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I’m working on a really long post, but I feel obligated to note this item here; it’s important and, in a way, will even tie in to the upcoming phonebook-length essay.

Browsing Cleveland.com today, I decided to see just what exactly Brent Larkin had written under the headline “Drawing the line on Democrat griping.” Had this been a work of, say, reactionary automaton Kevin O’Brien, I wouldn’t have even bothered, but I’ve found Larkin occasionally makes a fair point or two.

He does so, here. Said point is made in his usual crusty, crabby, how-distasteful-this-all-is way, but aside from the fact that I’m hardly one to talk, he does make a significant point all the same: Ohio’s Democratic Party seems to have invited the partisan redistricting heist of which they, and I, have been complaining so volubly.

Old man Larkin notes something I apparently missed in my normal indifference to Ohio politics, that “Last year, Democrats had a chance to take politics out of drawing new congressional boundaries and replace it with a plan that reeked of fairness.”

The plan would have amended the Ohio Constitution to create a seven-member panel to redraw those boundaries every 10 years. Republican and Democratic members of the Ohio House and Senate would have shared equally in the appointment of four members. Those four would have appointed the other three members. The support of five members would have been required for approval.

[The] proposal would have taken effect for this year’s drawing of new boundaries. It required voter approval, which would have been a near-certainty.

The Ohio Senate voted to put the plan on last November’s ballot, but it died in the Democrat-controlled House.

The hectoring editor emeritus goes on to list various reasons why the Democrats did such a silly thing. I would like to think they might offer up at least a token defense of their rejecting this reform, but having few illusions about the nature of politics even in parties I view relatively favorably, I expect that defense would be pretty thin. For what it’s worth, I’m not aware of anyone else even raising this point; presumably Democrats don’t want to talk about it because it makes them look bad, and presumably Republicans aren’t mentioning it because they don’t want to acknowledge the possibility that the current system which they’re exploiting is not the acme of fairness.

So, thank you, grumpy old newspaperman, for informing me of what everyone else finds inconvenient to recall. What can I say; this was an awful choice even if it hadn’t quickly rebounded to Democrats’ and democracy’s disadvantage. (more…)

Dear Professor Cole,

Please don’t whine about Facebook.

As I’ve said on other occasions, if you or someone else wants to use Facebook, go right ahead. And for that matter, if you want to whine about it, go right ahead… but be aware that you sound whiny and pathetic when you do so.

I realize that I run a risk, here, of sounding like I’m saying “if you don’t like the way things are then just do without,” a policy which is certainly neither progressive nor thoughtful nor, in many cases, especially practical.

But nuance can, naturally, work in more directions than just one. Yes, it’s simplistic to respond automatically to a complaint by saying “if you don’t like it why don’t you just do without,” but it’s also simplistic to conclude that, therefore, all complaining is equally valid. Obviously it is not; obviously whining is sometimes just whining, and the more whiny for being dressed up in the clothing of serious complaints about fairness and justice.

And in this case, I just don’t believe that you have much claim to your (usually justified and well-deployed) aggrieved voice for enlightened progressive opinion style, professor.

As multiple comments on your post point out, rather eloquently, Facebook is a private, for-profit corporation, for which you are not even a customer; their customers are instead those businesses and organizations actually paying them for information about and access to you. They are largely in business to engage in exactly the sort of misbehavior you lament.

Which doesn’t, by itself, invalidate your complaints. I complain about all kinds of businesses with which I still have some technically-voluntary association; it’s difficult to completely deny one’s business to all of the bad corporations in energy, telecommunications, finance, agriculture, media, etc., etc., etc.

But it’s much more difficult for me to see how a practicality exception applies to Facebook. You anticipate this objection and attempt to address it, but just end up making yourself look whinier and, probably, a bit hypocritical as well. Comments about Facebook’s social value are probably rather subjective, and difficult to judge, but I really believe that we’ve gone overboard by declaring that “you can no longer be in the blogging/ journalism/ public intellectual realm without it.”

Honestly, professor? (more…)