the street shouting, ‘Double stabbing outrage near Oklahoma,’ or ‘Banker’s throat cut on Main Street,’ or otherwise resuming their regular mode of life. It seemed as much as to say, ‘Do not imagine that our local energies are exhausted in shooting a Senator,’ or ‘Come, now, the world is young, even if Clara Smith is acquitted, and the enthusiasm of Oklahoma is not yet cold.’

Mr. Hamon was presumably a member of the Upper Ten, if there is such a thing. He was a member of the Senate or Upper House in the American Parliament; he was a millionaire and a pillar of the Republican party, which might be called the respectable party; he is said to have been mentioned as a possible President. And the speeches of Clara Smith’s counsel, who was known by the delightfully Oklahomite title of Wild Bill McLean, were wild enough in all conscience; but they left very little of my friend’s illusion that members of the Upper Ten could not be accused of crimes. Nero and Borgia were quite presentable people compared with Senator Hamon when Wild Bill McLean had done with him.

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