President Obama is still refusing to release additional pictures of "enhanced interrogation" or whatever the kids are calling it these days. We're willing to give the Prez. the benefit of the doubt and assume he's sincere when he says he's refusing on the grounds that the photos won't provide any new information and they could further inflame anti-American sentiment.
That being said, he's wrong.
On a practical level, whose anti-Americanism is he worried about inflaming? Let's face it, those nice folks at Al-Qaeda aren't suddenly going to decide to start grilling hot dogs on the 4th of July if the photos aren't released. And as for driving people who are not anti-American into the "enemy camp"? What, Canada's going to start sending suicide bombers over Niagara Falls if a few provocative pictures come out? (That would actually make a good Onion article.)
On a philosophical level, too, we take issue with Mr. Obama. How can he claim that "there is little to learn from [the pictures]"? How does one know how much there is to learn from something until one has actually been exposed to it? Understand, the Solipsist is not among those clamoring to see these new images--there's something prurient about the whole thing. Still, the President has taken some strides towards getting this country back on the right path after eight years in the constitutional wilderness. He shouldn't retrench over something as pointless as possibly disturbing but probably unsurprising pictures.
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From the "Why is this front-page news?" department:
"When the toilet in Carol Taddei's master bathroom began to break down a few months ago, she decided it would be cheaper to buy a new one [and install it herself] than pay for repairs. . . . Initially, things looked good with the flushing and the swishing. That is, until the ceiling collapsed in the room below the new (leaky) toilet. Rushing to get supplies for a repair, Ms. Taddei clipped a pole in her garage. It ripped the bumper off her car, and later, several shelves holding flower pots and garden tools collapsed over her head."
A nice treatment for a Roto-Rooter commercial, maybe, but front page news for the national paper of record? The gist of the article is that the economic crisis has forced upper-middle-class amateurs to channel--with hilariously catastrophic results--their inner Joe the Plumbers, Tool-Time Tim Allens, and Madge the Hairstylists to save money on household repairs and other personal services. Fine, but there's something troubling about the article's prominent placement and cautionary (albeit humorous) tone. It feels like the Times is telling its bourgeois intellectual readership (present company included) not to get its hands dirty with manual labor. That sort of thing is best left to the blue-collar-types who read the Daily News.
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Who edits this stuff?
Here's a sentence from an article in the Sports section, about the statistical unlikelihood of Alex Rodriguez tipping (giving away) pitches to opposing middle-infielders. The article makes a distinction between "low-leverage" and "high-leverage" situations (i.e., moments in games that are relatively meaningless and meaningful, respectively):
"If a tipping conspiracy were in place, one would expect that Rodriguez and rival middle-infielders in games he played to have hit better in low-leverage situations than in high-leverage ones."
We went over that sentence three times trying to figure out why it was so convoluted. First, it appears that the "that" should come out--probably a holdover from an earlier draft. Still, removing it only makes the sentence grammatically correct, not any clearer. The problem seems to come from the prepositional phrase "in games he played," used to modify "rival middle-infielders." What are the other options?
First, let's grant that the modifier is necessary--that, without it, we could be talking about any rival middle-infielders in any games. This is a silly assumption: The article is about A-Rod tipping pitches to middle infielders; how could he have done that for people who weren't involved in the same game. At any rate, though, as a stylistic exercise, let's say that all the information is necessary.
Why not switch the order of ideas:
"If a tipping conspiracy were in place, one would expect it to come into play in low-leverage situations. In other words, we would expect that both Rodriguez and his opponent's middle infielders would hit better in low-leverage situations than in high-leverage ones."
That's better, right? Now, you may object that the revision comes in at two sentences and 45 words, as opposed to the original's one (incoherent) sentence and 33 words. All right, let's see what we can do about that:
"If a tipping conspiracy existed, it would probably come into play in low-leverage situations, when one would expect that both Rodriguez and his opponent's middle-infielders would hit better."
One sentence, 30 words, no confusion! The lesson: Beware prepositional phrases used as adjectives. Too many of them in too short a space leads to lack of clarity
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