Asawin Suebsaeng

Interactive Writing Fellow

Asawin Suebsaeng is the interactive writing fellow at the Washington, DC, bureau of Mother Jones. He has also written for The American Prospect, the Bangkok Post, and Shoecomics.com.

Full Bio | Get my RSS | Follow @swin24

A graduate of Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Penn., Asawin came back to DC with hopes of putting his flimsy Creative Writing major, student newspaper tenure, and interest in human rights and political chicanery to some use. He started cutting his teeth at F&M's student-run weekly, The College Reporter, serving as editor in chief. He has interned at The American Prospect, been a reporter for the Bangkok Post, and scribbled for ShoeComics.com. His favorite movie is either Apocalypse Now or Pirahna 3D, depending on the day or mood.

The Taller the Man, the Less Likely the Heart Failure?

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Mon Jan. 23, 2012 1:22 PM PST

Which coffee cup do YOU think will outlive the other?

Tall men, it seems, tend to get everything in life. Heightened self-esteem, better returns in the dating world, fatter paychecks, racial-stereotype-defying careers in professional sports.

And according to some Boston medical researchers, vertically gifted gents may also have naturally superior odds at dodging heart disease than you short folk do.

Or maybe they don't.

Reuters reports on the decidedly wishy-washy study:

Tall men appear less likely than shorter ones to develop heart failure, according to a study covering thousands of U.S. doctors. Researchers in Boston said that while there is no proof that a few extra centimeters protect the heart, it was possible that short and tall people are different in other ways, including in their diets or diseases growing up, and that this too could affect heart risks.

"This study doesn't say anything definite about whether height, itself, is going to lead to anything," said lead researcher Luc Djousse, of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical Center.

But the researchers...said it's also possible that something about the biology of taller people, such as the distance between their hearts and certain branches of arteries and blood vessels, could decrease stress on the heart. Data came from 22,000 male doctors who were followed as part of a large study of heart disease and cancer, starting when they were in their mid-50s, on average...The taller men were, the lower their chance of heart failure, the researchers found. The tallest men in the study, those over 1.8 meter (six feet), were 24 percent less likely to less likely to report a heart failure diagnosis during the study period than men who were 1.72 meters (5 ft 8 in) and shorter.

It's important to remember how this (just like countless other scientific studies out there) isn't in any way conclusive, which, to be fair, the researchers fully and openly acknowledge. The height-focused part of their study, published in the current issue of the American Journal of Cardiology, sounds at least somewhat plausible: A taller frame could mean that it takes more time for blood to reach the heart, meaning less stress for the vital organ.

However, since that point is caveated to hell—infections, childhood nutrition, and other factors that can affect both heart health and height—there's no cause to believe that Jamie Cullum is destined to cardiovascularly buy the farm years before Bob Saget does. Also, it's worth mentioning that the medical journal The Lancet Oncology published a study in July 2011 showing a possible link between greater height and increased risk of ten common types of cancer, so there's really no point in inferring that taller individuals are biological X-Men.

But it's not like that is going to stop people from wondering whether being tall gets you elected President of the United States.

Advertise on MotherJones.com

"Red Tails": The Tuskegee Airmen Deserved a Movie That's Not Completely Unwatchable

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Sat Jan. 21, 2012 4:00 AM PST

Photo courtesy of Lucasfilm

Red Tails

Lucasfilm

120 minutes

If you've heard anything about the movie Red Tails in the past few weeks, it likely had something to do with George Lucas venting about systemic racism in Hollywood.

In the month leading up to the film's release, Lucas (who served as executive producer) took his high-profile publicity stops as an opportunity to call out the big-studio aversion to predominantly black casts.

"This has been held up for release since 1942, since it was shot," Lucas joked on an episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on January 9. Then, he started talking bluntly—and sounding more than a little bitter: "It's because it's an all-black movie. There's no major white roles in it at all…I showed it to all of them and they said, 'Noooo. We don't know how to market a move like this.'"

The "all-black movie" is based on the true story of the Tuskegee Airmen, the WWII pilots who were the first black servicemen to fly combat missions for the US Army Air Forces at a time when the military was racially segregated and black Americans were not recognized as full citizens at home.

Here's a rough outline of Red Tails' two-hour running time: Brave black pilots are stationed in Italy in 1944. They battle the institutionalized racism in the army and swiftly debunk decades of bigotry masquerading as science. The Airmen massacre the living snot out of scores of mean-spirited, smug Nazis. They triumph over their own fears and personal flaws, and even win the hearts and minds of some white dudes along the way. And (spoiler alert) in the end, racism loses, the fascists get owned, and the Tuskegee Airmen (or "Red Tails") end up as decorated heroes.

It's a great story, and it certainly doesn't hurt that it was inspired by actual events.

But the film, released in at the frigid movie-dump weeks of January, lives up to neither the compelling history nor the premise. In fact, the movie is devoid of visceral thrill, drained of emotional energy, and head-scratchingly awful throughout.

[Read more in the Mixed Media blog]

Democrats Received Over Twice As Much Bain Cash As Republicans Did

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Fri Jan. 20, 2012 4:55 AM PST

One of the co-founders of Bain Capital, we've been told. MittRomneys/FlickrAlex Bolton has a piece at The Hill that should come as a big shock to...virtually no one:

During the last three election cycles, Bain [Capital] employees have given Democratic candidates and party committees more than $1.2 million. The vast majority of that sum came from senior executives. Republican candidates and party committees raised over $480,000 from senior Bain executives during that time period.

Recipients include Democratic senators facing tough reelection races this year, such as Jon Tester (Mont.), Claire McCaskill (Mo.), Sherrod Brown (Ohio) and Bill Nelson (Fla.)...President Obama received a sizable share as well. He has accepted more than $80,000 from Bain employees since the beginning of 2007. Bain Capital employees gave $27,500 to Obama during the first three quarters of 2011.

Yes, that's the same Bain Capital that Mitt Romney co-founded. And yes, some Republican congressional candidates in battleground states have—given the Bain-related hits Romney has faced lately from both liberals and fellow Republicans—already started to use this information as ammunition against their Democratic opponents.

This doesn't look terribly good from a PR standpoint for Democrats, but it's not that surprising. It's no secret that Barack Obama and many other Democratic politicians have received tens of thousands of dollars in donations from Bain employees. And considering the president's rather cozy relationship with big business and Wall Street, it seems only natural that his reelection campaign is awash with financial-sector cash.

Now that Bain executives have one of their own as the clear front-runner for a major party nomination, their political giving reflects that:

As of Dec. 21, fundraising reports show Bain employees gave $123,000 to the Democratic National Committee in 2011...The Democratic fundraising advantage, however, was offset by at least $750,000 that Bain Capital employees gave to Restore Our Future, a pro-Romney super-PAC, in 2011.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Romney has bagged more campaign contributions from Bain Capital employees than any other federal candidate over the last five years. In the first three quarters of 2011 alone Romney hauled in nearly $85,000 from Bain executives and employees.

So, this story essentially just shows the folks at Bain Capital shelling out campaign donations in pragmatic and predictable ways. But it also lays out the key problem with the "corporate raider" attacks Democratic strategists have been itching to deploy against Romney in a general election fight. As Bolton notes, "Democrats could be forced to justify attacking Bain—which specializes in buying companies and boosting profitability, often by laying off workers—while accepting campaign funds from the same executives who made the cost-cutting decisions." There are major distinctions to be drawn between accepting campaign cash from a private equity firm and presiding over said firm as CEO. But if Democrats choose to commit to this line of attack, they might have to live with the impact being dulled, especially when the words "received twice as much money from Bain Capital" enter the debate.

New Study: It's Still Not Okay to Drink Alcohol While Pregnant

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Thu Jan. 19, 2012 8:18 AM PST

Your unborn offspring doesn't appreciate you salivating over this, ma'am.

Here's some well-worn conventional wisdom: If you are a pregnant woman, consuming alcohol (yes, even if it's just a Mike's Hard strawberry) is likely at the very top of your "don'ts" list.

Such wisdom, however, doesn't seem to be sinking in with a significant minority of pregnant women: According to a fifteen-year study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published in September 2011, over 12 percent of American women have consumed alcohol while pregnant. Since 2008, the March of Dimes Foundation has reported that roughly "1 in 30 pregnant women [admit to] binge drinking (five or more drinks on any one occasion)."

Now a study published in a recent issue of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research paints an even grimmer picture of the impact of alcohol on fetal development, even—and especially—during the earliest stages. Alice Park of Time magazine reported on Wednesday:

Between 1978 and 2005, scientists at the University of California, San Diego worked with 992 women who provided information about how much alcohol they drank—as well as other substances they used—every three months during their pregnancies.

For every one additional drink the mothers consumed [above the recorded daily average] between their 43rd and 84th days of pregnancy [the second half of the first trimester], their babies had a 16% greater chance of being born smaller than average, which may put them at greater risk for mental and physical problems. Their infants were also more likely to have birth defects, such as a 25% higher risk of a smooth ridge linking the nose and upper lip, a 12% increased risk of an abnormally small head and a 22% greater chance of unusually thin upper lips.

Although there have been other recent studies that downplay the adverse effects of weekly "light drinking" during pregnancy, the UC San Diego researchers maintain that the results of their nearly three-decade inquiry raise serious concerns regarding the intake of even small amounts of alcohol during any of the three trimesters. "[O]ne of the challenges has been determining what are the windows of risk and the patterns in timing and quantity of alcohol use, and this [study] addresses that," Tom Donaldson, president of the National Organization on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome in Washington, DC, told USA Today. "This article very clearly demonstrates that risk begins with any use."

[Read more in the Blue Marble blog]

Romney in 2001 on the Relative Dangers of Animal Rights Activists and Al Qaeda

—By Asawin Suebsaeng

| Wed Jan. 18, 2012 8:22 AM PST

John McCain and Mitt Romney in 2012. Most likely not discussing the former's oppo file from 2008.

In the flurry of tidbits that were pulled from the 2008 McCain campaign's oppo research on Mitt Romney (rediscovered and posted by BuzzFeed on Tuesday night), a familiar narrative takes hold: Romney is a compulsive flip-flopper who says and does weird, out-of-touch things.

In the chapter of the oppo book labeled "Terrorism," the McCain campaign paints one-time rival Romney as soft on Al Qaeda. One way of doing this was, apparently, to highlight Romney's bizarre post-9/11 priorities. As you probably could have guessed, the real "gotcha" moment of chapter is the (by now old) news of Romney saying in April 2007 that it would not be "worth moving heaven and earth, spending billions of dollars just trying to catch [Osama bin Laden]." But on page 78, the '08 McCain researchers target Romney's emphasis on a very different kind of terrorism—animal rights extremism:

After hijacked jetliners smashed into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, Utahns began openly wondering if the 2002 Winter Games might become a target of Islamic terrorists. But Salt Lake Organizing Committee President Mitt Romney, in a meeting with the Deseret News shortly after the attacks, downplayed any threat posed by Osama bin Laden, explaining instead that the real threat of terrorism against the Winter Olympics lay with home-grown terrorists acting under the flag of animal rights.

That passage was taken from the opening lines of a story published in Salt Lake City's the Deseret News in mid-November 2001. Deprived of context, the quote does make Romney look naïve, dismissive, and insensitive—and just two months after the 9/11 attacks!

[Read more in the MoJo blog]