Isegoria

Classic moral stories have been used for centuries to teach children the virtue of honesty, but there hasn’t been any scientific evidence that they work — until now:

This study compared the effectiveness of four classic moral stories in promoting honesty in 3- to 7-year-olds. Surprisingly, the stories of “Pinocchio” and “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” failed to reduce lying in children. In contrast, the apocryphal story of “George Washington and the Cherry Tree” significantly increased truth telling. Further results suggest that the reason for the difference in honesty-promoting effectiveness between the “George Washington” story and the other stories was that the former emphasizes the positive consequences of honesty, whereas the latter focus on the negative consequences of dishonesty. When the “George Washington” story was altered to focus on the negative consequences of dishonesty, it too failed to promote honesty in children.

(Hat tip to Tyler Cowen.)

John Derbyshire reviews Breaking Bad:

Walter: I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. I was… really… I was alive.

There speaks the Old Adam. Sure, the bourgeois life of home comforts and civilized achievement is pretty nice. I am personally a big fan. Just this afternoon, of a perfect midsummer day, I was out in my backyard, doing some small painting chores on my garage; I’d sit for minutes on end admiring the work I’d done and planning next steps, looking forward to my wife coming home, anticipating the familiar wifely way she’d season her appreciation of my efforts with small sarcastic quips about jobs not yet done, then looking further forward to the extra glass of wine I’d allow myself with dinner… Life is good, and you won’t hear me complaining.

Still, inside most men — and no doubt some number of women, too — there is the understanding that to be alive, at some higher level, is to be staying on your feet in a swirl of amoral mayhem until at last, mortally wounded, you fall, laughing, among the corpses of your enemies.

Which is exactly what Walter does. Any number of characters from Greek epic poetry and Norse sagas would understand.

The great British statesman and scholar Enoch Powell gave a radio interview in April 1986 when he was 73 years old. “How would you like to be remembered?” asked the interviewer. Replied Powell: “I should like to have been killed in the war.”

Powell’s biographer adds the following.

After broadcasting that remark, he “received dozens of letters from people saying I’m glad you said that because I felt the same and I’ve never known it before. There’s a secret guilt about those who served and were not killed that they too… were not killed.”

The Old Adam: We have successfully pushed him out to the fringes of our pleasant suburban societies, the fringes where dwell Special Forces and inner-city desperadoes. A good thing too, for women, children, and us geezers. In our imaginations, though, the Old Adam still runs wild, and we love him for it.

Secret guilt is by no means only for combat survivors and schoolteachers turned meth cooks.

When the new Lone Ranger movie came out, a part of me wanted it to be good, because I enjoyed reruns of the original show as a preschooler — but even the original is Hollywood nonsense:

The Lone Ranger: There, it fits perfectly. Good job, Tanto.

Tanto: Here hat. Me wash in stream. Dry in sun. Make whiter.

The Lone Ranger: Thanks, Tanto.

Tanto: Here guns, to kill bad men.

The Lone Ranger: I’m not going to do any killing.

Tanto: You not defend yourself?

The Lone Ranger: Oh, I’ll shoot if I have to, but I’ll shoot to wound, not to kill. If a man must die, it’s up to the law to decide that, not the person behind a six-shooter.

Tanto: That’s right kemosabe.

That was quite progressive in 1949, I’m sure.

Stephen Merchant presents “If We Won” with Newcastle Brown Ale:

Looking back, the Brangelina publicity strategy is deceptively simple, Anne Helen Petersen explains:

In fact, it’s a model of the strategy that has subconsciously guided star production for the last hundred years. More specifically, that the star should be at once ordinary and extraordinary, “just like us” and absolutely nothing like us. Gloria Swanson is the most glamorous star in the world — who loves to make dinner for her children. Paul Newman is the most handsome man in Hollywood — whose favorite pastime is making breakfast in his socks and loafers.

Jolie’s post-2005 image took the ordinary — she was a working mom trying to make her relationship work — and not only amplified it, but infused it with the rhetoric and imagery of globalism and liberalism. She’s not just a mom, but a mom of six. Instead of teaching her kids tolerance, she creates a family unit that engenders it; instead of reading books on kindness and generosity, she models it all over the globe. As for her partner, he isn’t just handsome — he’s the Sexiest Man Alive. And she doesn’t just have a job; instead, her job is being the most important — and influential — actress in the world.

Her image was built on the infrastructure of the status quo — a straight, white, doting mother engaged in a long-term monogamous relationship — but made just extraordinary enough to truly entice but never offend. The line between the tantalizing and the scandalizing is notoriously difficult to tread (just ask Kanye), but Jolie was able to negotiate it via two tactics: First, and most obviously, she accumulated (or, more generously, adopted and gave birth to) a dynamic group of children who were beautiful to observe; second, she figured out how to talk about her personal life in a way that seemed confessional while, in truth, revealing very little; and third, she exploited the desire for inside access into control of that access.