Top Paid Athletes

Here are Sports Illustrated's 2007 Fortunate Fifty highest paid athletes combined with the magazines' top 20 non-American athletes. The bottom of each list is around $15 million per year, so this is effectively the top 70 jocks in the world, ranked in order of total earnings (i.e., salary or winnings plus endorsements). These are only current athletes (i.e., no Michael Jordan or Arnold Palmer -- Arnie's estate will no doubt rake in sizable endorsements for years after his death).

I've included my rough estimate of their race (e.g., baseball player Johnny Damon is 50% white, 50% East Asian). Overall, I come out with 39% white, 50% black, 7% East Asian, and the rest split between South Asian (golfer Vijay Singh) and New World Indian (part of each of the top two, Tiger Woods and Oscar de la Hoya).

For black, I followed local thinking: I counted all the African-Americans as 100% black unless I knew they had one white parent (Derek Jeter and Jason Kidd). For the Latin Americans, I guesstimated background from their looks (e.g., Alex Rodriguez as half white, half black). So, on a purely racial basis, it would be more like whites 42%, blacks 48%. So, it looks like about what you'd expect: whites and blacks are pretty evenly matched in numbers of world-class athletes, with everybody else trailing.

The NBA dominates the salary rankings, presumably because the teams are smaller with only 12 players versus 25 in baseball and 45(?) in football. Also, I suspect that the pyramid of talent is steeper in the NBA just because there are so very few men who are extremely good athletes and extremely tall. Thus, because the supply of agile giants is so limited, NBA players can get bigger contracts than say NFL running backs, who don't have to be any particular height.

Among the 50 American citizens on SI's list, endorsements add up to $387 million, with Tiger's $100 million accounting for over a quarter of that. I estimated share of endorsement by race, with whites garnering 37%, blacks 41%, East Asians 18%, and American Indians 3%, but these proportions are heavily influenced by how you break up Tiger's $100 million. I'm doing it genealogically, with 12.5% of his endorsements going to the white category, 25% to black, 50% to East Asian, and 12.5% to American Indian. Taking Tiger out, the endorsement split would be whites 46%, blacks 47%, East Asians (Michelle Wie and half of Johnny Damon) 7%. So, by race, the endorsements are pretty similar to the total earnings, with whites and blacks pretty closely matched.

The popular golfers dominate the endorsement rankings, with the three golfers ranking 1, 2, and 5 in endorsements among Americans. Golf's an expensive game to play, plus golfers are a safe bet for endorsers. It's a game that demands self-control and good character (following accusations of cheating a couple of decades ago, the young Singh was banished for awhile to Borneo!), so if you hire a golfer to be the face of your product, you can be reasonably sure he won't be arrested for hanging his insufficiently vicious pit bulls.

You'll notice there isn't anybody from the Ultimate Fighting Championship or other "mixed martial arts" on the top 70 list. The UFC is making a lot of money on pay-per-views right now, but I guess not much must be going to the fighters -- judging from what the UFC reports to the Nevada authorities on what they are paying their fighters, it's pretty paltry. It's hard to imagine that the UFC can get many world class athletes for what they are paying. If you were the next Vince Young or Sidney Crosby, would you focus on training for the UFC or for a real sport that pays real money?

Rank		Athlete	Sport	Total	Salary/Win	Endorsements	Race
1		Tiger Woods	Golf	$111,941,827	11,941,827	100,000,000	Mix
2		Oscar De La Hoya	Box	$55,000,000	53,000,000	2,000,000	Mestizo
3		Phil Mickelson	Golf	$51,256,505	4,256,505	47,000,000	White
4		Fernando Alonso	F1	$35,000,000			W
5		Shaquille O'Neal	NBA	$35,000,000	20,000,000	15,000,000	Af-Am
6		Kobe Bryant	NBA	$33,718,750	17,718,750	16,000,000	Af-Am
7		Ronaldinho	Soc	$32,700,000			Mulatto?
8		Roger Federer	Ten	$31,343,885			W
9		LeBron James	NBA	$30,828,089	5,828,089	25,000,000	Af-Am
10		Valentino Rossi	M'Cycle	$30,000,000			W
11		David Beckham	Soc	$29,700,000			W
12		Derek Jeter	MLB	$29,000,000	22,000,000	7,000,000	Mulatto
13		Kevin Garnett	NBA	$29,000,000	21,000,000	8,000,000	Af-Am
14		Alex Rodriguez	MLB	$28,000,000	22,000,000	6,000,000	Mulatto
15		Yao Ming	NBA	$27,455,000			E Asian
16		Dale Earnhardt Jr.	NASCAR	$27,111,735	7,111,735	20,000,000	W
17		Allen Iverson	NBA	$24,184,375	17,184,375	7,000,000	Af-Am
18		Ichiro Suzuki	MLB	$24,000,000			EA
19		Maria Sharapova	Ten	$23,799,501			W
20		Peyton Manning	NFL	$23,000,000	10,000,000	13,000,000	W
21		Tracy McGrady	NBA	$22,901,500	16,901,500	6,000,000	Af-Am
22		Barry Bonds	MLB	$22,800,000	20,800,000	2,000,000	Af-Am
23		Roger Clemens	MLB	$22,500,000	19,000,000	3,500,000	W
24		Jeff Gordon	NASCAR	$22,471,444	7,471,444	15,000,000	W
25		Jason Giambi	MLB	$22,000,000	21,500,000	500,000	W
26		Thierry Henry	Soc	$21,400,000			Black
27		Tim Duncan	NBA	$20,929,672	17,429,672	3,500,000	Af-Am
28		Michael Ballack	Soc	$20,900,000			W
29		Ronaldo	Soc	$20,700,000			Mulatto
30		Michael Finley	NBA	$20,654,625	20,154,625	500,000	Af-Am
31		Manny Ramirez	MLB	$20,500,000	18,000,000	2,500,000	Mulatto?
32		Floyd Mayweather Jr.	Box	$20,250,000	20,000,000	250,000	Af-Am
33		Michelle Wie	Golf	$20,235,224	735,224	19,500,000	E Asian
34		Vince Carter	NBA	$20,101,625	15,101,625	5,000,000	Af-Am
35		Michael Vick	NFL	$20,000,000	13,000,000	7,000,000	Af-Am
36		Jason Kidd	NBA	$19,584,000	18,084,000	1,500,000	Mulatto
37		Stephon Marbury	NBA	$19,184,375	17,184,375	2,000,000	Af-Am
38		Hideki Matsui	MLB	$19,000,000			E Asian
39		Jermaine O'Neal	NBA	$18,834,000	18,084,000	750,000	Af-Am
40		Chris Webber	NBA	$18,807,008	18,307,008	500,000	Af-Am
41		Jalen Rose	NBA	$18,691,500	18,441,500	250,000	Af-Am
42		Dirk Nowitzki	NBA	$18,101,625			W
43		Brett Favre	NFL	$18,000,000	11,000,000	7,000,000	W
44		Ralf Schumacher	F1	$18,000,000			W
45		Jimmie Johnson	NASCAR	$17,770,125	15,770,125	2,000,000	W
46		Baron Davis	NBA	$17,570,000	15,070,000	2,500,000	Af-Am
47		Andriy Shevchenko	Soc	$17,300,000			W
48		Alfonso Soriano	MLB	$17,250,000			Black
49		Grant Hill	NBA	$17,151,500	16,901,500	250,000	Af-Am
50		Vince Young	NFL	$17,140,000	13,140,000	4,000,000	Af-Am
51		Todd Helton	MLB	$16,900,000	16,600,000	300,000	W
52		Ben Wallace	NBA	$16,680,000	15,680,000	1,000,000	Af-Am
53		Paul Pierce	NBA	$16,601,625	15,101,625	1,500,000	Af-Am
54		Andy Pettitte	MLB	$16,500,000	16,000,000	500,000	W
55		Vijay Singh	Golf	$16,411,026			S Asian
56		Eddie Jones	NBA	$15,930,000	15,680,000	250,000	Af-Am
57		Dwyane Wade	NBA	$15,841,442	3,841,442	12,000,000	Af-Am
58		Jason Schmidt	MLB	$15,750,000	15,500,000	250,000	W
59		Alessandro Del Piero	Soc	$15,700,000			W
60		Shawn Marion	NBA	$15,670,000	15,070,000	600,000	Af-Am
61		Ray Allen	NBA	$15,611,570	14,611,570	1,000,000	Af-Am
62		Albert Pujols	MLB	$15,500,000	12,000,000	3,500,000	Mulatto
63		John Terry	Soc	$15,500,000			W
64		Steven Gerrard	Soc	$15,400,000			W
65		Antawn Jamison	NBA	$15,371,625	15,101,625	270,000	Af-Am
66		Steve Francis	NBA	$15,320,000	15,070,000	250,000	Af-Am
67		Tom Brady	NFL	$15,006,720	6,006,720	9,000,000	W
68		Carlos Delgado	MLB	$15,000,000	14,500,000	500,000	Black
69		Johnny Damon	MLB	$15,000,000	13,000,000	2,000,000	W-EA
70		Amaré Stoudemire	NBA	$14,955,000	12,455,000	2,500,000	Af-Am

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

Black v. white physical differences in sports

Here's a comment from reader Philly Guy on my posting about whether there's a g factor of athleticism:

I don’t think “athleticism” is just a byword for black. What is meant by athleticism (as opposed to athletic ability, which is a much broader and more nebulous concept) is the ability to move one’s body quickly (in the sense of acceleration, change of direction, and top speed) and powerfully. This is largely a function biomechanics and musculo-tendon physiology and chemistry. Differences in physique and physiology clearly give blacks an advantage over whites in this respect and the word “athleticism” is applied to them much more often because they are much more likely to possess a high degree of “athleticism.”

Re physique, blacks and whites, when matched for SES variables, are virtually identical in average height, however, their physique and body proportions are much different. Blacks have shorter torsos, broader shoulders, smaller ribcages, narrower hips, and longer limbs (with comparative elongation of the distal segments). Fit samples of blacks and whites appear to be about the same weight on average (or perhaps blacks are marginally heavier), but fit blacks have on average less body fat, particularly on their limbs. It follows that blacks have a greater fat free body mass (i.e., bone, muscle and viscera) than whites. The smaller ribcage and narrower pelvis would indicate less viscera weight and indeed, blacks have been found to have substantially more total body musculature and denser, heavier bones than whites. This greater musculature is also distributed differently. Blacks show considerably more musculature in their glutes and thighs than whites, which gives a substantial advantage in locomotion. Blacks have also been shown to have on average greater cross sectional thickness in their limb musculature than whites, with the difference much greater in the proximal than distal limb segments. Naturally higher average testosterone levels and a greater number of testosterone receptors probably contribute to the leaner more heavily muscled physique of blacks compared to whites.

The average physiological differences give blacks a substantial advantage in athleticism. Narrower hips mean that locomotive force is applied closer to the center of the body’s mass, leading to greater biomechanical efficiency by putting a greater portion of the force generated into forward locomotion and causing less to be wasted in rotational force on the body (not to mention the smaller adjustments that have to be constantly made while running or walking to move the center of gravity towards the leg in contact with the ground). Longer limbs provide greater reach, stride length (both forward and lateral), and longer acceleration paths, both for imparting velocity to thrown objects and for accelerating one’s own body for jumping. The problem with long limbs is that they move the center of mass farther from the pivot point (i.e., the joint), causing greater torque and requiring more force to accelerate the limb or change its direction. However, here again black physique provides them with the best of both worlds. The heavy musculature concentrated in the hips and in the proximal segments keeps most of the mass close to the pivot point and provides a lot of force, and the relatively long, thin distal segments don’t create that much torque while still giving the benefits of long reach, stride and acceleration paths. Blacks lower average body fat and viscera weight from comparatively short torsos with small ribcages provide a greater power to weight ratio and less top-heaviness, with a greater portion of their mass being located in the musculature of the hips and thighs, which provide locomotive power.

Muscle and tendon physiology also contribute to black “athleticism.” It is well publicized that blacks have a higher percentage of fast twitch muscle fibers and higher levels of glycotic and phosphogenic enzyme activity levels, when diet and activity levels are controlled for, which would provide an advantage in explosive, short-duration muscular exertions. Additionally, blacks have comparatively long tendons and short muscle bellies compared to total muscle-tendon length compared to whites. When doing repetitive movements like running, the muscle and tendon of the opposing muscle group to contracting muscles are stretched, which stores energy like an elastic band, which is then added to the backstroke as the opposing muscles contract back. (Try taking an appendage such as a finger and stretching it back and notice how it snaps back to its resting position when you release it to see this stored energy effect.) Tendons are more elastic than muscles and contribute more to this effect. Blacks’ comparatively longer tendons would give them comparatively greater energy storage and retransfer while running, causing them to spend less energy and be more efficient. It is also established that blacks have greater muscle elasticity as well as proportionally longer tendons (their tendon elasticity is about the same as whites).

-Philly Guy

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

New EPA gas mileage estimates

Thank you, federal government. Back in March 2006, I blogged:

Your mileage may vary -- and how!

It's time to revise the federal gas mileage rating methodology. Have you noticed how the official gas mileage ratings on cars are absurdly optimistic? ... This outdated test means that vehicle buyers don't realize how expensive unaerodynamic and heavy SUVs will turn out to be. ... Considering as well the non-monetary costs of oil consumption for the environment and foreign policy, is it too much to ask that the government tell us the straight story on mpg ratings?

And it turns out that the EPA now has a new, less nutty methodology. For example, the 2007 V6 Toyota Camry (with the 6 speed automatic) used to be rated at 22 city, 31 highway, but is now rated by the EPA at 19 and 28. That's better, but it still sounds like what the more careful than average driver gets, not what the typical lead-footed American achieves.

A reader writes:

1) Look at safety first. The safercars.gov and iihs.org sites are where to start. The US DOT tests more car-car crashes. The IIHS tests more of how a car will do it hit by an SUV. So they don't always agree on top ratings. Note that Ford, Audi, and Subaru do really well on the top picks list of IIHS. Note as well that a top small car pick is NOT as safe as a top big car pick.

2) You can look at fuel efficiency on fueleconomy.gov. Note that the EPA just tightened their way to test fuel efficiency. Some cars (especially bigger ones) suffered only small losses under the new testing regime. But the Prius's mileage dropped 25%. On that site you can look at each car with both the old and new ratings systems.

3) The main fuel economy value of hybrids comes from capturing energy with regenerative braking. Watch how much you hit the brakes on commutes.

4) Ford and GM have come a long way on quality. Granted, Toyota still has a lead. But their lead isn't so big as it used to be.

5) I believe oil prices will keep going up because, near as I can tell, we really are using up all the oil. But ask yourself how many miles you'll drive per year and what gas will cost you per year at various prices per gallon and mpg. My commute will be so short that I'm insensitive to $5/gallon gas or even $6/gallon gas. I drive a big Cadillac for safety and want to move up to a newer Town Car for even better crash ratings.

6) I find the autotrader.com site the best for looking for used cars. But there are cars that only show up on one of the other sites.

7) The Germans are bringing back diesels. Even Honda says they will come out with a diesel but not this year or probably not next either. The lowering of allowable sulfur in diesel fuel has allowed fancier filtering systems and therefore 50 state diesel is making a come back. There's a diesel VW Jetta coming out this fall that'll cost maybe $24k. Probably last a long time and beat a lot of hybrids on the highway.

8) Fords are nice and underpowered. Yes, the overpowering is ridiculous. Reviewers complain the Town Car has only 239 hp whereas a 1990 Town Car had like 199 hp. The Cad DTS has 300 hp and for what exactly? My mom's supposedly underpowered 2000 Grand Marquis seems to accelerate fast to me. Yet the car mags complain about Fords not being as peppy as Lexuses and Beemers. What the hell?

Car companies competing on horsepower as if your normal commute is across the Bonneville Salt Flats at 140 mph everyday reminds me of house shopping. You go to an open house where the sales lady says that the seller knocked out lots of interior walls converting an eight room house into a five room house with one vast central room, and everybody oohs and aahs about how great it would be for parties. And I'm oohing and aahing too, but in the back of my mind, a little voice is yapping, "Hey, you don't hold parties, and what you really want is your own little room where you can shut the door and think without hearing the damn TV." Similarly, the last time I drove over 80 mph was on a deserted flat, straight back road to Monterey that Jerry Pournelle assured me was never visited by the cops. I got a $400 speeding ticket for going 86.

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

The g Factor of Sports

Just as there's a general factor of intelligence, coaches tend to talk as if there is a g factor in sports. In America today, they tend to call it "athleticism."

The way the word is used can be a little surprising: e.g., eye-hand coordination is not considered part of athleticism. Quarterback Michael Vick has "athleticism" but Peyton Manning, despite his superior throwing ability, does not. Cornerbacks have lots of athleticism, but placekickers do not. Centerfielders have athleticism but third basemen do not. Willie May had athleticism, Brooks Robinson was a great fielder. You might recall Brooks Robinson diving flat out over third base to spear a ferocious one-hopper, then scrambling to his feet to fire a throw to first base, but, well, that's just not athleticism.

Breaking it down, it appears that "athleticism" consists of footspeed, leaping ability, agility, ability to improvise unexpectedly (e.g., fake left, go right), ability to react, and hitting ability (in the football sense, not the baseball sense). One reader says "athleticism" is used to mean "lower body springiness."

One interesting question is whether "athleticism" exists as a general factor much like g in IQ. I sometimes wonder if it's not just a euphemism for "black."

Anyway, anyone interested in "multiple athleticisms" vs. "a general factor of athleticism" could take a look at the data from NBA and NFL Draft combines. For example, here are the numbers on the 2007 NBA draft hopefuls on two kinds of leaping ability, bench press, lane agility, and 3/4 court sprint. You might be able to extract something interesting here, although range restriction is severe -- all these guys would beat you 20-2 in a one-on-one game.

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

American Conservative online

Here's the table of contents for the current issue of The American Conservative:

September 10, 2007 Issue

The Once & Future Christendom
By James P. Pinkerton
What J.R.R. Tolkien tells us about surviving the clash of civilizations

Running for Life Coach
by Michael Brendan Dougherty
One-on-one, Mike Huckabee is the GOP’s strongest candidate, but will that be enough to propel him to the
top tier?

In Good Faith
By Thomas E. Woods Jr.
Pope Benedict’s restoration of the Latin Mass delights Old Rite devotees.

Long Division
ByTrita Parsi
Ending the tension between Washington and Tehran will require more than the departure of Bush’s neocons or Ahmadinejad’s radicals—however welcome that would be.

Test Case
By Steve Sailer
Bureaucracy fails when civil servants aren’t put to the test.

Balancing Act
By Christopher Layne
Give terrorists what they don’t want: a U.S. departure from Iraq.

Welcome to the Global Market
By J.G. Collins
Free trade is the new white man’s burden.

Sands of Empire
By Steve Sailer
“Lawrence of Arabia”
at 45

The Clash, Still Calling
By A.G. Gancarski
Redemption Song: The Ballad of Joe Strummer by Chris Salewicz

Purchase an online edition of this issue immediately

Christianity’s Cheerful Prophet
By Michael S. Rose
God’s Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Europe’s Religious Crisis by Philip Jenkins

The Senators Who Said No
By Clark Stooksbury
Elites for Peace: The Senate and the Vietnam War, 1964-1968 by Gary Stone

Chinese Hostage Crisis
By Patrick J. Buchanan
Our Bankers in Beijing

Feeling a Draft?
By William Pfaff
Rough Draft

The Bushian Barack
By Daniel Larison
Obama’s Second Inaugural Address

The Unbound West
By Fred Reed
How the West Won

Fourteen Days: Bush Teaches Vets About Vietnam; Padilla Presumed Guilty Until Proven Guilty; Rudy’s Culture War

Deep Background: Cheney Lights the Fuse; The Green Zone’s Bug Problem

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

Gas mileage question

After years of having the shortest commutes in LA history, we now have to do some serious driving, so I've been thinking about gas mileage, but I'm making no progress with my thinking.

Hopefully, my 10 year old sedan won't collapse anytime soon, but it's making weird shimmying motions, so I've started to look at car ads again, and, what the heck happened with horsepower in this decade? The Toyota Camry V6, the most generic middle of the road car of them all, is rated at 268 hp. My old sedan has 200 hp and goes 0-60 in 7.8 seconds, and that seems like plenty.

So, does all this extra modern horsepower consume more gas, all else being equal? I could look at the federal mileage ratings, but I've never come close to the numbers they claim. The federal test track must start on the top of Pike's Peak.

Is this purely a physics problem of how much the car weighs, how fast you accelerate it, and what your wind and road resistance is at top speed, so that horsepower doesn't matter? I should just accelerate like I have 168 hp instead of 268? Is that it?

Even if that were so, it doesn't sound very realistic for a mediocre driver like me. I mean, you could probably drive some state-of-the-art bat-out-of-hellmobile in a sensible fashion, merging into traffic off the onramp at a moderate pace, but I'd likely continue to stomp it for all it was worth even if I had a Bugatti Veyron.

Or was this just an error by the car companies? Did they forecast that gas would $1.50 per gallon in the wake of a successful Iraq War and wind up with a line of gas-guzzlers?

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

Our Washington Wise Men, cont.

Alan Greenspan's contention that "the Iraq War is largely about oil" is reassuring in the sense that at least somebody thinks the war is about something, rather than, as it looks more and more, about nothing. But, now that details of Greenspan's thinking have emerged in the Washington Post, the security of believing in a vast Machiavellian conspiracy of incisive strategic minds has been shattered once again:

Greenspan: Ouster Of Hussein Crucial For Oil Security

By Bob Woodward
Washington Post Staff Writer

Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, said in an interview that the removal of Saddam Hussein had been "essential" to secure world oil supplies, a point he emphasized to the White House in private conversations before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Greenspan, who was the country's top voice on monetary policy at the time Bush decided to go to war in Iraq, has refrained from extensive public comment on it until now, but he made the striking comment in a new memoir out today that "the Iraq War is largely about oil." In the interview, he clarified that sentence in his 531-page book, saying that while securing global oil supplies was "not the administration's motive," he had presented the White House with the case for why removing Hussein was important for the global economy.

"I was not saying that that's the administration's motive," Greenspan said in an interview Saturday, "I'm just saying that if somebody asked me, 'Are we fortunate in taking out Saddam?' I would say it was essential."

He said that in his discussions with President Bush and Vice President Cheney, "I have never heard them basically say, 'We've got to protect the oil supplies of the world,' but that would have been my motive." Greenspan said that he made his economic argument to White House officials and that one lower-level official, whom he declined to identify, told him, "Well, unfortunately, we can't talk about oil." Asked if he had made his point to Cheney specifically, Greenspan said yes, then added, "I talked to everybody about that."

Greenspan said he had backed Hussein's ouster, either through war or covert action. "I wasn't arguing for war per se," he said. But "to take [Hussein] out, in my judgment, it was something important for the West to do and essential, but I never saw Plan B" -- an alternative to war. ...

As for Iraq, Greenspan said that at the time of the invasion, he believed, like Bush, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction "because Saddam was acting so guiltily trying to protect something." While he was "reasonably sure he did not have an atomic weapon," he added, "my view was that if we do nothing, eventually he would gain control of a weapon."

His main support for Hussein's ouster, though, was economically motivated. "If Saddam Hussein had been head of Iraq and there was no oil under those sands," Greenspan said, "our response to him would not have been as strong as it was in the first gulf war. And the second gulf war is an extension of the first. My view is that Saddam, looking over his 30-year history, very clearly was giving evidence of moving towards controlling the Straits of Hormuz, where there are 17, 18, 19 million barrels a day" passing through.

Greenspan said disruption of even 3 to 4 million barrels a day could translate into oil prices as high as $120 a barrel -- far above even the recent highs of $80 set last week -- and the loss of anything more would mean "chaos" to the global economy.

Given that, "I'm saying taking Saddam out was essential," he said. But he added that he was not implying that the war was an oil grab.

"No, no, no," he said. Getting rid of Hussein achieved the purpose of "making certain that the existing system [of oil markets] continues to work, frankly, until we find other [energy supplies], which ultimately we will."

Uh, I realize I wasn't the most powerful unelected official in America for two decades like Mr. Greenspan was, and I lack his sources of inside information, but how exactly was this decade's Saddam Hussein, with no air force and rusty tanks, going to get to the Straits of Hormuz, which would require him to fight past American military bases in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman? A fleet of lateen-rigged dhows? A camel caravan marching for 20 waterless days across the Anvil of the Sun to attack from behind? A really long tunnel?

By the way, it always seemed strange to me that Greenspan, widely worshipped when he was an old man as the essence of wisdom, when in his prime, from his late 20s up at least through the age of 42, had been a leading acolyte in the Ayn Rand cult. Bill Bradford reported in The American Enterprise:

As I learned in hours of interviews with their associates, Greenspan was a member of Rand’s inner circle during this entire period [the 1950s] and beyond. He lectured on economics for the Nathaniel Branden Institute. He wrote for the first issue of The Objectivist Newsletter, and when Rand broke with Branden [her 25-year younger lover], he signed a public statement condemning the traitor “irrevocably.” [Greenspan was then in his 40s.]

Randall Parker tees off on Greenspan in "Greenspan Deluded On Saddam Threat To Strait Of Hormuz," and points out:

Greenspan is another example of a general problem we face: We are poorly led. We give our elites - especially our political elites - far too much respect and deference. These people are nowhere near as competent as they make themselves out to be. The really talented people in America are in investment banks and Silicon Valley start-ups. They aren't in Washington DC in high government positions. Though I bet there are some smart people on K Street manipulating the yahoos in government.

We mostly are better off if the sharpest people are in venture capital-funded start-ups and investment banks. The private sector generates the wealth. But we need some small handful of sharpies in key positions of power who can recognize when nonsense is being spoken and say no to stupid policies.

For whatever it's worth, I figured I'd repost this blog item I wrote around June 11, 2003, which ws based on some emails I exchanged with Stanley Kurtz shortly before the invasion of Iraq.:

And, oh, yeah, that stuff about Saddam being a threat to invade Kuwait again? The normally sensible Stanley Kurtz imprudently rehashes his prewar scaremongering about how Saddam couldn't be deterred the moment -- Any Day Now -- when he got a nuclear bomb, or maybe a dirty bomb (which ain't exactly the same thing). Deterrence might have worked on Joe Stalin, but Saddam was just utterly crazed, etc etc.

Obviously, Saddam hasn't had any sort of nuclear bomb program to speak of since 1995, or some Iraqi would have told us about it by now. What, you think Iraqis have some kind of Sicilian code of omerta and every single one of the hundreds or thousands of workers is steadfastly refusing to tell the conquerors exactly what they want to hear? Yeah, that's exactly how Arabs behave...

But even if Saddam had a nuclear bomb, the evident weakness in Kurtz's case that Saddam was going to invade Kuwait again was overwhelmingly confirmed by the fighting south of Baghdad. In short, nuclear weapons, even if they existed, were irrelevant because his tanks would never have gotten to Kuwait. America's absolute air superiority meant they would never have made it through the No-Fly zone before being turned to scrap. Without air superiority, tanks are worthless in open country (not that Saddam's rust bucket tanks were worth much under any conditions). And the Iraqi regime didn't even send up one airplane to defend itself. Nobody, rational or irrational, smart or stupid, can conquer Kuwait if they can't physically get to Kuwait. And Saddam's tanks couldn't get there without first being turned into hamburger helper by our Warthogs.

Tell me, did you see anything during the three weeks war that indicated that Saddam could mount a credible invasion of anybody?

Now, you might argue that Saddam could have sat in Baghdad and threatened nuclear terrorism against NYC if we didn't let his boys drive to Kuwait, but nuclear terrorism is a really, really stupid idea if you have a return address (e.g., Downtown Baghdad).

Of course, even in extremis, he didn't do anything remotely like that, as the whole world has seen.

Basically, Stanley's not describing the historical Saddam, may he be burning in hell, but Dr. Evil from the Austin Powers movies: "I will blow up the world unless you pay me ... ONE MILLION DOLLARS!" This threat is perhaps practicable if your secret lair is a laboratory hidden in a hollowed-out volcano, but not if you own 47 palaces.

Clearly, we do need to do some game theorizing about what to do with Dr. Evil-type figures -- in fact, Osama bin Laden (remember him?) is as close to a Goldfinger-type bad guy as I ever want to see -- but it doesn't do American credibility any good to say easily falsifiable things like Saddam was a major danger to invade Kuwait despite absolute air inferiority. And American credibility is a dangerous thing to waste.

Nuclear weapons are extremely useful deterrents against invasion, as we showed in the Fulda Gap for 40 years. As offensive weapons ... Let's just say that any 3rd World regime's strategy for conquest that relies upon initiating a nuclear exchange with the Strategic Air Command is a non-starter.

It's all very well to plan for crazed leaders acting in random fashions, but the vast proportion of bad things that have happened down through history have happened for superficially plausible reasons. So, our first priority must be to make sure we are providing the correct incentive structures for non-random actors. The problem is that we've just once again upped the need for regimes to acquire nuclear deterrrents to prevent American attack (as did our aggression in Yugoslavia in 1999). Our destroying the utility of weapons inspections as a viable instrument -- in their very moment of triumph -- is likely to encourage proliferation of nuclear or infectious biological weapons. Since not having weapons of mass destruction is no defense against the whim of the President of the United States, you'd better have them. In turn, that increases the chances of crazed leaders or Dr. Evil-types getting them.

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

Public school finance

What public schools need to do is get rich people to give them money to put their names on buildings around the schools, just the way private schools do. Milton Friedman said that campuses exist for three purposes: instruction, research, and monument erection. These days, private colleges are putting donors' names on each classroom and even each seat in the football stadium. Finding your way around a campus with a map is difficult because colleges insist on putting the key on maps alphabetically, and buildings are no longer ever referred to by their function, but by their donor. So, to find the Chemistry Lab on the map, you have to look in the key under Z for the Helda Zuffelump Chemical Sciences Center.

The amount of money spent on building palatial new buildings on private college and high school campuses in this decade has been enormous. (Fortunately, the new edifices appear to be in better taste than most built since WWII.)

The secret to academic fund-raising is to ask for money. And then ask some more. And some more. It's an odd job, one that can be hard to do right, because donors don't want you to look like Donald Trump, they want you to look like Mr. Chips, but you have to have your hand out all the time like Donald Trump. With his trademark bow tie and funny glasses. Bill Durden, who became President of then-ailing Dickinson College in Pennsylvania in 1999 and immediately started hauling in big contributions through the simple expedient of asking for them all the time, has the Chips-Trump combo down perfectly.

Lots of rich people are graduates of public schools, so they'd be easy targets. For example, junk bond pirate-king Michael Milken and his brother paid for the fancy High Tech High charter school on the campus of Birmingham High School in LA because Milken was a cheerleader, along with future actress Sally Field, the year Birmingham won the LA City football championship.

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

"In the Valley of Elah"

Here's an excerpt from my review in the 9/24/07 issue of The American Conservative:

"In the Valley of Elah" is a modest-budget drama laden with Hollywood luminaries. Oscar-magnet screenwriter Paul Haggis ("Crash" and "Million Dollar Baby") directs fellow Academy Award winners Tommy Lee Jones ("The Fugitive"), Charlize Theron ("Monster"), and Susan Sarandon ("Dead Man Walking") in a spare, somber, and moving police procedural.

"Elah" is based on the notorious 2003 murder of Spc. Richard Davis by his fellow soldiers shortly after their unit arrived stateside from combat in Iraq. At some point after a drunken brawl outside a strip club, Davis was stabbed 32 times. His comrades-at-arms then dismembered his body, burnt it, and hid the remains in the woods.

Working from Mark Boal's Playboy article, Haggis wrote the central role of the victim's father, a laconic retired Army sergeant, a former military policeman in Vietnam, for his mentor Clint Eastwood, but the 77-year-old told him he has retired from acting. So Haggis turned to 61-year-old Tommy Lee Jones, who, as his formidable performance in "Elah" demonstrates, is still very much in his prime.

As a director, Haggis's strength is that he's not intimidated by his screenwriter's fame. Haggis edited out an hour of his own dialogue, making "Elah" far quieter than the sometimes brilliant but showy "Crash." Here, Haggis lets his superb cast carry the film through long silent takes.

For example, the morning after the corpse is sent to the coroner for identification, Jones is awoken by a knock on his motel room door. Outside is a soldier in full dress uniform. Having worn the same uniform to deliver the same message to other parents, the despairing father knows what's coming. For 15 seconds he struggles to prepare himself to receive the blow in the only way he knows, willing his tired body to stand at rigid military attention.

In a brief role, Sarandon is even better than Jones. Having lost her older son to a helicopter crash in training, she asks her husband, "Couldn't you have left me just one?" When he protests that he didn't tell their boy to enlist, she responds that their son couldn't have grown up in their home without feeling that he'd never be a man until he served. Jones has no answer.

I would guess that Haggis' strength is writing from personal feelings. "Crash" was inspired by his being car-jacked in 1991 by two black criminals. And "Elah" probably had a lot to do with his having four kids. I suspect "Elah" will have a big impact on people with teenage sons, and tend to bore most everybody else.

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

Multiple Intelligences

I've always been sympathetic toward Howard Gardner's popular Multiple Intelligences theory. I pointed out to him once that if there really are seven or eight separate intelligences, then it's much less likely that all races have all the same intelligences than if the g factor was dominant. For example, we see that the two sexes have extremely similar g factors on IQ tests, which is hardly implausible purely from a stochastic standpoint since there are just two data points: male average IQ and female average IQ. But if we have, say, four or five racial/ethnic groups and seven or eight Gardnerian intelligences, that's 28 to 40 different datapoints, and no way, no how are 28 to 40 different data points all going to come out the same in the real world.

He agreed.

But, I'm also frustrated by how little development has been done on his theory, by him or by others.

Reading his books, it's pretty clear that, while he's a bright, interesting guy, he pretty much made up his categories off the top of his head.

For example, if I recall correctly, he lumps agile athletes together with guys who are really good at working on their cars as all possessing high "kinesthetic" intelligence. The problem is that if you stop and think about the cliques at your old high school, you'll note that there was little overlap between the jocks and the greasers. The gearheads tended to be a little uncoordinated and the football heroes were more into buying cars than fixing them. So, while I'm perfectly happy to agree that there are multiple intelligences, I'm don't think Gardner's term "kinesthetic" is actually pointing to a real single thing. Football star LaDainlian Tomlinson and car-fixer-upper Jesse James (Sandra Bullock's husband) may well both possess unusually gifted cognitive talents, but I strongly doubt they are the same talent.

If anybody is actually interested in quantitatively investigating multiple intelligences, the military's ASVAB test would offer a good source of data. The ASVAB, introduced in the 1970s, is a superset of the military's traditional AFQT enlistment IQ test. To the four highly g-loaded AFQT subtests, the military added six more specific, less g-loaded subtests. For example, one was on auto repair, which would be relevant to Gardner's kinesthetic category. Here are the ten subtests as of 1980:

• general science
• Arithmetic reasoning
• word knowledge
• paragraph comprehension
• numercial operations
• coding speed
• auto and shop information
• mathematics knowledge
• mechanical comprehension
• electronics information

We have a fantastic nationally representative National Longitudinal Study of Youth sample of about 12,000 people who took the military's ASVAB as young adults in 1980, and social scientists have been following the course of their lives with close interest ever since. Most famously, Herrnstein and Murray correlated what they were doing in 1990 against their AFQT IQs in 1980 to furnish most of the novel material in The Bell Curve. But the other six subtests, when correlated with the NLSY demographic data, might provide some clues as to what multiple intelligences actually exist.

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

The Waning of Water

We all used to obsess over how a glass was partly full of water, but, recently, extremely sophisticated thinkers have noticed that many glasses are also partly empty.

Therefore, all of us cutting edge folks now know that you don't have to pay any attention whatsoever to water. H2O? H2whatever is more like it.

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

More proof that David Brooks was right about IQ being passe

David Brooks's recent NY Times op-ed on how IQ is passe was supported by a new development over the weekend.

You may vaguely recall that back in 2005, the President of Harvard, Larry Summers, the former Clinton Administration Treasury Secretary, made some uncontroversial remarks about how, although men and women have the same mean IQ, the male bell curves are fatter in the tails, which has implications for elite faculty gender balance. His speech was greeted with yawns since everybody in the public sphere in America had long before internalized all the implications of psychometric research, as symbolized by the 2001 appointment of the pseudonymous statistician La Griffe du Lion as Secretary of Education.

Now, the San Francisco Chronicle reports:

Lawrence Summers, the controversial former president of Harvard University, has been replaced as the planned speaker at a UC Board of Regents dinner next week after complaints from faculty members.

"(UC Regents) Chairman Richard Blum and Dr. Summers talked last Thursday and agreed that the regents would have a different speaker," Trey Davis, director of special projects for the UC system, said Saturday.

Davis was unable to say whether a protest letter signed by more than 300 people from the university system had any effect on the decision to find a different speaker for the regents' dinner in Sacramento on Wednesday. He referred those questions to Blum, who is out of the country.

Summers, who was Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton, resigned from Harvard last year after a long-running clash with some faculty members over his questioning whether women might not have the same innate ability as men in disciplines such as science, math and engineering. He also had thorny relations with minority faculty members during his time at the university.

While Summers later apologized for his remarks, which he said were misinterpreted, it didn't slow the criticism, which continues to this day.

"I was appalled and stunned that someone like Summers would even be invited to speak to the regents," said UC Davis Professor Maureen Stanton, who helped put together the petition drive. "I think many of us who were involved in the protest believed that it wouldn't reflect well on the university that he even received the invitation."

The petition called Summers' invitation "not only misguided but inappropriate" at a time when the university is working to diversify its community.

"Inviting a keynote speaker who has come to symbolize gender and racial prejudice in academia conveys the wrong message to the University community and to the people of California," the petition said.

The decision to dump Summers as the speaker at the dinner was abrupt. His name was on the dinner invitation that went out Aug. 31, along with other information about the three-day meeting at UC Davis, Davis said.

"The dinner is an informal, social occasion, with more of a conversation with the speaker than a formal talk," he added. Blum, who is the husband of California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, made the original decision to invite Summers.

Susan Kennedy, chief of staff for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, will replace Summers as speaker at the dinner.

While delighted that the regents have decided to replace Summers, Stanton now hopes the dispute will be quickly forgotten.

"Frankly, we'd like to see the story just die at this point," she said.

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

David Brooks: "The Waning of IQ"

NY TIMES

September 14, 2007

Op-Ed Columnist

The Waning of I.Q.

By DAVID BROOKS

A nice phenomenon of the past few years is the diminishing influence of I.Q.

For a time, I.Q. was the most reliable method we had to capture mental aptitude. People had the impression that we are born with these information-processing engines in our heads and that smart people have more horsepower than dumb people.

And in fact, there’s something to that. There is such a thing as general intelligence; people who are good at one mental skill tend to be good at others. This intelligence is partly hereditary. A meta-analysis by Bernie Devlin of the University of Pittsburgh found that genes account for about 48 percent of the differences in I.Q. scores. There’s even evidence that people with bigger brains tend to have higher intelligence.

But there has always been something opaque about I.Q. In the first place, there’s no consensus about what intelligence is. Some people think intelligence is the ability to adapt to an environment, others that capacity to think abstractly, and so on.

Then there are weird patterns. For example, over the past century, average I.Q. scores have risen at a rate of about 3 to 6 points per decade. This phenomenon, known as the Flynn effect, has been measured in many countries and across all age groups. Nobody seems to understand why this happens or why it seems to be petering out in some places, like Scandinavia.

I.Q. can also be powerfully affected by environment. As Eric Turkheimer of the University of Virginia and others have shown, growing up in poverty can affect your intelligence for the worse. Growing up in an emotionally strangled household also affects I.Q.

One of the classic findings of this was made by H.M. Skeels back in the 1930s. He studied mentally retarded orphans who were put in foster homes. After four years, their I.Q.’s diverged an amazing 50 points from orphans who were not moved. And the remarkable thing is the mothers who adopted the orphans were themselves mentally retarded and living in a different institution. It wasn’t tutoring that produced the I.Q. spike; it was love.

Then, finally, there are the various theories of multiple intelligences. We don’t just have one thing called intelligence. We have a lot of distinct mental capacities. These theories thrive, despite resistance from the statisticians, because they explain everyday experience. I’m decent at processing words, but when it comes to calculating the caroms on a pool table, I have the aptitude of a sea slug.

I.Q., in other words, is a black box. It measures something, but it’s not clear what it is or whether it’s good at predicting how people will do in life. Over the past few years, scientists have opened the black box to investigate the brain itself, not a statistical artifact.

Now you can read books about mental capacities in which the subject of I.Q. and intelligence barely comes up. The authors are concerned instead with, say, the parallel processes that compete for attention in the brain, and how they integrate. They’re discovering that far from being a cold engine for processing information, neural connections are shaped by emotion.

Antonio Damasio of the University of Southern California had a patient rendered emotionless by damage to his frontal lobes. When asked what day he could come back for an appointment, he stood there for nearly half an hour describing the pros and cons of different dates, but was incapable of making a decision. This is not the Spock-like brain engine suggested by the I.Q.

Today, the research that dominates public conversation is not about raw brain power but about the strengths and consequences of specific processes. Daniel Schacter of Harvard writes about the vices that flow from the way memory works. Daniel Gilbert, also of Harvard, describes the mistakes people make in perceiving the future. If people at Harvard are moving beyond general intelligence, you know something big is happening.

The cultural consequence is that judging intelligence is less like measuring horsepower in an engine and more like watching ballet. Speed and strength are part of intelligence, and these things can be measured numerically, but the essence of the activity is found in the rhythm and grace and personality — traits that are the products of an idiosyncratic blend of emotions, experiences, motivations and inheritances.

Recent brain research, rather than reducing everything to electrical impulses and quantifiable pulses, actually enhances our appreciation of human complexity and richness. While psychometrics offered the false allure of objective fact, the new science brings us back into contact with literature, history and the humanities, and, ultimately, to the uniqueness of the individual.

I couldn't agree more! Obviously, judging from laws like No Child Left Behind, our political and pundit classes have spent quite enough time studying and publicly elucidating the subtleties of the science of IQ. C'mon, guys, enough is enough with all the IQ expertise on display in the press! We're into diminishing marginal returns on IQ knowledge by now.

Aren't we all sick of hearing George Will and Thomas Friedman harp on and on about Spearman's Hypothesis about the g factor on every Sunday morning talk show? And how many dozens of articles about IQ and the Wealth of Nations can The Economist run in one decade? And by now haven't we've all heard NPR explain ad infinitum that the reason that young whites have an 80% higher combat death rate in the Iraq War than young minorities is in large part because the military's well-validated devotion to IQ testing makes it much harder for minorities, with their lower average IQs, to enlist? And do we really have to see Arthur Jensen and Linda Gottfredson on the evening news every week being asked to give an IQ expert's perspective on every social issue under the sun? Can't we ever debate immigration without Dana Milbank of the Washington Post reminding us of the lower average IQ of illegal immigrants?

And when will critics of IQ research ever get any media attention whatsoever? Will the little-known paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, who died in poverty because of persecution by the all-powerful IQ Establishment, ever get any recognition for his (admittedly obscurantist) critique of IQ?

And when will all the Schools of Education stop requiring all future teachers to spend a semester studying The Bell Curve? Wouldn't 8 weeks be enough to spend on that one book?

Brooks is right! Enough of the never-ending IQ-this and IQ-that in the media!

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

"Borat" - Somebody else finally gets it

As I pointed out during the insane "Borat" frenzy of a year ago, Sacha Baron-Cohen's character is basically one giant old-fashioned Polish Joke, with a few updatings for the age of political correctness. For example, to make Eastern Europeans look primitive and backward, they filmed Borat's home village in a dilapidated, feckless Romanian Gypsy village. But, the movie then makes the point that one of the many faults of Eastern European gentiles is that they are prejudiced against ... Gypsies! Yet, almost nobody noticed that "Borat" was based on old Yiddish anti-Polish jokes.

So, I was glad to find a review on IMDB by a scholar who did her Ph.D. dissertation on Polish-Jewish relations (probably not a prudent choice, considering that the world's most famous living author can't get his two-volume history of Russian-Jewish relations published in New York) who noticed the same thing. Danusha V. Goska writes:

There's more going on here, and I know I'm risking a lot by pointing this out.

Borat speaks Polish. Only speakers of Polish will get that. He says "Dzien Dobry," "jak sie masz," "dziekuje" and other Polish phrases. The film's opening and closing scenes were shot in a real Eastern European village. Real Eastern European folk music is played on the soundtrack.

With "Ali G," Baron Cohen exploited vicious stereotypes of Blacks. With "Borat" Baron Cohen is not targeting Kazaks. He's exploiting a centuries-old, contemptuous and hateful stereotype of Eastern European peasants that can be found in various Western cultures - witness the American "Polak joke" - - and is common in one thread of Jewish culture. In this stereotype, Poles, and, by extension, Eastern European Christian peasants, are, like Borat, ignorant, bestial, and disgusting. A good précis of the stereotype can be found in a famous passage in Isaac Bashevis Singer's "The Slave." It can be found in the "Golem" article on my website.

In fact, "Borat" has a lot in common with Marian Marzynski's controversial film "Shtetl." In both, cameras invade an impoverished Eastern European peasant village. Villagers who are not sophisticated or worldly are conned into appearing on camera to perform for us as if they were trained monkeys. We laugh at them, or feel disgust at them, because they are dirty, because they are poor, and because they keep pigs. In any case, gazing at these lesser peasants, we know that we are superior. Perhaps Baron Cohen will try this technique next in a Darfur refugee camp or a homeless shelter. Poor, unsophisticated people can be so amusing.

Baron Cohen speaks of women as if they were less than dirt. Don't misunderstand him. He's not mocking misogyny. He's milking misogyny. The things Baron Cohen says about women in this movie are grotesque; they are brutal. He makes fun of mentally retarded people. He makes fun of white, Christian Southerners, a group everyone feels safe mocking.

Reviews, and no doubt many viewers, are telling you that "Borat" is a fearless laugh riot that punctures political correctness and makes you laugh till you cry. It's that very description that made me want to see it. I thought I'd be getting something like the Colbert Report.

I've gotta think I'm not the only one, though, who found looking at Baron Cohen's hatred for an hour and a half to be an icky, profoundly unfunny experience.

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

"La Vie en Rose"

Here's my review for The American Conservative of the musical biopic about singer Edith Piaf:

Why is the "struggle with inner demons" such a staple of movies about musicians and actors?

Part of the reason is selection bias: producers aren't dying to make "The Johann Sebastian Bach Story" because composing a new masterpiece for Sunday church services each week while raising 20 children didn't leave Bach much time for self-inflicted drama.

Nonetheless, on average, performers really do live more chaotic lives than the rest of us. The detective novelist and screenwriter Raymond Chandler explained in The Little Sister, his novel about a troubled actress: "If these people didn't live intense and rather disordered lives, if their emotions didn't ride them too hard -- well, they wouldn't be able to catch those emotions in flight and imprint them on a few feet of celluloid ..."

Nobody lived a more intense and disordered life than Edith Piaf (1915-1963), the Parisian chanteuse depicted in the melodramatic and moving French film "La Vie en Rose." While her contemporary Judy Garland became an icon to male homosexuals (the gay liberation movement began in 1969 when drag queens returning from Garland's funeral rioted at New York's Stonewall bar), Piaf was a national heroine, as French as Johnny Cash was American.

Although many showbiz biopics punch up the drama with fiction, writer-director Olivier Dahan's big problem was what to leave out to keep "La Vie en Rose" down to 140 minutes. Amusingly, he omitted World War II, which Piaf spent in German-occupied Paris. (The embarrassing reality is that while Piaf did help the Resistance, her career, like many French culturati's, flourished during the Occupation, which was easier in Paris than elsewhere -- the more Francophilic and civilized German officers tried to wangle assignments there.)

Many pop stars concoct hardscrabble mythologies to blur their privileged upbringings. For instance, the lead singer of the great leftist punk rock band The Clash gave himself the macho prole name Joe Strummer to obscure that he was the son of a diplomat.

Piaf's childhood, however, was the real thing. Abandoned as an infant by her mother, a street singer and prostitute, her father, a circus contortionist, dumped her with his madam mother to grow up in a bordello. When the little girl went blind from conjunctivitis, the whores with hearts of gold chipped in to send her on a pilgrimage to Lisieux to pray at the grave of St. Therese. Her sight restored, she began singing in her father's street corner act.

Dahan chopped up the storyline of "La Vie en Rose" chronologically, perhaps because Piaf's life was such a string of catastrophes that a straightforward retelling would have left punch-drunk audiences giggling at the one-damn-thing-after-anotherness of it all.

At 18, she had an illegitimate child, who soon died, and she fell under the thumb of a pimp. Piaf was discovered singing on the street at age 20 by a nightclub owner (played by the formidable Gerard Depardieu), but he was murdered and the police at first accused her. The great love of her life, middleweight world champion boxer Marcel Cerdan, died in a plane crash on his way to a rendezvous with her in New York. A painful car crash turned her into a morphine junkie, and cancer killed her at 47, before which she looked to be 80.

Perhaps due to childhood malnutrition, she only grew up to be 4'-8". (Despite being over ten inches taller, Marion Cotillard somehow portrays Piaf with spectacular verisimilitude.) Like Dick Cheney, her head inclined to the right. Out of this sparrow-like frame emerged an enormous voice, magnificent and nasally piercing, perfect for belting out "Le Marseillaise."

In these days of easy electronic amplification, it seems strange that for centuries the great challenge to professional musicians was to generate enough sternum-vibrating volume to blast the full emotional and physical power of the music out to a large paying audience.

By the time of Piaf's discovery in 1935, Bing Crosby had revolutionized singing by introducing a quieter, more conversational style suited to the microphone, but she mostly stood by the old loud mode. At her peak in the 1950s (despite all her woes, she continued to improve as an interpreter of songs), she could sound lovely, but the film chooses to emphasize her more stentorian style. To 21st Century audiences Piaf might sound like a curiosity, a pocket battleship Ethel Merman. Still, "La Vie en Rose" is one of the best musical biopics.

Rated PG-13 for substance abuse, sexual content, brief nudity, language, and thematic elements.

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

"A Mighty Heart"

Here's my review for The American Conservative of the Angelina Jolie flick that got the critics all excited but died at the box office.

Thirty seconds into Angelina Jolie's explanatory voice-over that opens "A Mighty Heart," the critically-acclaimed film about the pregnant wife of the Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped and beheaded by Muslim terrorists in Pakistan, the dozen corn-rowed young men sitting near me got up, put on their gang-colors jackets, and filed out of the theatre to go find something more entertaining to watch.

Who was right about "A Mighty Heart" -- the Critics or the Crips?

After Angelina Jolie first surfaced playing a lesbian junkie supermodel who dies of AIDS in 1998's "Gia," she stood out from Hollywood's fungible ranks of blonde and bland starlets by being dark and demented. After lurid years of soul-kissing her brother and wearing around her neck a vial of then-husband Billy Bob Thornton's blood, however, Jolie has been trying to recast herself as a globe-trotting humanitarian, a sexy Albert Schweitzer. Not surprisingly, she has brought the same demonic energy she once devoted to playing with knives to adopting orphaned children from different countries, resembling an obsessive Pokemon player who's gotta catch 'em all.

Jolie's first attempt to embody her newfound ideals in a film, her 2003 tribute to international relief workers, the romantic drama "Beyond Borders," was a respectful snore. Now, she's trying again in a much-acclaimed performance as the saintly Mariane Pearl, a French radio journalist whose bestselling memoir recounted her four heartbreaking weeks in 2002 trying to piece together clues to her husband's disappearance, until a video emerged of her husband's head being hacked off.

Ever since, her former father-in-law, UCLA professor Judea Pearl, has tirelessly promoted his son as the Anne Frank of the 21st Century, recruiting Bill Clinton for the Honorary Board of his Daniel Pearl Foundation that promotes "cross-cultural understanding." A competing film project based on the insufferable French intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy's book Who Killed Daniel Pearl?, with Josh Lucas as the martyred reporter, has been announced, but Jolie's movie won the race to the screen.

Giving "A Mighty Heart" a bad review seems churlish, since the film is so factual that any harping might appear to reflect upon the poor widow. Nonetheless, the critics were wrong and the gangbangers right: this police procedural is one of the more futile films in memory.

Mrs. Pearl says, "To me, it's a story about Danny being held by extremely intolerant people. And yet we, in that house in Pakistan—Christian, Hindu, Jew, Buddhist, Muslim—came together to find him."

But failed, badly. While we can admire the film's refusal to pretend that the Pakistani and American investigators ever came close to rescuing Daniel Pearl, its lack of suspense makes for a pointless 100 minutes.

And then there are the colorless characters. I still have no idea who the "Mighty Heart" of the film's title is supposed to be. Pearl appears to have been a nice guy and a dedicated professional who died bravely, but he never claimed to be an oversized personality. Newspapermen were once, according to "His Girl Friday," sozzled misanthropes too crude to remove their hats while pounding out copy on their Underwoods, but modern reporters, like Mr. and Mrs. Pearl, tend to be sober and self-effacing. Indeed, this murder mystery isn't much interested in the victim, as illustrated by the casting of the obscure Dan Futterman opposite Jolie.

The film's focus on Mariane Pearl might suggest she's the mighty heart. Yet, the emotionally restrained Mrs. Pearl, who meditates in front of her personal Buddhist shrine to maintain her inner harmony during her ordeal, doesn't make much of an impression either. She's too culturally sensitive to vent her wrath against the men who slaughtered her husband.

Although widely praised for not chewing the scenery, Jolie, who studied Method acting and won her Oscar for playing a sociopath mental patient in "Girl, Interrupted," lacks the theatrical training that Helen Mirren used to subtly delineate an undemonstrative character in "The Queen." So, we're left with plenty of time to admire the elegant curve of Jolie's profile from her eyebrows down to the tip of her nose.

Nor does the movie teach you much. Pakistan is an astonishingly complex and potentially crucial country, but the filmmakers are so loathe to stereotype that all we learn about the place is that it's really crowded.

Ultimately, the tedium of "A Mighty Heart" is due to the devotion of all involved to the modern religion of non-judgmentalism.

Rated R solely for language. The beheading is not portrayed on film.

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