This fabulously rich Parsi from Bombay writes in such a tortured prose style to cover up his commonsensical dissent from the Edward Said-orthodoxy of his field. Unlike Said, who denounces Europeans who write about Arabs to cover up how embarrassed he is by his fellow Arabs, as a Parsi, Homhi Bhabha simply doesn't feel like purely a victim of colonialism. His remarkably intelligent race of Zoroastrians (they are to South Asia what Hungarian Jews were to pre-Holocaust Europe) did very well for themselves under the British as industrialists, although British racial snobbery was no doubt galling. In fact, a Parsi was elected to Parliament as a Tory M.P. from the English Home Counties in the 1890s! To Homi Bhabha, it's obvious that colonialism wasn't all bad, and that Said's model of the world is stupid. But he's too smart and too careerist to come out and say it clearly.
February 9, 2002
Homi Bhabha, Homi Bhabha, I just love to say that name
February 8, 2002
God Save the Queen on her 50th Anniversary
Queen Elizabeth's 50th Anniversary: The only time I ever sawn the Queen was in 1983. I had just arrived in San Francisco on business, and the TV news was trumpeting that President Reagan was going to have dinner with Queen Elizabeth at a Golden Gate Park museum. So, I grabbed a taxi and issued the Mother Goose-like command, "Take me to see the Queen!"
"Any queen in particular?" asked the cabbie. "This town's loaded with 'em."
I eventually landed on a street corner full of Irish protestors holding signs denouncing British rule in Northern Ireland. After a long wait, the biggest motorcade in the history of world rolled by, and there at the back was Elizabeth II, giving her famous little wave to all of us on the corner. I turned around to watch the furious Irish protestors, only to see them leaping up and down in joyous excitement, waving back with tears of adulation in their eyes. When she was gone, the embarrassed Fenians skulked off.
By the way, a lot of hyper-intellectual bilge has been written in the years since the Queen's 25th anniversary "explaining" the Sex Pistol's great single "God Save the Queen." The real reason Johnny Rotten (a.k.a., John Lydon) hated the Queen with such memorable passion was simple: he's an Irishman.
February 7, 2002
Edward Said, Jonah Goldberg, and "Orientalist" scholars
First, as is so common among multiculturalists, Said prefers to write about Europeans who wrote about Arabs, rather than writing about Arabs themselves, because Said is bored and embarrassed by his own people.
Second, many of these European scholars were not only not biased against Arabia, they were in fact "desperately in love with the Arab Muslim world," according to the great economic historian David Landes (click here for my review of his last book.) The British archaeologist turned Arab guerilla leader Lawrence of Arabia is only the most famous "sand-smitten" example.
Third, more than a few Orientalists were not only in love with Arabia, they were in love with individual Arab boys or men. Arab culture's tendency toward bisexuality made it particularly attractive to gay Englishmen. When asked why he had fought for Arab independence, Lawrence replied, ""Personal: I liked a particular Arab, and I thought that freedom for the race would be an acceptable present." This particular Arab was apparently Dahoum, a teenage waterboy. In The Source, James Michener suggested that British rulers in Palestine tended to emotionally bond with the Arabs because they both shared a taste for Brideshead Revisited-style male-male "romantic friendships." In contrast, the highly heterosexual Jews and Americans found each other on the same wavelength.
The essential problem with the European Union
February 6, 2002
New Frontiers in Multicultural Sensitivity
Why Canada admits so many immigrants:
February 3, 2002
Is Human Evolution Finally Over?
Is Human Evolution Finally Over? asks the British Observer. Of course not. Some genes are always being selected for and some against. For example, Palestinians are having three times as many children as Israeli Jews. Thus, the gene frequencies in the Holy Land are evolving at a dramatic rate, with massive real world consequences.
Of course, the rate of current gene change pales in comparison to what will be happening not far in the future when genetic technologies mature. (Already, there are children alive today whose embryos were scientifically selected for being genetically superior to their sibling embryos.) This will have massive political and social impact.
Francis Fukuyama's next book Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution will try to predict these consequences. Unfortunately, I fear Fukuyama will ignore the single best tool for estimating the impact of future differences in gene frequencies: looking at the impact of current genetic differences between individuals and groups. He's always played it safe (in career terms) by ignoring race, even to the point of silliness in his last book, which was about crime and illegitimacy!
To see how understanding genetic differences today sheds crucial light on the genetically engineered tomorrow, read my Thatcher Lecture and my "The Future of Human Nature." 2/3/02
February 2, 2002
Tom Brady's Wonderlic IQ score
Of course, IQ tests do a lousy job of measuring improvisational mental ability, which football players, especially the black ones, are particularly good at. (See my classic article "Great Black Hopes" for the full story.)
The Patriots are the underdogs, but they'd be favored if it was a debate tournament. Starting QB Tom Brady scored 126 (that's about what George W. Bush would score, judging from his 1206 SAT score), while backup QB Drew Bledsoe beat that with a 134 (Al Gore's IQ). 2/02/02
Richard Lynn's and Tatu Vanhanen's IQ and the Wealth of Nations
C'mon, you know you want to to read its tables! For instance, those snotty French who think they are so smart? How do they really score? Or, if you've been wondering why so many people in so many Arab countries believe in so much dumb stuff, Lynn's book offers the most direct explanation: generally speaking, they ain't rocket scientists. Not surprisingly, the Northeast Asian tigers lead the world in average national IQ. (Lynn's mediocre score for Israel seems open to question.)
For the correlation between national IQ and per capita GDP, Lynn reports the kind of high number that social scientists normally only dream about finding. If all you know about a country is its average IQ and whether it has a free market economy, you can predict its income level with a surprising degree of accuracy. Of course, this doesn't solve the chicken or egg question. Are they rich because they are smart or smart because they are rich? From what I've seen so far out of the book, it looks to me like both are true.
Culture also plays a role. Lynn lists underachievers with high IQs and low incomes (e.g., perennial screw-up Argentina) and overachievers (e.g., Barbados, with its veddy, veddy English cricket-centric culture that makes it the best-run black country in the world.).
February 1, 2002
Zora Neale Hurston
My review of Nicole Kidman's Birthday Girl.
January 30, 2002
I predicted Bill Clinton's impeachment over sexual harassment in 1992
January 29, 2002
Blondes' Darwinian Advantage
While my [blonde] girlfriends admittedly wield what would seem to average looking girls of any race an enviable disproportion of sexual power in their teens and twenties, these Blonde beauties, especially the sun-goddesses, start looking a tad bit, well peaked, you know, past the sell-by date, once they hit their mid-thirties - unless they happen to be blessed with strong cheekbones and facial structure. Otherwise, Father Time does his cruel linear dance with crows' feet across Mother Nature's fair maiden's countenance, and watching that happen is heart-breaking without the aid of the Botox Wizard. It's like observing a nouveau riche tycoon devolving into a shopping-cart pushing crack head, not a sight for the faint of heart. Unless said fair maiden is married to a plastic surgeon like the fortunate Victoria Principal. I guess it all evens out in the end! YAY!
January 25, 2002
January 23, 2002
Enron: bankruptcy and "ruin"
More Enron: Having noted yesterday how business insiders never kill themselves anymore over being "ruined" (largely because, unlike in the past, they aren't really ruined - they always escape poverty) comes word today that former Enron Vice Chairman J. Clifford Baxter has shot himself in the head. Still, like the Enron scandal in general, that's an exception that proves the rule.
No doubt, prison sentences are in order for several Enron bigshots, but the truth is that criminal trials aren't an adequate deterrent for corporate malfeasance in general. The standard of guilt - beyond a reasonable doubt - is high and the complexity of the cases often makes reaching that level of certainty beyond juries' capabilities. You'll note that Enron is a huge once-a-decade story in elite circles, but it's making most of the public's eyes glaze over.
No, civil trials and regulatory proceedings are more appropriate for deterring routine bad behavior. The problem is that the penalties are seldom severe enough. Executives generally escape scandalous bankruptcies with their lifestyles merely cut down from filthy rich to highly affluent. Consider a parallel case: O.J. Simpson's daily life after losing a gigantic civil suit. He didn't have to get a job at Burger King. He merely went from playing golf daily at ritzy Riviera to playing golf daily at the public courses like Knollwood at which I occasionally treat myself to a round. 1/25/02
January 22, 2002
The problem with polygamy
Bioethics are too important to leave to the bioethicists
With that in mind, Bush's new nominees for his Council on Bioethics seem much stronger than I expected. James Q. Wilson, for example, has a long track record of making successful predictions (e.g., to reduce crime: put more crooks in jail for longer terms and fix broken windows). Francis Fukuyama, Charles Krauthammer, and Stephen Carter are also smart guys that you might have heard of. 1/22/02
January 20, 2002
Enjoying Martin Luther King Day off?
Since most whites don't mind working on Martin Luther King Day, the holiday has just ended up worsening racial divisions. Chris Rock says, "You gotta be pretty racist to not want a day off work!"
Fortunately, I have a solution. Move the holiday from King's birthday to the date of his most memorable accomplishment, his "I Have a Dream" speech on Aug. 28, 1963. All Americans would then unite to demand a three day weekend the week before Labor Day. Racial harmony would prevail across the land. 1/20/02
More MLK: You may have thought that King's "Dream" speech was about allowing black American citizens to share fully in the benefits of American citizenship. But Roger Clegg, of Linda Chavez's Center for Equal Opportunity, sets you straight in National Review Online. It was really about "liberal immigration policies." Thanks, Rog, I can feel the scales falling from my eyes already. 1/20/02