A Mind Is A Terrible Thing

New at Reason: To the long list of dueling personality-type categories—dog people vs. cat people, bus people vs. train, brown liquor vs. clear, Clay vs. Ruben—let me propose another: There are people who want every person, place and thing in their lives to be explicable by ideology, and people who don't. While the famously broad-minded readers of Reason would never subscribe to the former group, that school of thought is, well, healthily represented out there in the wide world. Today, Reason has two articles representing the other way of thinking. Chuck Freund surveys the way Arabic music "clips" confound or delight viewers precisely because they represent nothing more than entertainers' own styles. Michael Young speculates that the endless dispute over Salam Pax's background and identity really hinged on whether you're willing to believe there's an Iraqi who doesn't fit into any bracket we've got a word for.