Critiques of political correctness generally come from the right. However, I think it is important to acknowledge the ways in which an overemphasis on cultural sensitivity can lead to the "closing of the American mind" (as the late Alan Bloom once argued). We must be able to have open debates about race that acknowledge its importance in how we see each other and interact. While a color blind world or post-racial society are wonderful utopian ideas, they do not seem to capture the reality of contemporary American or global society. Race and racism matter and it is important to confront prejudice, even if it is sometimes done in racist ways. The recent contretempts over Jimmy Carter's comments is one example of our inability to really contemplate race and its effects, but another interesting one just occurred at Tufts University.
An Asian student decided to make fun of a fellow Asian student by putting up posters that played on racial stereotypes of Asians. The campus became astir with protests over its inflammatory message and its potentially negative effects on students (http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/09/28/tufts). I am not supporting the student, but just this kind of approach can be effective at challenging PC culture that quells real dialogue on important issues. The student in fact argued that he was confronting this very culture on campus. Discomfort and confrontation are often effective ways to get people to explore their own ideas, beliefs, values and perspectives. Rather than shying away from it, I believe we should instead embrace it as a more effective form of mediation. I do this in my own classrooms, and while it does lead to heated conversations and anger among my students, I believe it forces many to confront their own feelings on racism. Civility and reasoned, "rational" conversation are a bedrock of white, middle class culture. But they too often stiffle rather than foster meaningful, critical conversations on race, gender, class and inequality. With some reservation, I thus laud the student for confronting his own sense that cloaking something does not mean it doesn't exist.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Healthcare "Debate"
Good article in Salon on the healthcare debate: http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/09/24/healthcare/print.html. While the public continues to support the public option and hungers for real reform, the heathcare industry and the politicians they have bought pretend they are representing them. This is backed by a punditocracy that seems to parrot the discourse of the far right as if it spoke for all Americans. Will the media ever change? Is there such a thing as responsible journalism any more? Too many on television ignore the real public climate in lieu of the very "special interests" they decry. Instead of the reporters who once fought for the public interest, we have too many who are part of the elite. The only hope exists on the margins and we can only hope they have a strong enough voice in the mainstream.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Feckless Democrats and the Upside of Technology
Democrats have been shooting themselves in the foot for years – from the ineffective campaigns of Gore and Kerry to the obsequious Congressional democrats during the Bush years. Obama turned the tide on conservative dirty campaigning and won a huge, and real, consensus from the American people that they wanted change. What has happened since?
He filled his administration with old Clinton lackies, including most troubling the Rubin and Reich neoliberal acolytes like Summers and Bernake
His recovery package fell short of what many wanted, in regards to changing the nature of business and the social contract in America. He made a number of concessions to Republicans who still didn’t vote for the bill
His attempt at regulation has been suspect at best
And now on healthcare, he makes a deal with the drug companies and seems ready to drop the government-sponsored plan altogether (even as most progressives argue it is the only way to solve the long term problems)
On Sunday and Monday, we learned that Obama was not inured to the public option for healthcare (the only real way to intervene and control costs): www.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/health/policy/17talkshows.html?th&emc=th. Obama then relents somewhat and says this is not the case. But it is clear he is making deals with a party that has little interest in reform of any kind. We have a consensus from the American people for change, but Obama is somehow still beholden to bipartisanship that is not bipartisan except in making concessions to conservatives who still don’t vote for the bills. He talks about breaking the gridlock in Washington, but has done little to get conservatives to play the game at all. And like so many democrats before him, we are left to wonder what he really stands for. Luckily there are some democrats who claim they will go forward without Republican support (www.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/health/policy/19repubs.html?th&emc=th), but whether they will succeed or not is still an open question.
What has happened to the backbone of the party? Have they fallen prey to the very forces that control the Republican party? Are they corrupt and willing to win/keep office at any cost? Are they so interested in Realpolitiks that they have forgotten what they stand for (ala the net roots)? Have they sold their soul to the devil to get the majority (think Lieberman and the Blue Dogs)? Or are Democrats just too interested in dialogue and agreement to actually stand up for their principles, and the people they are supposed to support (in this case the majority). One problem appears to be the people they entrust to frame their agenda, for example a guy who lost presidential election after presidential election become Hillary Clinton’s chief strategist, or hiring Emmanuel, who is too used to compromise to be the architect of real change, or Arne Duncan who is a strong supporter of policies that have failed in Chicago and undermined public education across the country. Today a big problem appears to be one that plagues the party – an inability to know what you should stand for and a penchant for falling prey to polls and attack-style politics.
* * * * * * * * * * *
In this blog, I often decry the downside of technology. I also often point out the positive. Obama has been very effective at using technology to mobilize, inform and communicate with the American people. This is particularly important given the relative irresponsibility of the mainstream media. Sometimes I think he sends out too many emails, thus causing me to press the delete button without reading them a lot. But today he offered a good point-by-point refutation of the conservative framing of the healthcare debate. Here it is: http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/settingtherecord. While the Internet is full of half-truths and outright lies, particularly in the viral emails so often sent out by conservatives, the savvy Internet user can usually quickly find the “truth.” One great site to facilitate this process is http://www.truthorfiction.com/.
He filled his administration with old Clinton lackies, including most troubling the Rubin and Reich neoliberal acolytes like Summers and Bernake
His recovery package fell short of what many wanted, in regards to changing the nature of business and the social contract in America. He made a number of concessions to Republicans who still didn’t vote for the bill
His attempt at regulation has been suspect at best
And now on healthcare, he makes a deal with the drug companies and seems ready to drop the government-sponsored plan altogether (even as most progressives argue it is the only way to solve the long term problems)
On Sunday and Monday, we learned that Obama was not inured to the public option for healthcare (the only real way to intervene and control costs): www.nytimes.com/2009/08/17/health/policy/17talkshows.html?th&emc=th. Obama then relents somewhat and says this is not the case. But it is clear he is making deals with a party that has little interest in reform of any kind. We have a consensus from the American people for change, but Obama is somehow still beholden to bipartisanship that is not bipartisan except in making concessions to conservatives who still don’t vote for the bills. He talks about breaking the gridlock in Washington, but has done little to get conservatives to play the game at all. And like so many democrats before him, we are left to wonder what he really stands for. Luckily there are some democrats who claim they will go forward without Republican support (www.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/health/policy/19repubs.html?th&emc=th), but whether they will succeed or not is still an open question.
What has happened to the backbone of the party? Have they fallen prey to the very forces that control the Republican party? Are they corrupt and willing to win/keep office at any cost? Are they so interested in Realpolitiks that they have forgotten what they stand for (ala the net roots)? Have they sold their soul to the devil to get the majority (think Lieberman and the Blue Dogs)? Or are Democrats just too interested in dialogue and agreement to actually stand up for their principles, and the people they are supposed to support (in this case the majority). One problem appears to be the people they entrust to frame their agenda, for example a guy who lost presidential election after presidential election become Hillary Clinton’s chief strategist, or hiring Emmanuel, who is too used to compromise to be the architect of real change, or Arne Duncan who is a strong supporter of policies that have failed in Chicago and undermined public education across the country. Today a big problem appears to be one that plagues the party – an inability to know what you should stand for and a penchant for falling prey to polls and attack-style politics.
* * * * * * * * * * *
In this blog, I often decry the downside of technology. I also often point out the positive. Obama has been very effective at using technology to mobilize, inform and communicate with the American people. This is particularly important given the relative irresponsibility of the mainstream media. Sometimes I think he sends out too many emails, thus causing me to press the delete button without reading them a lot. But today he offered a good point-by-point refutation of the conservative framing of the healthcare debate. Here it is: http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/settingtherecord. While the Internet is full of half-truths and outright lies, particularly in the viral emails so often sent out by conservatives, the savvy Internet user can usually quickly find the “truth.” One great site to facilitate this process is http://www.truthorfiction.com/.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Your Mind on Twitter
An article on Salon yesterday perfectly captures the essence of my problem with technology: http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2009/08/15/twitter_addiction/?source=newsletter. In it, Laurel Snyder admits her addiction to Twitter. And that appears to be the way technology works. We become addicted to it without ever knowing why. Video games, facebook, twitter, blogs, itunes, tv, or any host of other technologies become addictions that are hard to escap the. Is it like having a drinking problem or heroine addiction -- probably not, but what technology tends to do today is waste hours of our day. Is that such a bad thing?
Not necessarily. But what it has done is made being bored a verboten state. There is nothing worse, and I notice the effects in my classroom -- students who expect to be entertained throughout class, who can't concentrate for even 40 minutes, who sneak text messages at every opportunity, who refuse to really think about anything with any level of criticality. There areof course, exceptions. But one student a couple semesters ago went as far as taking a phone call while we were watching a movie. I took her into the hallway to talk to her about it and she never showed up again.
The biggest cost in the end though is time. All of the time we waste interacting with technology far exceeds the time we save through its efficiency. Sure it is great for research and finding information. Sure it can make organizing our lives easier, allow us to pay bills in minutes, keep our checkbooks balanced, allow us to keep in touch easily and quickly with those near and far, facilitate meeting people, help organize events and mobilizations and find others to do just about anything we desire, etc. But what it also does is keep us busy with its prime directive, whatever that may be. It creates an entire society unable to focus of anything for very long. It causes us to more often talk over each other than I remember in the past. And it breaks down the casual street culture that once defined New York City. Is there more good or bad? Hard to say. But what seems increasingly clear to me is that it goes a long way in defining who we are and how we relate to the world.
Not necessarily. But what it has done is made being bored a verboten state. There is nothing worse, and I notice the effects in my classroom -- students who expect to be entertained throughout class, who can't concentrate for even 40 minutes, who sneak text messages at every opportunity, who refuse to really think about anything with any level of criticality. There areof course, exceptions. But one student a couple semesters ago went as far as taking a phone call while we were watching a movie. I took her into the hallway to talk to her about it and she never showed up again.
The biggest cost in the end though is time. All of the time we waste interacting with technology far exceeds the time we save through its efficiency. Sure it is great for research and finding information. Sure it can make organizing our lives easier, allow us to pay bills in minutes, keep our checkbooks balanced, allow us to keep in touch easily and quickly with those near and far, facilitate meeting people, help organize events and mobilizations and find others to do just about anything we desire, etc. But what it also does is keep us busy with its prime directive, whatever that may be. It creates an entire society unable to focus of anything for very long. It causes us to more often talk over each other than I remember in the past. And it breaks down the casual street culture that once defined New York City. Is there more good or bad? Hard to say. But what seems increasingly clear to me is that it goes a long way in defining who we are and how we relate to the world.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Movie Review: Waltz with Bashir
I just rented this extraordinary film on Netflix and recommend it to anyone who loves film. Waltz with Bashir (2008) follows writer and director Ari Folman’s quest to remember his service in the Israeli Army during the Lebanese War of the early 80s. The animation is exemplary and at times breathtaking in its rendering of the space between fact and fiction in our own memories and the price of war on those who participate. Its most compelling images juxtapose the horrors of war and how men deal with their own complicity in death and atrocity; often through the mundane and eradication of emotional attachment to actions and their consequences. The animation amplifies the power of the message and somehow captures the truth of the moment better than a traditional documentary or even film could. Ironically, by escaping the limitations of real images he transcends them (as Sontag once argued, a photograph is as important for what it excludes as what it includes – and this is just as true with film). In the denouement he moves from animation to real footage of the Sabra and Shatila massacre and this serves as a perfect ending, unmediated by any context except the story that preceded it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabra_and_Shatila_massacre).
Folman’s approach provides a balanced view of the victim’s of the war, among Israelis, Lebanese and the various other players in the long running civil war that involved many of the surrounding countries. Rather than simply condemning Israeli complicity in the atrocities, it uses images and the words of the veterans to leave the audience to decide. The main characters are all involved at some level in the conflict, but are themselves victims of events essentially beyond their control. Through his extraordinary narrative structure and use of animation, he captures the fog of war explicated so poignantly in the traditional documentary form by Errol Morris in his interviews with Robert McNamara (Fog of War, 2003). Waltz seems to take Hannah Arendt’s perspective of the banality of evil to heart, showing young men pushed to service against their deeper instincts and morality; while simultaneously showing the coldness with which they ignore or justify their behavior and the destruction and killing of civilians, including women and children, in which they partake. The film rejects the bathos that often underlies films in this genre, instead allowing the images to serve as the moral underpinning of the critique of war.
Ultimately, the film is a beautifully rendered tragedy that captures the complex relationship between memory and atrocity, fear and bravery and the long term costs of war to all involved. The surreal dream sequences serve to codify the very real events that surround them and move the film from docudrama to an artistic masterpiece. I am hard pressed to think of a better animated film in history. (A)
Folman’s approach provides a balanced view of the victim’s of the war, among Israelis, Lebanese and the various other players in the long running civil war that involved many of the surrounding countries. Rather than simply condemning Israeli complicity in the atrocities, it uses images and the words of the veterans to leave the audience to decide. The main characters are all involved at some level in the conflict, but are themselves victims of events essentially beyond their control. Through his extraordinary narrative structure and use of animation, he captures the fog of war explicated so poignantly in the traditional documentary form by Errol Morris in his interviews with Robert McNamara (Fog of War, 2003). Waltz seems to take Hannah Arendt’s perspective of the banality of evil to heart, showing young men pushed to service against their deeper instincts and morality; while simultaneously showing the coldness with which they ignore or justify their behavior and the destruction and killing of civilians, including women and children, in which they partake. The film rejects the bathos that often underlies films in this genre, instead allowing the images to serve as the moral underpinning of the critique of war.
Ultimately, the film is a beautifully rendered tragedy that captures the complex relationship between memory and atrocity, fear and bravery and the long term costs of war to all involved. The surreal dream sequences serve to codify the very real events that surround them and move the film from docudrama to an artistic masterpiece. I am hard pressed to think of a better animated film in history. (A)
Friday, August 14, 2009
Funniest Books in the English Language
This blog is primarily a space where I offer cultural critique, but today I thought I would offer a short list of the funniest books I have ever read in the English language. These would probably be on most lists, but I know a lot of people that have never read one or more of them – so here they are . . .
1) Confederacy of Dunces (John Kennedy Toole): this brilliant book, post-humous winner of the Pulitzer, follows the travails of chubby, ne’er do well Ignatius T. Reilly and a wonderfully eccentric collection of characters in New Orleans. A movie adaptation has been in the works for years, but seems eternally cursed.
2) Lucky Jim (Kingsley Amis): one of the best books ever written on the absurdly esoteric and petty world of academia and another ne’er do well falling in love with the wrong women.
3) Catch-22 (Joseph Heller): an absurdist tale of World War II that deals with some very profound questions underneath; and through the travails of Captain Yossarian added Catch-22 to the American lexicon. The Nichols film doesn’t quiet capture the magic of the novel, but is still worth a view. This was Heller’s one great novel.
4) Vile Bodies (Evelyn Waugh): a brilliant satire of the senseless decadence of the British upper class in the period between World War I and II. Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley both considered Waugh one of the greatest satirists of his epoch. A film adaptation, Bright Young Things (2003), does a decent job of capturing the epic humor of the book.
5) The Russian Debutate’s Handbook (Gary Shtenygart): a wonderfully inventive tale of assimilation in America and Prague in the early 90s, this book (like his second Absurdistan) is brilliantly rendered with rich characters and
A few others that I think fit the bill include Vonnegut, The Cat’s Cradle, Jonathon Safran Froer Everything is Illuminated (movie sucked), Douglas Adams A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Richard Russo Empire Falls (with very serious undertones), David Sedaris Me Talk Pretty Some Day, Bernard Malamud’s The Natural (very funny, unlike the movie) and Nick Hornby’s About a Boy.
1) Confederacy of Dunces (John Kennedy Toole): this brilliant book, post-humous winner of the Pulitzer, follows the travails of chubby, ne’er do well Ignatius T. Reilly and a wonderfully eccentric collection of characters in New Orleans. A movie adaptation has been in the works for years, but seems eternally cursed.
2) Lucky Jim (Kingsley Amis): one of the best books ever written on the absurdly esoteric and petty world of academia and another ne’er do well falling in love with the wrong women.
3) Catch-22 (Joseph Heller): an absurdist tale of World War II that deals with some very profound questions underneath; and through the travails of Captain Yossarian added Catch-22 to the American lexicon. The Nichols film doesn’t quiet capture the magic of the novel, but is still worth a view. This was Heller’s one great novel.
4) Vile Bodies (Evelyn Waugh): a brilliant satire of the senseless decadence of the British upper class in the period between World War I and II. Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley both considered Waugh one of the greatest satirists of his epoch. A film adaptation, Bright Young Things (2003), does a decent job of capturing the epic humor of the book.
5) The Russian Debutate’s Handbook (Gary Shtenygart): a wonderfully inventive tale of assimilation in America and Prague in the early 90s, this book (like his second Absurdistan) is brilliantly rendered with rich characters and
A few others that I think fit the bill include Vonnegut, The Cat’s Cradle, Jonathon Safran Froer Everything is Illuminated (movie sucked), Douglas Adams A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Richard Russo Empire Falls (with very serious undertones), David Sedaris Me Talk Pretty Some Day, Bernard Malamud’s The Natural (very funny, unlike the movie) and Nick Hornby’s About a Boy.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Debate or the Texas Two Step?
While the blogosphere and emags have been decrying the nature of conservative discourse on the healthcare “debate,” the mainstream media has again shown its ineptitude at doing much more than reporting what other people say (he said, she said syndrome gone wild). The New Republic weighs in today on the absurdity that has become conservative discourse on healthcare, essentially centered around scaring the old, the disabled and anyone who isn’t really paying attention:
“We're stuck in what Josh Marshall has called a "nonsense feedback loop"--a conversation in which Zeke Emanuel wants to kill grandma, health care reform is bad for the people who can't get health care, and Stephen Hawking has been snuffed out by the British National Health System. Instead of arguments that are unrelated to reality, we're getting arguments that are the very opposite of reality.” (http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_treatment/archive/2009/08/12/the-swiftboating-of-health-reform.aspx)
Just like the 2000, 2004 and 2008 campaigns, too much of what comes out of the lunatic fringe becomes conventional wisdom with too much of the voting public ((http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/08/from_tpm_reader_cs.php). In 2000, Gore was a liar, based on, well, lies. Then the recount centered around a public restless for a result, that was really just restless of hearing how restless they were. In 2004, the swift boat veterans for truth spread lies like most of us spread butter on toast – but the media including the “liberal” New York Times played along, while finding the truth with a minor lie (in the Dan Rathers coverage of Bush’s suspect service during Vietnam) became a media maelstrom. In 2008, the socialist story line garnered less popular support, but still boiled at the edges of the political penumbra. And now, with healthcare reform, we have moved to the truly absurd spectacle society (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Society_of_the_Spectacle).
Can we have reasoned debate in America today? The answer appears to be no. Instead the lunatics and hardliners on the right take up far too much of our time, while the reasonable are attacked, marginalized or completely ignored. Why do we allow this to happen? Could it be that we are too busy updating our twitter and facebook accounts, watching movies and tv and trying to figure out how we missed out on the boom of the early twentieth century and how exactly we should take the “good news” on the economy. Or could it be that a country that has celebrated anti-intellectualism for far too long just doesn’t have the energy or critical faculties to really consider the issues? Maybe we just can’t figure out the difference between lies and truth or fiction and reality anymore. It appears that the postmodern reality has taken hold like never before.
P.S. Who are these right-wingers disrupting the President's town hall meetings? Here's one: http://www.salon.com/opinion/walsh/politics/2009/08/12/william_kostric/print.html.
“We're stuck in what Josh Marshall has called a "nonsense feedback loop"--a conversation in which Zeke Emanuel wants to kill grandma, health care reform is bad for the people who can't get health care, and Stephen Hawking has been snuffed out by the British National Health System. Instead of arguments that are unrelated to reality, we're getting arguments that are the very opposite of reality.” (http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_treatment/archive/2009/08/12/the-swiftboating-of-health-reform.aspx)
Just like the 2000, 2004 and 2008 campaigns, too much of what comes out of the lunatic fringe becomes conventional wisdom with too much of the voting public ((http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/08/from_tpm_reader_cs.php). In 2000, Gore was a liar, based on, well, lies. Then the recount centered around a public restless for a result, that was really just restless of hearing how restless they were. In 2004, the swift boat veterans for truth spread lies like most of us spread butter on toast – but the media including the “liberal” New York Times played along, while finding the truth with a minor lie (in the Dan Rathers coverage of Bush’s suspect service during Vietnam) became a media maelstrom. In 2008, the socialist story line garnered less popular support, but still boiled at the edges of the political penumbra. And now, with healthcare reform, we have moved to the truly absurd spectacle society (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Society_of_the_Spectacle).
Can we have reasoned debate in America today? The answer appears to be no. Instead the lunatics and hardliners on the right take up far too much of our time, while the reasonable are attacked, marginalized or completely ignored. Why do we allow this to happen? Could it be that we are too busy updating our twitter and facebook accounts, watching movies and tv and trying to figure out how we missed out on the boom of the early twentieth century and how exactly we should take the “good news” on the economy. Or could it be that a country that has celebrated anti-intellectualism for far too long just doesn’t have the energy or critical faculties to really consider the issues? Maybe we just can’t figure out the difference between lies and truth or fiction and reality anymore. It appears that the postmodern reality has taken hold like never before.
P.S. Who are these right-wingers disrupting the President's town hall meetings? Here's one: http://www.salon.com/opinion/walsh/politics/2009/08/12/william_kostric/print.html.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
The Family and Technology
“This is morning in America in the Internet age. After six to eight hours of network deprivation — also known as sleep — people are increasingly waking up and lunging for cellphones and laptops, sometimes even before swinging their legs to the floor and tending to more biologically urgent activities.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/10/technology/10morning.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=%22Coffee%20can%20wait.%22&st=cse). Thus is the state of the American family today, according to a New York Times article on Monday. The article starts with a typical family in Michigan who now often wake to their computers in four different rooms. Family breakfast? A fresh start to the day? Forget that! We’ve got work emails to get us reveled up, facebook and twitter updates to review, video games to play, texts to fellow teens we will see in less than an hour, TV to watch or websites to peruse before going to work to, well, sit in front of the computer all day. The kids just need that morning fix of technology before heading off to school to subsist in the anachronistic world of chalkboards and people talking to each other; as apparently do the parents.
Has technology improved our lives? In many ways, the obvious answer is yes (see prior posts). But what of the family? Another family, the Gudes, admit they”use texting as an in-house intercom,” he said. “I could just walk upstairs, but they always answer their texts.” Huh? Why bother actually waking up your kids with a smile or a careless caress of their hair. Instead technology can make sure we maximize efficiency first thing in the morning. But what is gained in this technological world and what is lost? “Both adults and children have good reasons to wake up and log on. Mom and Dad might need to catch up on e-mail from colleagues in different time zones. Children check text messages and Facebook posts from friends with different bedtimes — and sometime forget their chores in the process.” Is catching up on emails first thing in the morning really necessary? Do we really have anything interesting to say on a text first thing in the morning?
The problem I have often had with technology is that after a period of negotiation, humans tend to just adjust to its imperatives. Many people defensively disagree with this claim. But do they really think about it? Music is great, but what does listening to it all day do? Facebook is interesting, but how much does it really add to our day? Twitter has to be among the most inane of activities – but it has caught on like cut jean shorts in the late 80s. And what of email? An executive off for a week can have 10,000 emails to catch up on. Are they all really necessary? One thing I have noticed is six or seven emails can usually be taken care of in a one or two minute call. Yet we stick with the email because it’s easier or allows us to multitask. How many people can say they have talked to someone in the last week who wasn’t really listening? In fact, how many of us can admit that many of our friends and/or colleagues appear to just be waiting for a chance to talk.
The reality is it took years to see any productivity gains from computers in the U.S. Today one wonders if the amount of time people waste with their various technologies transcends any benefits that could have been gained from them. And there are, of course, other costs. People seem to have the attention span of a newborn baby. Many people I know are constantly bored. Our relationship to our surroundings has changed in profound ways that no one recognizes, because they are too busy texting about that date last night or some mundane detail of their life. There is much more talking at rather than to people. Community and neighborhood life has all but disappeared. And, as I have often noticed, people tend to act worse online. I sometimes play poker or backgammon online and have noticed that there is a surfeit of jerks, that are jerks for no other reason than that they can be without any ramifications. How does this translate to the rest of our interactions with others – strangers and friends alike? I sometimes sound like a Luddite in training, but also recognize the benefits of technology. It is just that so few seem to recognize how the technology around them changes not only what they are able to do, but what they decide to do and how they live their lives from one moment to the next. The ultimate question is whether this is better or not? Hard to say. But who has time to ask these questions when they are busy answering so many other questions? What are you wearing today? What’s going on? How’s class? What did you eat for dinner? I can’t wait to the new IPhone comes out . . .
Has technology improved our lives? In many ways, the obvious answer is yes (see prior posts). But what of the family? Another family, the Gudes, admit they”use texting as an in-house intercom,” he said. “I could just walk upstairs, but they always answer their texts.” Huh? Why bother actually waking up your kids with a smile or a careless caress of their hair. Instead technology can make sure we maximize efficiency first thing in the morning. But what is gained in this technological world and what is lost? “Both adults and children have good reasons to wake up and log on. Mom and Dad might need to catch up on e-mail from colleagues in different time zones. Children check text messages and Facebook posts from friends with different bedtimes — and sometime forget their chores in the process.” Is catching up on emails first thing in the morning really necessary? Do we really have anything interesting to say on a text first thing in the morning?
The problem I have often had with technology is that after a period of negotiation, humans tend to just adjust to its imperatives. Many people defensively disagree with this claim. But do they really think about it? Music is great, but what does listening to it all day do? Facebook is interesting, but how much does it really add to our day? Twitter has to be among the most inane of activities – but it has caught on like cut jean shorts in the late 80s. And what of email? An executive off for a week can have 10,000 emails to catch up on. Are they all really necessary? One thing I have noticed is six or seven emails can usually be taken care of in a one or two minute call. Yet we stick with the email because it’s easier or allows us to multitask. How many people can say they have talked to someone in the last week who wasn’t really listening? In fact, how many of us can admit that many of our friends and/or colleagues appear to just be waiting for a chance to talk.
The reality is it took years to see any productivity gains from computers in the U.S. Today one wonders if the amount of time people waste with their various technologies transcends any benefits that could have been gained from them. And there are, of course, other costs. People seem to have the attention span of a newborn baby. Many people I know are constantly bored. Our relationship to our surroundings has changed in profound ways that no one recognizes, because they are too busy texting about that date last night or some mundane detail of their life. There is much more talking at rather than to people. Community and neighborhood life has all but disappeared. And, as I have often noticed, people tend to act worse online. I sometimes play poker or backgammon online and have noticed that there is a surfeit of jerks, that are jerks for no other reason than that they can be without any ramifications. How does this translate to the rest of our interactions with others – strangers and friends alike? I sometimes sound like a Luddite in training, but also recognize the benefits of technology. It is just that so few seem to recognize how the technology around them changes not only what they are able to do, but what they decide to do and how they live their lives from one moment to the next. The ultimate question is whether this is better or not? Hard to say. But who has time to ask these questions when they are busy answering so many other questions? What are you wearing today? What’s going on? How’s class? What did you eat for dinner? I can’t wait to the new IPhone comes out . . .
Monday, August 10, 2009
Healthcare Debates: The Cost of Neoliberalism
A new today poll from USA Today shows the potential perils in one of the underlying tenets of neoliberalism (http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-08-10-healthcarepoll_N.htm). The idea is that acting in our own self-interest leads to the best outcome for all. This has always been a fallacy outside purely economic terms (and sometimes within in), but healthcare brings the problem into focus in a way that few other issues do. Healthcare has social costs and benefits that transcend the individual. This is particularly true given the incredible power that healthcare providers hold – essentially the power to directly or indirectly affect the quality of your life; and more seriously it’s length. Making decisions primarily based on one’s own interests, undermine the ability to address the two biggest problems today – costs and the uninsured. In the long run, the uninsured cost all of society, but neoliberal ideology, and American society in general, have a hard time looking to the long run. And the only way to control costs is to act collectively -- as shown most clearly by the fact that the power to control costs come predominantly from the number insured within a particular group.
As debates continue and fear becomes a key factor, it appears the aging population of the U.S. is predominantly making decisions based on their own interests – in the poll as the sample participants get older, they are more interested in controlling costs than dealing with the uninsured. Among 18-29 year olds, we do see more worried about the uninsured than cost containment. But every other group believes controlling costs is more important (with the percentage increasing as the cohorts age). There is also a race dynamic here, as 75% of Blacks and 66% of Latino/as believe we should expand coverage to the uninsured. Left out of so many of these discussions are the people who can’t vote – the millions of children who do not have access to basic healthcare that could very well affect them the rest of their lives. And the group most opposed to healthcare reform are the elderly.
Healthcare and education are really public goods, with huge externalities that the market is often unable to capture. These externalities are both positive and negative. A healthy society has lower medical costs and thus a workforce that can increase productivity and reduce shared social costs. A well-educated public provides more high skill workers and a more vibrant democracy that can challenge its problems through informed, diversified participation in the public sphere. Without effective healthcare and educational systems a country can easily fall into debt and long-term decline. This is also the case with the environment, with the middle class and rich the only one’s generally able to make ecologically responsible decisions. It is also the case with the corporate world, where more and more make decisions that benefit themselves but hurt others – not because they are “bad apples” but because we have set up a system where profit maximization trumps social responsibility and the common good. The U.S. is currently on a path where the privatization of public goods could send us into a hinterland from which we will not recover. Can we convince people to think beyond their self-interest, recognizing that in the end it is in their self-interest to think collectively about key public goods?
As debates continue and fear becomes a key factor, it appears the aging population of the U.S. is predominantly making decisions based on their own interests – in the poll as the sample participants get older, they are more interested in controlling costs than dealing with the uninsured. Among 18-29 year olds, we do see more worried about the uninsured than cost containment. But every other group believes controlling costs is more important (with the percentage increasing as the cohorts age). There is also a race dynamic here, as 75% of Blacks and 66% of Latino/as believe we should expand coverage to the uninsured. Left out of so many of these discussions are the people who can’t vote – the millions of children who do not have access to basic healthcare that could very well affect them the rest of their lives. And the group most opposed to healthcare reform are the elderly.
Healthcare and education are really public goods, with huge externalities that the market is often unable to capture. These externalities are both positive and negative. A healthy society has lower medical costs and thus a workforce that can increase productivity and reduce shared social costs. A well-educated public provides more high skill workers and a more vibrant democracy that can challenge its problems through informed, diversified participation in the public sphere. Without effective healthcare and educational systems a country can easily fall into debt and long-term decline. This is also the case with the environment, with the middle class and rich the only one’s generally able to make ecologically responsible decisions. It is also the case with the corporate world, where more and more make decisions that benefit themselves but hurt others – not because they are “bad apples” but because we have set up a system where profit maximization trumps social responsibility and the common good. The U.S. is currently on a path where the privatization of public goods could send us into a hinterland from which we will not recover. Can we convince people to think beyond their self-interest, recognizing that in the end it is in their self-interest to think collectively about key public goods?
Sunday, August 09, 2009
Healthcare Debates: The Government Wants to Kill You
On the McLaughlin Group this morning (http://www.mclaughlin.com/), a microcosm of the problems with the current healthcare debate came into clear focus. Conservative Pat Buchanon, who has gotten more reasonable on some matters, was speaking of how Democrats want to assist seniors in suicide or, at its extreme, euthanasia. Monica Crowley was herself chiming in, using our collective fear of government intervention into our lives, warning that bureaucrats are suddenly going to start telling people how to end their lives. Other conservatives have started to call Obama a Nazi or Fascist, lied about the cost and are now showing up at the town hall meetings with their absurd comparison (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/06/AR2009080603854.html). Is there truth in these claims?
The reality appears to be that the government will pay for people to go visit their doctors to discuss their end of life options (including a living will). Why would the Medicare pay for these services? Because, among other things, 24% of the total lifetime costs of Medicare occur in the last year of people’s lives. In other words, hospitals, hospices, drug companies, and the like are making a fortune on that last year of our lives . . . often not by making it better, but by running up bills that do little to improve the quality or length of that life. The second reality is that healthcare costs are now $1.7 trillion a year and rising, which translates to 17% of GDP. That is unsustainable in the long run. And lest us forget, as I have mentioned before, that obesity and the aging of the population over all (remember those pesky baby boomers that are retiring as we speak) are on the rise and thus costs will only balloon further in the future.
Healthcare is big business in America though, and a real role for the government will undermine their profitability. So lobbyists are spending millions, conservative talk show hosts come up with absurd analogies, wingnut operatives disrupt town hall meetings and the entire conservative establishment and its corporate benefactors spread misinformation and fear to undermine necessary reform. We don’t hear of the 30% of pharmaceutical company revenue that goes to advertising, or the shift to palliatives (from curatives) that occurred in the 70s. We hear lies about the healthcare systems in Canada and England, but very little about the even better systems in Scandinavia. And rather than reasonable debate, the mainstream media largely plays along – failing to give people the facts that could help them make informed decisions. Some of these facts include the fact that we have among the lowest life expectancy and higher infant mortality rates of any industrialized country in the world. Aren’t these two pretty big indicators of how good the healthcare system in a country is? And how about the fact that a majority of the population are on some drug or another, even though many of these drugs do little to improve our lives? ADHD only became a national endemic when there were drugs to deal with it. General Anxiety Disorder, Uncomfortable Leg Syndrome, Adult ADD, anti-depressants for children, Phen Phen, Hormone therapy for women, etc., all show how profitability influences healthcare decisions in a negative way. And yet few seem to bring all the pieces together and ask the really important questions. They start the conversation and then it degrades down to what we are witnessing now (http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/08/06/healthcare/print.html).
I think it is interesting to consider the conservative movement today within this context. After the election, there was some blood-letting and many argued that conservatives had to redefine themselves. Instead they seem to believe they should return to the Clinton era strategy – bottleneck Washington, undermine reform, challenge every big policy initiative and use lies and fear-mongering to turn the country against the presidency. The problem is hints are again emerging that this strategy is effective. In a country where many take pride in their ignorance or the stone-like quality of their, often uninformed, opinions, framing debates in this way is very effective. This is particularly true with a mainstream media establishment that has lost its heart and tends to report as if there were no facts to confront the he said-she said nature of debates in the political arena. The big problem is we have serious long term challenges that will go unaddressed if this absurdity continues. Beyond healthcare is the still reeling economy, global warming, retirement costs in the coming years, persistent racial inequalities and ongoing income disparity differentials that undermine democracy itself. If we do not soon address these problems, I believe rumors of the not too distant demise of America might not be so exaggerated . . .
The reality appears to be that the government will pay for people to go visit their doctors to discuss their end of life options (including a living will). Why would the Medicare pay for these services? Because, among other things, 24% of the total lifetime costs of Medicare occur in the last year of people’s lives. In other words, hospitals, hospices, drug companies, and the like are making a fortune on that last year of our lives . . . often not by making it better, but by running up bills that do little to improve the quality or length of that life. The second reality is that healthcare costs are now $1.7 trillion a year and rising, which translates to 17% of GDP. That is unsustainable in the long run. And lest us forget, as I have mentioned before, that obesity and the aging of the population over all (remember those pesky baby boomers that are retiring as we speak) are on the rise and thus costs will only balloon further in the future.
Healthcare is big business in America though, and a real role for the government will undermine their profitability. So lobbyists are spending millions, conservative talk show hosts come up with absurd analogies, wingnut operatives disrupt town hall meetings and the entire conservative establishment and its corporate benefactors spread misinformation and fear to undermine necessary reform. We don’t hear of the 30% of pharmaceutical company revenue that goes to advertising, or the shift to palliatives (from curatives) that occurred in the 70s. We hear lies about the healthcare systems in Canada and England, but very little about the even better systems in Scandinavia. And rather than reasonable debate, the mainstream media largely plays along – failing to give people the facts that could help them make informed decisions. Some of these facts include the fact that we have among the lowest life expectancy and higher infant mortality rates of any industrialized country in the world. Aren’t these two pretty big indicators of how good the healthcare system in a country is? And how about the fact that a majority of the population are on some drug or another, even though many of these drugs do little to improve our lives? ADHD only became a national endemic when there were drugs to deal with it. General Anxiety Disorder, Uncomfortable Leg Syndrome, Adult ADD, anti-depressants for children, Phen Phen, Hormone therapy for women, etc., all show how profitability influences healthcare decisions in a negative way. And yet few seem to bring all the pieces together and ask the really important questions. They start the conversation and then it degrades down to what we are witnessing now (http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/08/06/healthcare/print.html).
I think it is interesting to consider the conservative movement today within this context. After the election, there was some blood-letting and many argued that conservatives had to redefine themselves. Instead they seem to believe they should return to the Clinton era strategy – bottleneck Washington, undermine reform, challenge every big policy initiative and use lies and fear-mongering to turn the country against the presidency. The problem is hints are again emerging that this strategy is effective. In a country where many take pride in their ignorance or the stone-like quality of their, often uninformed, opinions, framing debates in this way is very effective. This is particularly true with a mainstream media establishment that has lost its heart and tends to report as if there were no facts to confront the he said-she said nature of debates in the political arena. The big problem is we have serious long term challenges that will go unaddressed if this absurdity continues. Beyond healthcare is the still reeling economy, global warming, retirement costs in the coming years, persistent racial inequalities and ongoing income disparity differentials that undermine democracy itself. If we do not soon address these problems, I believe rumors of the not too distant demise of America might not be so exaggerated . . .
Friday, August 07, 2009
Testing and the False Promise of Educational Improvement
An interesting article in the New York Times this week looked at New York City schools under Mayor Bloomberg’s control: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/nyregion/04scores.html?_r=1&ref=education. While there has been a large rise in the number of students passing the tests and a closing of the gap between racial groups based on the number passing, the numbers are somewhat deceiving when one delves deeper. For one thing, the actual gap in scores has not changed much. For another, it appears that the increase in passing rates relates more to making the tests easier – rather than any real improvement in student performance. This was made clear when looking at the 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress, which showed that eighth graders showed little improvement in reading or math. So what’s the story? As with many neoliberal reforms, testing justifies a shift to a curriculum based on testing, narrowed away from a broader, more holistic approach. Yet the tests don’t really measure student performance or what they’re learning in a real sense. It is a perfect example of the old adage by Benjamin Disrael that there are lie, damn lies and statistics.
Thursday, August 06, 2009
Dialectics of Technology
A couple of friends of mine were talking about loneliness and technology the other night. One argued that she felt lonely all the time and the other that texting, emails, facebook and the like were the same as being with people face to face. Technology enabled us to never be lonely. Is that true? Many lonely people turn on the TV to escape the quietude of solitude. Others get on the Internet and in one way or another “connect” with other; whether its fantasy games, twitter or facebook updates, instant messaging, emailing old friends, blogging, engaging in online communities and the like.
When we text or email others, are we really “being” with them in an authentic way? Can we escape the plague of modernity and postmodernity by using technology to stay in touch? Can we be happy and engaged from afar? These are difficult questions. Having 200 friends on Facebook certainly makes one feel as if they are part of a community, with a lot of people they can turn to in times of need or want. But what is the composition of those friendships? What does it mean to have meaningless online communiqué once or twice a year? What does it even mean to talk to someone everyday without ever seeing them? Does it measure up?
The answer for me is a resounding no. Yes I believe technology enables us to stay in touch with more people, to reconnect with old friends and to more effectively plan getting together. But there is so much missing in all forms of electronic and digital communication: intonation, all the non-verbal cues that are often more important than words, the look, the feel, closeness of two bodies, etc. As Emerson once wrote, what you do speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you say. With technology, what you do is secondary to what you write . . .
When we text or email others, are we really “being” with them in an authentic way? Can we escape the plague of modernity and postmodernity by using technology to stay in touch? Can we be happy and engaged from afar? These are difficult questions. Having 200 friends on Facebook certainly makes one feel as if they are part of a community, with a lot of people they can turn to in times of need or want. But what is the composition of those friendships? What does it mean to have meaningless online communiqué once or twice a year? What does it even mean to talk to someone everyday without ever seeing them? Does it measure up?
The answer for me is a resounding no. Yes I believe technology enables us to stay in touch with more people, to reconnect with old friends and to more effectively plan getting together. But there is so much missing in all forms of electronic and digital communication: intonation, all the non-verbal cues that are often more important than words, the look, the feel, closeness of two bodies, etc. As Emerson once wrote, what you do speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you say. With technology, what you do is secondary to what you write . . .
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
Blink and Listen Blindly, Malcolm Gladwell has Something to Say
Malcolm Gladwell has made a career out of looking at culture in unique, often heterodox, ways. Among his most famous works are The Tipping Point (the potentially massive importance of small-scale social events, Blink (how the human subconscious analyzes events and our ability to make snap decisions based on prior experience) and most recently Outliers (which, among other things, comes up with a rather arbitrary number that describes genius and success). Gladwell is essentially a pop-sociologist who has made a fortune writing and giving lectures to corporations. Yet many critique him for, among other things, using social science arguments without context and confusing causation and correlation. At a deeper level, I just think he is dead wrong a lot.
In his new article in the New Yorker, “The Courthouse Ring,” Gladwell argues that To Kill a Mocking Bird is not the radical text we have long considered it (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/10/090810fa_fact_gladwell?printable=true). Starting with the analysis of legal scholar Steven Lubet, he argues that Atticus was in fact an accomodationist, not worthy of anything but our contempt. He then compares him to real-life politician Jim Folsom. To start, Folsom was a politician and thus a poor comparison to a lawyer trying to uphold justice. Second, I think Folsom should be commended, with reservations, for the radical tenor of many of his actions as governor. The New Republic offers a wonderful critique of the article here: http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/08/04/what-is-malcolm-gladwell-talking-about.aspx. I wanted to add by one critique to this heavily overrated intellectual and his huge talking fees and popularity in the public sphere.
Gladwell bases his argument predominantly on the notion that Atticus is not confronting injustice, but essentially serving it by not taking it head on. But is it really the role of the law to be a radical agent for change? The law sets the minimum standard for human behavior, but as with Brown v. Board of Education, has little power if not enforced. Atticus stands up for justice from a position of moderation. He is not an activist hero that will change the world, but really a symbol of how each of us can contribute in fighting racism and injustice – by living by our ideals and standing up for what we believe in. The novel is certainly not a call to arms for radical change, but is inspirational in its ability to make us look at ourselves and our complicity in hatred and injustice.
I believe there are several other problems with his thesis and analysis. At one point, Gladwell argues that Mayella is treated as a women so desperate for sex she is willing to plot for a year to seduce a Black man. I think this is an absurdly naïve analysis. Mayella is interested in a particular Black man, Jim Robinson, serving as an exemplar of the complex relationship between Black men and white women in the South and beyond. Her desire not only ostracizes her from society and bring up one of the greatest taboos in the South, but hints at the underlying fear of White men of perceived Black virility. As bell hooks among many has argued, White men are essentially emasculated by white female desire for Black men and have thus centered racism on any hints of sexual desire related to this relationship. The novel captures this complex dynamic, showing white male hatred built on the large Black man that actually had little interest in the white girl who desired him. On top of this, the novel contemplates the racial dynamics of the town – as Mayella and her father are poor and Atticus clearly a man of some means.
The class aspect of the book is important, and yet Gladwell gives us a simplistic leftist argument that the final scene with Boo Radley has a class dynamic that undermines Atticus’ deeper sense of justice. This is the same problem with his analysis of race. Atticus may not be an activist, but he is a purveyor of justice irrespective of skin color. He is a brave man for standing up to the town and trying, though failing, to save a Black man from unfair prosecution. His quiet dignity and bravery is, in fact, emblematic of a particular type of American hero that persists up to the present day (think of Clint Eastwood in most of his movies in the 70s – though here against violence). Is Atticus a hero? I think he is. And what’s more, I believe To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the most beautifully written American novels and thus transcends how radical its politics were. Yet even here, I believe they are far more radical than anything Gladwell has ever offered us (while making a ton of money in the process).
In his new article in the New Yorker, “The Courthouse Ring,” Gladwell argues that To Kill a Mocking Bird is not the radical text we have long considered it (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/10/090810fa_fact_gladwell?printable=true). Starting with the analysis of legal scholar Steven Lubet, he argues that Atticus was in fact an accomodationist, not worthy of anything but our contempt. He then compares him to real-life politician Jim Folsom. To start, Folsom was a politician and thus a poor comparison to a lawyer trying to uphold justice. Second, I think Folsom should be commended, with reservations, for the radical tenor of many of his actions as governor. The New Republic offers a wonderful critique of the article here: http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/08/04/what-is-malcolm-gladwell-talking-about.aspx. I wanted to add by one critique to this heavily overrated intellectual and his huge talking fees and popularity in the public sphere.
Gladwell bases his argument predominantly on the notion that Atticus is not confronting injustice, but essentially serving it by not taking it head on. But is it really the role of the law to be a radical agent for change? The law sets the minimum standard for human behavior, but as with Brown v. Board of Education, has little power if not enforced. Atticus stands up for justice from a position of moderation. He is not an activist hero that will change the world, but really a symbol of how each of us can contribute in fighting racism and injustice – by living by our ideals and standing up for what we believe in. The novel is certainly not a call to arms for radical change, but is inspirational in its ability to make us look at ourselves and our complicity in hatred and injustice.
I believe there are several other problems with his thesis and analysis. At one point, Gladwell argues that Mayella is treated as a women so desperate for sex she is willing to plot for a year to seduce a Black man. I think this is an absurdly naïve analysis. Mayella is interested in a particular Black man, Jim Robinson, serving as an exemplar of the complex relationship between Black men and white women in the South and beyond. Her desire not only ostracizes her from society and bring up one of the greatest taboos in the South, but hints at the underlying fear of White men of perceived Black virility. As bell hooks among many has argued, White men are essentially emasculated by white female desire for Black men and have thus centered racism on any hints of sexual desire related to this relationship. The novel captures this complex dynamic, showing white male hatred built on the large Black man that actually had little interest in the white girl who desired him. On top of this, the novel contemplates the racial dynamics of the town – as Mayella and her father are poor and Atticus clearly a man of some means.
The class aspect of the book is important, and yet Gladwell gives us a simplistic leftist argument that the final scene with Boo Radley has a class dynamic that undermines Atticus’ deeper sense of justice. This is the same problem with his analysis of race. Atticus may not be an activist, but he is a purveyor of justice irrespective of skin color. He is a brave man for standing up to the town and trying, though failing, to save a Black man from unfair prosecution. His quiet dignity and bravery is, in fact, emblematic of a particular type of American hero that persists up to the present day (think of Clint Eastwood in most of his movies in the 70s – though here against violence). Is Atticus a hero? I think he is. And what’s more, I believe To Kill a Mockingbird is one of the most beautifully written American novels and thus transcends how radical its politics were. Yet even here, I believe they are far more radical than anything Gladwell has ever offered us (while making a ton of money in the process).
Monday, August 03, 2009
Reflection at the Speed of Light
In the film LA Story, there is a scene where Steve Martin skates through LACMA, one of the art museums in town. His friend videotapes the adventure until they run into his burgeoning love interest. An interesting article in the New York Times today, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/03/arts/design/03abroad.html?th&emc=th, ponders the significance of the way we look at art in museums these days and whether many don’t secretly dream of roller skating or, maybe more appropriately, skateboarding or rollerblading through museums to maximize what they can see and the “efficiency” of the visit. To be more specific, the article looks at the ways many of us don’t really look at art anymore. We take a snapshot, glance at the work or run to the famous piece, like the Mona Lisa. I have a friend who follows this trend, almost running through an exhibit in a museum or trying to see the entire collection in a couple of hours. I’m more of a meanderer and often sit down to really look at art I like; but I guess that puts me in the minority these days.
Really I think the question of a changing relationship to art in museums relates to a larger social trend – the inability to focus on much of anything. Martin Heidegger once decried the loss of the power of art that came with its reproduction, arguing that the transcendental relationship with art can only be experienced firsthand. Today, mediated reality seems to trump reality on a daily basis. We have twitter and facebook to keep constant tabs on others and keep them abreast of the minutest details of our lives, multiple reenactments of almost any significant event (think of how many Iraq War movies have already come out), advertising peeking out at us from every corner, background or foreground noise everywhere (I entered a movie theatre a half hour early last night, and they already had previews running) and essentially the “multitaskination” of our entire lives. Doing one thing at a time, for any prolonged period of time, is a bête noire to contemporary sensibility, at least in American cities. One must walk and talk, text and talk, drive and text, eat and read, have seven to ten programs opened at once on the computer, multitab our way through the Internet, etc. ADHD has become a cultural pandemic and it is not just a problem for kids.
But what is the bigger significance? By disavowing the importance of focus and time to really contemplate and explore aesthetic and material reality, what is lost? How does this relate to the simplification of American political discourse? What does it mean for democracy and social interaction? Can it undermine the ability to have meaningful relationships and friendships if one has 800 friends on facebook that need a few seconds of attention every couple of months and we are all texting our way through evenings rather than really talking to each other? Why is it that so few (including me) can have a linear conversation these days? Lost in the struggle to fit more and more information and experiences into one day and one lifetime might be the ability to actually enjoy those experiences. Could it be that an hour in front of one painting isn’t a waste of time? Hard to say as I sit here writing a blog entry that will soon disappear into the ether of tomorrow’s yesterday.
Really I think the question of a changing relationship to art in museums relates to a larger social trend – the inability to focus on much of anything. Martin Heidegger once decried the loss of the power of art that came with its reproduction, arguing that the transcendental relationship with art can only be experienced firsthand. Today, mediated reality seems to trump reality on a daily basis. We have twitter and facebook to keep constant tabs on others and keep them abreast of the minutest details of our lives, multiple reenactments of almost any significant event (think of how many Iraq War movies have already come out), advertising peeking out at us from every corner, background or foreground noise everywhere (I entered a movie theatre a half hour early last night, and they already had previews running) and essentially the “multitaskination” of our entire lives. Doing one thing at a time, for any prolonged period of time, is a bête noire to contemporary sensibility, at least in American cities. One must walk and talk, text and talk, drive and text, eat and read, have seven to ten programs opened at once on the computer, multitab our way through the Internet, etc. ADHD has become a cultural pandemic and it is not just a problem for kids.
But what is the bigger significance? By disavowing the importance of focus and time to really contemplate and explore aesthetic and material reality, what is lost? How does this relate to the simplification of American political discourse? What does it mean for democracy and social interaction? Can it undermine the ability to have meaningful relationships and friendships if one has 800 friends on facebook that need a few seconds of attention every couple of months and we are all texting our way through evenings rather than really talking to each other? Why is it that so few (including me) can have a linear conversation these days? Lost in the struggle to fit more and more information and experiences into one day and one lifetime might be the ability to actually enjoy those experiences. Could it be that an hour in front of one painting isn’t a waste of time? Hard to say as I sit here writing a blog entry that will soon disappear into the ether of tomorrow’s yesterday.
Sunday, August 02, 2009
Booyah: Finally Competition 24/7
Ever get bored of competing with friends over jobs, salaries, cars, size of homes, lawns, kids achievements, vacation destinations and general quality of life? Feel like facebook and twitter are not providing you with enough of a platform to tell everyone about the spectacular bowl movement you had five minutes ago or the flight that is 15-minutes late? Afraid that life just isn’t complete if you can’t compete over the minutest details of your very existence? Tired of replacing those bumper stickers that tell us your kid is a C student at Alabaster elementary? For those who answered yes to any of these questions, or who feel that keeping score of their lives needs a technological instantiation – here it is! Booyah has come along to allow you to keep track of all of your achievements, big and small, through a point system that you can share with friends: http://www.booyah.com/. Now this is worth a glass of champagne! It’s got to be worth a few points. I’ll twitter you about it when I’m done . . .
Saturday, August 01, 2009
So Cute, I Just Want to Eat You Up
Ok, probably in bad taste, but this has to be one of the weirdest stories I've read in a while. A woman in Texas, after a breakup, goes crazy and kills and starts eating her own baby -- claiming the devil made her do it: www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2009/08/01/otty_sanchez. The Internet is already abuzz with this story, just thought I would chime in for those who missed it. Some will use this story to claim we don't take very good care of children in society or critique the way women are treated as second class citizens. Both claims are probably true, but I think it also hints at something larger and more troubling. The fact that kids have no real rights in our society. Decisions are too often made that disadvantage children and undermine their future. Many of them are happening as I write this -- as we continue to ignore future environmental calamity, build up debts they will have to pay off rather than tax the rich and corporations, have public schools that promises meritocracy but seems to base achievement predominantly on the income level of the parents and appear ready to miss an opportunity to fix a broken healthcare system. But I digress . . .
Framing Healthcare: Fear is a Friend of Foes
Republicans, conservative talk radio and even abortion foes have come together to rejuvenate a brilliant idea from none other than the Bush administration. Renaming the inheritance tax as the death tax was a brilliant strategy used a few years ago to end an important aspect of our ideas of American meritocracy. Now they are taking a provision from the new healthcare bill to do a similar thing – use fear as a motivating factor to get the very group that need healthcare reform to oppose it. The so called “death care” provision simply asks doctors to assist patients in making living wills and other preparations for all of our ultimate fate (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/31/AR2009073103148_pf.html). Yet as the powerful have known from time immemorial, besides divide and conquer, fear is one of the greatest motivators.
It was used after 911 to start a war, undermine the constitution and misdirect a growing list of scandals that plagued the administration in the aftermath (remember all those terror alert raises at opportune moments that somehow never materialized in reality)? Now they are using the arsenal that continues to allow them to dominate public discourse and debate. Fear, divide and conquer (see Gates fiasco and Sotomayor hearing), and misinformation are their arms and they trump the still enervated Democrats, that can’t seem to find the needed ganas even in the thrall of a major electoral victory. Can we survive without substantial changes to the healthcare system? What will we do when the baby boomers start retiring in mass? How can we handle the growing obesity pandemic and its enormous long-term health costs? Can profits trump the public interest in perpetuity? Like the environment, these are questions our kids and grandkids will have to answer if conservatives have anything to say about it.
It was used after 911 to start a war, undermine the constitution and misdirect a growing list of scandals that plagued the administration in the aftermath (remember all those terror alert raises at opportune moments that somehow never materialized in reality)? Now they are using the arsenal that continues to allow them to dominate public discourse and debate. Fear, divide and conquer (see Gates fiasco and Sotomayor hearing), and misinformation are their arms and they trump the still enervated Democrats, that can’t seem to find the needed ganas even in the thrall of a major electoral victory. Can we survive without substantial changes to the healthcare system? What will we do when the baby boomers start retiring in mass? How can we handle the growing obesity pandemic and its enormous long-term health costs? Can profits trump the public interest in perpetuity? Like the environment, these are questions our kids and grandkids will have to answer if conservatives have anything to say about it.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Bonus Babies
The New York Times provides further evidence of the absurdity that has become our economy today: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/business/31pay.html?_r=1&th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print. Bonuses were doled out to 1000s of top traders and bankers on Wall Street last year. Not necessarily for doing a good job, but hey, they had a huge influx of capital. Of course that capital came from the U.S. government; and by extension us. But that doesn’t really matter. These are, as Tom Woolf once labeled them, master’s of the universe. Profits and losses are not really the bottom line anymore. Either is talent, or performance for that matter. Once you rise high enough in the corporate matter, you are paid for being at the top. You are paid to maintain your opulent lifestyle, make sure you can make your payments on the three or four houses you own, the private jet, the jewelry for your wife and lovers and everything else necessary to make the rest of us strive to be just like you. Now Goldman and JP Morgan have reaffirmed their profitability, and emerged as the two winners of the battle for Wall Street hegemony (conveniently, Bernake once worked for one of them). They can pay back the government for saving them and move on to again do what they’ve always done; hopefully with little regulation from that pesky organization that saved them – the government.
This seems to be the emerging theme across the economy. Now that there are the first hints of recovery in the near or not too far future, it’s time to forget all the problems that got us here in the first place. Put government intervention back on the guillotine block – government is again the problem and markets the only solution. Forget regulation, forget consumer protection, forget any radical changes to the economy. Now we need to step back and move slowly. Now we need to give corporations and Wall Street back their power over the economy, and by extension, our lives. Sure Obama won the election to change things, but all we need to do now is forget all that and calm down because America thrives on unfettered capitalism, period. Healthcare reform and further recovery packages are unnecessary. Regulation is for those suckers in Europe. The Welfare State is the organizing principle of a bygone era. Fear should lead us to step back – and by the way, Obama really caused the financial crisis. You didn’t know? All you need to do is forget the past 8 years; or really 25 for that matter. History is for those who aren’t paying attention. What is needed is to blindly listen to the talking heads, parroting right wing ideology once again. The question that remains is whether past is prologue? I think, if nothing changes, the answer is a resounding yes. But as America moves toward another yesterday girl empire, at least we can take comfort in the fact that the super rich will continue to entertain us with their conspicuous consumption and crazy affairs. Not a bad deal, right?
Oh one other thing – it appears unemployment is a little bit higher than we have been led to believe (see 7/28/09 - http://educationpolicyblog.blogspot.com/) . . . But don’t worry, that improves the bottom line, and that has to trickle down to us at some point, right (http://www.theonion.com/content/news/reaganomics_finally_trickles_down)?
This seems to be the emerging theme across the economy. Now that there are the first hints of recovery in the near or not too far future, it’s time to forget all the problems that got us here in the first place. Put government intervention back on the guillotine block – government is again the problem and markets the only solution. Forget regulation, forget consumer protection, forget any radical changes to the economy. Now we need to step back and move slowly. Now we need to give corporations and Wall Street back their power over the economy, and by extension, our lives. Sure Obama won the election to change things, but all we need to do now is forget all that and calm down because America thrives on unfettered capitalism, period. Healthcare reform and further recovery packages are unnecessary. Regulation is for those suckers in Europe. The Welfare State is the organizing principle of a bygone era. Fear should lead us to step back – and by the way, Obama really caused the financial crisis. You didn’t know? All you need to do is forget the past 8 years; or really 25 for that matter. History is for those who aren’t paying attention. What is needed is to blindly listen to the talking heads, parroting right wing ideology once again. The question that remains is whether past is prologue? I think, if nothing changes, the answer is a resounding yes. But as America moves toward another yesterday girl empire, at least we can take comfort in the fact that the super rich will continue to entertain us with their conspicuous consumption and crazy affairs. Not a bad deal, right?
Oh one other thing – it appears unemployment is a little bit higher than we have been led to believe (see 7/28/09 - http://educationpolicyblog.blogspot.com/) . . . But don’t worry, that improves the bottom line, and that has to trickle down to us at some point, right (http://www.theonion.com/content/news/reaganomics_finally_trickles_down)?
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Movie Review: (500) Days of Summer
(500) Days of Summer may very well become the Singles, Swingers, Empire Records (kind of) or Reality Bites of its moment. It is that rare animal that is often tried but rarely succeeds, a romantic comedy that attempts to capture the aesthetic along the edges of an epoch’s urban center; the edgy confines of those who can name all the Pixies albums and lead singers of the Replacements, Breeders, Lemonheads, Killers and Velvet Underground, can quote the Simpsons, Shakespeare and Blake at will, discern between surrealists and situationalists, explain existentialism and define irony, know ten bands and authors you’ve never heard of, are fluent in Truffaut and Fellini, can look cooler than you for $10, and otherwise wade in the odd place where high and low culture meet. Like the other films in this genre, it centers around a love affair with a series of side characters to fill in the ambience, though in this case a relationship that is destined for failure and side characters less compelling than the others mentioned above. As the film jumps back and forth in time, with occasional narration, plenty of animation and other effects to heighten its cleverly though clearly “constructed” feel, we find ourselves rooting for Tom Hansen (Joseph-Gorden Levitt) and Summer Finn (the charming Zooey Deschanel) even as we suspect the outcome to come. Summer is the sort of girl that anyone who wasn’t cool in high school can’t help but fall in love with – a flakey, intelligent, flighty girl that floats through life with a keen eye to pleasure and the less discernible beauty that hides on the edges and periphery; the kind of girl that is smarter than you and makes you earn her adoration (but whose worth the effort). The film is a visual bricolage of experimentation and references that breezily move from one topic or technique to the next with little concern for narrative continuity. But it somehow works in the end. The main problem with the film, from my perspective, is the acting job of Gorden Levitt, who I think fails to really capture the pain and exultation of love lost and found. I also feel the character is written with some serious flaws – a sell out with great hidden talent that never really translates well to the screen; particularly given the apartment he inhabits. The sort of drifting undertone of this genre seems to fail a little here as well, as all the characters seem to have money and a little too much material comfort for the roles they play. Yet 500 Days certainly works overall, with one left to wonder in the end if the question of love and fate is really resolved . . . or ever will be. (A-)
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
The Female and Collective Redemption
I am currently reading an advanced copy of a book on the Iraq War and humiliation for a review that should come out in the next few weeks. I don’t want to give away too much of the argument here, but one interesting point the author makes is that Abu Ghraib was reframed by the media as a story about two female soldiers and their “bad apple” actions. The two women were publicly vilified and essentially humiliated to both misdirect the public away from other images of rape and murder from the prison and a broader debate about torture and the war on terror. But the condemnation of these women also served to absolve the country of its blame in the death and destruction of Iraq. Just as a few “bad apples” were to blame for the corruption scandal that plagued the corporate world a couple of years before the financial crisis started, a few “bad apples” were behind the horror of Abu Ghraib – not the administration and its position on torture; nor the majority of the public that supported the war before it started.
An interesting subtext of this discourse though was that women were chosen to be the major scapegoats, just as Martha Steward was absurdly chosen as the scapegoat of insider trading on Wall Street a few years back. And just as French women after World War II became the scapegoats for pretty widespread French complicity and cooperation with the Germans during World War II (see Verhoeven’s underrated Black Book for a wonderful filmic treatment of this dynamic at play). This is simultaneously the case on both sides of the ideological battle over Iraq. Those against the war and occupation used the situation of Iraqi women to fortify their argument, while often simultaneously supporting those that make women second class citizens and worse (Hussein ironically improved the position of women in Iraq dramatically during his reign) and by conservatives to misdirect attention from the failures of the Bush administration and the aforementioned debates on torture tactics, which often involved endangering women or humiliating males by engendering violence and the torture itself.
The point is that women are often the scapegoats for collective national guilt. Relating this to film, I find it interesting that in times of financial crisis the number of horror films increase – where women are tortured and killed in a pornographic display of violence that often involves the metaphoric penetration of women with a knife or other weapon. In Drag Me to Hell, the generally likable character Christine Brown makes an arguably unethical choice against her better judgment to try to win a promotion at work. While this decision was driven by two males, it ultimately leads her on a path toward death and damnation in hell. The question then becomes if she symbolizes our collective degradation as a society based on greed trumping ethics and common decency. Is then a woman the embodiment of this failure; even as men continue to make most of the decisions that lead us in this direction?
An interesting subtext of this discourse though was that women were chosen to be the major scapegoats, just as Martha Steward was absurdly chosen as the scapegoat of insider trading on Wall Street a few years back. And just as French women after World War II became the scapegoats for pretty widespread French complicity and cooperation with the Germans during World War II (see Verhoeven’s underrated Black Book for a wonderful filmic treatment of this dynamic at play). This is simultaneously the case on both sides of the ideological battle over Iraq. Those against the war and occupation used the situation of Iraqi women to fortify their argument, while often simultaneously supporting those that make women second class citizens and worse (Hussein ironically improved the position of women in Iraq dramatically during his reign) and by conservatives to misdirect attention from the failures of the Bush administration and the aforementioned debates on torture tactics, which often involved endangering women or humiliating males by engendering violence and the torture itself.
The point is that women are often the scapegoats for collective national guilt. Relating this to film, I find it interesting that in times of financial crisis the number of horror films increase – where women are tortured and killed in a pornographic display of violence that often involves the metaphoric penetration of women with a knife or other weapon. In Drag Me to Hell, the generally likable character Christine Brown makes an arguably unethical choice against her better judgment to try to win a promotion at work. While this decision was driven by two males, it ultimately leads her on a path toward death and damnation in hell. The question then becomes if she symbolizes our collective degradation as a society based on greed trumping ethics and common decency. Is then a woman the embodiment of this failure; even as men continue to make most of the decisions that lead us in this direction?
Monday, July 27, 2009
Adaptations and their Discontents
Whenever a popular book is turned into a movie, fans tend to debate the choices made, the actors who will play their favorite characters, what’s missing and just as often complain about all of those choices. Whenever a new Harry Potter movie comes out, another comic book is adapted to TV or a popular book like Da Vinci Code or anything by Tom Clancy, John Grisham or the late Ian Fleming is released an outpouring of opinions and critiques emerges on the Internet like a hermeneutic deconstruction that rivals Derrida, the multiple readings of The Canterbury Tales, or even the Bible. It was in this vein that I did the opposite, reading a book, Pay it Forward, a student of mine reviewed after having already seen the rather mediocre film a few years earlier. The student had made some rather innocuous comments about the differences that I found anything but innocuous. So I forged onward to take on the project from the opposite end. The book, like the movie, is in many ways average except in its message – which is uplifting without being completely saccharine or bathed in bathos. But three changes are made which appear to have clear political undertones. The first is that the teacher, Reuben (Kevin Spacey), moves from Black to White. Second, the original book has the teacher’s injuries occur in Vietnam, not from an abusive father. And finally, the lead character, Trevor (played by Haley Joel Osment), dies saving a gay boy who dresses as a women, not a little kid being bullied by local gang bangers.
In all three cases, there is a softening of most of the edge the original book did have. The story, for those who didn’t see it or read it, revolves around a boy who comes up for a project to change the world. Essentially, he will start by helping three people and rather than asking to be paid back, he asks that they “pay it forward” to three more. The idea is that the “payment” is something huge, not just a little favor and that it not be compensated at all. Trevor sets out to find three people to help and in the process starts a worldwide movement that dramatically changes the world. But the film alters the narrative in ways that undermine part of its ecumenical message. The first and most important change, in my mind, is getting rid of the Black teacher and replacing him with Spacey. This decision allows the moviemakers to avoid the contentiousness of a pretty white women actually dating, having sex with and marrying a Black man (in this case a Black man with injuries much worse than those portrayed in the film). Eschewing one of the biggest unspoken taboos in American society and eschews the potential to challenge that verboten mix and its radical potential in confronting racism.
The second change, taking out the literal and figurative scars of war is interesting, as Hollywood certainly is not afraid to take on this topic – but its absence here individualizes the narrative in a particular sense and arguably unravels its more radical statement on social interaction. Finally, is the less than surprising choice to eliminate the hot button topic of homosexuality. These three choices collectively challenge some of the more radical messages of the book, making the story in line with the Jesus savior narrative so common in American films and moving from a communal sense of social improvement to individual mettle and the ability to face the past and turn one’s life around. The film is not unredeemable, but could have done much more to offer a Utopian, counterhegemonic message – instead becoming a feel good film about individuals overcoming their past and building a new future inspired by a naïve but inspirational child with more wisdom than the adults who surround him (a increasingly common theme on TV and movies). To not end on a negative note, it is an admirable idea and one that could do a lot to change the world we live in today, so pay a favor forward some time and see how it feels . . . (B+ for the positive message (B- as a film))
In all three cases, there is a softening of most of the edge the original book did have. The story, for those who didn’t see it or read it, revolves around a boy who comes up for a project to change the world. Essentially, he will start by helping three people and rather than asking to be paid back, he asks that they “pay it forward” to three more. The idea is that the “payment” is something huge, not just a little favor and that it not be compensated at all. Trevor sets out to find three people to help and in the process starts a worldwide movement that dramatically changes the world. But the film alters the narrative in ways that undermine part of its ecumenical message. The first and most important change, in my mind, is getting rid of the Black teacher and replacing him with Spacey. This decision allows the moviemakers to avoid the contentiousness of a pretty white women actually dating, having sex with and marrying a Black man (in this case a Black man with injuries much worse than those portrayed in the film). Eschewing one of the biggest unspoken taboos in American society and eschews the potential to challenge that verboten mix and its radical potential in confronting racism.
The second change, taking out the literal and figurative scars of war is interesting, as Hollywood certainly is not afraid to take on this topic – but its absence here individualizes the narrative in a particular sense and arguably unravels its more radical statement on social interaction. Finally, is the less than surprising choice to eliminate the hot button topic of homosexuality. These three choices collectively challenge some of the more radical messages of the book, making the story in line with the Jesus savior narrative so common in American films and moving from a communal sense of social improvement to individual mettle and the ability to face the past and turn one’s life around. The film is not unredeemable, but could have done much more to offer a Utopian, counterhegemonic message – instead becoming a feel good film about individuals overcoming their past and building a new future inspired by a naïve but inspirational child with more wisdom than the adults who surround him (a increasingly common theme on TV and movies). To not end on a negative note, it is an admirable idea and one that could do a lot to change the world we live in today, so pay a favor forward some time and see how it feels . . . (B+ for the positive message (B- as a film))
Saturday, July 25, 2009
The Post-Racial Dream in Doubt?
In the run-up to the election, after the media decided Obama was “Black enough” to be called a Black candidate for president and absurd theme started to build steam – we were living in a post-racial society. This idea proliferated across the mainstream media like nude pictures of Brittany Spears did across the Internet until it almost became conventional wisdom. If a Black man can be voted President, race clearly doesn’t matter in America. I think we have seen in the past two weeks two rather obvious examples of what a fallacy this argument is . . .
The first involved famed Harvard legal scholar Henry Louis Gates and his arrest for attempting to break into his own house (http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=8131953&page=1); something that clearly happens to white folks all the times in the suburbs of America. So what’s the big deal? To some liberals, it was yet another example of the racist police force of not only Boston but most of America. To conservatives it was a good chance to take shots at an uppity negro and put him in his place for daring to challenge said racist cops (http://www.examiner.com/x-5738-St-Louis-Political-Buzz-Examiner~y2009m7d24-VIDEO--Rush-Limbaugh-tells-mistruths-in-attack-President-Obamas-comments-on-Gates-arrest). The point that has not been adequately covered is that police are generally racist, do tend to profile and generally don’t go around shooting young white males by mistake (think New York City the past few years). Also worth asking is why a neighbor called 911 in the first place. By placing the focus on his access to Ivy League status and his overreaction to the police (http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/07/24/gates/index.html), what was lost was a real dialogue about why police would bother a man dressed like Gates, of Gate’s age, in his neighborhood, trying to enter his own house? And there is, of course, the broader question of whether this sort of thing goes on every day with average Black men across the country. Statistics and my own anecdotal knowledge say yes. Obama made this point in his follow-up press conference on Friday: http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/feature/2009/07/24/obama_gates/index.html (though softening his initial reaction).
The second issue involved an image sent out this week by a doctor against the Obama reforms (http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/07/conservative_activist_forwards_racist_pic_showing.php). The clearly racist image shows the lengths many conservatives will go to get their point across and build on the racism that still lurks barely below the surface for so many conservatives today. Reagan won on the latent racism and conservatives have been effectively using it ever since. We saw this clearly at a number of McCain campaign events leading up to the election and heard it almost daily in the mocking of Michelle Obama and Barack himself – together with the absurd claims that he was a Muslim terrorist.
Both cases bring into clear focus the nature of race relations in America today. The reality is that Blacks (and Latinos) have substantially higher drop out rates (45 vs 30%) and lower college completion rates (15% vs 30%), lower paying jobs (In 2007, $569/week vs. $716 for whites; and even in the same categories), high unemployment and poverty rates, lower income and wealth (the income gap has increased in the past 30 years from 63% of average white family in 1973 to 58% in 2004), much higher incarceration rates (6.4x as likely as whites to be in prison) and lower life expectancy (73.3 vs. 78.3). A study a couple of years ago found that Blacks receive worse healthcare than whites, often even from the same doctor. They go to poor schools that are underfunded with inexperienced teachers and thus perform worse academically. And they are the victims of all sorts of blatant and latent racism that undermine their futures. Now to quote these statistics will be called race baiting by many, but what is the image of Obama really doing?
A third is the Sotomayor hearings (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/07/14/sotomayor-faces-tough-questions-senators/). The conservative argument seemed to center around the idea that Sotomayor couldn’t leave her race at the door when adjudicating cases. Maybe this is partially true, but what it fails to acknowledge is either do whites. We assume in this country that white is a neutral color, but ask most people of color and they will disagree. Whiteness comes with its own biases, prejudices and sometimes outright racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. To question a Latina for her ability to remain objective seems absurd when one moves beyond the rhetoric of the law and justice as a blindfolded woman to recognize, as Gates among many has argued for years, that the law is heavily influenced by the people deciding it and their political and social perspectives. One need only think of Gore vs. Bush as one example among thousands to recognize how important political ideology is to legal decision. Or how about Dred Scott or Plessy vs. Ferguson?
The first involved famed Harvard legal scholar Henry Louis Gates and his arrest for attempting to break into his own house (http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=8131953&page=1); something that clearly happens to white folks all the times in the suburbs of America. So what’s the big deal? To some liberals, it was yet another example of the racist police force of not only Boston but most of America. To conservatives it was a good chance to take shots at an uppity negro and put him in his place for daring to challenge said racist cops (http://www.examiner.com/x-5738-St-Louis-Political-Buzz-Examiner~y2009m7d24-VIDEO--Rush-Limbaugh-tells-mistruths-in-attack-President-Obamas-comments-on-Gates-arrest). The point that has not been adequately covered is that police are generally racist, do tend to profile and generally don’t go around shooting young white males by mistake (think New York City the past few years). Also worth asking is why a neighbor called 911 in the first place. By placing the focus on his access to Ivy League status and his overreaction to the police (http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/07/24/gates/index.html), what was lost was a real dialogue about why police would bother a man dressed like Gates, of Gate’s age, in his neighborhood, trying to enter his own house? And there is, of course, the broader question of whether this sort of thing goes on every day with average Black men across the country. Statistics and my own anecdotal knowledge say yes. Obama made this point in his follow-up press conference on Friday: http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/feature/2009/07/24/obama_gates/index.html (though softening his initial reaction).
The second issue involved an image sent out this week by a doctor against the Obama reforms (http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/07/conservative_activist_forwards_racist_pic_showing.php). The clearly racist image shows the lengths many conservatives will go to get their point across and build on the racism that still lurks barely below the surface for so many conservatives today. Reagan won on the latent racism and conservatives have been effectively using it ever since. We saw this clearly at a number of McCain campaign events leading up to the election and heard it almost daily in the mocking of Michelle Obama and Barack himself – together with the absurd claims that he was a Muslim terrorist.
Both cases bring into clear focus the nature of race relations in America today. The reality is that Blacks (and Latinos) have substantially higher drop out rates (45 vs 30%) and lower college completion rates (15% vs 30%), lower paying jobs (In 2007, $569/week vs. $716 for whites; and even in the same categories), high unemployment and poverty rates, lower income and wealth (the income gap has increased in the past 30 years from 63% of average white family in 1973 to 58% in 2004), much higher incarceration rates (6.4x as likely as whites to be in prison) and lower life expectancy (73.3 vs. 78.3). A study a couple of years ago found that Blacks receive worse healthcare than whites, often even from the same doctor. They go to poor schools that are underfunded with inexperienced teachers and thus perform worse academically. And they are the victims of all sorts of blatant and latent racism that undermine their futures. Now to quote these statistics will be called race baiting by many, but what is the image of Obama really doing?
A third is the Sotomayor hearings (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/07/14/sotomayor-faces-tough-questions-senators/). The conservative argument seemed to center around the idea that Sotomayor couldn’t leave her race at the door when adjudicating cases. Maybe this is partially true, but what it fails to acknowledge is either do whites. We assume in this country that white is a neutral color, but ask most people of color and they will disagree. Whiteness comes with its own biases, prejudices and sometimes outright racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. To question a Latina for her ability to remain objective seems absurd when one moves beyond the rhetoric of the law and justice as a blindfolded woman to recognize, as Gates among many has argued for years, that the law is heavily influenced by the people deciding it and their political and social perspectives. One need only think of Gore vs. Bush as one example among thousands to recognize how important political ideology is to legal decision. Or how about Dred Scott or Plessy vs. Ferguson?
Friday, July 24, 2009
Bipartisanship and the Status Quo
When Bush won the election in 2000, the consensus was that he should be bipartisan in his approach to governance. He, of course, did the opposite and charged Democrats with being “partisan” whenever they didn’t agree with anything he wanted to do from deregulation and tax cuts to the rich to the war on terror and foreign policy in general. Luckily for him, they generally followed his lead and had little power to do anything when they didn’t. Now Obama has won the election and elements of the media again place the expectation of bipartisanship on his shoulders (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203946904574298582782451614.html). Complaints have come from across the aisle that Obama has abandoned his “post partisan” ideas and is now running roughshod over them with his “ideological” legislation. Yet wasn’t this the point of the election in the first place? It was not to address the “governmental gridlock” as many argued, but to actually change things in the country (at least that’s my reading). The country was fed up with Bush and not happy with Democrats that lacked the votes or resolve to challenge him. The financial crisis, lurking healthcare, retirement and environment crises and sense that government was serving corporate and elite interests and ignoring the rest of us all pointed toward a strong desire for change: a government that actually listened to and served the citizenry of the country.
A more reasoned argument comes from Ed Gilgore today in The New Republic (http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/07/23/is-obama-redefining-bipartisanship.aspx). Republicans showed right from the start that they are not really in a bipartisan mood and are in fact partisan girls in a partisan world. Again we see the effectiveness of their strategy, as Obama’s poll numbers drop. We are the sensible ones who want to go slowly. Obama is radical and we need to stop him. But really the Republicans just want to restore the status quo of the past 30 years – small government, limited regulation, lower taxes for the wealthy and the dismantling of social programs. The fact that we remain in a financial crisis, that the healthcare system is in looming doom, that we need to address income and wealth inequalities in this country and that race and gender still matter are beyond the scope of the Republican discourse or ideologically fixed position. The strategy only works when people don’t think or listen and blindly follow the framing the mainstream media offers. One wonders if the resolve exists to actually take on the power elites and make fundamental changes to the country we live in. We shall soon see . . .
A more reasoned argument comes from Ed Gilgore today in The New Republic (http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2009/07/23/is-obama-redefining-bipartisanship.aspx). Republicans showed right from the start that they are not really in a bipartisan mood and are in fact partisan girls in a partisan world. Again we see the effectiveness of their strategy, as Obama’s poll numbers drop. We are the sensible ones who want to go slowly. Obama is radical and we need to stop him. But really the Republicans just want to restore the status quo of the past 30 years – small government, limited regulation, lower taxes for the wealthy and the dismantling of social programs. The fact that we remain in a financial crisis, that the healthcare system is in looming doom, that we need to address income and wealth inequalities in this country and that race and gender still matter are beyond the scope of the Republican discourse or ideologically fixed position. The strategy only works when people don’t think or listen and blindly follow the framing the mainstream media offers. One wonders if the resolve exists to actually take on the power elites and make fundamental changes to the country we live in. We shall soon see . . .
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Framing the Debate . . .
George Lakoff has been writing for several years about the importance of framing and metaphors in political discourse (http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/10/27_lakoff.shtml). Conservatives have generally been better at framing debates – for example renaming the inheritance tax the “death tax” or arguing that we must “support the troops” after the war began to dismantle debate – and have thus had the ability to win elections and largely control debate in the public sphere. That was until Barak Obama came along. He ran a brilliant rhetorical campaign based on framing himself as essentially three things: “hope,” “change” and “not Bush.” This strategy helped him handily win the election and pull in larger majorities in the House and Senate.
Since then, the remnants of the old conservative order have been challenging him at every turn. While many have complained about the love affair between the media and Obama (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/04/20/_media_cover_obama_like_hes_ultimate_a-list_celebrity__96072.html), I believe a closer look in fact shows the power of conservatives to steer the debate to their favor. Obama is receiving the same coverage most new presidents do, and often receiving a more critical eye than most. I remember one article that came out a few weeks after his presidency began that argued that the honeymoon period was already over.
On two issues, I believe we are seeing the effectiveness of the conservative rhetorical machine: 1) the economy and 2) healthcare. While some positive signs are developing on the economy, the fundamental issues remain and unemployment is still rising. But conservatives effectively altered the nature of the debate from the economy to soaring debt and thus undermined any attempts to build a second recovery bill that could push the country forward. In the process, they have put a serious dent in Obama’s approval ratings right from the outset, way before the bill could have any positive effects (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/19/AR2009071902176_pf.html). More importantly, they have moved us away from the idea that government could actually help us more equitably balance the needs of the many and the desires and greed of the few – thus returning us the key issue that led to their rise under Reagan.
On healthcare, the fear campaign of the healthcare industry together with a misinformation campaign about what’s happening in countries with socialized medicine (http://www.prwatch.org/node/8422) has dominated the debate, undermining a necessary change in how we structure our healthcare system in America. One wonders why so few talk about the pandemic-like obesity problem, huge rise in diabetes and autism, low life expectancy and high infant mortality rates and the incredibly high rates of unnecessary procedures that plague America today. On top of this is a pharmaceutical industry that claims to need to charge astronomical prices for drugs that are much cheaper everywhere else, because of innovation – even as they spend huge sums on advertising, often to get us to buy drugs we don’t really need for diseases they sometimes create for this purpose like “General Anxiety Disorder.” Who the hell doesn’t have general anxiety in today’s world?
In any case, the power of framing appears to again be serving the cause of conservatives and Democrats and progressives need to be vigilant if they are to counteract current efforts to undermine real change. To miss this opportunity for real change could cost the party its majority in short order and the country its future in the long run.
Since then, the remnants of the old conservative order have been challenging him at every turn. While many have complained about the love affair between the media and Obama (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/04/20/_media_cover_obama_like_hes_ultimate_a-list_celebrity__96072.html), I believe a closer look in fact shows the power of conservatives to steer the debate to their favor. Obama is receiving the same coverage most new presidents do, and often receiving a more critical eye than most. I remember one article that came out a few weeks after his presidency began that argued that the honeymoon period was already over.
On two issues, I believe we are seeing the effectiveness of the conservative rhetorical machine: 1) the economy and 2) healthcare. While some positive signs are developing on the economy, the fundamental issues remain and unemployment is still rising. But conservatives effectively altered the nature of the debate from the economy to soaring debt and thus undermined any attempts to build a second recovery bill that could push the country forward. In the process, they have put a serious dent in Obama’s approval ratings right from the outset, way before the bill could have any positive effects (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/19/AR2009071902176_pf.html). More importantly, they have moved us away from the idea that government could actually help us more equitably balance the needs of the many and the desires and greed of the few – thus returning us the key issue that led to their rise under Reagan.
On healthcare, the fear campaign of the healthcare industry together with a misinformation campaign about what’s happening in countries with socialized medicine (http://www.prwatch.org/node/8422) has dominated the debate, undermining a necessary change in how we structure our healthcare system in America. One wonders why so few talk about the pandemic-like obesity problem, huge rise in diabetes and autism, low life expectancy and high infant mortality rates and the incredibly high rates of unnecessary procedures that plague America today. On top of this is a pharmaceutical industry that claims to need to charge astronomical prices for drugs that are much cheaper everywhere else, because of innovation – even as they spend huge sums on advertising, often to get us to buy drugs we don’t really need for diseases they sometimes create for this purpose like “General Anxiety Disorder.” Who the hell doesn’t have general anxiety in today’s world?
In any case, the power of framing appears to again be serving the cause of conservatives and Democrats and progressives need to be vigilant if they are to counteract current efforts to undermine real change. To miss this opportunity for real change could cost the party its majority in short order and the country its future in the long run.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Shilling the Poor . . . and Everyone Else
A recent study by University of Chicago economists Bertrand and Morse looked at the opportunity costs of payday lending and whether more information would change the behavior of borrowers (http://www.slate.com/id/2223378/?wpisrc=eDialog). They found that there were marginal changes in behavior when borrowers became aware of the longer term costs of these loans (10% reduction in borrowing). They thus argue for more information disclosure for borrowers. The more fundamental question, of how we can allow 400% interest rates in contemporary society, remains largely unexamined. This is not surprising coming from the epicenter of capitalist cheerleading. But even as Ohio and the military cap interest rates, much of the country has done little to address the general rise in the cost of borrowing for consumers.
Even as interest rates were dipping in the 90s, credit cards and other lenders gained considerable advantages through the banking reform passed late in Clinton’s term. Anyway remember those 30-day waive periods when no interest was charged or $5 late fees? Now banks and credit card companies charge late and over the limit fees the day payments are due and those fees have risen to $35. They also raise the interest rates on accounts the second they are maximized, generally to rates close to 40%. Not only are the poor being screwed by the astronomical rates of payday borrowing, but the average citizen has been penalized by bank efforts to squeeze even more money out of us borrowers. The latest proposal of the banking industry is to start charging people for being good customers (i.e., paying off their balances on time). They want to charge annual fees to this group and maybe even penalties for paying off balances on time. As with the healthcare reforms currently being weakened by corporate interests, the question we need to ask ourselves is whether we really believe that bowing to these interests really serves the common good.
Even as interest rates were dipping in the 90s, credit cards and other lenders gained considerable advantages through the banking reform passed late in Clinton’s term. Anyway remember those 30-day waive periods when no interest was charged or $5 late fees? Now banks and credit card companies charge late and over the limit fees the day payments are due and those fees have risen to $35. They also raise the interest rates on accounts the second they are maximized, generally to rates close to 40%. Not only are the poor being screwed by the astronomical rates of payday borrowing, but the average citizen has been penalized by bank efforts to squeeze even more money out of us borrowers. The latest proposal of the banking industry is to start charging people for being good customers (i.e., paying off their balances on time). They want to charge annual fees to this group and maybe even penalties for paying off balances on time. As with the healthcare reforms currently being weakened by corporate interests, the question we need to ask ourselves is whether we really believe that bowing to these interests really serves the common good.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Movie Review: The Girlfriend Experience
Soderberg’s latest, The Girlfriend Experience (2009), continues his trend of intermingling small and large projects. Coming on the heals of the two-part Che series and the entertaining blockbuster Ocean’s Thirteen, the film follows a high priced call girl and her entrepreneurial trainer boyfriend as the financial crisis heats up on the heals of the election. The film was shot on a shoe string budget reported at $1.4 million and stars a real porn star, Sasha Grey. The narrative follows her as she meets with clients, makes business decisions, fights with her boyfriend and is interviewed in a restaurant by a journalist. As with most Soderberg films, hand held cameras capture much of the action and the film jumps around in time, centering on the interview.
What is interesting about the film, besides a decent acting job by Grey and the other relative unknowns who make up the cast, is the film’s underlying message about the cost of centering society on wealth and greed. In Sex, Lies and Videotapes, Soderberg deconstructed the changing nature of desire in a world where video and television had made the approximation of desire more interesting or enticing than its instantiation in the real (at least for some). Here he arguably moves on to a deeper issue, which is the ways in which people have commodified not only themselves but everyone around them. The journalist talks about her “iron door armor” and who she might open it up for. We find out it is not her boyfriend, who she is willing to toss aside after meeting a new client for one day – a client she decides to go away with for the weekend. In the end, the client doesn’t show up, explaining that we would feel too guilty leaving his wife and kids. It is the coldness she shows toward her boyfriend in explaining this new man that perfectly captures the nature of so many interactions today.
People have been taught to brand themselves to maximize their ability to sell themselves to whoever they want to entice, be it a movie or music agent, a boyfriend or girlfriend, a potential life mate or the businessman or boss they want to impress. In the process, the nature of relationships deteriorates, to the extent that instrumental rationality seems to become the foundation of friendship and love alike. This is obviously not the case with all, but I see it a lot in New York City and even more when I lived in Los Angeles. The process of commodification of love, happiness and friendship means more than alienation from others though, it could mean alienation from ourselves and our needs, wants and desires. This is exactly the point Marcuse made in Eros and Civilization and relates to Heidegger’s critique of an inauthentic existence. The character Sasha’s absence of affect as she makes decisions that affect not only her own life but those around her perfectly captures the nature of this alienation. She is not alienated from her labor per se, but from her deeper desiring system and real social connection. We also see this with her boyfriend Chris, who is constantly in the process of selling himself and his ideas, ultimately undermining his primary job.
The film has done only $680,765 domestically and thus has been seen by very few people. While the Ocean series essentially celebrates capitalism, though the sort of rogue capitalism that attacks traditional success (a nod to the true American Dream), here we see Soderberg provide a powerful critique of its deleterious effects on us as human beings and a society. Whether or not this was his intention, he again shows himself as possessing an uncanny ability to coexist in the world of megasuccess and true art, deconstructing society with a keen eye that builds on individual characters and their relationship to the surrounding world. This is what all good art does, and what Hollywood so often neglects to do. Too bad so few will actually see it. (A-)
P.S. On a side note, I happened to catch on F/X a few minutes of another film, Cruel Intentions, that critiques the excesses of contemporary society though with the usual Hollywood sensibility and simple moral ending. I flipped it on just as the infamous scene between Sarah Michelle Gellar and Selma Blair in Central Park began. What was odd was that it was missing a kind of essential aspect of that scene – the actual kiss that won them an MTV award. I was baffled until I thought about where it was on the dial and the absurdity and hypocrisy of contemporary American society. It’s certainly comforting to know that we are protecting our children from even a hint of gay sex, particularly as it takes them about ten seconds to find it on Google.
What is interesting about the film, besides a decent acting job by Grey and the other relative unknowns who make up the cast, is the film’s underlying message about the cost of centering society on wealth and greed. In Sex, Lies and Videotapes, Soderberg deconstructed the changing nature of desire in a world where video and television had made the approximation of desire more interesting or enticing than its instantiation in the real (at least for some). Here he arguably moves on to a deeper issue, which is the ways in which people have commodified not only themselves but everyone around them. The journalist talks about her “iron door armor” and who she might open it up for. We find out it is not her boyfriend, who she is willing to toss aside after meeting a new client for one day – a client she decides to go away with for the weekend. In the end, the client doesn’t show up, explaining that we would feel too guilty leaving his wife and kids. It is the coldness she shows toward her boyfriend in explaining this new man that perfectly captures the nature of so many interactions today.
People have been taught to brand themselves to maximize their ability to sell themselves to whoever they want to entice, be it a movie or music agent, a boyfriend or girlfriend, a potential life mate or the businessman or boss they want to impress. In the process, the nature of relationships deteriorates, to the extent that instrumental rationality seems to become the foundation of friendship and love alike. This is obviously not the case with all, but I see it a lot in New York City and even more when I lived in Los Angeles. The process of commodification of love, happiness and friendship means more than alienation from others though, it could mean alienation from ourselves and our needs, wants and desires. This is exactly the point Marcuse made in Eros and Civilization and relates to Heidegger’s critique of an inauthentic existence. The character Sasha’s absence of affect as she makes decisions that affect not only her own life but those around her perfectly captures the nature of this alienation. She is not alienated from her labor per se, but from her deeper desiring system and real social connection. We also see this with her boyfriend Chris, who is constantly in the process of selling himself and his ideas, ultimately undermining his primary job.
The film has done only $680,765 domestically and thus has been seen by very few people. While the Ocean series essentially celebrates capitalism, though the sort of rogue capitalism that attacks traditional success (a nod to the true American Dream), here we see Soderberg provide a powerful critique of its deleterious effects on us as human beings and a society. Whether or not this was his intention, he again shows himself as possessing an uncanny ability to coexist in the world of megasuccess and true art, deconstructing society with a keen eye that builds on individual characters and their relationship to the surrounding world. This is what all good art does, and what Hollywood so often neglects to do. Too bad so few will actually see it. (A-)
P.S. On a side note, I happened to catch on F/X a few minutes of another film, Cruel Intentions, that critiques the excesses of contemporary society though with the usual Hollywood sensibility and simple moral ending. I flipped it on just as the infamous scene between Sarah Michelle Gellar and Selma Blair in Central Park began. What was odd was that it was missing a kind of essential aspect of that scene – the actual kiss that won them an MTV award. I was baffled until I thought about where it was on the dial and the absurdity and hypocrisy of contemporary American society. It’s certainly comforting to know that we are protecting our children from even a hint of gay sex, particularly as it takes them about ten seconds to find it on Google.
Monday, July 20, 2009
To Be Young at Heart . . .
In some ways, it was a heartbreaking weekend for the old timers – with Tom Watson blowing it on the 18th hole of the British Open (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/20/sports/golf/20cink.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print) and Lance Armstrong all but ceding the Tour de France after his teammate Alberto Contador burst ahead in the final 3 ½ miles of the 15th Stage (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/20/sports/cycling/20tour.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print). On the other hand, Watson’s near victory was an extraordinary achievement at 59. The oldest major winner in golf history was Julius Boros at 48 years old (1968 PGA Championship), with the second oldest being the more famous 1986 Master’s winner Jack Nicholas at 46. But Watson has not had the game to compete with the youngsters in 20 years. It was only in returning to Turnberry, where he won the shootout with Nicholas in 1977 that the old magic that won him 5 British Opens returned. The stage was set, everyone was ready to cheer and then cruel fate sent his second shot over the green and the third putt ran just long enough for his Achilles heal to send spasms of fear into Watson and the millions of cheering fans around the green and television sets. He missed with a weak effort and suddenly a playoff was on. It is the odd tendency of golf to too often end with the leader choking on the last day, or sometimes the last few holes. Crowd favorite Phil Mickelson has made a career of it (with a few stirring exceptions), Greg Norman will always be remembered for it (particularly his masters collapse) and a long list of others are forever memorialized as snapshots of near majesty; at least in their own subconscious bitterness.
Watson’s miss is a bit more bittersweet than most, as it reflected the collective resolve that keeps many of us pushing forward against the tides of age and deterioration. It was more than a golf story, it was the story of humanity itself and our struggles against the intractable march toward obsolescence and our desire to transcend a world that is increasingly defined by the wants, needs and largely manufactured desires of the young. We have deified youth like no previous generation, and particularly in the United States where marketers long ago realized the buying power and manipulative potential of the young. From Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers to the aging Hillary Duff, Amanda Bynes, Christina Aguilera, Lyndsey Lohan and, of course, Brittany Spears, the public sphere of entertainment has become increasingly dominated by those who have the business savy of the middle aged but none of the wisdom that provides anything but cookie-cutter entertainment to their peers. Enough adults play along with these rather crass marketing campaigns to keep a new generation of pre-adolescents dreaming of the fame that a few lucky ones are guaranteed to achieve.
Lance Armstrong’s loss had a similar story line, though at 37 he is only old within the confines of his sport. Armstrong against symbolizes the push against the tide of youth though, together with the broader significance of his achievement – coming back from cancer to win the European-dominated ultimate test of endurance seven times. He is a symbol of American resolve and arguably, because of this, despised by the power brokers of the sport, who are constantly harassing him as a doper. Armstrong did not have the legs to keep up with his younger competitor yesterday, but he does sit in second place and has shown that even at his age, he is among the elites of a sport that is defined by the acumen to accept pain most of us would run away from, not towards.
In both cases I was reminded of an argument made by Hans Gumbrecht (http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/gumbrecht.html) a few years ago at a summer program I attended at Cornell – that sports offer entryway to the sublime. In sports, we have the opportunity to sit as spectators and watch the fading opportunity for glory – that once defined much of ancient life. We can see the spectacle of physical feats that seem to transcend our limits as humans, to see last second heroics that bring sweet victory, to witness historic wins and losses and to align ourselves with our favorite players and teams and share in their thrills and agony. We experience the heightening of emotions that accompanies our strange identification with the players and teams, our sense that something is at stake in our own lives with each success and failure. In fact, we often speak of “we” when describing the home team, as if we were out there on the field toiling away for victory, as if we were making decisions about the team, as if we had the power to root our brethren toward victory. The truth is we sometimes do – as almost all teams do better at home than away. Sports thus offer not only access to the sublime through its transcendence of the mundane and quotidian, but that sense of community that I believe we all long for. In Armstrong and Watson, we have seen two ad hoc communities form – built around a collective desire for age to win out over youth just one time, to cheat the omnipresent but cloaked hints of death for a moment longer and to prolong that too short march toward the sweet hereafter with dignity and aplomb. Even in loss they have won that battle not only for themselves but all of us.
Watson’s miss is a bit more bittersweet than most, as it reflected the collective resolve that keeps many of us pushing forward against the tides of age and deterioration. It was more than a golf story, it was the story of humanity itself and our struggles against the intractable march toward obsolescence and our desire to transcend a world that is increasingly defined by the wants, needs and largely manufactured desires of the young. We have deified youth like no previous generation, and particularly in the United States where marketers long ago realized the buying power and manipulative potential of the young. From Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers to the aging Hillary Duff, Amanda Bynes, Christina Aguilera, Lyndsey Lohan and, of course, Brittany Spears, the public sphere of entertainment has become increasingly dominated by those who have the business savy of the middle aged but none of the wisdom that provides anything but cookie-cutter entertainment to their peers. Enough adults play along with these rather crass marketing campaigns to keep a new generation of pre-adolescents dreaming of the fame that a few lucky ones are guaranteed to achieve.
Lance Armstrong’s loss had a similar story line, though at 37 he is only old within the confines of his sport. Armstrong against symbolizes the push against the tide of youth though, together with the broader significance of his achievement – coming back from cancer to win the European-dominated ultimate test of endurance seven times. He is a symbol of American resolve and arguably, because of this, despised by the power brokers of the sport, who are constantly harassing him as a doper. Armstrong did not have the legs to keep up with his younger competitor yesterday, but he does sit in second place and has shown that even at his age, he is among the elites of a sport that is defined by the acumen to accept pain most of us would run away from, not towards.
In both cases I was reminded of an argument made by Hans Gumbrecht (http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/gumbrecht.html) a few years ago at a summer program I attended at Cornell – that sports offer entryway to the sublime. In sports, we have the opportunity to sit as spectators and watch the fading opportunity for glory – that once defined much of ancient life. We can see the spectacle of physical feats that seem to transcend our limits as humans, to see last second heroics that bring sweet victory, to witness historic wins and losses and to align ourselves with our favorite players and teams and share in their thrills and agony. We experience the heightening of emotions that accompanies our strange identification with the players and teams, our sense that something is at stake in our own lives with each success and failure. In fact, we often speak of “we” when describing the home team, as if we were out there on the field toiling away for victory, as if we were making decisions about the team, as if we had the power to root our brethren toward victory. The truth is we sometimes do – as almost all teams do better at home than away. Sports thus offer not only access to the sublime through its transcendence of the mundane and quotidian, but that sense of community that I believe we all long for. In Armstrong and Watson, we have seen two ad hoc communities form – built around a collective desire for age to win out over youth just one time, to cheat the omnipresent but cloaked hints of death for a moment longer and to prolong that too short march toward the sweet hereafter with dignity and aplomb. Even in loss they have won that battle not only for themselves but all of us.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Horatio Alger Story 2009: Paid for by Uncle Sam
Two articles today highlight the competing visions of America’s future. In the first in the Washington Post, we learn that AIG wants to give its top executives their promised bonuses: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/09/AR2009070902702_pf.html. Largely unmentioned in the article, is why they should be paid bonuses. Hasn’t AIG contributed substantially to the global financial crisis? Aren’t bonuses usually given for actually doing a good job? And should the tax payers really fund bonuses for those who still have jobs, when so many don’t? On top of these questions, is the reality that AIG could soon be insolvent: ‘“Our valuation includes a 70 percent chance that the equity at AIG is zero,’ Joshua Shanker of Citigroup wrote in a note to investors. He cites the continuing risks posed by the company's exotic derivative contracts, called credit-default swaps, and its sale of assets at low prices. AIG's stock plummeted by more than 25 percent yesterday.”
In the second article in the New York Times, the House has come up with an interesting plan to fund half of the new healthcare initiative – paying for it with a surcharge tax for those making over $250,000 (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/11/health/policy/11health.html?ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=print). This seems in line with the populist undertones that helped Obama win the election, but Republicans and conservative “blue dog” Democrats are already trying to undermine the plan. Will we see a profound change in the way our government does business or eternal return to the same as our future stands in jeopardy? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
In the second article in the New York Times, the House has come up with an interesting plan to fund half of the new healthcare initiative – paying for it with a surcharge tax for those making over $250,000 (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/11/health/policy/11health.html?ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=print). This seems in line with the populist undertones that helped Obama win the election, but Republicans and conservative “blue dog” Democrats are already trying to undermine the plan. Will we see a profound change in the way our government does business or eternal return to the same as our future stands in jeopardy? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Thursday, July 09, 2009
The Taking of My Money 1 . . . 2 . . . 3
Remakes are a tricky undertaking under the best of circumstances. Take Landslide by both the Dixie Chicks and Smashing Pumpkins. I find the former wanting in several ways and the latter a worthy update to the original – written and performed by Stevie Nicks for her father. Clearly the poet of the alt-rock scene, Billy Corrigan, was doing something different with the song and, at least for me, it resonated at a number of levels. The Dixie Chicks remake smacks of interest in fast money, and based on the radio play alone, I assume it has succeeded at that level. But there is not much done to improve the song or make it their own. I also think of Stan Ridgeway and his remake of Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire. Again the creator of Mexican Radio put his own signature on a classic and gave us his quirky, compelling rearticulation (which I find more interesting than Social Distortion’s take, by the way).
But to a largely unimaginative movie industry remakes tend to be gold on the cheap. Just find a good director, some big (not necessarily good) actors and/or actresses and boom – money, money, money. Making the remake worthy of viewing, on the other hand, is a more complicated process. The first question that comes to mind is why are we remaking this film? Is there a reason, or is it simply to make money? Second, what am I adding to the original? Anything compelling? Third, why should I see this rather than go to the rental store or add it to my Netflix list? To start, I'll offer a series of decent remakes: Casino Royale (2006), The Departed (2006), Heat (1995), The Thing (1982), Scarface (1983), Cape Fear (1991), The Ring (2002), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), The Hills Have Eyes (2006), Dawn of the Dead (2004), The Fly (1986) and The Count of Monte Cristo (2002). Horror films fare well on my list and that of many others (see http://www.popsyndicate.com/column/story/the_list_25_best_movie_remakes_of_all_time_part_i for a list, though I disagree with many entries). Making clever foreign films into American fare, less so – as is every Tim Burton attempt (who I consider one of the most overrated directors in the history of film). Here is my long list of forgettable ones from just the past few years: Alfie (2004), The Out of Towners (1999), Sleuth (2007), The Ladykillers (2004), Vanilla Sky (2001 - Original Obre Sus Ojos), The Italian Job (2003), Planet of the Apes (2001), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), City of Angels (1998), The Truth About Charlie (2002), Scent of a Woman (1992; I know many will disagree) , The Invasion (2007), Poiseidon (2006), Pyscho (1998, why?????), The Stepford Wives (2004), War of the Worlds (2005), The Wicker Man (2006), Pink Panther (2006), The Jackal (1997) and The Omen (2006) to name a few. In all cases, the formula involves bringing in a a young or aging established actor is brought in to give us a new interpretation of the classic (Steve Martin appears a couple of times here, the fading Marky Mark twice and exes Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman twice each) and make the film marketable, the story is generally updated to give it contemporary relevance, cinematography and costuming are generally important and, if applicable, the humor is generally over the top and stupid (like most Steve Martin and Robin Williams films in recent years).
And that brings us to the less-talented of the Hollywood Scott brothers. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is one of the most pointless remakes I have ever seen, and up there on the list of all-time most pointless movies for that matter. John Travolta plays a completely unredeemable character that kills for no other reason than his own greed and revenge against the city that caught him in his Wall Street scam. Caught in the middle is Denzel Washington, who while capable as usual, does little here to keep my attention. After building tension in the middle part of the movie, the first two bad guys are caught too easily in the middle of the street and the final chase scene with Travolta as uninteresting a denouement as one can imagine. The plot twist might make unemployed Hedge Fund traders salivate, but it left me cold. Gone is the clever cynicism of the original, the compelling acting of Walter Matthau, the mercurial malevolence of Robert Shaw as Mr. Blue, the frenetic energy of the mayor and police and the buildup to a clever escape plan, only to be foiled in the end. Here the escape plan is faultily hatched and uninteresting to watch as it unravels. The humor is sparse and the pointless death less interesting than any Schwarzenegger film I can think of. Tony Scott has been making bad films for some time now, including the truly terribly Domino (2005), Man on Fire (2004), and the Last Boy Scout (1991), the entertaining (if not good) Déjà vu (2006), Enemy of the State (1998), Days of Thunder (1990) and Revenge (1990). But he did do the classics True Romance (1993), which introduced the world to Quentin Tarrentino (as a writer), and Top Gun (1986). Maybe I was just expecting too much of someone who peaked 16 years ago. (C-)
By the way, I reviewed Public Enemies a few days ago, and while that is a loose remake, it would certainly fit on my list as well. The point seems to be that it is best to leave ideas already created in the can unless you have some way to actually improve on them – as is often the case with horror films, but less so with classics. The point for us viewers is to stop going to these crap fests so Hollywood finally starts to make quality films in months that don’t start with a D.
But to a largely unimaginative movie industry remakes tend to be gold on the cheap. Just find a good director, some big (not necessarily good) actors and/or actresses and boom – money, money, money. Making the remake worthy of viewing, on the other hand, is a more complicated process. The first question that comes to mind is why are we remaking this film? Is there a reason, or is it simply to make money? Second, what am I adding to the original? Anything compelling? Third, why should I see this rather than go to the rental store or add it to my Netflix list? To start, I'll offer a series of decent remakes: Casino Royale (2006), The Departed (2006), Heat (1995), The Thing (1982), Scarface (1983), Cape Fear (1991), The Ring (2002), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), The Hills Have Eyes (2006), Dawn of the Dead (2004), The Fly (1986) and The Count of Monte Cristo (2002). Horror films fare well on my list and that of many others (see http://www.popsyndicate.com/column/story/the_list_25_best_movie_remakes_of_all_time_part_i for a list, though I disagree with many entries). Making clever foreign films into American fare, less so – as is every Tim Burton attempt (who I consider one of the most overrated directors in the history of film). Here is my long list of forgettable ones from just the past few years: Alfie (2004), The Out of Towners (1999), Sleuth (2007), The Ladykillers (2004), Vanilla Sky (2001 - Original Obre Sus Ojos), The Italian Job (2003), Planet of the Apes (2001), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), City of Angels (1998), The Truth About Charlie (2002), Scent of a Woman (1992; I know many will disagree) , The Invasion (2007), Poiseidon (2006), Pyscho (1998, why?????), The Stepford Wives (2004), War of the Worlds (2005), The Wicker Man (2006), Pink Panther (2006), The Jackal (1997) and The Omen (2006) to name a few. In all cases, the formula involves bringing in a a young or aging established actor is brought in to give us a new interpretation of the classic (Steve Martin appears a couple of times here, the fading Marky Mark twice and exes Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman twice each) and make the film marketable, the story is generally updated to give it contemporary relevance, cinematography and costuming are generally important and, if applicable, the humor is generally over the top and stupid (like most Steve Martin and Robin Williams films in recent years).
And that brings us to the less-talented of the Hollywood Scott brothers. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is one of the most pointless remakes I have ever seen, and up there on the list of all-time most pointless movies for that matter. John Travolta plays a completely unredeemable character that kills for no other reason than his own greed and revenge against the city that caught him in his Wall Street scam. Caught in the middle is Denzel Washington, who while capable as usual, does little here to keep my attention. After building tension in the middle part of the movie, the first two bad guys are caught too easily in the middle of the street and the final chase scene with Travolta as uninteresting a denouement as one can imagine. The plot twist might make unemployed Hedge Fund traders salivate, but it left me cold. Gone is the clever cynicism of the original, the compelling acting of Walter Matthau, the mercurial malevolence of Robert Shaw as Mr. Blue, the frenetic energy of the mayor and police and the buildup to a clever escape plan, only to be foiled in the end. Here the escape plan is faultily hatched and uninteresting to watch as it unravels. The humor is sparse and the pointless death less interesting than any Schwarzenegger film I can think of. Tony Scott has been making bad films for some time now, including the truly terribly Domino (2005), Man on Fire (2004), and the Last Boy Scout (1991), the entertaining (if not good) Déjà vu (2006), Enemy of the State (1998), Days of Thunder (1990) and Revenge (1990). But he did do the classics True Romance (1993), which introduced the world to Quentin Tarrentino (as a writer), and Top Gun (1986). Maybe I was just expecting too much of someone who peaked 16 years ago. (C-)
By the way, I reviewed Public Enemies a few days ago, and while that is a loose remake, it would certainly fit on my list as well. The point seems to be that it is best to leave ideas already created in the can unless you have some way to actually improve on them – as is often the case with horror films, but less so with classics. The point for us viewers is to stop going to these crap fests so Hollywood finally starts to make quality films in months that don’t start with a D.
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
Palin vs. Obama
Interesting news day. The spectacle of Jackson’s funeral, of course, leads the papers and online mags (http://www.slate.com/id/2222409/), but two stories show the growing chasm between both democrats and republicans and republicans and any semblance of reason. Obama has, in my estimation, taken another step in the right direction by arguing for limiting oil speculating (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/08/business/08cftc.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper). This is just the latest step in his attempt to restore some regulation over the markets and corporate activity – a necessary structural adjustment if we are to see a real, shared economic rejuvenation in the future. USA Today, on the other hand, reports that almost three in four Republicans would vote for Sarah Palin for President (http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-07-07-palin-poll_N.htm). Should I write that again – three in four Republicans would vote for Sarah Palin for president! I thought Bush was the least qualified president in history, but Palin makes him look like a near genius. Has the party lost its way this much? Has the insanity of the lunatic fringe moved to the mainstream? Can anyone truly believe Palin is ready to run the country, dealing with the financial crisis, Iraq and Afghanistan, Healthcare reform, or any of the challenges now facing the country? She seems as petulant and uninterested in anybody else’s opinions as Bush was (outside of Cheney and Rumsfeld, of course), and just as lacking of knowledge about the U.S,. and the world. Isn’t it time to move beyond the cult of celebrity and actually consider worthy candidates for president? Apparently not yet.
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Summer Movies
The early summer movies have been pretty disappointing, as has been the case for several years. Wolverine was episodic without any real heart and lacked substance beyond the explosions, special effects and salivating scenes of Jackman’s body (for women that is). The Proposal had some funny moments, but lacked genuine chemistry between the two leads Bullock and the likable Reynolds and sufficient time building up the budding romance so we cared about the de rigeur break up and reunion. Terminator Salvation was interminably long and again lacked sufficient character development to make me care (see below).
Maybe most disappointing is the downward turn in Mann’s talent that Public Enemies seems to hint at. Mann’s best work includes contemporary crime dramas set in Los Angeles (Heat, Collateral), historically compelling films like Last of the Mohicans and the politically charged The Insider. Here he follows his Miami Vice redux with another dud, on the heals of the disappointing Ali. Only Collateral saved a general decline in his work following the success of The Insider. Mann has certainly succeeded in the past with pensive, moody pseudo-thrillers like Manhunter and Heat (that seem to reference De Palma while moving beyond his aesthetic sensibility and adherence to Hitchcock-envy), but here there is little to back up impressive cinematography and acting by the two leads. The story lacks a coherent plot line, sufficient character development and a reason to like Dillinger, besides the fact that he’s played by the aging heartthrob Depp; that both men and women seem to equally love. The movie languors on much longer than needed, placing too much focus on enlongated shoot outs and not enough on what Hollywood has gotten better at – asking the why question regarding our favorite heroes and villains (too much with superheroes in my estimation). And the love story also lacks sufficient development to explain the depth of their connection. Like much of Hollywood mainstream fare these days, the film has all the elements to entertain us but none of the substance to keep up interested. Only Star Trek has really lived up to the hype so far, and this may be because I’ve always liked the series.
Veteran TV executive Barry Diller was recently quoted in Salon as saying “"Talent is the new limited resource . . . There's just not that much talent in the world, and talent almost always outs." (http://www.salon.com/books/excerpt/2009/07/06/scott_rosenberg/print.html) One wonders if he’s right. There seems to be far too many scions of the powerful acting, directing and producing in Hollywood, huge budgets for subpar films and a general decline in quality even as moviemaking itself improves. The troubling trend I see in American society in general is a growing distance between quality and success (film, business, etc.). What makes it more troubling is the quality that continues to exist on the edges. France’s Tell No One was a great thriller without most of the shortcomings we find in Americans films these days and a great plot twist at the end. The Brothers Bloom, while self-consciously derivative (particularly of the fading talent Wes Anderson), was fun, smart and engaging entertainment. And the crass, stupid The Hangover was downright funny, if nothing else. With so much talent swimming around, one wonders how Hollywood keeps finding ways to make money out of complete crap. But maybe that's because financial success is the only talent America truly esteems.
Side note: I did like Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell, which did have a $30 million budget. It was compelling film with a clever intermingling of spine-tingling surprises, over the top blood and gore and humorous mocking of itself.
Maybe most disappointing is the downward turn in Mann’s talent that Public Enemies seems to hint at. Mann’s best work includes contemporary crime dramas set in Los Angeles (Heat, Collateral), historically compelling films like Last of the Mohicans and the politically charged The Insider. Here he follows his Miami Vice redux with another dud, on the heals of the disappointing Ali. Only Collateral saved a general decline in his work following the success of The Insider. Mann has certainly succeeded in the past with pensive, moody pseudo-thrillers like Manhunter and Heat (that seem to reference De Palma while moving beyond his aesthetic sensibility and adherence to Hitchcock-envy), but here there is little to back up impressive cinematography and acting by the two leads. The story lacks a coherent plot line, sufficient character development and a reason to like Dillinger, besides the fact that he’s played by the aging heartthrob Depp; that both men and women seem to equally love. The movie languors on much longer than needed, placing too much focus on enlongated shoot outs and not enough on what Hollywood has gotten better at – asking the why question regarding our favorite heroes and villains (too much with superheroes in my estimation). And the love story also lacks sufficient development to explain the depth of their connection. Like much of Hollywood mainstream fare these days, the film has all the elements to entertain us but none of the substance to keep up interested. Only Star Trek has really lived up to the hype so far, and this may be because I’ve always liked the series.
Veteran TV executive Barry Diller was recently quoted in Salon as saying “"Talent is the new limited resource . . . There's just not that much talent in the world, and talent almost always outs." (http://www.salon.com/books/excerpt/2009/07/06/scott_rosenberg/print.html) One wonders if he’s right. There seems to be far too many scions of the powerful acting, directing and producing in Hollywood, huge budgets for subpar films and a general decline in quality even as moviemaking itself improves. The troubling trend I see in American society in general is a growing distance between quality and success (film, business, etc.). What makes it more troubling is the quality that continues to exist on the edges. France’s Tell No One was a great thriller without most of the shortcomings we find in Americans films these days and a great plot twist at the end. The Brothers Bloom, while self-consciously derivative (particularly of the fading talent Wes Anderson), was fun, smart and engaging entertainment. And the crass, stupid The Hangover was downright funny, if nothing else. With so much talent swimming around, one wonders how Hollywood keeps finding ways to make money out of complete crap. But maybe that's because financial success is the only talent America truly esteems.
Side note: I did like Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell, which did have a $30 million budget. It was compelling film with a clever intermingling of spine-tingling surprises, over the top blood and gore and humorous mocking of itself.
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