The Indelible Bonobo Experience

Looking at the real deal for the first time just now, and attempting to put out of mind the spoofs and criticisms I’ve already absorbed, my first impression is that there is something either metaphysically or politically queer going on. Barack Obama is president Julia’s entire life! (via Economist, The Life of Julia)

• My second impression, after slapping the shackles on my hair-splitting inner stickler, is that it was really quite generous of Mr Obama’s people not to admit outright the truth that Julia probably won’t survive past 30 in the terrifying alternative universe in which Mitt Romney is eternally president, for in that timeline her heart is torn out and eaten by a roving band of cannibal savages in the aftermath of the global nuclear devastation precipitated by Mr Romney, who doesn’t even have a Nobel peace prize.
• That is to say, my first impression was that “The Life of Julia” is completely ridiculous, even as a piece of propaganda, and I was immediately moved to satirise it. I guess that’s why there are so many send-ups. David Burge at Iowahawk, I think quite accurately captures the flavour of the original’s description of Julia’s political alternatives, whatever you think of his politics.
• Ross Douthat goes beyond the observation that “The Life of Julia” is a risible piece of propaganda. He argues that “the slide show represents a monument to certain trends in contemporary liberalism” due to the “fascinating ideological purity [of] its attitudes and arguments”. “On the one hand”, Mr Douthat writes, “its public policy agenda is essentially a defense of existing arrangements no matter their effectiveness or sustainability, apparently premised on the assumption that American women can’t make cost-benefit calculations or indeed do basic math”.
• At the same time, the slide show’s vision of the individual’s relationship to the state seems designed to vindicate every conservative critique of the Obama-era Democratic Party. The liberalism of “the Life of Julia” doesn’t envision government spending the way an older liberalism did—as a backstop for otherwise self-sufficient working families, providing insurance against job loss, decrepitude and catastrophic illness. It offers a more sweeping vision of government’s place in society, in which the individual depends on the state at every stage of life, and no decision—personal, educational, entrepreneurial, sexual—can be contemplated without the promise that it will be somehow subsidized by Washington.
• This seems a bit too heavy to lay upon a cartoon slide-show intended simply to illustrate the difference between a few of Mr Obama’s and Mr Romney’s policies. Is Mr Douthat disappointed that there are no slides depicting Julia sniffing the crisp fall breeze, attending a pot-luck at a family reunion, backpacking through the Andes, kneeling at her bedside in prayer, or engaged in other mostly government-free activities?
• A few full-on Scandanavian social democracies do about as well or better than America in terms of civil and economic liberties.
• A few full-on Scandanavian social democracies do about as well or better than America in terms of civil and economic liberties.

Law enforcement tracking of cellphones, once the province mainly of federal agents, has become a powerful and widely used surveillance tool for local police officials, with hundreds of departments, large and small, often using it aggressively with little or no court oversight. (via nyt, At)

• Depending on your phone, officers can get GPS data that shows everywhere you’ve been, and they needn’t even tell you they’re doing so. It’s a practice that renders privacy rights almost meaningless.
• Perversely, cell phone carriers are even profiting from sharing information about their customers. Says the Times, “Cell carriers, staffed with special law enforcement liaison teams, charge police departments from a few hundred dollars for locating a phone to more than $2,200 for a full-scale wiretap of a suspect.”
• “then there are police departments in places like Gilbert, Arizona, which have purchased their own cell tracking technology.”
• the decision to use a cell phone effectively surrenders a huge amount of privacy