Steve Kelman on Politics, Culture, and Life, 12.6.23
Steve Kelman, Harvard Kennedy School prof, moderate Dem, pro free speech/anti cancel culture, pro tax rich, pro-Israel. Research improving gov performance, China interest. Blog reprints Facebook posts
Crowded hospitals due to flu in China
A social media post in China about very crowded hospital waiting areas due to the flu received tens of millions of views and then was deleted.
Protest outside campus kosher restaurant
Pro-Palestine students at the University of Pennsylvania have protested outside a kosher restaurant near campus. The White House condemned the protest as "anti-semitic and completely unjustified." Thank you, President Biden.
Anti-Israel disinformation unprecedented
BBC's expert on disinformation has stated that the amount of disinformation about the Hamas attack on Israel from anti-Israel sources is greater than any he has ever seen.
Official Chinese warning against exaggerated statistics
China's National Bureau of Statistics has issued another warning against falsified and exaggerated statistics being submitted by local governments. It is interesting they are calling this out, suggests some good professionalism and independence in the Chinese civil service.
Supporting Trump like communists supporting Stalin after show trials in the thirties
One of my favorite commentators, Joe Klein, says Republicans still supporting Trump are like leftists who continued to defend Stalin after the 1930s show trials.
Safety risks of nuclear power not discussed much anymore
As best I can tell, once-common discussions of safety risks with nuclear power have more or less disappeared from the debate. I'm not sure if this is because various technical advances have made nuclear power safer or whether we have just turned our attention elsewhere. Anyone have any knowledge and thoughts about this issue?
Southern congressmembers boycott 1964 LBJ civil rights speech
When LBJ presented his 1964 voting rights legislation before a joint session of Congress, many representatives from the South refused to attend, including the entire Virginia and Mississippi delegations.
YMCA and gay sex
One factoid that appears in various places and contexts in the book on J. Edgar Hoover is that YMCA's were even in the sixties (maybe earlier for all I know) a place where gay people met for anonymous sex. Clueless Steve had no idea -- was this fact known much or at all at the time outside the gay community? I thought it started with the song YMCA.....
Reminded of horrible behavior by student protesters in my days as a student
Students at MIT were prevented from attending classes by pro-Palestine demonstrators who blocked passageways used for foot traffic. This is so much reminding me of horrible things that occurred many years ago when I was an undergraduate at Harvard.
Hamas atrocities
Hamas has responded to the widespread rapes of Israeli women that took place on October 7th by saying these were committed by other groups coming with them into Israel and not by Hamas itself. People don't care so much which of the various fanatically anti-Israel organizations actually committed the atrocities.
Really low voter turnout in Miami
Voter participation in the last Miami city election was under 15%.
Jewish victims of 1963 Mississippi Freedom Summer
I'm reading again in the J. Edgar Hoover book, obviously not for the first time, about the murder of 3 civil rights activists who had come to Mississippi in the summer of 1963. And reminded again that the two white victims were both Jewish. It is an enormous source of pride to me and others that the Jewish tradition emphasizes service to those suffering from oppression and disadvantage.
Let’s depoliticize question of what works in teaching kids to read
A new study concludes that the best way to help the reading skills of young kids is to give them a better vocabulary and a knowledge of phonics. For reasons I have never understood, this view has been politically controversial, with some on the left favoring "whole word learning" over phonics. Let's depoliticize this and follow what works.
The song YMCA was just a reflection of reality according to my gay friends. The song is so popular even now that most people don’t even know or think about what it is about. In the 59’s & 69’s, single men lived at the Y because it was cheap & enough of them were gay that the Y became known as a place for gay sex, not necessarily anonymous.