It’s behind the New York Review of Books paywall, alas, but Ian Johnson’s review essay about religion in China makes for exciting reading. Johnson, a veteran foreign correspondent, says that religion remains at the heart of China’s extraordinary social transformation. Who would have foreseen this? It turns out that you can kill the body, but you cannot permanently kill the soul. Excerpts:

Sometimes I wonder if we don’t know 90 percent of what most of us laymen need to know about the financial crisis from simply reading Michael Lewis and John Lanchester. From Lanchester’s latest, in which he briefly and expertly slices to the heart of current crises with Northern Rock, Jon Corzine’s firm, and Olympus:

Three leading companies in three different businesses in three different countries, and the common thread between them is that an interested outside party, paying the closest of attention, and immersing herself in all the publicly available information, would have had no chance of knowing what was really going on. It’s the kind of thing De Quincey calls ‘a vicious obscurity’. Nobody knows anything: that was William Goldman’s axiom for anyone who has anything to do with the movie business. Fair enough – but it isn’t supposed to apply to the working of huge, publicly owned companies in developed modern economies. And yet, it seems to be the case that even here, especially here, nobody knows anything. Wow. There’s so much big-picture bad economic news at the moment that it may seem hard to get excited about this point – but it is an important one, because it shows just how badly capitalism has been functioning, even on its own terms.

Via Boing Boing, this video of the great MAD magazine writer-artist Al Jaffee, still giving snappy answers to stupid questions at age 91:

Finally, Megan McArdle has posted her annual shopping suggestions for those on your gift list who like to work in the kitchen. I liked these:

Microplane lemon zester  Okay, so every year, I lead off with this.  Well, you know what?  Every year I find out that someone I know and love–and know to love food–does not own one.  Clearly, I am not shouting loud enough.

This is the cheapest piece of kitchen equipment that will ever immeasurably improve your life.  No more grating your knuckles into the lemon zest with your old box grater!  It’s faster and easier than the old style grater.  It’s also great for producing beautiful little clouds of parmesan to top your pasta or salad, and chocolate shavings on top of cupcakes, a cake, or the whipped cream on your hot chocolate.  I haven’t used a box grater in years, and every time I meditate upon that fact, I smile.

Kyocera Ceramic Slicer  The downside of these is that they don’t last all that long–I’d estimate we replace ours every couple of years.  The upside is that–unlike a mandoline–it’s small and handy.  You can adjust the size of the slice from paper-thin garnish to canape-ready, and it has a nice hole in the handle so you can hang it on the wall.  Especially great for young cooks who are just starting out and don’t have a food processor that slices.

Once, in Dallas, I set out to write something critical of a local Islamist imam’s preaching. I phoned his office to talk with him and to get a comment before writing. I also e-mailed asking him for comment. He refused to respond, so I wrote the column, noting that I’d reached out to him and he didn’t respond.

Some months later, the usual suspects from the local Islamic community turned up in our office to complain about my supposedly bigoted writing. I pointed out to the lead complainer that when I set out to write a particular essay to which he objected, I’d tried twice to get a comment from the imam, to get his side of the story. He had an opportunity to respond, I said, but chose not to.

Said my accuser, something to the effect of: “Can you blame him, given how biased you are?”

You see the Catch-22: Journalist is biased because he writes with Bias about Subject, but Subject refuses opportunity to make his case to Journalist, ensuring that Journalist will be accused of Bias.

I bring that up to illustrate a point about how spin works. This morning, NPR provided an instructive look at same in a report on the GOP’s opposition to extending payroll tax assistance to workers, and paying for it through a small surtax on millionaires. Democrats accuse Republicans of sticking up for millionaires at the expense of the little guy. But the Republican line has been that such a tax would hit small businesses hard, and make it more difficult for them to hire. Funnily enough:

We wanted to talk to business owners who would be affected. So, NPR requested help from numerous Republican congressional offices, including House and Senate leadership. They were unable to produce a single millionaire job creator for us to interview.

So we went to the business groups that have been lobbying against the surtax. Again, three days after putting in a request, none of them was able to find someone for us to talk to. A group called the Tax Relief Coalition said the problem was finding someone willing to talk about their personal taxes on national radio.

Oh, b.s., Tax Relief Coalition. That no GOP offices, or anti-tax business groups whose job it is to engage in lobbying (which includes media appearances), could produce a single actual business owner to explain why the tax would harm job creation, tells you something. So NPR put out a call on its Facebook page for any business owners who wanted to comment. Several answered — and they all said that the surtax issue has little or nothing to do with decisions to expand their workforces.

Hmm. This report makes it sound like Congressional Republicans and business lobbyists were just pulling the small business thing out of their hats to find a politically palatable way to protect millionaires. The report ends by saying that there may be anti-surtax small business owners out there, but it sure is hard to find any willing to explain their position. But you watch: conservatives, ignoring the good-faith effort of NPR’s reporter to find people on the GOP’s side of the issue to talk to, will now say that this NPR report is a classic case of public radio’s left-wing bias.

Of all the GOP presidential candidates, David Brooks says, Newt Gingrich is the one whose general “big government conservatism” worldview is most like his own. So why does Brooks believe that a Gingrich nomination would “severely damage conservatism and the Republican Party”? Mostly because of his deficient temperament and character. Excerpt:

As Yuval Levin noted in a post for National Review, the two Republican front-runners, Gingrich and Mitt Romney are both “very wonky Rockefeller Republicans who moved to the right over time as their party moved right.”

But they have very different temperaments. Romney, Levin observes, has an executive temperament — organization, discipline, calm and restraint. Gingrich has a revolutionary temperament — intensity, energy, disorganization and a tendency to see everything as a cataclysmic clash requiring a radical response.

I’d make a slightly similar point more rudely. In the two main Republican contenders, we have one man, Romney, who seems to have walked straight out of the 1950s, and another, Gingrich, who seems to have walked straight out of the 1960s. He has every negative character trait that conservatives associate with ’60s excess: narcissism, self-righteousness, self-indulgence and intemperance. He just has those traits in Republican form.

Well said.

Readers of my former blog may recall my run-ins with Mohamed Elibiary, a Muslim activist from North Texas with whom I frequently clashed. Elibiary had the mau-mau strategy down pat, being quick to accuse his opponents of anti-Muslim bigotry. This is his standard m.o., and he’s done pretty well by it. One of the last times I wrote about him at the Dallas Morning News was to blog about how incredibly foolish it was for Congress to rely on Elibiary for counterterrorism advice, considering that Elibiary publicly defended the late Muslim Brotherhood jihad ideologist Sayyid Qutb as a positive spiritual influence. Qutb, understand, called for global holy war to subjugate the planet — including dissenting Muslims — for radical Islam. As blogger Patrick Poole reminded us last year, Elibiary also spoke at the infamous Dallas Muslim conference in honor of “the great Islamic visionary” the Ayatollah Khomeini. What occasioned Poole’s recollection? Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano’s appointing Elibiary to an exclusive Homeland Security Advisory Council.

How, exactly, does the US government’s DHS choose to take advice from a man who publicly encouraged Americans to read the work of Qutb, whose teachings the 9/11 Commission cited as a prime motivator of Al Qaeda’s ideology, so that all may “see the potential for a strong spiritual rebirth that’s truly ecumenical allowing all faiths practiced in America to enrich us and motivate us to serve God better by serving our fellow man more”? It’s amazing. I have no idea if Elibiary is a bad guy or not, but at best this statement is truly crackpot. I find it hard to take Elibiary seriously as a sinister figure, as some on the right do, because to interact with him and to read his writing is to fail to be overwhelmed, or even whelmed, by his analytical capabilities. Based on my history with him, including dealing with him in editorial meetings, I wouldn’t trust the guy to give me straight advice about where to eat falafel, much less about Islamic terrorism. But that’s our government for you.

I had forgotten about Elibiary, who runs an outfit he calls the Freedom & Justice Foundation — or did run it; the website apparently no longer exists. (I’m sure it’s a total coincidence that Freedom & Justice is the name the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood chose for the political party it founded this year.) Well, it was reported a few weeks back that Elibiary may have leaked sensitive intelligence information to an unnamed media outlet in an alleged attempt to gin up negative coverage of Texas Gov. Rick Perry, on the grounds that Perry is “Islamophobic.” The media source told Poole it didn’t do a story because it found no evidence of Islamophobia in the documents Elibiary provided. From Poole’s report:

In light of these allegations, I spoke today with Texas DPS Director Steve McCraw. He confirmed that Elibiary has access to the Homeland Security State and Local Intelligence Community of Interest (HS SLIC) database, which contains hundreds of thousands of intelligence reports and products that are intended for intelligence sharing between law enforcement agencies.

(Full disclosure: I gave a briefing in April 2010 to the TX DPS on historical terror incidents and terror connections to Texas. I’ve also been critical of Elibiary’s involvement with DHS considering his past extremist statements and activities.)

I asked Director McCraw if he knew whether Elibiary had access to TX DPS reports on the HS SLIC, to which he replied:

“We know that he has accessed DPS documents and downloaded them.”

Elibiary did not respond to Poole’s request for comment.

If this is true, it’s a fairly significant story. Poole did not name his media source who claims Elibiary was shopping around this information. Poole later reported that McGraw of the Texas DPS requested a DHS investigation into the Elibiary affair. Poole did a follow-up report on November 28, saying that the DHS is still stonewalling on the Elibiary story. Excerpt:

Before publishing the original article, I spoke with DHS spokesman Chris Ortman. After grilling me about the nature of my source, he immediately terminated the conversation after I asked him how and when Elibiary got access to the HS SLIC system, telling me he would have to get back to me.

Needless to say, I’m still waiting for that return phone call, despite follow-up emails.

The questions I am looking to get answered:

1) When did Elibiary get access to the HS SLIC system, and who approved it?

2) Why was Elibiary the only member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council — he is one of 26 members — to get access to that system?

3) What is the status of the investigation requested by TX DPS Director McCraw into Elibiary’s leaking his agency’s documents to the media?

4) What other sensitive government databases did/does Elibiary still have access to, since he works with other agencies (e.g., FBI, National Counterterrorism Center, Office of the Director of National Intelligence)?

5) Is there evidence that Elibiary leaked sensitive documents and reports to other media outlets?

These are very good and important questions. The DHS website continues to list Elibiary as a member of its advisory council. One has to presume he is still in good standing with the agency. As Poole reports, Rep. Louie Gohmert asked Secretary Napolitano about the Elibiary situation in a Congressional hearing back in October; she promised to get back to him.

Well? It’s scandalous enough that a guy with Elibiary’s background and public profile serves on a high-level DHS advisory council, and may have been given access to sensitive intelligence. But if he used that access to try to play partisan politics by smearing the Texas governor, that is a very serious situation that reflects terribly on the DHS’s judgment — especially because all you have to do is spend 10 minutes with Google to learn how squirrelly Elibiary’s opinions are.

Maybe Elibiary did nothing wrong, and is being smeared. But the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety is on record saying that Elibiary had access to these documents and downloaded them, and asking for a DHS investigation. At this point, the issue is not only about Elibiary, it’s about the security and the judgment of the Department of Homeland Security. Come on, media — especially Texas media — this is a story.

Via Steve Sailer, I learned this interesting tidbit from a 2009 National Public Radio report on its audience demographics:

The majority of the NPR audience (86%) identifies itself as white. African-Americans make up the second largest audience for total NPR programming, comprising 5% of all listeners (and 31% of  jazz listeners). The lifestyle and consumption patterns are similar for NPR listeners across ethnic groups.

I’m a regular NPR listener, both to broadcasts and podcasts, and an off-and-on contributing member. I generally like NPR’s news/talk content a lot, but one show we have in Philadelphia that I don’t care for is “Tell Me More,” a national news-talk show focusing on topics of interest to minorities. I get that I’m not the main audience for the show, even though nearly 9 out of 10 of us NPR listeners don’t qualify as the main audience for the show. But whatever. Still, I find the show fairly dull and earnest.

For example: On the 70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor this week, host Michel Martin interviewed Hawaii US Sen. Daniel Inouye, a decorated World War II veteran who witnessed the Japanese attack as a teenager. Inouye has an interesting story to tell, obviously, and gave distinguished service to our country under adverse conditions for Japanese-Americans. But the interview was so — how to put this? — um, worthy. There was nothing new or interesting or insightful about it. The host seemed satisfied to let Sen. Inouye tell the same story he’s been telling for years. I don’t mean to disparage Sen. Inouye in the slightest … but is this really the best NPR’s “minority” news show could do on the Pearl Harbor anniversary? There are bound to be so many stories about Japanese-Americans and how things have changed for them since World War II. Or, what about the issue of Japanese spies on the US West Coast during that era? Doesn’t that complicate the issue of the treatment of Japanese-Americans back then? Wouldn’t that make for a more interesting radio segment, talking with historians about that?

Understand my point here: I’m complaining about dull journalism, not Sen. Inouye. Again, I know that I’m not the primary audience for “Tell Me More,” but I listen to it hoping to learn something about various minority communities. More often than not I turn it off out of disinterest, because the stories seem so often to be either about Minorities Who Are Suffering Unjustly, or Worthy Minorities Who Are Achieving Despite Oppression. It’s so booster-y, in the way that boring religion sections often are (or were, when newspapers had religion sections). The program strikes me as the kind of minorities-focused news-talk show that white Baby Boomer liberals would love. Maybe it’s what black liberals think too. I dunno. Like I said, I’m not the audience for this show.

But who is? If nearly nine in 10 NPR listeners are white, I wonder what this program’s audience looks like. The Washington Post reported back in 2004 that Tavis Smiley’s daily NPR show, which he left in an absurd diva huff back in ’04, could claim an astonishing (to me, anyway) 71 percent of its audience was non-black. And Smiley’s show was way, way more pointedly “black” than “Tell Me More.” So maybe I’m off-base here. To be sure, it doesn’t bother me one bit if NPR produces minority-oriented radio shows, but there’s very little on this particular one to hold my attention.

Here’s what I’m getting at: Consider that in light of this other demographic information, via NPR.org:

• The political outlook of the NPR News audience is relatively balanced, with nearly equal percentages identifying as middle of the road (25%), conservative (28%), and liberal (37%).
• 58% of NPR listeners believe that holding to religious faith and belief is “very important”

Isn’t that interesting? NPR’s listening audience is comparable to the general political/demographic distribution of the US, according to the comprehensive 2011 Pew political typology. And nearly six in 10 NPR listeners are serious about religious faith. I don’t know what the breakdown is, obviously, but the numbers have to include religious conservatives (like me), religious moderates, and religious liberals. It seems pretty clear that the potential audience for a daily one-hour news-talk show on religion (including values and spirituality) is there — and that there are far, far more potential listeners to a quality faith-and-values news-talk show than for, say, “Tell Me More.” So why not do it, NPR?  NPR’s demographic research shows that its overall audience is fairly well educated. It shouldn’t be hard to do an intelligent, punchy, balanced daily news-talk show on religion, spirituality, and values. (I’m a fan of Krista Tippett’s “On Being” program, but that’s a very different kind of show than a topical news-talk program.)

Understand that I’m not raising all this to complain about bias. I’m simply a regular NPR listener who would love to hear an NPR news-talk religion show, and who doesn’t understand the reasoning behind NPR’s producing “Tell Me More,” a daily program pitched at 14 percent of its overall audience, but has no daily news-talk program potentially addressing 58 percent of its current audience. Something doesn’t add up. What am I not seeing here? Is there really no audience for an NPR daily faith-and-values news-talk program, or is there just no audience for it at NPR headquarters and among the leadership of the member stations?

Walter Russell Mead is skeptical:

I advise my own students, employees and relations to think carefully before signing up for expensive masters’ degrees.  Most of the successful journalists, NGO leaders and authors I run across don’t have masters’ degrees and when the subject comes up they don’t recommend them to young people interested in these fields.  There are exceptions where top teachers who are also leading people in a given field can become your mentor and help you enter a challenging and rewarding profession, but you have to look hard to find these.

He’s responding to a Bloomberg report indicating that quite a few people find themselves possessing very expensive master’s degrees and low-paying jobs.

In my field, journalism, I honestly can’t see why most people would go for a master’s, given the facts on the ground. I’m sure you could learn a lot of useful information about reporting. No question about that. But where are you going to work, given the dearth of jobs within the field? And how are you ever going to make enough money to pay off your loans?