Flag Wrap

A week of Jasper Johns, Kenny G and Bad Art Friends

Most of what I wrote this week seems to be circling cultural topics. I don’t know if that’s because politics has gotten depressing or because it’s gotten boring. But my one political piece of the week was about the issue that is emphatically both.

One Man’s Ceiling Is Another Man’s Floor

My only piece at The Week this week was a short item about the debt ceiling:

The Democratic position is that Republicans should join in raising the debt limit because they share the responsibility for the rising debt — as they unquestionably do. Raising the ceiling shouldn't be a political football, but a routine matter, since the real decisions are made when taxes and spending levels are set by Congress.

Coming together that way would certainly be better than these constant pointless battles. But getting political cover is hardly something worth risking the full faith and credit of the federal government over. If the Democrats could eliminate the debt ceiling problem on their own, surely that would make more sense than joining the Republicans' incredibly risky game.

And the Democrats had every chance to do so. They could have included an increase in the debt ceiling in the original reconciliation bill, for example, or passed a standalone debt ceiling raise through reconciliation. They could eliminate the filibuster for debt ceiling bills on a party-line basis, just as Republicans did for judicial nominees — or they could eliminate the filibuster entirely in the same manner. All these choices carry political risks, but they are all within the Democrats' power, and are obviously superior to allowing a default.

The article feels a little obsolete already because Senator McConnell agreed to kick the can down the road to December, but he’s already saying that next time he won’t be so helpful. I really can’t fathom what the Democrats are waiting for. I understand that certain members of the Senate caucus get scared about the prospects of modifying the filibuster, and I understand that both moderates and progressives are nervous about including the debt ceiling raise in the omnibus reconciliation bill, because that would make the bill a must-pass matter. But I haven’t heard any Democrat defend this game on the merits. Nobody says “the debt ceiling is a good thing to have because it imposes an important discipline on the system” because nobody can actually believe that.

Meanwhile, in terms of pure politics, this is a weapon that, when the Republicans shot themselves directly in the foot with it, they recovered almost immediately. Who could possibly believe that the Republicans are going to look bad this time when the Democrats control the Senate and they can’t get their own caucus together on a purely partisan solution?

As I concluded in my piece:

If Democrats had wanted to set a positive example, they could have eliminated the debt ceiling entirely as soon as they got the majority. That would have been the right thing to do, and politically wise as well, since it would deprive future Republican majorities of a hostage to take.

Instead they're playing chicken in order to prove that Republicans are the irresponsible party. What a responsible thing to do.

On Here

Three posts this week on the Substack, all meditations in one way or another on culture and cultural institutions. For what it’s worth, I’m actually quite pleased with all of these.

• “Maculate Conception” articulates my thoughts on visiting the Jasper Johns show at the Whitney Museum, the relationship between art, abstraction, conception, and commerce. I think Johns navigated those relationships far more interestingly than a bunch of recent market-obsessed conceptual artists.

• “Grand Strategy. Huh. (Good God.) What Is It Good For?” is my analysis of what went wrong with Yale’s Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy, whose leader just resigned claiming that the university was bowing to donor pressure to curtail academic freedom. Spoiler: I don’t think it’s that simple.

• Finally, “Cuddly Nazis and Sympathetic Ghouls” reflects on whether a documentary about Kenny G has anything useful to say about evaluating the moral compass of Holocaust films.

The World Elsewhere

Everyone seems to have spent the week talking about “Who Is the Bad Art Friend,” about the strangely compelling case of Dawn Dorland v. Sonya Larson. This appears to be a story about appropriation, plagiarism, artistic freedom, envy, race and class. But what it’s really about is social media, the way it feeds our desire for attention and incites us to vicious judgment. So I find it very sad that so much of the commentary has consisted of gawking at the bad behavior of two writers and condemning one or the other as the villain—a mode of reading that enthusiastically participates in precisely the behavior that the piece is actually exposing.

More in this tweet thread from me—but first, I encourage you to read the story:

Noah Millman @BloggerGideon

I finally read "Who Is the Bad Art Friend," and I am saddened that people have chosen up teams on this one. These two people, Dorland and Larson, seem to me like two sides of the same sad coin. And I feel for both of them. nytimes.com/2021/10/05/mag… (1/n)

nytimes.comWho Is the Bad Art Friend?Audio Recording by Audm

Noah Millman @BloggerGideon

The thing that clearly bugged Larson from the beginning about Dorland was her neediness, that she seemed so interested in recognition for her selfless act of kidney donation. And from the article, it sounds like Larson had identified something real. (2/n)

Noah Millman @BloggerGideon

There's something so sad about being selfless enough to donate a kidney to a stranger, even meeting and getting recognition from that stranger, and yet not finding that enough. I identify with that kind of neediness -- I have been and still can be like that! But it's sad. (3/n)

Noah Millman @BloggerGideon

So Larson really did have a target there, and fodder for a story. But here's the thing: to write that story is *also* to be more interested in Dorland's self-presentation than in her interiority. Just like Dorland, Larson found the surface more important than the substance. (4/n)

Noah Millman @BloggerGideon

Indeed, Larson found Dorland's donation so incomprehensible that she -- in an email to her writer friends -- ridiculed the idea of doing the same. But that didn't make her wonder about what kind of person would do such a thing. She thought she already knew, from Facebook. (5/n)

Noah Millman @BloggerGideon

That's also very sad -- and also something I identify with. The hardest work of writing and of life isn't caricaturing the mote in your neighbor's eye but sketching the beam in your own that perforce you cannot see. (6/n)

Noah Millman @BloggerGideon

It should be obvious that the gift of a kidney matters much more than recognition from one's Facebook friends. But it wasn't obvious to Dorland. Nor to Larson. They've spent years hurting each other over something that, really, is trivial. I find that tragic. (7/n)

Noah Millman @BloggerGideon

Finally, one other thought. The whole team-choosing spectacle has been revelatory in its own way. This is a story that pits, on the one side, a charge of appropriation against, on the other side, a claim for artistic freedom. (8/n)

Noah Millman @BloggerGideon

Dorland says her words and life were stolen and distorted in a way that harms her. Larson says the story she created has its own integrity which Dorland has no claim to. Larson, in other words, is taking the Lionel Shriver position in this particular contretemps. (9/n)

Noah Millman @BloggerGideon

So I find it telling that the sorts of people who likely lined up on Shriver's side have largely sided with "team" Dorland. I can't help but wonder whether that has something to do with Larson having used Dorland's story as inspiration for a story about white saviorhood. (10/n)

Noah Millman @BloggerGideon

And by the same token, I can't helped wondering whether Larson's defenders would have lined up behind her if Larson were white and Dorland mixed-race, and everyone behaved in precisely the same way that they did in our reality. (11/n)

Noah Millman @BloggerGideon

Last note: I am pretty sure my views on this are consistent with my views about the Cat Person debate, but here's a link to those views so you can judge for yourselves. (12/12)

Noah Millman @BloggerGideon

Having read both the short story (back when it came out) and this article, I don’t think this is a fair characterization. It’s not that some details were made up and others were drawn from life; everything was made up and nothing was — that’s how fiction works. (1/n) https://t.co/lRvuZMCnZb