Do Barack Obama and John McCain have the same web designer?

We did a reading of As You Like It yesterday, and the question of the best marriage in Shakespeare came up again.

Here’s what I had to say last year in response to Cesario, a fellow blogger who suggested that it was the Macbeths:

I’ve heard Harold Bloom express this opinion, and I get the equal partnership aspect, but I find their relationship too dysfunctional and codependent to pay them this compliment. The title “Best Marriage in Shakespeare” is a dubious honor, but I think I’d have to go with Brutus and Portia. They seem like they have a really strong relationship. The fact that it can be torn apart by the assassination is a testament to the earth-shattering significance of that event. We won’t count the marriages at the end of the comedies, because who knows how they’ll fare?

But now, I turn the question over to you.

What’s the best marriage in Shakespeare?

P.S. Cesario is currently annotating the text of Hamlet, scene by scene, on her blog. Check it out.

It’s been a while since we’ve had a Question of the Week. Fans of the site may recall that the Question of the Week was originally inspired by the Edge Foundation’s annual question, asked to leading thinkers. This year, their question is “What have you changed your mind about? Why?”

For me, I’d have to go with Wikipedia. When I first heard about the open source encyclopedia, I scoffed. It was one thing for the Internet to allow anyone to post their opinions, but quite another to trust the general public to get encyclopedia-style facts right. Without authors putting their names on their work, the information would be worthless.

But as I started using Wikipedia, I found it to be an invaluable resource. I assured myself that I wasn’t really using it, only using it as a casual reference. But over time, I was surprised to find it a source I could rely on. Of course, it’s not always accurate, and I still couldn’t see myself actually citing it as a source in a publication, but it’s way more reliable than any of us would have had a right to expect.

The tipping point for me was reading Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen. I was expecting this to be a madcap trivia book of fun facts about American history that never made the textbook. Not so much, no. Instead, it was a detailed historiography of twelve American history textbooks and how they knowingly distort and obfuscate their subject matter. After that, I could no longer consider Wikipedia to be inferior to the textbooks we’ve been giving students all this time. I would actually trust a fact in Wikipedia over one in a textbook if they were in conflict.

But it’s not just facts; Wikipedia is also superior when it comes to point-of-view. I laughed at their value-neutral philosophy, because such a thing isn’t possible. At least, it’s not possible where there’s a single author. But in the negotiated definitions of Wikipedia, there is a natural balance of viewpoints that really gives the readers a sense of the range of opinions on a particular issue, often just as valuable (if not more so) than the dry facts. Even fake controversies seem to be quickly expunged from its pages.

I’ve changed my mind about Wikipedia. How about you?

What have you changed your mind about? Why?

Do you think that the voters of Iowa and New Hampshire have an inordinate amount of power in deciding who the credible candidates are going to be in the presidential primaries?

Take the issue of ethanol, an alternate energy fuel that can be made from corn, which is one of Iowa’s chief agricultural products.

Ethanol fuel is not particularly efficient, and some even believe that it may use more energy to produce ethanol than the fuel provides. But both Republican and Democratic candidates must support ethanol to get any traction in Iowa. And you may disagree about the promise of ethanol, but we can never have a serious discussion about it as long as Iowa retains such a powerful voice in the presidential elections.

This is just one extreme example of the larger issue, which is that two states get to set the tone for the other forty-eight. From the financial districts in New York, to the wheat fields in Kansas, to the senior citizen centers in Florida, to the Mormon churches in Utah, to the cattle ranches in Texas, to the Hollywood community in California, to the indigenous peoples of Alaska and Hawaii, America is a panoply of voices and points of view. To bestow the coveted frontrunner status to candidates after hearing from only two out of fifty states seems like a subversion of democracy.

The general election is held in every state on the same day.

Should the primaries all be held on the same day?

Scott Malia of The Shakespeare Blog poses a question:

While Shakespeare appreciation might be near universal among writers, it begs the question of comparison. Who among today’s writers is what might be considered the twenty first century answer to him?

Malia goes on to make a compelling case for Aaron Sorkin. Look, Shakespeare is so much of a product of time and place, as well as genius, that there never really can be another. However, the same genius can manifest itself distinctly within any particular culture. Virginia Woolf wrote a famous essay about what would have happened if Shakespeare had had a sister with equal gifts to his. Can we imagine a Shakespeare born in our time? What would he do? Who would he be? I posted my own response:

I’m a huge fan of Aaron Sorkin, but I would instead nominate David Mamet. Writing for both stage and screen, Mamet has elevated the art of the dramatist to create a body of work that simulaneously embodies and trandscends his contemporary culture. His use of language has the natural credibility of truth, while at the same time making use of the subtle artifice of poetry. His subject matter ranges from insightful cultural criticism to the basest elements of humanity. If anyone from our time qualifies as today’s Shakespeare, I vote for David Mamet.

Anyone else have an opinion?

Who is today’s Shakespeare?

Yesterday on This Week, George Stephanopoulos cited a “stunning” statistic from the Congressional Budget Office:

From 2003 to 2005, the increase in income for the top one percent exceeded the total income of the bottom twenty percent.

Turn that over in your mind for a moment before we move on to the Question of the Week, which comes to us via the Hoover Institute, a conservative think-tank at Stanford University.

How much does the gap between rich and poor matter? In 1979, for every dollar the poorest fifth of the American population earned, the richest fifth earned nine. By 1997, that gap had increased to fifteen to one. Is this growing income inequality a serious problem? Is the size of the gap between rich and poor less important than the poor’s absolute level of income? In other words, should we focus on reducing the income gap or on fighting poverty?

It’s a fair point. Do rising waters raise all ships? And if so, does it matter if the rich get richer faster than the poor get richer? Or is income inequity really the problem, and a bigger slice of the pie for the rich means less for everyone else? And is it okay to mix ship and pie metaphors when talking about economics? I guess what I’m asking is this:

Does the income gap matter?

I was reading recently about how Shakespeare dealt with suicide differently if he was writing about Christian characters. In Christianity, suicide is always considered a sin, while in Ancient Rome, it could be considered a noble act under certain circumstances. Shakespeare, chameleon that he was, would treat the suicide based on the culture that he was writing about.

When I first read this, it rang true for me. Hamlet laments that he wishes “that the Everlasting had not fix’d / His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter!” Macbeth asks “Why should I play the Roman fool, and die/ On mine own sword?” Meanwhile, characters like Brutus and Cleopatra get heroic suicide scenes.

But the more I think about it, the less sure I am that this holds up across the canon. Off the top of my head, I can think of about four or five (arguably six) Christian characters in Shakespeare who kill themselves. There may be others as well. So I guess the Question of the Week is in two parts:

How many Shakespearean characters can you name who are Christian and commit suicide?

Do you think Shakespeare treats his non-Christian suicides differently than he treats these suicides?

Today, the Nobel Prize winners are invited to the White House, which means that George W. Bush and Al Gore will meet face to face. Imagine that they have a private moment together.

What do they say? What should they say? What would you like to imagine that they say?

Feel free to answer as a one-liner, or to write a short dialogue.

One year to go.

Who will be the next president of the United States?

This is meant to be a prediction, not an endorsement, but feel free to throw in your preferences as well.

What’s in the box?