Jan 6th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
In Search of a Token
Ben Smith reports that Rep Xavier Becerra doesn’t want to fill in for Bill Richardson as Official Hispanic Cabinet Dude at the Commerce Department. And I can’t blame him, it’s a kind of C-List department and his current job in congress is a pretty good one. But I’m no member of congress — why not me? I’m very interested in the department’s statistical collection functions.
52 Responses to “In Search of a Token”
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January 6th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
“But I’m no member of congress — why not me?”
Because you’re a rich white Jew who went to Dalton and Harvard. That’s easy enough. What gets me is why Ken Salazar gets street cred for being “Hispanic” (which connotes some legacy of exclusion/discrimination) when he is the direct descendant of the Spanish conquistadors who colonized the American West.
January 6th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
When is he appointing me Secretary of Sexy? Damn.
January 6th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Why not you? Because you have no experience with anything to do with commerce?
To expand on what Fred said: You are a “rich white Jew who went to Dalton and Harvard” You got into Harvard because you went to Dalton. You got into Dalton because your daddy was a rich writer. While at Harvard you got a degree in Philosophy – which is pretty much getting a BA in BS. You come from prestige and pedigree, and after the last 8 years we need a lot less of that.
You seem to have the same credentials to run commerce that Brownie had to run FEMA: none. From what I can tell your only work experience consists of writing blogs and working on odd print pieces where the you regurgitate inside the belt-way cocktail party think that think tanks have come up with. You have no management experience, and more importantly you have no commerce experience.
I would hope you are being snarky with this post, but as a writer you should know that sarcasm never comes off as you intend it on the internet. BTW I am being 100% serious.
January 6th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
Man, Jimbo is in a bad mood today. Easy, buddy.
Does the Secretary of Commerce actually do anything? I thought it was the most transparently patronage-y position in Washington. The Department of Commerce is responsible for the Census and tracking some economic statistics and…?
I think he should appoint Caroline Kennedy and save us New Yorkers (and Gov. Patterson) a headache.
January 6th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
Jimbo didn’t get the joke. This is obviously Matt’s fault.
January 6th, 2009 at 5:15 pm
“I would hope you are being snarky with this post”
um… ya think? Meanwhile, my still-determinative support rests with the other declared candidate, Atrios, who was right on Iraq from the beginning. Matt, I will make you the Hillary of 2009.
January 6th, 2009 at 5:20 pm
“Does the Secretary of Commerce actually do anything?”
I think this is why bloggers keep volunteering to fill the post. That and seemingly limitless lefty-blogger love for meddling in local infrastructure issues they know next to nothing about. Not that there’s anything wrong with that – everyone should have better transit systems designed by Duncan and Matt….
January 6th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
Okay. For everyone missing the joke, the “Commerce Secretary Yglesias” joke goes a while (about a month and a half, specifically) to when Spencer Ackerman proposed MY as commerce secretary. As far as humor goes, it’s pretty dry and deadpan, and it’s really not all that funny even as dry, deadpan humor, but it’s not serious either.
January 6th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
As usual, Mr. Yglesias ignorance of scientific matter shows again. 65% of the Commerce Departments budget goes to NOAA. See attached link from Shirl Kirchenbaum who is an oceanographer who, in addition, actually worked as a Congessional aid to Florida Senator Nelson.
http://scienceblogs.com/intersection/2009/01/richardson_withdraws_as_commer.php
January 6th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
Matt,
Given the way that you sometimes promote studies of dubious statistical merit, just because they happen to match your prejudices, I would be just as happy to see Kathryn Jean Lopez as the token Hispanic in the Obama administration.
January 6th, 2009 at 6:30 pm
Since Commerce Sec. doesn’t do anything, I suggest Sofia Vergara because she is Hispanic and hot.
January 6th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
Oddly enough, the CHC echoed MattY’s “thoughts”, such as they are. Unfortunately, they’re quite serious. The CHC that is.
January 6th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
Because Salazar is Hispanic. In case you forgot, Southwest of US used to be part of Mexico. If you know anything about the area of Colorado where Salazar is from, you will come to the conclusion that the “Spanish” there did not live in complete isolation. Do you think that the conquistadors did not bring any women with them? There are very few pure Spaniards whose lineage goes back that far. In the town where Salazar is from, up until recently, the Anglo (white) and Hispanic populations lives relatively segregated from one another.
January 6th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
Building on the point about NOAA being 65% of Commerce (more than just weather radio) – Panetta apparently originally wanted the Commerce gig – most likely precisely because of NOAA. As a rep of Monterey County in Congress he was a major champion of the oceans and was instrumental in passing reforms to the Coastal Zone Management Act, probably the key pice of legislation governing land use in the coastal zone (all you smart growthers might want to care about the current reauth effort and NOAA as a result), since then he was chair of the Pew Oceans Commission and co chair of the Joint Ocean Commission Initiative along with ret ADM Jim Watkins – Basically Panetta has spent a good chunk of his time over the last few years championing oceans on Capitol Hill. So naturally he went to the CIA and DOC is seen as token.
January 6th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
About once a month, I’m taken aback by the frothing neon green ressentiment of Matt’s relatively privileged upbringing, as though he’s supposed to apologize for it or something. He did have a privileged upbringing, he seems to get that, he doesn’t take himself too seriously, and actually parlays his advantages into doing fairly meritorious work. What exactly is the problem?
January 6th, 2009 at 7:30 pm
Why does Commerce need to be a token Hispanic anyway? Aren’t Labor and Interior already going to have Hispanic Secretaries?
January 6th, 2009 at 8:04 pm
right: see my previous comment for the CHC’s reason. I’m sure MattY would agree with them.
January 6th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
Nolabody:
He has no authority to discuss any subject that he brings up, and most of his original posts lack deep insight and common sense.
Meritorious work would be doing peace corps or being an inner city teacher, what he does now is talk out his ass and every now and then link to someone who knows what they heck they are talking about.
He actually does take himself a little too seriously, and most of his posts reek of smug.
While he should not apologize for his privileged upbringing he should expect that his credentials will always be questioned. They will always be questioned because his privileged upbringing opened doors for him that are not available to the masses. Those who rose in society because of their own hard work and merit deserve our respect – Obama. Those who were born into high society and act smug because they did not fall off a cliff deserve our contempt – Lord Yglesias.
January 6th, 2009 at 8:25 pm
Re JimboSlice
I think one has to consider the fact that Mr. Yglesias majored in philosophy, not a particularly useful subject for getting a real job. Although I sometimes regret never having taken a course in philosophy. Majoring in subjects like physics doesn’t leave much room for electives.
January 6th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
SLC: I agree, philosophy is a useless subject, it is getting a BA in BS.
As far as electives go, I got my BS and MS in chemical engineering. For the BS they gave us room for 1 elective spring of senior year, for the MS none, its a shame they don’t allow for room for random electives, but the purpose of college was to get an education for the career I wanted. I have taken random courses I am interested in at the local CC (speaking of which I would like to see CC’s built and expanded with the upcoming Obama Stimulus)
January 6th, 2009 at 9:07 pm
I’m very interested in the department’s statistical collection functions.
Hey, so am I!
Of course, playing a role in those functions is what pays the bills at the LTC household. I for one welcome our new Yglesias overlord.
January 6th, 2009 at 9:21 pm
“What gets me is why Ken Salazar gets street cred for being “Hispanic” (which connotes some legacy of exclusion/discrimination) when he is the direct descendant of the Spanish conquistadors who colonized the American West.”
Ummm…which Hispanics AREN’T direct descendants of conquistadors?
January 6th, 2009 at 9:49 pm
Ummm…which Hispanics AREN’T direct descendants of conquistadors?
The ones who are descendants of priests.
January 6th, 2009 at 9:55 pm
It never ceases to amaze me how many people who apparently hate Matt continue to read his site. If ya don’t like him, go read something else. Or you could always start your own blog and mock him relentlessly until he runs away crying. Or you could, you know, get a real (outside the intertubes) life.
January 6th, 2009 at 10:00 pm
The U.S. Office of Management and Budget currently defines “Hispanic or Latino” as “a person of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race”.
So despite your b*tching about Priests and Conquistadors there are also millions of “Hispanics or Latinos” who were SLAVES. Yeah, you probably should shutup now.
January 6th, 2009 at 11:12 pm
Those who rose in society because of their own hard work and merit deserve our respect – Obama …
And what do those who post abusive self-righteous horseshit under assumed names deserve? With all due respect, of course.
January 6th, 2009 at 11:27 pm
“Because Salazar is Hispanic.”
He’s a white guy whose ancestors were colonial oppressors from Spain.
January 6th, 2009 at 11:28 pm
Remember back when the GOP was talking about getting rid of the Commerce Dept., and lefties were incensed by the suggestion? What changed?
January 6th, 2009 at 11:48 pm
1. Matt, please stop making these lame jokes about your Spanish ethnicity and desire for high-profile, high-power jobs. It was hardly amusing the first time and it’s become downright lame the fifteenth time, and all it does is create an immensely stupid set of comments by a number of people who apparently only read your blog daily to tell you how much you suck.
2. To the people who love to hate on Matt, for the love of God, just go read a Different. Fucking. Blog.
January 7th, 2009 at 12:11 am
“About once a month, I’m taken aback by the frothing neon green ressentiment of Matt’s relatively privileged upbringing, as though he’s supposed to apologize for it or something.”
He doesn’t need to apologize for it, but it would be nice if he acknowledge the big blinders it puts on him when it comes to domestic policy. It was that same privileged background and isolation from reality that led to the worst excesses of liberalism in the 1960s. Those who don’t learn from history call themselves progressives.
“It never ceases to amaze me how many people who apparently hate Matt continue to read his site.”
I read it mainly for the comment threads. If Matt stopped enabling comments, I’d be gone in a flash.
January 7th, 2009 at 12:19 am
You, sir, have been far too antisemitic of late to pass vetting.
January 7th, 2009 at 12:19 am
Separate from the “race” and “ethnicity” questions, the Census Bureau also asks an “ancestry” question. Like everything on the Census questionnaire, it’s self-reported, but unlike many questions, it’s not multiple-choice; you’re allowed to describe yourself however you see fit.
My point in bringing this up is that if you look at the map of which ethnicity has the plurality in each county of the country (page 8 of this document: http://www.census.gov/prod/2004pubs/c2kbr-35.pdf ) there’s a pink color representing “Mexican” that dominates much of California and the other counties along the Mexican border, but there’s also a light pink color representing “Hispanic/Spanish” that dominates northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. Presumably these are the people for whom the border crossed them, not the other way around. Ken Salazar would be one of these people.
January 7th, 2009 at 12:21 am
I wrote:
map of which ethnicity has the plurality
That should say “map of which ancestry has the plurality.”
January 7th, 2009 at 1:14 am
Jimbo: What philosophy have you done? No serious amount of philosophy, given your above-stated pedigree. Tell me, off the top of your head, what you think of the Rawlsian defense of the welfare state? Is his analysis of a just society a good one?
Or, if not that, what do you think about attacks on real metaphysical vagueness and their implications for a Copenhagen-style semantics/modeling for the equations of QM?
Can’t do it? STFU, then.
January 7th, 2009 at 4:05 am
Adam Villani: That’s an interesting document. I’m quite interested in the ancestry make-up. The large amount of German ancestry is particularly surprising to me, as I would’ve expected it to be a different ancestry. Time to do more digging into my family’s past.
January 7th, 2009 at 7:40 am
““Because Salazar is Hispanic.”
He’s a white guy whose ancestors were colonial oppressors from Spain.”
Once again, Hispanics are BY DEFINITION the descendants of ‘colonial oppressors from Spain’. Was there an indigenous Spanish-speaking population in the Aztec Empire in 1492 that I’m not aware of?
January 7th, 2009 at 9:12 am
Jeremy: The large amount of German ancestry is particularly surprising to me, as I would’ve expected it to be a different ancestry.
Me too; I would have guessed English or Irish would have been more prevalent than German. I posted some thoughts on this on my own blog here: http://blogbilongadam.blogspot.com/2008/10/ancestry-map.html
That map and document first came to my attention when I saw that Nate Silver showed that the percentage of people reporting simply “American” ancestry was strongly coordinated with voting Republican.
January 7th, 2009 at 9:57 am
NE:
Why would I waste my time with that? As I said its getting a BA is BS, who cares, how do answering those questions make my or any one else’s life better? It certainly is not close to the optimal use of societies education resources to get a whole degree in that crap.
I also couldn’t tell you how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop, but again – who cares?
January 7th, 2009 at 10:09 am
Jimbo:
Believe me, your contempt for the disciplines that allow one to frame cogent arguments in a historical perspective is no surprise at all. It really does show. You are just like the fundamentalist who thinks all science is bullshit.
January 7th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
“Once again, Hispanics are BY DEFINITION the descendants of ‘colonial oppressors from Spain’.”
Once again, “white guy”. Many Hispanics are not descendants of Spanish at all. Take a look at them. Most Mexican immigrants, for example, are of pure Indian stock. Many Caribbean Hispanics are of pure African stock. Still many others are of almost entirely Indian or African stock, or some combination of the two. Few, if any, Hispanics can trace their family roots back to Spain. Salazar can, because he is entirely of European descent.
January 7th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
My question is, why bother having a token Hispanic at all? I thought we had a meritocracy?
January 8th, 2009 at 1:11 am
Because you’re not a hispanic you coconut*, you’re jewish!
*coconut, white on the inside brown on the outside, though in this case MY is white through and through.
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