February 28, 2006

Did U. of Texas QB Vince Young score a 72

on the Wonderlic IQ test? That's the rumor going around after college football player prospects all took the quickie 12 minute IQ test at the NFL draft combine. Some now claim he'll fall to the second round in the draft because of this score.

Having watched Young's awesome performance in the last Rose Bowl, all I can say is that IQ ain't everything in football. The USC coaching brain trust had a month to come up with a plan to stop him, and failed utterly.

Here are my writings on the Wonderlic test.

Update: A Houston Chronicle columnist wrote:

On Saturday, a rumor that Young had scored a 6 on the Wonderlic test sent shock waves through the combine. No coach, scout or general manager surveyed could produce an example of a starting quarterback with a single-digit Wonderlic score.

The test — 50 multiple-choice, non-football questions in 12 minutes — is a barometer that teams use to gauge a prospect's ability to learn.

On Sunday, the combine said the test score of 6 that was being reported by some media outlets was false. "I've been told it was inaccurate by a source good enough for me to quote it," Texans general manager Charley Casserly said Sunday afternoon.

Young took the test again and scored 16. [That would be about a 92.]. According to Young's agent, Major Adams, the Sunday test was administered by Jeff Foster, executive director of National Scouting Combine.

"The combine officials assured us that score (6) was false and that the accurate score will be known when the combine results are given to each team," Adams said.

Wonderlic scores are supposed to be confidential and are never confirmed publicly by the NFL. Because they are included in combine results given to teams after the combine, scores leak out.

Young hired a relative and a family friend to be his representatives, and it's possible that he's being trashed in the press by the expensive agents as punishment.


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Conservative Film Critics Top 10 list

Jim Hubbard of American Film Renaissance, who runs the AFR film festival, has released his organization's poll of conservative film critics and industry insiders:

BEST FILMS of 2005

1. Cinderella Man 138
2. The Chronicles of Narnia 106
3. Walk the Line 75
4. Crash 70
5. Downfall 67
6. Pride and Prejudice 58
(Tie) Batman Begins 58
8. Capote 48
(Tie) The World's Fastest Indian 48
10. King Kong 44

BEST DOCUMENTARIES

1. March of the Penguins 71
2. Grizzly Man 49
3. Mad Hot Ballroom 27
4. Enron: Smartest Guys in the Room 21
5. Murderball 14

A good list, but it's hard to avoid the conclusion that, from any political perspective, 2005 was a fallow year for films.

I haven't seen "World's Fastest Indian," with Sir Anthony Hopkins as a motorcycle speed record setter, but the trailer with Sir Anthony's helmeted head skidding across the Bonneville Salt Flats to the accompaniment of The Clash's version of "Police on My Back" looks great. It's certainly an appropriate role for Sir Anthony, who, due to his superb diction, has been stuck for decades playing highbrows even though in real life his main cultural interest is 1960s American muscle cars.

Here's the Top Ten list I submitted at ARF's request:

1. "2046" -- Probably my favorite movie of the year, with sexy, glamorous performances from Tony Leung and Zhang Ziyi, gorgeous cinematography by Christopher Doyle ("Hero"), and a terrific soundtrack assembled by director Wong Kar-Wai.

2. "The March of the Penguins"

3. "Head-On" -- Deracinated Turkish immigrants in Germany re-enact "Sid and Nancy." So, that's assimilation?

4. "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" -- Brilliant screenplay and performances in my favorite genre

5. "Millions" -- Snazzy little family movie about a very religious little boy who finds a duffel bag full of cash.

6. "Junebug" -- A semi-comedy ensemble effort in which a Chicago yuppie takes his cosmopolitan bride to visit his downscale family in North Carolina. Insightful and surprisingly sympathetic to all sides.

7. "Yes" -- Yes, "Yes" is in rhyming iambic pentameter couplets.

8. "Crash" -- Too contrived to be a great movie, but a contrivance of a high order. And if Matt Dillon doesn't win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar ...

9. "The Squid and the Whale" -- It's past time for Jeff Daniels, as egomaniacal novelist Jonathan Baumbach, to get his first Oscar nomination.

10. "Walk on Water" -- Israeli comedy-drama about a Mossad agent who has to pretend to be a tour guide for a New Agey German tourist so he can locate and murder the tourist's 100 year old Nazi grandfather.


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Extremist makeover

An Irish reader writes:

You look insufficiently sinister for a gentleman with heretical views on such sensitive subjects. I would suggest trimming down that beard to a pointed, Mephistophelian goatee and waxing your eyebrows upwards at the corners.

Well, I have switched to a goatee since the picture at the top of the page was taken, but an insufficiently pointed one. By the way, how will I know when the goatee fashion has run its course and I can go back to a full beard? Will someone out there who keeps track of these things please remember to email me at the appropriate time?


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Marty Peretz's latest young man

Young Peter Beinart is out as editor of The New Republic and the even younger Franklin Foer, 31, is in.

There are two reasons that the editor of The New Republic is almost always a very young man. The first is illuminated by an opening title card for the movie "Shattered Glass" about the dozens of hoax articles Stephen Glass managed to publish in TNR. It explained why nobody at the magazine noticed his stories were utterly ridiculous (although many letters to the editor pointed that out): the median age of editors and staff writers at The New Republic was 26. For example, consider the following paragraph co-authored by Glass and Jonathan Chait, then only four years out of college, but now a "Senior" Editor at TNR. Chait was so clueless he put his name on this ludicrous invention of Glass's:

"... another bond-trading outfit has turned an empty office into a Greenspan shrine. Dozens of news photographs of Greenspan adorn the walls; glass casing encloses two Bic pens Greenspan supposedly used in 1993. Quotations from more than 30 of his speeches are posted under a sign that reads 'Greenspan’s Teachings.' The centerpiece is a red leather chair that sits in the middle of the room, surrounded by blue velvet ropes. A placard perched on the armrest says Greenspan sat in the chair in 1948 -- at the time, he was still in college. 'Some nights when we’ve lost money,' trader Brent Donalds confides, 'I come in here and sit in the chair and think. It gives me inspiration.'"

Yeah, sure, that's the way bond traders behave. No question about it.

I don't have much experience hanging around opinion magazines, but I fear it's a general rule: the staffers don't have enough life experience to have much understanding of how the world works. The pay is terrible and so you get what you pay for: kids.

The downside is that these babes in the woods get hoaxed -- on a small scale by Stephen Glass, or on a world-historical scale by the Bush Administration's Iraq Attaq hucksters.

The solution is clear: more money! If you know a billionaire or even a mere centi-millionaire, kindly point out to him that he can have his own intellectual/public policy magazine for pocket change each year. Us public policy intellectuals cannot be bought, but we sure can be rented for what any tycoon would consider a pittance.

And if your plutocrat friend objects that he may not have quite the sterling character and flawless personality required to be a lord of the opinion press, please reassure him that he probably couldn't help but raise the average.

The second reason TNR co-owner Marty Peretz takes an interest in idealistic young men appears to be, well, that he takes an interest in idealistic young men. The most notorious of Peretz's clammy obsessions was with handsome young Al Gore at Harvard.

Gore's academic career at Harvard was undistinguished, but his social career was striking. His roommate was football player Tommie Lee Jones, the future Oscar winner. Classics professor Erich Segal modeled the character, hockey player Oliver Barrett IV, played by Ryan O'Neal in the movie version of his novel "Love Story" on Tommie, but drew a few of the character's less attractive qualities from Al, who mistakenly claimed to be the main model (and wrongly suggested Tipper was the model for Ali MacGraw's character). However, Al was not bereft of enjoying a professor's creepy-sounding devotion to a hunky undergrad of his own: Professor Martin Peretz, who went on to marry rich women and buy The New Republic, was Al's valuable catch. (In the late 1990s, Peretz fired TNR editor Michael Kelly for not sharing his infatuation with Al.)


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

February 23, 2006

The Feb. 27th issue of The American Conservative

is now semi-online. It includes my article "Cesar Chavez, Minuteman."

February 27, 2006 Issue


Democracy & Its Discontents
By Leon Hadar
Contrary to the daydreams of the Bush administration, voting does not necessarily bring peace to unstable societies.


Who Elected Hamas?
By M.J. Rosenberg
The victory of the Palestinian militants was eminently predictable and perhaps inevitable.

Cesar Chavez, Minuteman
By Steve Sailer
The labor leader campaigned against the illegal immigrants who undercut his union members’ wages—until he became an ethnic icon.

War in Error
By Andrew J. Bacevich
Destroying the village to save it from al-Qaeda

Don’t Democratize
By John Laughland
Deterrence worked with the Soviets. Why not Iran?

Food for Thought
By Rod Dreher
Conservatives know that we pay a price when we trade dining tables for drive-thrus.

War of the Worlds
By William S. Lind
The Christian West is caught between radical Islam and the Brave New World

Report Card
By W. James Antle III
Bush’s education reform plan turns four—and flunks.

Armies of the Right?
By Paul Gottfried
The new American militarism comes from the Left, not the Right.



Field Trip From Woody World

By Steve Sailer
Woody Allen’s “Match Point”

Purchase an online edition of this issue immediately!

Alienation as Self-Medication
By Elizabeth Wright
Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America
by John McWhorter

Still Fighting the Last War
By William Anthony Hay
The Cold War: A New History
by John Lewis Gaddis

Authoritarian Personalities
By R.J. Stove
The Virtuoso Conductors: The Central European Tradition from Wagner to Karajan
by Raymond Holden



Après Alan, Le Deluge?
By Patrick J. Buchanan
Greenspan’s Great Depression

The Deuce’s Detroit
By Taki
Ford should specialize in cars, not layoffs.



Fourteen Days: The State of Delusion is Strong; Bush Borrows From Orwell; Democrats Can’t Hack Hackett

Deep Background: Big Brother is Watching Britain; A New Water-gate?; Undercover Agents Want Their Frequent Flier Miles


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

"An appeal to Larry Summers"

Half Sigma writes:

All his apologizing didn't save his job. What a waste. Too bad he wasn't a man who stood up for his beliefs. He would have still been forced to resign, but at least he wouldn't have resigned as a wuss.

So here is what I urge Summers to do. Summers needs to recant his apologies. He needs to say something like this:

After my remarks I apologized over and over again. This was a mistake on my part. I confess that I was a wuss. I thought that if I kissed the asses of Harvard's left wing I would be allowed to keep my job with its big salary and prestige. But I was wrong.

However, all the apologies don't reflect my true beliefs. I stand by everything I originally said. The only thing I regret about my remarks is that I apologized for them.

To which I'd add: "And, oh, yeah, that $50 million in gender quotas I promised? Well, it's not just a waste of money, but worse than a waste. Spending the money will actually make things worse."

A reader writes:

Now that poor Larry has resigned, have you seen the attempts to bring Title IX into science? I mean, the effects on college sports were bad enough, but ultimately the country will not suffer horrendously if a couple of guys can't get onto the wrestling team. We already have problems getting enough engineers and scientists, though...if we start giving the slots away to women (who will avoid the hard-science jobs) things will get even worse. Maybe you can get a little awareness of this on the right-wing blogosphere...frame it as a competitiveness issue.


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

The iSteve mailing list for my published articles

One way to make sure you get my published articles is to join my iSteve email list on Yahoogroups.com. This is a "one-way list" that I use to send out my articles from VDARE.com, The American Conservative, and other publications for which I write. Typically, I send out about one emailed article every six days, so your inbox won't overload. (And I have a process in place to prevent you from being spammed via this.)

Let me be clear about the contents: I email out my articles that appear in the left hand column of iSteve.com, not the daily blog items that appear in this, the right hand column.

What are the advantages of joining this email group?

- A number of my most famous readers use my emailings to keep up on my articles without having to check my blog daily. (Hmmmhmm, maybe there is a lesson in their efficient use of time for all of us ...). I don't want to discourage you from checking www.iSteve.com constantly, but if you miss a few days, you won't miss an important article.

- Emails of my articles are easy to forward on to your friends.

- Because I am an inveterate tinkerer with my prose style, I typically polish the emails so they are even a little better than the published versions.

By the way, I send out my VDARE.com articles in two formats -- with links and without links -- in the same email. For those whose email readers have no trouble with heavily formatted emails with lots of URLs embedded, the first version in the email is for you. For those who prefer plain text, just page down to the second vanilla version.

You can sign up by sending a blank email here.

Or you can go here, and then click on the blue "Join This Group!" button in the upper left corner.


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

The Princess Sweepstakes

A reader writes:

In watching tonight's figure skating competition, you may want to pay some attention to Shizuka Arakawa, who just may steal the gold. Arakawa, Cohen and Slutskaya are in a virtual tie after the short program. Slutskaya is about the jumps and ignores presentation... Arakawa has wonderful grace and a Ina Bauer to die for not to mention a triple/triple/triple combination that will be unveiled tonight. The only thing that may work against Arakawa, despite her "dark horse" spot is the pressure of the Japanese media, who have medaled at all during these games and now these Japanese ladies are the last hope for a medal.

The pressure the Japanese media put on the country's athletes when they compete on the world stage is overwhelming. Japan is an extremely homogenous, conformist, group-oriented and media-drenched country, so everybody gets excited at once about the same things. All the athletes feel the honor of Japan rests on their shoulders -- no Shanni Davises there! -- so they repeatedly collapse under it.

The Japanese finally had a good Summer Olympics in 2004, after a couple of decades of flame-outs, but this winter Olympics has been awful.


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

The Three Eras of Martin Luther King Blvd. in Los Angeles

A reader writes:

I read your review of Jared Diamond's books, and wanted to thank you for your insightful writing.

In it, I wrote:

Ironically, when I left the "Collapse" exhibit [based on Diamond's bestseller], with its warnings about overpopulation, at Los Angeles's Natural History museum, I turned out of the parking lot onto Martin Luther King Boulevard, where the billboards were in Spanish. In LA, the African Americans have been pushed off even MLK Blvd. by Latin American immigrants.

My reader goes on:

As far as your shock at how the area around Martin Luther King Blvd looks, with its signs in Spanish, it is amazing. Amazing to me Steve, because I grew up in this area. My parents lived about 2 blocks from the LA Coliseum. This was in the late 50's. Back then the Coliseum was the home of The Dodgers baseball team. As a kid of around ten years old ,I would play baseball on various empty parking lots on Saturdays with a bunch of other kids. The strange thing about this was that the other kids were all different ethnicities and races. Some of the kids were black, white, chinese, mexicans, germans [including me], italians, cubans, and who knows what else. We were all regulated, so we wouldn't fight ,by an older mexican girl named Nan. She made all of us custom teeshirts. This was not part of some organization ,but just kids meeting to play.

All of this seems like a dream now. I relate this to you as it reminded me of some of your writings on citizenism. Sure, sometimes some of the kids would fight about stuff, but all of them fought in English. And by the way, Martin Luther King Blvd. was called Santa Barbara Blvd., at that time. And also, the parents of the different kids didn't really hang out with each other, but they would sometimes greet each other with at least an hello.

Of course, at that time, immigration was slow, few in numbers, and orderly, and I think that may have been why things kind of worked out better between the races. I'm not really sure. Now, however, it seems as if Los Angeles or even California is headed towards something ominous, a total breakdown. I hope not. Thanks again for all your work.

This is similar to the description in Colin Powell's autobiography of the integrated Harlem neighborhood he grew up in a little earlier. The state of housing segregation in the U.S. at the time was complicated. In LA, for example, upper middle class neighborhoods were almost completely segregated due to racial covenants in home ownership contracts, but rental neighborhoods could be integrated. (In Chicago, however, working class neighborhoods were segregated, sometimes by violence.)

Then, two great migrations put huge stresses on non-Southern cities and overwhelmed housing integration. The first was the black migration that kicked into overdrive during WWII, especially following the mechanization of cotton-picking. This sent a lot of the more unskilled Southern blacks north. Then, when northern states raised their welfare payments in the early 1960s, this attracted a particularly feckless, and crime-prone group of Southern blacks.

Then, the Latin American influx (first Puerto Ricans in the 1940s and 1950s in NYC, then Mexicans everywhere else) overwhelmed integration.

The point is, however, that ethnically stable cities can often work out reasonable solutions. But when the ethnic balance is rapidly tipping, bad things can happen, as in the formerly black areas of Los Angeles that are being ethnically cleansed by Hispanics, where racial gang violence is widespread (as reflect in the recent LA jail riots between blacks and Latinos).

My in-laws saw the dire effects of rapid ethnic change first hand, to their intense cost. My late father-in-law was a classical musician and union leader and my late mother-in-law was a public school special ed teacher. When their working class neighborhood on the West Side of Chicago started to integrate around 1966, many of their friends told them to sell out as soon as possible, before the neighborhood tipped to all black.

But, as good liberals, they believed in integration. And the first blacks moving in were middle class. So, they joined an anti-tipping liberal group run by Father Edward McKenna (a classical composer who has written a couple of operas with librettos by Father Andrew Greeley), where neighborhood homeowners swore to each other they wouldn't sell no matter how black the neighborhood got.

Well, the crime rate, which had been non-existent when the neighborhood was all white, started to soar, housing prices fell, and pretty soon the middle class blacks were selling out because underclass blacks were moving in. The members of the pro-integration group started to break their promises and move out. My in-laws stuck with their vows. But, then in 1968, black rioters looted all the stores in the neighborhood after Martin Luther King was murdered, and their small children were mugged three times. So, they finally sold, losing about half of their live savings, and bought a farm 65 miles out of town, where they didn't have indoor plumbing for two years.

The last time I visited their old neighborhood in the 1990s, it looked like a war zone, with about 1/3rd of the houses abandoned or torn down.

On the other hand, just to the west is the independent suburban municipality of Oak Park (Hemingway's hometown), which has perhaps the most architecturally distinguished domestic architecture in America, with dozens of Frank Lloyd Wright Prairie-style homes. There, with even more to lose, homeowners successfully resisted Oak Park tipping all black by instituting the "black a block" program in which real estate agents were only allowed to sell one home per block to blacks. It's completely illegal, but highly successful.

Something that is almost completely overlooked is the beneficial aspect that the great black migration of 1945-1970 had on the South, which made the civil rights revolution grudgingly acceptable to Southern whites over 1965-1970. Southern whites had denied Southern blacks the vote since roughly 1877 because in many locales blacks had the majority. But the great black migration out of the South strengthened the white majority in the South, making equal voting rights easier to accept for whites.

With the exception of some urban disasters like New Orleans, today, the South is better governed than when white Democrats ran it in Jim Crow days. The business-oriented white GOP controls most Southern states today, and has helped make them more economically competitive than in the days of the Democrat's Solid South when all the emphasis on keeping blacks down got in the way of economic development.

A reader adds:

I work for the Census so I interview a lot of rental units. I find it interesting that small multi-unit apt complexes (4-12 units or so) are often 100% of one ethnicity or another. It's pretty clear the land-lord is making a conscious decision to rent to only one ethnicity. Landlords are almost always upper-middle-class whites. So I don't think it's a case of some ethnic land-lord making enclaves for their peeps. No, I think it's land-lords trying to make an attractive living arrangement (ie ethnically homogenous) for his tentans. But there's probably self-selection by prospective tenants as well.

Oh, and all this is illegal but is widely done.


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

"Bond, not Blond"

Here's the first official publicity shot of actor Daniel Craig as the new James Bond in the upcoming film "Casino Royale." You may notice something different about the blond actor's look when he's playing James Bond: he suddenly has brown hair. James Bond is supposed to be tall, dark, and handsome, but Craig is none of those, so they changed what they could, his hair color.

In contrast, Steven Spielberg cast the naturally blond-haired, blue-eyed Craig as the only one of the Mossad assassins in "Munich" who doesn't suffer moral qualms about killing people. (Must be too much Teutonic blood tainting his ethics, I guess.)

Craig is a fine actor, but his casting as James Bond seems like a money-saving stopgap, especially when Pierce Brosnan isn't quite over the hill yet, but was asking for $30 million. Brosnan's natural heir apparent as James Bond would seem to be Clive Owen, but I suspect that Owen would cost more than Craig.

I like my James Bonds to appear, like Bond, English and upper crust, like Roger Moore. Sean Connery is one of the greatest movie stars of all time, but he was too Scottish and too proletarian to be well-cast as Bond, although he got by on his colossal charisma. My dark horse choice for James Bond would be Hugh Grant, who makes a terrific cad, as in the Bridget Jones movies. I'll have to get by with seeing Hugh as Simon Cowell in "American Dreamz," where he costars with Dennis Quaid as George W. Bush.

The CraigNotBond website proposes some other roles that Daniel Craig would be better suited for, such as playing the rodent-obsessed groundskeeper Carl Spackler (first portrayed by Bill Murray) in a prequel to "Caddyshack."

If you want to learn more about why blonde women and brunet men are most in demand in the media, I reviewed Peter Frost's valuable book "Fair Women, Dark Men" at VDARE.com here.


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

February 22, 2006

Merck and Vioxx

Your Lying Eyes has a good summary of the current state of the lawsuits against Merck for not acting for years upon studies showing that its anti-pain medicine Vioxx was killing off thousands of users. Check out the comments, too. Why do you think there's not much media interest in this case?


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

John Derbyshire on "Hesperophobia"

Derb's "Hesperophobia" article that got spiked by NRO can be found on his website here.


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

What's the deal with Norwegians and skiing?

"A short history of skiing" -- Nothing too exciting about this long article by Morten Lund, but if you are wondering about the social history of Nordic and Alpine skiing, it does a good analytical job of explaining the emotional relationship between modern Nordic skiing (cross country, biathlon, and ski-jumping), which was largely developed in the Telemark district of Norway in the middle of the 19th Century, and Norwegian nationalism (leading to independence from Sweden in 1905).

It also discusses why Austrians are winning so many Alpine (downhill) skiing medals this year (they invented Alpine ski training). And you may recall Sir Arnold Lunn, the Christian apologist who was a contributor to National Review in the early 1970s. Well, what do you know, he invented the slalom in 1922. (He was knighted for contributions to Anglo-Swiss amity.)


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Forensic Anthropology Marches On

Nobody in Sicily hates anybody worse than Boasian cultural anthropologists hate forensic anthropologists, because the latter are paid to look at human biological differences to do useful things, like solve crimes.

DNA 'could predict your surname'
By Paul Rincon, BBC News science reporter

Forensic scientists could use DNA retrieved from a crime scene to predict the surname of the suspect, according to a new British study. It is not perfect, but could be an important investigative tool when combined with other intelligence.

The method exploits genetic likenesses between men who share the same surname, and may help prioritise inquiries. Details of the research from the University of Leicester, UK, appear in the latest edition of Current Biology.

The technique is based on work comparing the Y chromosomes of men with the same surname. The Y chromosome is a package of genetic material found only in males. It is passed down from father to son, just like a surname....

For the study, Turi King and colleagues from the University of Leicester recruited at random 150 pairs of men who shared a British surname and compared their Y chromosomes. Across the sample, the authors determined that just under a quarter of the pairs had recent common ancestry.

Given the small sample size and the random recruitment, Dr Jobling said he was surprised at the strength of the signal. Sharing a surname also significantly raised the likelihood of sharing the same type of Y chromosome, with the link getting stronger as the surname gets rarer.

The researchers used the data to roughly test the predictive power of the method. They found the approach was most useful for less common names, with a 34% chance of prediction in the 80 least common surnames from the 150-name sample.

"This range of surnames makes up 42% of the population. So we're looking at prediction in just under half of the population. We have to exclude the Smiths and Joneses," Dr Jobling said.

Speaking of anthropologists, here's a nugget from the NY Sun's article on Larry Summers being driven out of the presidency of Harvard:

In a recent interview, an anthropology professor who clashed with Mr. Summers and subsequently quit as dean of Harvard's graduate school of arts and sciences, Peter Ellison, recounted an early conversation in which Mr. Summers said professors in the social sciences could usually be ranked in terms of intellect. "President Summers asked me, didn't I agree that, in general, economists are smarter than political scientists, and political scientists are smarter than sociologists?" Mr. Ellison told the Boston Globe. "I laughed nervously and didn't reply."

Actually, Larry was being diplomatic in that he didn't go on to finish his chain of logic by saying: "And who's the dumbest of them all? Right! Cultural anthropologists!"


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Let the World's Greatest Princess contest begin!

As I blogged in 2002:

A sports-talk show was debating this morning, "If you like watching women's skating, does that mean you're secretly gay?" One thing I've noticed about myself is that I often intensely enjoy watching feminine-effeminate pastimes like figure skating and Broadway musicals, but I don't spend all that much time thinking about them in-between seeing them. In contrast, I seldom enjoy golf while I'm playing it - my handicap is my swing - but in between rounds I've spent a truly massively useless amount of my life thinking about golf, especially golf course architecture. In fact, when I was changing careers in 2000, I intentionally didn't play for an entire year because when I do play, especially on a fine course, I can't stop thinking about golf for days or weeks afterwards.

This mental gap works in the opposite direction as well. Of all the art forms, golf course architecture is one of the biggest - as measured in objective terms such as dollars spent on it or acres covered by it (more than Delaware and Rhode Island combined). Yet, the rest of the art world pays zero attention to it, probably because it appeals almost solely to the kind of heterosexual guys who don't care much about other kinds of art. If you are interested in seeing how hardcore golf course connoisseurs think, check out the discussions at GolfClubAtlas, where you can read, for example, a 70 message thread about the aesthetic failure of the new fairway bunker on Riviera's 7th hole. The aficionados on the discussion group may seem way over the top, but that's how art forms progress - they require not just people who love good art, but also people who deeply hate bad art and want to stamp it out of existence.

American Sasha Cohen looked very good and took a miniscule lead over the Russian veteran Slutskaya. The final is Thursday.


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

Something nonboring about Francis Fukuyama

Well, I managed to keep up my perfect record in regards to Francis "End of History" Fukuyama's writings by not making it all the way through his celebrated essay "After Neoconservatism" in the NYT Magazine. Leon Hadar actually read it all and writes:

"What FF is basically arguing is (and here I'm borrowing from another political philosopher, Bill Maher), is that the neocons were using a great film script (which Fukuyama helped to write), but that they just did a lousy job in directing and producing the movie on Iraq."

I'm not saying that Fukuyama is always wrong. What I am saying is that Fukuyama's first idea about anything is always wrong, but, unlike his pals, he often comes up with a better answer 5 or 10 or 15 years later. Granted, that isn't a particularly scintillating track record, but compared to the true believer neocons who never learn from anything, he's Edmund Burke predicting the whole course of the French Revolution in 1790.

Anyway, what's interesting about Fukuyama is that he is, as far as I can tell, just about the only minority intellectual in America who does not write heavily about race. Guys like Thomas Sowell and Stephen Carter tried to write about something else, but the demand for writing about race was too great. (Of course, Americans are less interested in East Asians than in blacks, so the demand for Fukuyama's views on race would not be as strong). In fact, Fukuyama goes out of his way to ignore race even when it's obviously relevant. For example, his book "The Great Disruption" is primarily about crime and illegitimacy, but he dismisses race's relevance to these subjects in a single page!

However, being a minority is still valuable to Fukuyama in his spat with his former neocon pals. In 2005, when Charles Krauthammer tried to play the Anti-Semite Card on him for daring to criticize the neocons, he didn't collapse like most white conservatives intellectuals would because, hey, he's not white! So, he enjoys privileges.

As I wrote in 2005:

You may recall that prominent neocon Francis "End of History" Fukuyama jumped ship awhile ago and criticized Charles Krauthammer in The National Interest for his lack of realism about the Iraq War. Krauthammer responded, predictably, by playing the anti-Semitism card. Here is part of Fukuyama's rebuttal:

"Krauthammer says I have a "novel way of Judaizing neoconservatism", and that my argument is a more "implicit and subtle" version of things said by Pat Buchanan and Mahathir Mohamad. Since he thinks the latter two are anti-Semites, he is clearly implying that I am one as well. If he really thinks this is so, he should say that openly."

A little late, perhaps, Francis? "First they came for Pat Buchanan, but I was not Pat Buchanan, so I said nothing. Then they came ...". But better late than never. Fukuyama continues:

"What I said in my critique of [Krauthammer's] speech was, of course, quite different. I said that there was a very coherent set of strategic ideas that have come out of Israel's experience dealing with the Arabs and the world community, having to do with threat perception, preemption, the relative balance of carrots and sticks to be used in dealing with the Arabs, the United Nations, and the like. Anyone who has dealt with the Arab-Israeli conflict understands these ideas, and many people (myself included) believe that they were well suited to Israel's actual situation. You do not have to he Jewish to understand or adopt these ideas as your own, which is why people like Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld share them. And it is not so hard to understand how one's experience of Arab-Israeli politics can come to color one's broader view of the world: The 1975 "Zionism is racism" resolution deeply discredited the UN, in the eyes of Jews and non-Jews alike, on issues having nothing to do with the Middle East. This is not about Judaism; it is about ideas. It would be quite disingenuous of Charles Krauthammer to assert that his view of how Israel needs to deal with the Arabs (that is, the testicular route to hearts and minds) has no impact on the way he thinks the United States should deal with them. And it is perfectly legitimate to ask whether this is the best way for the United States to proceed."

Well said. America's foreign policy blunders of the last 30 months have less to do with the fact that so many highly influential people in Washington and New York, like Krauthammer, think about Israel and its welfare all the time, as to the fact that it has become extremely dangerous to one's career to point out that they do.

Gene Expression offered a telling analogy in support of Fukuyama's calling a spade a spade here: if top Pentagon civilians were named Patel, Pondicherry, and the like, and if they had talked America into invading Pakistan, wouldn't it be acceptable to point out that their ethnicity made them a little biased? So why not in the case of Wolfowitz, Feith, and Perle?

By the way, over on Dennis Dale's Untethered site, Carter van Carter of Across Difficult Country brings up David Stove's rebuttal to Fukuyama's "End of History" theory:

"Is the world about to surrender for good to liberalism and the free market? Will there soon be no more Colonel Qaddafis, only Colonel Sanders everywhere and forever?"...

"The long proof, in a nutshell, is that the mixture which Fukuyama expects to freeze history forever — a combination of Enlightenment values with the free market — is actually one of the most explosive mixtures known to man. Fukuyama thinks that nothing will ever happen again because a mixture like that of petrol, air, and lighted matches is widespread, and spreading wider. Well, Woodrow Wilson thought the same; but it is an odd world view, to say the least."

And to finish off my blogrolling, here's the website of David's son, R.J. Stove, who often writes for The American Conservative.


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

The Port Deal

As you've heard, a company owned by the government of Dubai, the playground of the United Arab Emirates, wants to buy the British company that manages operations at six American ports. Obviously, ports are sensitive spots in staying safe from terrorism. And the odds that a Dubai citizen has a cousin who is inclined toward terrorism is much higher than for British nationals. Still, my question is: Does anybody know whether Arabs actually do any work in this company? Would there be Arabs in decision-making roles down on the docks, or is that all too much trouble for them and they'll just hire somebody else to do the work?

Gulf Arabs are quite the possibly the laziest people on Earth (the unbelievably hot and humid climate doesn't help). According to the CIA Factbook, only 19% of the residents of the United Arab Emirates are natives. The rest are guest workers. During the first Gulf War, P.J. O'Rourke took part in a betting pool with the other war correspondents: first person to see a Saudi national pick up anything heavier than money wins.

Of course, the Wall Street Journal editorial page has come out all for the Port Deal in an editorial entitled: "Ports of Politics: How to sound like a hawk without being one." According to the WSJ, being in favor of homeland security is a poor substitute for being a hawk abroad. See, from the WSJ's perspective, since we must continue to invite the world into America, therefore, we must continue to invade the world to make it safe for America.

It's all just simple logic, as the WSJ makes clear in this utterly reassuring explanation.

Yes, some of the 9/11 hijackers were UAE citizens. But then the London subway bombings last year were perpetrated by citizens of Britain, home to the company (P&O) that currently manages the ports that Dubai Ports World would take over. Which tells us three things: First, this work is already being outsourced to "a foreign-based company"; second, discriminating against a Mideast company offers no security guarantees because attacks are sometimes homegrown; and third, Mr. Graham likes to talk first and ask questions later.

Being one of those dubious types who reads sources of crimethink like iSteve.com, you might be saying to yourself:

"Okay, but isn't there a difference between Dubai and Britain? And, while certainly there are terrorists within Britain, wouldn't Dubai nationals be more more likely to have ties to terrorism?

But that just shows you are one of those bad people who thinks in terms of stereotypes. The WSJ knows better!

So does President Bush, who said from Air Force One:

"''I really don't understand why it's OK for a British company to operate our ports, but not a company from the Middle East,..."

What are you people, some kind of racists who thinks Arabs are more likely than Brits to be terrorists? That's the voice of our President talking, and we must obey! Otherwise, your on the side of the terrorists.


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer

February 21, 2006

Why are television news anchorettes so blonde?

Jack Shafer writes in Slate in "TV's Aryan Sisterhood" that:

Joanna Pitman estimates in On Blondes that only one in 20 white adult Americans is a genuine blond, yet one in three adult American females sports has the look. If you do the math, it's clear that many female newscasters lie about their true hair color every time they appear on television. Lest you think I exaggerate the bogus-blonde glut, I recommend a visit to TVheads.com. The Web site maintains an archive of 50,000 newscaster images collected by volunteers during the last three years. TVheads.com breaks out newscasters by network and by sex, and by my definition of blond, at least 60 percent of the females qualify.

Unfortunately, the theory Shafer offers for why this is so is clearly wrong:

As the leading scholar of blond studies, Joanna Pitman provides us with the best collection of statistics, history, prehistory, and commentary on the subject. Her book offers an evolutionary psychology explanation for the hair color's timeless allure: We associate blond with youth, she writes, because the hair of babies and that of young children tends to become wan and darken with age. Pittman—a blonde, incidentally—notes blond women appear younger and thus more fertile, winning them an evolutionary advantage over brunettes.

From an evolutionary standpoint, however, it makes no sense that women trying to catch male attention would want to look like toddlers. Prepubescent children don't appear "more fertile," they appear infertile. So, that is likely only a coincidence. Much more plausible is a theory I offered in VDARE in 2003:

The press typically attributes the popularity of blondeness to the evil monopoly of the WASP elite (or whatever). But that doesn't make much sense because there's little demand for blond men. Hollywood, for example, believes that ladies prefer their gentlemen tall, dark, and handsome, a phrase coined by Mae West about Cary Grant. There are dramatically more blonde actresses than actors, because audiences apparently associate darker hair with mature masculinity. In the vast majority of love scenes in movies, the man is darker in hair and skin color than the woman. Actors typically described as blond, such as Leonardo DiCaprio, generally wear their hair much darker than do blonde actresses, such as Meryl Streep or Kate Hudson. Even Conan the Barbarian was played as a brunet by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

This pattern appears to be true around the world. Latin American television, for example, is full of blonde women and darker Latin lover-type men.

Why do gentlemen prefer blondes - or at least take more notice of them? My guess is that it's largely because blonde hair is inherently more noticeable. [It reflects more light.] Women like to wear gold and silver jewelry for the same reason—it makes them, to put it crudely, shinier.


My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer