Supreme Court Sides with Corporations Again

The Supreme Court has again decided a case in favor of corporate interests, this time by ruling that the California law that sought to limit children's access to violent video games like Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Postal 2, Duke Nukem 3D and Mortal Kombat was unconstitutional: Slate. In their decision, the Court reaffirmed the long Puritanical tradition of saying protecting kids from sex is much more important than protecting them from violence. While I'm a strong proponent of first amendment rights, it is still true that children's rights are often undermined by, say, the rules of a school or of particular private spheres. And the rather vulgar messages of Grand Theft Auto in particular seems like it is well beyond the scope of first amendment rights. In fact, I think there is an interesting question of whether purchasing is really a form of speech -- just as one could argue that corporations spending money on campaigns and candidates is really a form of "speech" (ala the outrageous Citizens decision). So in the past year, the Roberts court has essentially ended class action suits, undermined the ability of even an entire gender to get together to sue a corporation (Wal*Mart) for discriminatory practices, said corporations can spend as much as they want to get candidates that support their interests (as if lobbying doesn't already play a huge role in insuring this to be the case) and a whole host of other decisions that allow corporate interests to trump the public good. When the government is sponsored by Corporate America for too long, I suppose we should expect that the courts will as well. But as collective bargaining is attacked across the country, not only with public service unions but in most professional sports leagues, I wonder how long it will be before corporate super rights become the de jure norm?

IMF Chief Takes Charge too Literally

I originally thought that the IMF chief had simply chased a maid down the hall -- now that I know more I want to apologize for this completely inappropriate entry ...

As nations across the world have complained since the 90s, the IMF seems more interested in screwing them then actually helping them recover. And it appears the IMF chief, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, took this charge too literally, chasing a maid down a hallway in his swanky New York hotel to try to, well, screw her in less ambiguous ways (CNN Story). The neoliberal, "Washington Consensus" policies propagated by the IMF since the 80s have been blamed by many (including Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz) for not only undermining the national sovereignty of developing and underdeveloped countries across the globe, but for making the situation of the countries and their citizens worse -- under the now almost absurd notion that liberalizing markets alone leads to economic growth and development. Under neoliberal policies (first envisioned by the Trilateral commission in the 70s), income inequality has grown, poverty has increased, the number of crises has risen and instability and insecurity have become the norm. But some multinational corporations and capitalists have done quite well under these policies, so it's probably a wash in the end. And if the chief of the IMF is going to screw all of us, maybe we should be happy he's at least trying to personalize the experience.

Footnote: I'm not making light of the horrible situation the housekeeper was put in, of course. It was just too compelling a metaphor to ignore.

Knowledge and Power

I am going to start considering an issue of my own research here -- the relationship between knowledge and power. To start this series of entries, I wanted to set out the terrain of the discussion. In a couple of papers I'm working on, I argue that one of the key projects of neoliberalism is to constrict or delimit the knowledge that is available to the public. I will expand on these ideas in coming posts, but here are the main arenas I'm considering:

1. K-12: the move to a focus on standards and testing is severely constricting what knowledge is focused on in schools (predominantly basic skills). Not only does this move away from more holistic notions of education, but severely limits spaces for creativity and true critical thinking. This is coupled with the tendency to focus schooling almost exclusively on economics and global competitiveness, legitimating the new global order and the training and sorting functions of schooling. And it is backed by the notion that teaching and teacher education can be improved through rationality and science, and that diversity and social justice are anathema to contemporary aims.
2. At the university level, similar pushes are underway. First is the attack on radical, or even progressive professors, through a number of channels. Second, is the push to vocationalize higher education, thus pushing its focus toward training high skilled workers and away from the humanities and any attempt to transform society or question entrenched knowledge. Third, it involves attempts to impose accountability and standards in college classes (together with increasing class size in many universities) -- taking away professor's autonomy. And crises are used in both cases to solidify these imperatives, by draining funding from any non-value-added programs and departments (e.g., those associated with liberal arts education and the humanities).
3. In the media and public sphere, there is a push toward "objectivity" that involves the contention that reporters are only supposed to report the news, not analyze it or hold those making news accountability for the truthfulness of their claims. I reported on the attacks against Anderson Cooper for calling Mubarek a liar -- which might have crossed the line a little, but can't the media take any position anymore? One wonders what happened to the spirit Woodward and Bernstein once inspired in the mainstream media to challenge entrenched power?
4. This is part of an overall perspective that certain types of knowledge are implicitly dangerous. In shifting the elites from those with money and power to professors, conservatives played on the hubris of too many leftists. They backed this with their reactionary project and a closed-mindedness to any alternatives. But I believe it exists among progressives and on the left as well -- as for example supporting free speech but trying to block speakers they don't like from college campuses and other forums. Parents and the general public too have fallen prey to this ideology -- that politics can and should be eliminated from education and the news. There seems to be a general meme that instrumental rationality should dominate not only education but all public policy -- with experts the sole determinant of decision-making.

Some initial thoughts that I will expand upon in the coming weeks ...

Modern American Male

I was just reading an old article by Malcolm Gladwell about the successful marketing of Dockers in the 80s and 90s. The advertisers used a strategy that challenged the ideas of masculinity, but only on the margins. Their first series of ads focused on an issue of great importance to baby boomer men -- male friendship. There was a general lack in the midst of the family and work lives, the inability to maintain close relationships with their friends. My disembodying the Dockers and having the actors engage in "natural" but fragmented conversation, it attached the pants to this abstract notion of friendship and a casual style that wasn't really stylish at all. Later, as sales began to fall, they moved to a new campaign -- based on creating an Ideal-Other that sort of cared about fashion, but without being emasculated in a serious way or becoming a fop. The Dockers ads sold conformity, through a general disinterested interest in style and fashion. The non-descript, safe Dockers needed accessories and thus expanded the fashion market for men by over 20 percent.

The newer ads however partially diverged from the old. Playing on the notion of the "canned-laughter" problem, they built around the idea that men needed simple ads with clear, uncomplicated messaged. The "canned-laughter" research found a fundamental difference between men and women. Women tended to integrate information in making decisions, thus not being as prone to be influenced by laugh-tracks, while men tended to make choices one way or another, and were thus more apt to be influenced by laugh-tracks, even for comics they otherwise wouldn't have found funny (it had little affect on "quality" comics). Women were thus more apt to integrate or synthesize information in decision making while men were more likely to select one choice and ignore evidence that confronted or contradicted that choice. The new ads altered the nature of male advertising by allowing the sexualization of the men, as women said "Nice Pants," in a series of circumstances. However, the sexuality had to be undercoded -- so the "naive" male was actually unaware of his sexual attractiveness and didn't get the girl, thus allowing an escape from the thought that they were again being emasculated and treated as sexual objects. A form of neurosis was at play here, where the interest in style and desirability had to be partially cloaked into an "aspirational reading" that was digestible.

Ultimately, the underlying message advertisers end up embracing is one of the simple male that they must play down to. Ignoring for this short entry the essentialism at the heart of the analysis, is the troubling implications. First, if it is true that men tend to select rather than integrate, does this help explain the conservative (and I would argue liberal) penchant to simply ignore confounding information? A choice is made and then the man becomes immune to ideology critique, or openness to even questioning their underlying assumptions. This seems to be a meme toward and one that essentially undermines democracy -- and certainly the more radical democracy based on deliberation and participation. And the second implication is that advertising appears to follow the central tenet of popular culture regarding men -- that essentially they are not only stupid and incurious, but this is the best way to sell to them. The underlying anti-intellectualism then becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy, if we believe that our wants, needs and desires are at least partially informed by the very consumer culture (or culture industry) that is based on these assumptions. Are films, television and advertisers constructing a male that is antithetical to the central tenets of modernity, thus constructing the postmodern man that is neurotic, alienated, cynical and disengaged? At a deeper level, what of the monomyths we have constructed in contemporary society? Are they even worse than Dirty Harry and the old John Wayne Cowboy? The brevity of this form precludes a more nuanced analysis, but the idea that we are promulgating a happily ignorant male who cloaks their deeper desires within media and advertising constructs certainly bodes poorly for not only democracy but our collective future. Does this help explain eight years of Bush and the Tea Party movement? Hmm, that sounds like one of those annoying questions that would make me think. I think I'll turn on the tv instead.

Movie Review: The Green Hornet

Yesterday I took a break from work and watched The Green Hornet, a $120 million movie that may have been the worst superhero action film ever made (though I hate to give short shrift to the equally terrible Spiderman III or the relatively dull Wolverine). Under the tutelage of the generally likable Seth Rogan (who both stars in the "movie" and co-wrote the script), the film was a disaster from beginning to end, with a narrative so tired I'm surprised it didn't put the camera to sleep during shooting and dialogue so flat it made Matzoh seem like it was bursting with yeasty vibrancy. The story, to those who haven't seen the film, revolves around a poor little rich kid (well not that little) who is lost, disappointing his father as he parties all day and night and sleeps with beautiful women that the story doesn't even bother to name. Then his father dies and our hero realizes he has to change his life, with the assistance of his father's mechanic Kato (Jay Chou) and Lenore Case (Cameron Diaz), who seems to have no role in the film but to provide some utterly uninteresting factoids about crime and a smile to Kato and Britt Reid (Rogan). The characters are as thinly developed as a finely cut slice of Swiss cheese, and the plot even less profound than an average Ziggy or Family Circus comic. Kato and Britt decide, after cutting the head of a statue of the fallen hero boss and father (Tom Wilkinson), to become criminals themselves to take down the criminal syndicate led by the Chudnofsky (played by the usually wonderful Christoph Waltz), who suffers from low self-esteem and salves this internal wound by simply killing all his enemies with a double barreled gun. Rarely has there been a less interesting evil antagonist matched against an equally uninteresting hero. The plot then turns around a corrupt politician (how original!), in this case a DA who is in cahoots with the criminal kingpin, and the attempt to stop him.

Lots of pointless action scenes follow, of course, culminating in a final shootout and the anti-Oedipal moment of returning the head to the dead father's statue -- as we learn he was an okay billionaire after all. Yet does the protagonist really grow? Does he get the girl? Do we even give a shit? The film was directed by Michel Gondry, who crafted what I consider one of the best movies of the just past decade -- the sublime Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind. Since then, like too many directors of his generation (including most obviously Wes Anderson), he seems to get worse with every movie. Aronofsky has certainly worked against this trend, but too many seem to revel in their own press too much and lose the edge that defined their early work. Like so much blockbuster fare of late, The Green Hornet, is a pointless piece of entertainment thrown together as a vehicle for the new crop of tepidly talented comedic stars. Where once we had the veritable brilliance of Eddie Murphy, John Belushi, the early Chevy Chase and Bill Murray, today we are stuck with Adam Sandler and his many brethren. Even Michael Myers has fallen into disrepair, losing his comedic touch to the point that I'm not sure he's even making films anymore (and don't really care if he is).

The deeper problem appears to be the low expectations we hold for comedy today and an underlying assumption that the American public cannot digest anything with a deeper intellectual backbone (except in Oscar season, if even then). Has the failure of the education system finally caught up with us? Has popular culture offered even a semblance of a commitment to quality? Or has America just gotten so stupid we don't know any better? I don't think the last question should be answered in the affirmative, but I fear that Hollywood has come to that conclusion -- or that it has simply lost its will to give real talent the freedom to create films really worth the $12 cost of entry.

Vampires and Desire

I have often wondered at the ongoing fascination with the Vampire. One could offer a simple analysis, that vampires inspire our dreams of immortality and beauty, of desire unbridled, of the beast that transcends the limitations of the human body -- much as the superhero does. But is there something more in the vampire narrative? Does the story relate to a deeper desire, just as Frankstein's monster augurs a fear of modernity and the forward march of technology and reason? I wonder at times if the vampire story differs from other monster tales, where irrationality is confronted and overcome -- often my science and technology, in that we find ourselves routing for the vampire. What is the deeper psychology of this relationship? I sometimes believe it is the deeper desire in humans for the antimodern subjectivity, where we escape the strictures of modern society -- the family, the church and capitalism itself. Rather than capital accumulation and romantic love, the vampire exists but to feed, to suck the life out of experience and return to the baseness of human existence (in a non-human form). Is the vampire channeling our deeper desire to find a way out of the modern, capitalist world of rationality, exploitation and domination and control? Does the vampire not only offer us eternality, but escape from religion, the administered society and notions of progress that seem to really only offer alienation and lack? The vampire is not our superego, or even our ego, but the unbridled desire of our id instantiated in the real. They live in an almost Hobbesian world of chaos and violence, but backed by the charismatic quality of Weber to rule over those who seek to sublimate it.

What is interesting, if I'm on the right track, is the way that Twilight has altered this dynamic. The "good" vampires of the narrative in fact fold back into modern human society. They sublimate their desire for blood, their very raison d'etre. They sublimate their rejection of social mores by "playing human," simply so they can live in human society rather than among their own -- without any real reason proffered for the choice. The celebration of the vampire here is as a beautiful ubermensch that has rejected its proximity to the world of nature (and Nietzsche's incantation to bridge that false dichotomy) even as it continues to rein over it. The vampires here want to be part of human society, particularly Edward who desires marriage and romantic love rather than feeding on his deeper desire. In fact, even this desire for human social normativity requires the ultimate sublimation -- in that his love for Bella is backed by an almost uncontrollable hunger for her blood. One wonders if this augurs the further cooptation of a form of resistance into the fold, a further move toward a world where every alternative is simply a false desire to escape the new "common sense" and its accompanying subjectivity. One can also see this changing nature of the vampire in 28 Days, where the vampire has lost all of its proximity to the human, and like the witch-hunts of Salem, implies that all forms of resistance must be contained, thus reinforcing the normative, even as it is critiqued. Yet I cannot help but think that those outsides, even as they are tamed, continue to dominate the creative imagination because of our own deeper neurotic relationship to the world order we live in and the pathology not only of death but of the sublimation of our very humanity into a rationality that appears to exist above us even as it exists within our own bodies, repeated over and over again though the body burst outward for an alternative.

Trump Follies

As someone who grew up in New Jersey and New York, the image of Donald Trump that immediately comes to mind is buffoon. Not only the silly hair, but his appearances on the Howard Stern show, his absurdist self-absorption, his clownish public persona. Obviously "The Apprentice" gave him the imprimatur of popular culture and the veneer of  earnestness that was largely missing from his personality before the appearance of the show. The Trump narrative is often obfuscating and the reality that he lost his fortune and got it back erases the fact that he grew up rich and often used predatory, and it appears racist, tactics as one of the richest landlords in New York City. But what does his flirtation with a Presidential run say about the state of politics today?

1) The nature of media today is so tilted toward spectacle and sensationalism that they seem to have completely lost sight of any role in being responsible arbiters of the public sphere and honest political debate. From making both Iraq Wars look like cool video games, to an irresponsible adherence to anything the Bush administration said (e.g., Gore said he invented the internet, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, Saddam and 911, weapons of mass destruction, terror threat alerts, etc.), to a new belief that their jobs is just to report what people say without any checking of whether it's true (as for example with the critique of Cooper below) to their love affair with Sarah Palin, the media seems to be more about making the news interesting than deconstructing it.
2) Victimhood sells in American politics more than at any time in history. Reagan and Nixon both fed on the purported victimhood of working class men by women, blacks, unions, hippies and the government itself. Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are popular based on this very tendency. Whites are still victims of blacks, of affirmative action, of a government that wants to destroy freedom, of the poor, of Muslims, of gays, of "illegal immigrants" taking their jobs, and of anyone or anything that challenges the idealized utopian past. Ironically, as is the case with many of the instruments of this reactionary, atavistic who are far from victims themselves, Trump is a billionaire who has only benefited from contemporary economic and political regimes. And yet he becomes the embodiment of this victimhood, turning the focus to the international arena -- where Americans are victims of China, OPEC, Iran, Iraq and anyone else trying to undermine our economic and political imperialism and hegemony.
3) As is a general strategy of the elite, hatred always sells -- but particularly when times are tough. And like so many pretenders before him, Trump is trying to harness that hatred and use it to catapult himself to the most powerful seat in the world. How? By feeding on the absurd ideas of the birthers and then turning immediately with the tide to say that Obama is an "affirmative action baby" who didn't merit his academic, or we suppose, political achievements. What is most startling about this is the way it ignores the more obvious benefactor of privilege -- George W. Bush (an average student who also has two Ivy League degrees).

I assume that Trump has little chance of success, but like McCain before him his turn to the right to test the waters of Republican Presidential politics shows us how extreme America is and how dangerous to our collective future that extremism might be.

Osama is Dead ... Or is He?

The President scored a major victory yesterday with the death of terrorist and Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. He received praise from most, including the Republicans considering presidential runs. But some on the far left and right have already started to question whether it was in fact Osama who was killed: Fox News. It is hard to believe that the administration would fake such a story, but it is also hard to believe that no one would have been able to challenge a non-native born citizen before he became president. Conspiracy theorists are fecund in America and it appears that their appeal with the public has only increased since 911. Now I wonder how far they will go to try to discredit a major achievement of the administration -- one, lest us forget, that Bush never accomplished. An email from a leftist friend was just as troubling, leading me to continue wondering why the left can find little more right with Obama than the right. What I think is clear is we are headed for a serious psychological engagement with the pathos that has dominated American politics since 911, and potentially the birth of a broader movement to challenge the militaristic, security state tendencies that emerged in its wake.

One Two, Buckle My Shoe

If the court decisions keep on at their current rate, one could imagine a time when the average citizen will be forced by law to tie the shoelaces of the super rich whenever they demand it -- codified by a current interpretation of the constitution that seems to have less and less to do with individual rights. The other decision is the more important, but first the latest NFL Lockout stay (Yahoo News), that sides with the owners against the players who are not even close to "slaves," as some argue, but who certainly are being exploited not only in financial, but physical terms as well. The players argument is clear and persuasive: their average career lifespan is 3.5 years and, given salary minimums, that can be as little as $1.2 million for a player whose career ends after those 3 year. The players are the ones who are bringing in the fans and risking their current and future health, and do deserve a slightly larger take of the profits and better benefits. More telling is the number of players who end up committing crimes, in jail or bankrupt within ten years out of the league. The owners are making huge amounts of money and their argument is simply that they want a bigger piece of the oversized pie (Legal Arguments). And a continued lockout sanctioned by the federal courts might just let them have their cake and eat it too (which is a phrase I've always found silly, because why would one want a cake that they couldn't eat?)

The other decision, from the supreme court, is substantially more troubling (New York Times).It sided with AT&T Mobility against a couple arguing that they had the right to file a class action suit with others even though they had signed a standard "arbitration first" contract, after a $30 fee was added to their bill. The decision appears to end the ability of consumers to file class action suits, as companies can now simply use standards form contracts to forbid consumers claiming fraud from banding together and instead force them to do so alone. While many class action suits seem silly, as they only provide marginal settlements to individual consumers, they can be important in challenging and punishing corporations for their illegal or unsavory practices. Without this power, consumers are essentially left at the whim of the many small (and larger) ways in which corporations take our money or practice fraud. The decision continues the court majority's approval of forced arbitration over litigation, an absurd legal standard that undermines the rights of consumers and helps protect corporations from being penalized for their actions. The whole system of forced arbitration is absurd, with corporations demanding that consumers and workers go through an arbitration process that often benefits the company. And it reminds one of the continuing costs of allowing 8 years of Bush and co -- the financial crisis, ridiculous expenditures on Iraq and Afghanistan that have helped create a growing debt being used as an excuse to cut social services and a supreme court that seems intent on turning the clock back on American jurisprudence while consistently supporting the interests of corporations over citizens. 

This occurs as two other states consider limiting employees collective bargaining rights: Massachusetts and  Florida (following successful efforts in Ohio and Wisconsin). The financial crisis arguably caused by the free market, appears to be the key legitimator of continuing to give the fictitious, fickle market control over our lives.

Donald Trump Called Out

CNN, which has been making the call for "balance" an almost absurd raison d'etre of late, does have at least one pundit willing to call people out. In this You Tube clip, you can see Eliot Spitzer take on "the Donald" for potentially lying about his financial situation: CNN Clip. It is a real pity that Spitzer ruined his political career -- as he has taken on power in a way that few other in law, politics and now media do. The slippery slope of Trump's financial situation, personal narrative and past will certainly come to the fore if he does decide to run, though the negative press around his potential campaign might just keep him, and the circus his candidacy would instigate, from ever coming to fruition. Let's hope he and his hairdo take a pass and just keep abusing average people and celebrities who have an inexplicable burning desire to work with him.

Cheating the Cheaters

Accountability, on the surface, makes sense. If democracy is to function properly we need transparency and tools to ensure that the government is indeed serving the interests of the people. We need tools to help us in deciding if a particular policy is working and to contemplate alternatives that might make government and society function better. The push toward accountability accelerated dramatically under Reagan, as he consistently talked of governmental waste. And he certainly had a point. The accountability movement in schools was much slower, though it accelerated dramatically after the passage of No Child Left Behind in 2002. Now test scores are the key measure of success in our schools. Rather than provide a fundamental critique of this law and its shortcomings (which I have done in previous entries), I want to focus on one particular problem that has emerged -- the bringing of politics into the equation.

Politics and education are inextricably bound for a number of reasons, among them the nature and content of knowledge taught, the focus, funding differentials, teacher training and the relationship of schooling and education to democracy and equality. But more specifically, mayoral takeover of schools has been accompanied by a strong necessity to show results for political purposes. As I noted in an earlier post, in New York City this has manifest itself in making the tests and the grading of tests easier and easier to ensure positive results. In Houston and Texas it led to widespread fraud and the pushing of students to drop out before high school level exams and drop out rates were accessed. And now in DC, where former chancellor Michelle Rhee gained positive press for turning the system around, we find that widespread fraud appears to exist in actually changing the tests themselves (with a statistically significant overrepresentation of wrong answers changed to correct ones): USA Today.

Essentially calls for accountability must be accompanied by checks and balances that address the penchant toward cheating and manipulation as ways to avoid the pressure of that accountability. We want to know that our children are being educated in schools, but we want that to manifest itself in smarter, more independent and responsible adults -- not simply in a population that masters a few basic skills (if that) and learns the valuable (but socially destructive) lesson that one should do anything to succeed. While teachers across the country recognize that teaching to the test is undermining education in America, they continue to be the ones blamed for the failure of our schools. It is time to scrap the accountability and choice movement and build a more reasoned, holistic series of measures that allow real teaching and learning to return to the classroom.

Sustainability

"Sustainability" is usually used as a word to describe preservation of the environment and to address the growing ecological crisis that could lead to the destruction of the planet. Yet, as I often argue in this blog, there is another kind of sustainability that must be addressed if we are not to say goodbye to democracy -- and that is the sustainability of popular sovereignty against the threats of neoliberalism, neoconservativism and emerging and solidifying plutocracies. A great article by Tax expert David Cay Johnston on April 13 (Portland The Week) provides solid evidence to support the claim that tax changes since the ascendancy of Reagan have accumulated predominantly at the top (at the individual and corporate level). How long can the current system be sustainable as inequality increases, the middle class is squeezed and the number of poor increases not only in the periphery and semi-periphery countries but in the Western core itself. We have already seen these tensions explode across Central and South America and in a more muted sense in America and Europe. But what will happen if predictions of a new "jobless economy" really come true? Will people continue to support a system that can't meet their minimal needs? Can ideology continue to function as the material and symbolic violence of poverty continue to increase? One could argue, as Polanyi did in the 50s, that the only logical responses to this reemerging crisis are fascism, communism or a New New Deal.

Fetishism and Empathy

Theorists of popular culture have long spoken of fetishism, the process by which an object is mystified and emptied of its productive process. Starting with Marx, passing through Freud and with a corrective from Lacan, the key idea is that commodities are fetishized as supernatural things than create jouissance (or pleasure) through our desire to own them. Products thus relate to deeper desires, displacing lack and desire through their relationship to the real. Substitution is the key concept, with relations between people replaced by relationships between people and objects. This substitution erases the exploitation and alienation inherent in capitalist production but also creates the quasi-religious relationship that develops between consumers and the sensuous commodities. The system then weaves a "system of needs" into a "libidinal economy" that connects people through the mediation of commodities and markets. Psychoanalysis looks at this relationship from the individual first through the trauma of castration anxiety that leads to the neurosis and psychosis that results from replacing sexual desire with fetishized objects to Lacan, who looks at the lack that develops between subjects and their other (first the image in the mirror, then the symbol). The point, again, is that an innate substitution occurs between the relationships between people and the relationships between people and objects. Zizek thus points out the humanism in Marxism, in that overcoming commodity fetishism implies a fully transparent society where there is no need for substitution.

I was thinking about this theory in relationship to the question of empathy, a key concept in a humanistic approach (or even post-humanist biopolitiical approach). Without empathy, social justice becomes meaningless and democracy loses its truly radical potential. It we are replacing relationships between people with relationships between people and objects - or subjects and objects - how does this affect our relationship to each other? If we are fetishizing commodities and fetishizing images, how does this affect our ability to emphasize with other human beings? Even when we try to buy "sweat shop free" clothes, are we really concerned about people or just doing it to feel better about ourselves? When we interact with our friends and family with facebook or through text, does this alter the nature of the exchange, the mediation done through the very objects we are fetishizing? Empathy still exists in the world, but if we go back to film studies where fetishism theory really emerged, does it explain why we can cry in a movie then ignore the homeless person we walk by? When one thinks of neoliberal ideology and its incantation to act in our own self interest as a way to be citizens and serve society, does this further solidify the point? And when we add the "blame the victim" argument that has dominated conservative discourse since Reagan, are we left in a society where there is really no place for empathy outside the small circle of family and friends (if it even extends that far)? Certainly I exaggerate the relevance of these new circumstances, with plenty of empathy still obviously existent across the country and world, it certainly leads one to pause and contemplate the future of humanity. Can fetishism and commmodification of all human emotions ultimately lend itself to a society founded on an underlying sociopathology (the absence of empathy and concern for the ramifications of one's actions on others)? I believe hints of this are already present across the social, political and economic landscape. I will provide examples in future entries . . .

When 3% is 90%

Among the reasons Republicans gave for the almost shutdown of the government was abortion. Or more specifically, they wanted to defund that perennial friend to women and enemy of conservatives -- Planned Parenthood. What is PP's crime? Offering advice on abortions to women, of course. But more than that, according to one congressman, 90% of funding went to abortions. Is that true? Well, kind of. In the hyperreal world in which we live, where fact and fiction are essentially the same thing, 90% is close enough to 3%, isn't it (Chart)? Does any federal money actually go to abortions? Actually, the answer is no! What do Title X funds fund? Pelvic exams and pap smears, infertility screening, breast exams, testing for high blood pressure, anemia and diabetes, screening and treatment for STDs and safe-sex counseling. PP does, of course, also provide contraceptives, family planning services and, yes, abortions. But the federal government doesn't fund these services.

So what is the attempt to shut down the government really about? It is just the latest parry in the continued attempts to undermine the role of government in actually improving the lives of citizens. Essentially the goal is the fundamental rewriting of the social contract. Governments were formed to provide security to citizens, but also to serve their interests. Representative democracy is, in fact, founded on the idea that representatives will actually, gasp, represent the interests of their constituents. Yet that idea has clearly become passe in a world ruled by multinational corporations and their technocratic, ideological and political stewards. Rather than the government serving the interests of the average person, they serve the interests of the "market," an entity that essentially serves the interests of elites. Today, deficits and fear serve as the predominant mechanism to legitimate a system proven illegitimate by the latest financial crisis, and the reality of the past 30 years. Its ideological foundation rests on less and less firm ground. So what is a market acolyte to do? Continue to spew the myths with increased stridency, even as those myths become little more than fairy tales with nightmare endings. Use the media to back these arguments with spurious claims and outright lies. Close off spaces for people to become informed and actually debate the key issues of our times. Reduce education to serving the economic interests of the country. And act as if the status quo is inevitable and their is no alternative to the declining living standard of most denizens of the country and globe. How long can this strategy work? Only as long as enough people are comfortable enough to accept it and the rest ignore their power to demand better (through the very government they are taught to distrust and/or despise) ...

Money Talks, Democracy Walks

Last week, the Supreme Court heard a case about the constitutionality of an Arizona law known as the Citizens Clean Elections Act. Essentially, the law provided for public subsidies for candidates who were far behind in campaign funds to "level the playing field." To the five judges who passed Citizens United last year, this is a now verboten argument, undermining the ability of corporations to overwhelm the voices of the people, or candidates who might not support their interests (and thus don't garner enough of their money). While that is not the argument they use, obviously, it appears to be the foundation of their underlying logic. On the surface, they have just completed the circle on decisions over the past 100 years or have essentially given corporations the same rights as citizens -- one should note without any of the same perceived obligations. In fact, if one thinks about the continued drive for tort reform, the constant push toward deregulation (even after the recent financial crisis and looming ecological disaster) and the attempts to lower or maybe eliminate corporate taxation (the story on GE from a couple of weeks ago was pretty telling -- they earned $14.2 billion in profits, but actually received $3.6 billion more in tax benefits: New York Times, it can be argued that the right wants to give corporations the rights of citizens without any of the responsibilities (or obligations in traditional political science parlance).

Yet the more troubling and recent argument that bodes even worse for democracy is the idea that money is speech. Money certainly talks, as we have been told for time immemorial. But does it speak? Does it allow for a dialogue? Should it be protected by the first amendment? I think the answer to the ironically named anti-federalists that demanded the addition of the bill of rights to the constitution is no. The bill of rights was, in fact, an attempt to protect the rights of individual citizens from excessive power by not only the government, but elites as well. Making money a part of speech undermines the very concept of the constitution, based on limiting not only the tyranny of the majority (as was clearly a concern for both Hamilton and Madison) but of the minority as well. Madison makes this very point in his argument about the power of factions, arguing sufficient diversity of voices fighting for their own interests would ensure that no interests predominated over all. By giving corporations, an entity with a prime directive very different from the individual (profit maximization), the same rights as an individual and money the imprimatur of a form of speech, we essentially allow corporations to not only dominate the debate within DC (as they tend to do through lobbying) but in the public sphere and election process as well (where they have had an undue influence for far too long).

I believe we have already seen the effects of Citizens United in 2010, as the GOP won a landslide in the House and in state governments across the country. Since then, they have started to enact policies that are increasingly troubling to average citizens who recognize that the party supports the interests of the elites and corporations rather than the citizens they essentially bought. Is this democracy? Or is it the results of a stolen election followed by the successful nomination of two Supreme Court justices who pretended to be moderate but ended up being even more radical than their conservative predecessors? I can't help but think of the Pelican Brief as I contemplate the fading signifier we call "democracy."

Ceci n'est pas une femme

Rene Magritte reminded us almost a century ago that a painting is not a thing itself but a re-presentation of that thing. So the Mona Lisa smile that has garnered out attention for several centuries now is but a representation of that enigmatic woman we have never been able to meet in the real world. Sure we have written songs about her, people have made the pilgrimage to the Louvre just to stare at her surrounded by throngs of other tourists and separated from us by a huge glass encasement and the painting has been reproduced in books, posters, prints and on the Internet. But we might soon be able to move from the dessert of the virtual to the DNA of the real, as archeologists in Italy are seeking to exhume remains they believe are of the original model: Telegraph. The woman, Lisa Gherardini (a Florentine wife of a rich silk merchant) is believe to be housed in a tomb beneath a convent in Florence. But I wonder if the mystery that surrounds her really adds to the aura of the painting and its transcendental quality. Will we destroy her allure if we know who she is? Does her wealth and status undermine the rather radical nature of his framing and subject at the time? Will people be heading off to wherever the cranial remains are ultimately housed rather than the famous Paris museum? I'm not sure; and I'm not sure I care, but I suppose it does provide a respite from the disaster of the dessert of the real we live in.

On a slightly related note, a woman attacked a Gauguin painting in the National Gallery in Washington DC last week, screaming "This is Evil." The painting, Two Tahitian Women, portrays, you guessed it, two Tahitian women, both topless. While many feminists have faulted Gauguin's paintings for exoticizing these native women he often took as lovers, my guess is the woman thought the painting was evil because it dared to show the naked breasts of women -- a clearly unnatural sight that is destroying the very fabric of American society. Thank God we have defenders of decency and religious rectitude around to protect us from seeing those shameful symbols of sexuality and, um, our sustenance for the first several "sinful" months of our lives!

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

Republicans will unveil their 2012 budget proposal this week. Authored by Wisconsin Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, it is entitled "The Path to Prosperity." The plan calls for aims to cut federal by $5.8 trillion over the next 10 years by, among other things -- ending Medicare and replacing it with a "premium support system" that would provide $15,000 in premium coverage and more coverage to the poor, huge cuts to Medicaid, tax cuts to the richest Americans and corporations (from a top rate of 35% to 25%) and cuts to Social Security. The plan will not be passed, of course, as the Democratically held Senate and President Obama would never accept it, but it does but out a new blueprint for the 2012 Presidential debate. Many will critique it for cutting social programs for the elderly and poor, for increasing fiscal risk for millions of Americans, for hurting the poorest Americans and for giving even more money to the bloating wealth of the wealthy. Even some Republicans, including the "Gang of Six" critique it for not doing enough to increase revenue or address cuts in military spending (the biggest part of the budget). But there is certainly good news, if one considers the proposal from a pragmatic perspective:

- Cutting Medicare and Medicaid (as the new plan does not account for estimated increases in medical costs) should reduce life expectancy over time -- reducing the number of people requiring not only federal assistance for healthcare but also social security
- Cutting Medicaid in particular should worsen the health  of the poor, and they will thus hopefully die off sooner, improving the gene pool over time
- Among those who do survive, the plan should be a boon to the privatized prison industry, as a new rash of "clients" should emerge
- Increased tax cuts for corporations should improve profitability and lead to larger bonuses for top executives, who can use their leadership skills and influence to help Wall Street come up with another major money making strategy like CDOs
- Increased tax breaks for the rich will be good news for sellers of private jets, those renting and selling property in the Hamptons, sellers of Crystal, Gucci, Cartier and other "luxury goods" who have suffered under the strain of the financial crisis and the cuts to bonuses (oh wait -- well at least those bonuses should increase even more under the new plan).
- If we continue along this path, we can do away with the pesky, outdated notion of democracy altogether and adapt a political system more amenable to the needs of our most worthy denizens -- say a plutocracy along the lines of post-communist Russia

One may critique the humanity of the plan, but the numbers certainly add up if we are more rational in our analysis.

Democracy Run Amok

While the Middle East continues to struggle to topple dictatorships and establish the roots of democracy (TNR Article), at home we continue to push further and further away from it. Since the 70s, there has been ample evidence that Republicans are not that fond of democracy -- from Watergate to Iran-Contra to the Florida 2000 debacle to the diverse efforts by the Bush Administration to establish a Presidency above national and international accountability or law. Citizens v. United States of America (an ironic title if there ever has been one) further undermined democracy and the voice of the people, by allowing the much more heavily subsidized voices of corporation to have an even larger (unlimited) role in elections. Now we learn that the Republicans who spent an unprecedented amount of money to take back the House are not only working to overturn Obama's healthcare reform (which is still unpopular), but also the watered down Wall Street reforms that he passed with popular support: Politico. However, since Wall Street Reform remains popular with a public still suffering under its excesses borne of the deregulation of the past 30 plus years, Republicans decided their efforts to reform the Dodd-Frank should be a little less publicized -- or, wait, not publicized at all. The GOP, claiming that new regulations on derivatives, credit rating agencies and private equity firms are undermining economic growth by "raising the cost of doing business in America but also send jobs overseas." Besides the fact that these are relatively absurd claims, is the fact that those reforms, as meager as they are, are a direct response to the root of the financial crisis that emanated from derivatives gone wild, credit agencies that profoundly overrated what were essentially worse than junk bonds and private equity firms that callously continued to sell CDOs, while openly acknowledging they were garbage. Again, the voices of the people are silenced and corporate interests brought to the fore of policy. And yet again we see a Washington DC that seems completely oblivious to the sources of our continuing financial crisis and ways to solve them.

Bipartisanism in the Shadows?

The Washington Post reported a couple of weeks ago about a bipartisan group of Senators working behind the scenes to tackle the disaster that potentially looms from our skyrocketing debt: Link. Their discussions include addressing entitlement costs, increasing the retirement age to 69 and simplifying the tax code to increase revenue from corporate taxes. What is not included is any increase in taxes for the wealthiest Americans. One of the members of the unofficial group, Senator Chambliss, actually went as far as arguing, ""None of us have ever voted for a tax increase, and I don't intend to. But the tax system is 'way out of kilter,' producing $1.1 trillion in revenue in 2009 while giving away $1.6 trillion in deductions and other breaks. We can do it in a fair and reasonable way and . . . actually lower rates and at the same time raise revenues." Sounds like the old Laffer Curve come back to haunt us -- even after being proven wrong for years. The tone deafness across DC to the reality of our current situation and potential ways to solve it is astounding. While billionaires like Gates and Soros are slowly giving away their fortunes to try to improve the world, others work arduously to ensure that they don't pay any more in taxes. We are working toward establishing a plutocracy in this country, with the help of politicians, pundits, Supreme Court justices, technocrats, lobbyists, pseudo-intellectuals and others supporting a system that will hurt them in the end. As Verbal espoused in the 1995 film The Usual Suspects, "the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." And the devil is in the details of our collective collapsing future ...

Subwayization?

Many scholars have been talking for years about the McDonaldization of the world, with U.S. "fast food"/consumer culture spreading across the globe undermining local cultural traditions, national pasttimes and, even, more healthy dietary practices. While I've always found the discourse on American cultural imperialism a little deterministic and reductionist in ignoring the agency of non-Americans to American culture and the reality that the power of capitalism and consumer culture is its ability to channel desire and offer ephemeral cathexis of the very wants, needs and desires it pawns as natural.

Well among those who still adhere to the "McDonalization" discourse, it might be time to update your moniker. Apparently, Subway has overtaken McDonald's as the biggest chain restaurant in the world (Link). McDonald's still remains the most profitable chain with $24 billion in sales to Subway's $15.2 billion. But Subway, which first made its international foray in Bahrain in 1984, has a total of 33,749 restaurants to McDonald's 32,747. Subway plans to continue growing internationally and to have more foreign than domestic restaurants by 2020 (Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts are also expanding internationally, particularly in China where the former will triple their chains and the later plans to open thousands of new outlets in the coming years). A McDonald's spokeswoman was not terribly disturbed by the news: "We remain focused on listening to and serving our customers, and are committed to being better, not just bigger." And thus the marketing magicians who gave us Supersizing, among a number of other practices that have made buying anything at a restaurant or theatre feel like culinary harrassment, have decided that size doesn't matter, except in your French Fries, of course.  

And the Great World Spins

The world stands in chaos today, from protestors across the Middle East, to renewed violence in Israel/Palestine (where a husband, wife and infant were stabbed to death in their beds) to rebels under attack by government forces in Yemen and Libya to continued protesters in Wisconsin and the devastating effects of the earthquake in Japan. Reading through the L.A. Times, it becomes clear that the battle between humans and nature is far from over and that people fighting for a better world will always confront strong challenges from entrenched power. Even in victory, Egypt and Tunisia stand in chaos, with increased crime, violence and unstable governments that are having trouble establishing order in the wake of revolution. Here in the U.S., floods in Ohio, protesters in Madison and battles across the country against a radical conservative agenda that seeks to undermine the power of the government and further solidify the corporate takeover of the state continue. One interesting article detailed the power of radio personalities Kobylt and Chiampou and blogger Jon Fleischman in working to enact their anti-tax agenda, even as the state stands on the brink of financial disaster.

What is at stake across the globe today? The future of democracy is clearly at the forefront as well as the future of humanity, as we continue to experience the effects of our mistreatment of the planet. And on the other side of confronting these issues stand fundamentalism and its inability or unwillingness to adopt to a changing world. While dictatorships in other parts of the world are certainly more forceful in their attempts to maintain and even expand their rule over the people, here it is ideological, anti-democratic reforms that stand at the forefront of the fight for our collective future. It is the fundamentalist belief of the increasingly powerful radical right wing that seem increasingly able to influence lawmakers and enact policies that stand in stark contradiction to addressing fundamental problems today. Even as unemployment remains far above recent levels, as poverty increases, as we continue to pollute the world and as money stands in as the greatest arbiter of decision-making at the local, state and national level, the call is simply to continue shrinking government and cutting taxes.

In California, the radical agenda seems ready to seriously undermine the education of children in our public schools, cut services that many need simply to survive, lower the status and quality of education in our world-class public university system and actually shrink the economy rather than admit that the quality of life of millions of people is more important than a deficit that largely resulted from their blockage of almost any attempt to raise taxes. Fundamentalism in all forms is dangerous, as it fails to react to a changing world. The Enlightenment attempted to confront and overcome this adherence to orthodoxy and mythology, by making science and reason the build blocks for a better world. As Adorno and Horkheimer argued in the 20th century, this faith in science and instrumental reason were themselves dialectic, failing to acknowledge the human element in decision-making and true democracy. This led to a profound critique of the new world order and its positivist predilections. Now we need to critique the most dangerous fundamentalism today. No, I'm not thinking of Islam. It is neoliberalism and its blind faith in the market and absolute skepticism toward the role of government in working to mitigate and solve social and economic problems. Rather than admitting that tax raises on the richest Americans could solve much of the budget mess we are currently suffering through, the only answer is cuts and those cuts must be in education, in undermining unions and in shrinking the size of government for the long run. And even though there is a strong case for green policies that could actually increase the revenue the federal or state governments receive (according to, among others, Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz), we continue to essentially sell the futures of our children and grandchildren down the river rather than make sacrifices for the common good. Unless we do, I believe the U.S. and globe stand in peril of destruction at the hands of those who cannot adopt to changing reality and instead rely on the unquestionable validity of received wisdom unsubstantiated by empirical reality, or even logical coherence.

Photoshop as You Shoot

Have you ever felt that photographs don't really capture the real you? Do you turn away whenever someone places you in the aim of their image creating machines? Are you about as photogenic as Richard Nixon? Well, Panasonic has a solution just for you: Reuters -- a new camera that has a "beauty re-touch" function. The camera can whiten your teeth, increase the translucency of your skin, remove dark eye circles, make your face look smaller or even magnify the size of your eyes. While models and the less physically-adept rejoice, those mired in the world of online dating are given further pause in their pursuit of love -- or an easy one-night stand. The current epoch many have labeled "post-modern" has certainly benefited from new technology and media; and now it appears that new technology and media are instantiating in the real the abstract claims of the theorists that defined the movement.

It's the Unions, Silly!

Magnanimous Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has threatened to fire 1,500 public sector workers if the 14 Democratic State Senators who escaped the state don't return for a vote enacting his new bill to take away collective bargaining rights from state workers. Following through on a strategy he suggested during a crank call with an activist posing as conservative billionaire David Koch, he will use these workers as leverage to pass a bill that it appears most in the state and country don't want. A recent poll from Rasmussen, in fact, finds that 57% of Wisconsin residents are opposed to the new Governor's agenda and 48% strongly disapprove. In a recent national poll, 52% of respondents said they support unions and another showed that many would rather that taxes on the rich are passed than that social services are cut. These are interesting findings, given that Republicans swept into power in the House based on what appeared to be the opposite perspective.

In a broader sense, one wonders if the 30-year battle to change common sense about unions is about to change. Unions had outlived their purpose, they were inefficient and corrupt and they were holding back the economy. That was the conventional wisdom shilled by conservatives from Ronald Reagan forward. And many came to embrace this idea as if it was an irrefutable fact. Many people I talked to hated unions and many workers were actually against the organization that provided us with the minimum wage, 40-hour work week, paid vacations, company-sponsored healthcare, pensions and the like. The truth is actually the opposite. Unionization percentages (or labor power in places like France) is the best predictor of income inequality in a country. The higher the percentage of the workforce that is unionized, the less inequality experienced in the country. As the U.S. moved from Fordism to Post-Fordism and a service economy, union percentages decreased dramatically and income inequality increased precipitously. If workers don't have collective bargaining rights, employers will use the opportunity to cut wages and benefits.

When the economy is bad, this situation grows even worse. And that is what the new governor was counting on. But people in Wisconsin and across the country have been protesting against these changes with a populist vehemence that pulled Obama to a landslide victory in 2008. Now one wonders if the tide will turn and politicians will start listening to the people and reaffirm the rights of employees to a livable wage and reasonable working conditions. Business is doing everything in their power to ensure that this doesn't happen. I guess we shall see if the will of the people can trump money this time; as it appears to be across the Middle East ...

Arsenal Blues

I am that odd sort of American who actually thinks about football as soccer, and the U.S. version as American football. Having long been a Jets fan, disappointment has been a central feature of my longer relationship with the American version of the sport. And while the Yankees certainly give me moments of glory, the Knicks have also been the heartbreak kids on numerous occasions. Yet my true love for the past several years has really been Arsenal, a perennial disappointment for the six long years since their last trophy. There have lost finals, missed opportunities and suffered through a complete collapse at the end of last season that cost us a chance at the second most important trophy -- a league title. I thought that would all end today, as they came in big favorites to finally win some medal in the final of the Carling Cup against Birmingham. And yet we once again found a way to lose, this time with a heartbreaking mistake by our young Polish goalie Szczesny at the stroke of full time. I'm not sure anyone who reads this blog cares about the beautiful game, but one of the things that makes it beautiful is the potential for an upset on the grandest of stages. That is exactly what happened, as Arsenal seemed severely limited without stars Fabergas and Wolcott. Bendtner. Nasri and the upstart Wilshire certainly provided some opportunities, but the Fagergas sub Rosicky continued to fail in finishing some good opportunities. The thrill of a victory against the best team in the world Barcelona less than two weeks ago is now overshadowed by the agony of a defeat that again showed a team not living up to the moment, or it's potential. In the mid-2000s I became a huge fan as they won several trophies with a spectacular team led by the inimitable Frenchman Thierry Henry. Now they seem poised to follow in the footsteps of the Jets, and find ways to lose games and tournaments they should or could win. I suppose I can only hope for a miracle in the return leg to the city that brought me to the game in the first place (Barcelona) ... or take respite in the fact that, as a New Yorker, I might just revel a bit in the minor and major tragedies I have come to expect.

The "New Classic" Man

The rube in the big city has long been a Hollywood staple , from Mr. Smith Goes to Town to Mr. Deeds to The Hudsucker Proxy. The protagonist in these films generally becomes a hero as he unearths the decadence, elitism and corruption of the urban denizens that serve as his straw men and shows that honor, honesty and, of course, innocence are central features of the American male. With the birth of the 80s and the new American character, these characters fell into the background, replaced by the savvy, greedy but ultimately redeemed protagonists who broke through the morally corrupt world and found success and happiness in the process. With Cedar Rapids, we return to this well-worn theme, though this time the "big" city is Cedar Falls and the hero is an insurance salesman who has never flown, never stayed in a hotel and who dates his old high school teacher.

Time Lippe (played by Ed Helms of The Office and Hangover fame) is an honest man thrust into the rather dimmed spotlight of an insurance conference, after being forced to replace the company's darling salesman turned deviant, who dies with a belt around his throat and his pants at his ankles. He packs up his suitcase and heads to Cedar Falls where a hooker Bree (Ally Shawkar), a promiscuous wife and mother Joan (Anne Heche), a Black nerdy insurance man named Ronald Wilkes (Isiah Whilock, Jr.) and an obnoxious lout (Dean Ziegler played by John C. Reilly -- who seems to have taken a break from quality acting), all show him the way out of his staid existence. He first wins a riveting Scavenger Hunt with Joan, parties with the gang, sleeps with Joan, parties with Bree, pays for the prestigious two diamond award upon which his company and his job depend and then comes clean and undercuts the selling of his company. Redeemed, though alone, in the end, we are led to believe that he has grown as a result of his foray into the medium-sized, Midwest city and is now a better, more mature man who has succeeded in business and life.

The film works on a few levels, but is less funny than it is soft-spoken in its approach and many of the jokes revolve around our credulity toward the innocence and stupidity of the characters, including nods to the old staples of homophobia (in a shower scene with the pious (though we later learn corrupt) president of the insurer's association) and a good ole salacious drug party scene that culminates in a fight before the star-crossed lovers Tim and Bree decide against consummating their new love as she offers up her bum for his sexual pleasure. The film, like most of what Hollywood does today, is derivative, but that is not necessarily a reason not to see it -- as the bankruptcy of ideas certainly did little to undermine the incredibly entertaining and uproarious Hangover. Instead my real critique of the film, which is still entertaining in its modest goals, is its celebration of innocence and simplicity as goals to which men should aspire. While the art house and alternative films tend to revel in our collective hypocrisy, disillusionment and even, sometimes brilliance, mainstream Hollywood films tend to celebrate the opposite. From Adam Sandler films to frat boy flicks to action movies and the cop/robber caper, stupidity is put forth as a funny, and really admirable, American male trait.

Rocky is a hero not only for beating the Black man (Apollo, in case the message is lost) who was "stealing" jobs from the working class White American male in the 70s, but embodied our love affair with the lovable dolt, the hapless loser, the incurious beast who could become rich through no fault of his own or even, under the right circumstances, President. The days of the mook might be on the decline, but we still have plenty of Homer Simpsons, Tom Greens, Jackasses, Sandlers and Coaches to keep us laughing, and teach our teenagers what cool is all about. This is backed by advertisers who love to celebrate this credulous dupe, often informed now by preteen children who send him on the path toward enlightenment; which itself seems odd given that they have none of the "experience" that we hold so dear. We can think of the daughter in Definitely Maybe, the sister in (500) Days of Summer or the teenager in the recent remake of True Grit. All seem to have wisdom well beyond their years, while the adults that surround them act like the youth of yore, still innocent, easily manipulated, unempathetic, immature and unable to really navigate the world around them without the women and children they rely on to survive. The irony here is that we celebrate the innocence of youth across the consumer culture at the same time we tell those same kids to hurry and grow up before those stupid adults they shouldn't respect destroy the universe. One hopes that at least they learn this valuable lesson and ignore the call toward stupidity and indifference that seem to reign supreme today.

The More Things Change ...

In a post-Tuscon world ... little appears to have changed. In a Town Hall meeting in Georgia a few days ago, a participant stood up and asked "Who is going to shoot President Obama?" (Salon Article) The crowd responded with laughter and then Tea Party representative Paul Braun, one of the most conservative members of the house, said the following: "The thing is, I know there’s a lot of frustration with this president. We're going to have an election next year. Hopefully, we'll elect somebody that’s going to be a conservative, limited-government president that will take a smaller, who will sign a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare." So while not outright inciting violence, he did little to temper the storm. And this isn't the first time Braun has been involved in controversy. In November 2008 he warned that Obama might try to install a Nazi or Marxist dictatorship in the country. This comes on the heals of the Texas decision to insist that colleges and universities allow students and professors to carry concealed handguns, a wonderful choice unless we consider that a low grade, an off-color comment or simply a student who is hungover and was just broken up with the night before might decide to take out his or her ire on the professor or fellow students. And their was the Wisconsin ADA who advocated using live ammunition against the protesters trying to protect the rights of public workers in the state, and decided that instead of an apology he would hold steadfast to his belief they are unAmerican troublemakers that deserve injury death for having the gaul to challenge the fiat of the Koch brothers governor elect (who, by the way, didn't even graduate from college).

The country has moved from a fringe of radicals to radicality in the mainstream and it bodes poorly for the future of the country and our democracy. Even after bellicose rhetoric led to tragedy, their is little attempt to temper the incendiary nature of discourse in American politics today. Rather than reasoned, informed debates about the key issues of our times, we simply demonize the enemy and call for violent contestation. Instead of debating the relative strengths and weaknesses of a particular perspective or bill, there is an absolutism that leaves no room for compromise. In the place of objective research and fact checking, we have a media that invokes a he said/she said style of reporting that refuses not only to take a position, but to challenge outright lies. And instead of tolerance and ecumenity, we have a model of mutual hatred that cuts off the ability to debate. Why is it that those who claim to represent and love the country the most seem intent on destroying it?

Man vs. Machine

Two events yesterday brought into acute focus the man/machine debate; at least for me. The first, reported widely, was the victory by IBM supercomputer Watson over the two greatest Jeopardy champions of all times, Ken Jennings (who won 74 straight times) and Brad Rutter (who won over $3 million in prize money): Montreal Gazette. The computer was created over a six-year period for the sole purpose of answering questions (or really answers) in the particular format that jeopardy uses. And it worked -- as it essentially slaughtered the two geniuses of trivia by a whopping $77,147 to $24,000 and $21,600 respectively. Jennings added a footnote to his Final Jeopardy response in day two -- "I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords." Maybe he's not far off, as we continue to make computers with artificial intelligence that seems to either match or exceed that of humans. Why IBM would spend the money and time to create a machine focused solely on winning a trivia contest is itself a worthy question – but it just seems to be the next step in the robots that will someday probably take over our lives.

The other event was the long anticipated first leg of the Champions League tie between Arsenal and Barcelona. Pitting two of the best football teams in the world against one another, the game lived up to its billing, with Arsenal coming back from a goal down to win 2-1 in stunning fashion; beating what is clearly the best team in the world, if not of all times. How does this relate to the battle between man and machine? I believe football (aka soccer) shows the limits of the machine. On the pitch, it is the creativity and split second decision-making of the players that moves the game from the mundane to the sublime. And it is hard to see a computer ever giving us that sort of visceral experience. In fact, I have never had a transcendental experience related to technology, except maybe a film (which of course always includes human actors, human directors, human editors, human producers, etc.). The machine may be able to process information more rapidly, act more rationally, solve more complex problems and make our lives easier, but it is our interaction with other humans and our creative spirit that makes life worth living. And so the neo-Luddite in me was left a little confused by the fact I watched such sublime human accomplishment through the very technology I am now maligning.

When a Lie is Not a Lie

Anderson Cooper has been getting lambasted by the media for days now, for the unforgivable sin of, gasp, calling a lie a lie. The lies, told by ousted President Mubarak, apparently should have been reported without the modifier of their truthfulness, at least according to the new standards of journalism -- where reporting what people say is their only job. Howard Kurtz of CNN, James Rainey of the LA Times and Chris Dickey all believe that the call to objectivity disallows the ability of a respected journalist to actually differentiate between fact and fiction. It is this sort of absurd call to "objectivity" that is at the heart of the problem with journalism today. Where once journalist sought to follow in the hallowed footsteps of Edward R. Murrow or Woodward and Bernstein, unearthing the truth from behind the shrouds of power, now the media tends to serve those very interests while holding steadfast to some absurd call to a higher duty. Luckily we still have journalists on the margins like Olbermann, Stewart and Moyers, willing to call a lie a lie -- but until the mainstream media begins to restore their integrity by actually serving as the fourth estate, the line between truth and fiction will continue to blur. Global Warming? Well, some guy in a coffee shop in Iowa said it's a lie and I guess it's the responsibility of venerated newsmen to report that as if it were an incontrovertible truth. Where have you gone Cassandra of Troy?

Social Network (2010)

I finally got around to seeing The Social Network last night and have to say that while it was a good movie, it wasn't anything earth shattering to me. The film was not particularly compelling from a visual perspective, the narrative structure was average and the acting was good but not great. In fact, it appears that the endless hype surrounding the picture had more to do with its covering of the topic on everyone's mind than the film itself. Certainly Facebook has become an almost nonpareil social phenomenon, starting in a dorm room at Harvard and expanding to being the most popular website on the planet. Some people spend hours on the site a day and now have a tacit control over their networks that once seemed impossible. The site is wonderful for communicating the mundane details of our lives to others, for reading the mundane details of others lives, for organizing parties, political action and online campaigns, for launching businesses (as a few of my friends have), for catching cheating partners and, really, for wasting time alone as if we were wasting it with others. It is clearly addictive, though I have found that addiction has waned to the point where I can go days without even surfing through the news of my "friends" lives. In any case, getting back to the movie, I wonder what the point of the film was. Are we to take away the point that Zuckerman just isn't that nice a guy? That he is our Revenge of the Nerds doppelganger for the new millenium? That he is redeemed in the end, because we all love facebook and he is the youngest billionaire in history? Or is this a tragic tale of a deeply-scarred asshole who is still in love with the girl who ditched him in college? There is, of course, a lot more going on in the film, and it certainly touches on the uber-competitive, backstabbing, success-at-any-cost world in which we live today -- and I imagine that was one of the themes the adept screenwriter Sorkin was attempting to elicit. And a further theme could be the ways that even technology meant to bring us together tends to alienate us from others and to treat them in instrumental (really inhumane ways). Yet one wonders how the film was received by viewers enamored with Facebook? Is Zuckerberg the anti-hero turned hero we learn to adore? Is he a cautionary tale on how success and money can't really erase the scars of social-exclusion? Or is he just a brilliant genius who should be forgiven for his shortcomings -- including screwing friends and enemies alike? In the end, I believe the film highlights the changing nature of social interaction in America today and the ways we have learned to embrace the new world order without really recognizing either its costs or ramifications for our collective future. But it was fun to watch ...

On Language: Conservative Framing

In this blog, I often talk about conservative framing. One of their brilliant strategies was to relabel what had become expected government services as "entitlements" (see David Brook's op ed today). Should we really think of social security, a system we all pay in to, as an "entitlement?" Given the fact that the economy has been kept afloat primarily by deficit spending at the individual and governmental level, and thus "negative savings," for years -- isn't social security our only bastion from returning to the pre-Great Depression situation of most elderly people being poor? Regarding, Medicare and Medicaid, most countries in the developed world have much larger socialized medicine programs -- should we just ignore the elderly and poor, and allow them to drop dead in the streets, just upping the number of street cleaners we hire?  And unless I'm stuck in a dream, didn't we just pass a watered down healthcare bill that attempts to deal with the skyrocketing costs to famililes and businesses (and the even larger strain to come)? It is clear that the current level of deficit spending is unsustainable, but why does the discussion never go to the obvious -- raising taxes for those at the top who have benefited the most from the new world order? Given the success of Republicans in making "taxes" as bad a word as "liberal," I guess the answer is evident.

Tea Party Congressman: Good for Absolutely (Something), Say it Again

Well, the Tea Party might be more than just a bunch of right-wing radical conspiracy theorists and racists after all. New Tea Party GOP congressman have shown their mettle in a fight over renewal of the Patriot Act, causing the bill to fail in the House of Representatives: LA Times Article. Like many leading Democrats and those who support civil liberties, they believe the bill oversteps the power of the government to watch and intervene in our lives. As Democratic Representative John Conyers of Michigan put it, the act is "one of the worst laws this body has ever passed."

Unfortunately, in another signal that Obama is moving further and further to the center (which is really the right of a few decades ago), the administration supports renewal of the bill through 2013. Along with his concession on extending Bush's tax cuts, the continued war in Afghanistan, the turn to fighting the deficit over creating jobs, the inability to pass a substantive financial reform bill, a continuation and expansion of the failed educational policies of his predecessor and little forward progress on addressing global warming, it is now clear that hope and change meant little more than more of the same. One wonders if there is a space for a true progressive in America anymore?

The Crazy Times We Live In

A series of stories today show how crazy the country has gotten, and how crisis appears to bring out even more nut cases than America has always cultivated (including, of course, one of our most recognizable media personalities -- the truly loony Glenn Beck):

A freshman Tennessee lawmaker credits her success on Hooters: New York Times

The Colorado GOP Chairman will not seek reelection to a third term, because he is "tired of the nuts" and fighting with "those who are obsessed with seeing conspiracies around every corner: The Denver Post

Tax revenue has fallen under Obama (to rates not seen since the 50s), partially because of the huge tax cuts instituted by Bush and Obama's recent concession to continue them into the future. So are conservative happy? Of course not. "America's tax system is clearly broken," said former Bush economic adviser Donald Marron. "It fails at its most basic task, which, lest we forget, is raising enough money to pay for the federal government." AP

According to a recent survey of 900 biology teachers, only 28% teach evolution according to the National Research Council recommendations, and many continue to teach creationism (even though it's unconstitutional): New York Times

Who's Serving Your Burrito?

Wall Street darling and favorite of the commodified pseudo-ethnic chain movement Chipotle Mexican Grill is apparently in trouble as its hip and ecofriendly image abuts against a growing probe over the number of "illegal" workers they employ: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110207/ts_nm/us_usa_immigration_fastfood/print. The situation highlights the great paradox of one aspect of globalization -- the growing migration of peoples across national borders, and particularly to the Global North. On one side, it fits the neoliberal discourse of opening the world markets up to free trade and movement of capital and people. It helps supply cheap labor to industries that need it within the borders of their home country: for example, the agricultural, meatpacking and fast food industries here. And it provides opportunities for those suffering in the Global South (remember when we liked the melting pot metaphor?). On the other hand, it is true that in some cases these workers take jobs away from Americans -- for example in trade industries like construction (though it's worth noting that many fields dominated by "irregular" migrants are ones that white Americans would rarely if ever take -- for example migrant farming, child care, landscaping -- or that were once done by teenagers). It is also true that politically two intertwining realities help immigration become a wedge issue -- particularly in times of crisis. The first is the challenge to "national identity" that is brought on by immigrants that don't look or act like we do. Not only Americans, but populations across the globe fear for the loss of their home culture over time. A second issue is the perception that the immigrants from the Global south are perverting or corrupting our culture, based predominantly on stereotypes and long-standing biases that only seem to disappear if enough members of that group gain middle class or elite status. In any case, the paradox of opening or closing the borders really relates to our identity more than direct economic issues, and it is here where I fear it will stay as the proportion of the population of Latino/as continues to grow.

The Revolution Will Be Televised

A few years ago, a documentary came out called The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Revolution_Will_Not_Be_Televised_%28film%29) about the coup d'etat attempt in Venezuela. The irony, of course, was that the film was in fact televising the revolution that almost was -- as the attempt to unseat Chavez ultimately failed. I think what is fascinating about what is happening in Egypt and Tunisia and how it seems to be planting the seeds of change in Sudan, Yemen, Jordan and other countries across the region, is its viral nature. The media and technology are not only capturing images and scenes that bring the revolutionary spirit across the globe, but framing and deconstructing it as it happens -- spreading the message of democracy and the power of the people to the far reaches of the planet. This forces not only leaders like Obama to react, but people all around the world to take a position on issues far beyond the scope of their daily lives, much as Marshall McLuhan argued television would do (and arguably did during the civil rights movement and Vietnam War). The military learned this lesson after Vietnam and has controlled framing of the two subsequent wars with Orwellian precision. Yet the power to control the images available and the framing of those images has been severely circumscribed by media savvy revolutionaries, gonzo-journalists and the Internet and its still largely unregulated space.

The power of the image to speak to us, even when heavily mediated, is profound. And even in repressive regimes, it appears that images of others struggling to unseat dictatorial power has the viral effect of infecting those around them with that same spirit. Thomas Paine once noted his surprise at the fact that people had so rarely used their ultimate power -- their number and the ability to revolt against tyranny -- to change the status quo. As we watch these revolutions in the MENA countries unfold, one wonders if the media is changing the dynamics of social upheaval forever more ...

Democracy on the Mind

The new year has started with a surge of populist democratic movements across the globe. In Tunisia, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was pushed out of power after a month-long popular uprising against corruption, lack of jobs and a clampdown on civil liberties: http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&safe=off&q=revolution+in+tunisia&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&fp=dded8f20a6bb9442. In Egypt, continued protests seem on the verge of ousting President Mubarak's 30-year dictatorial, repressive reign (http://slatest.slate.com/id/2283149/?wpisrc=newsletter) as the army refuses to shoot at Egyptian citizens and Nobel Laureate ElBaradie set to step in and institute democratic reforms.And anti-government protests in Sudan seem on the verge of reaping the desired secession of the South: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12324646. Even in the U.S., a protest emerged against the billionaire Koch brothers and their largely secret work on behalf of the Tea Party and other conservative movements: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-koch-brothers-20110131,0,3791885.story.

After the institution of austerity programs in the U.K., the anti-labor push in Germany and the huge mid-term victories for conservatives in the U.S., there was certainly concern that neoliberalism was to survive and flourish at the tail end of the financial crisis. But these movements and continued unrest among populations in the core nations certainly challenge the notion that the status quo will be restored without challenge. The power of democracy has always been its tendency to extend beyond the contours of its birth. Today populations across the globe seem poised to demand a more just and democratic future that reflects their interests and challenges the position of entrenched power.

The Face of the New GOP

This article provides interesting background on Ryan: http://www.thenation.com/blog/158010/paul-ryan-republicans-thinker?rel=emailNation. Apparently, his idea of "fiscal responsibility" is to advocate for another great transfer of wealth from the bottom and middle to the top. Among the ideas of this acolyte of Ayn Rand:

• Reduce tax rates, eliminate taxes on capital gains, dividends and interest, and abolish the corporate tax, the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax. (The average tax cut for the top 1 percent of the population (with incomes over $633,000) would be $280,000. The richest one-tenth of one percent, who had incomes over $2.9 million in 2009, would pocket $1.7 million a year in tax breaks.
• Unravel employer-based healthcare plans by eliminating the tax credit.  
• Eliminate traditional Medicare and cut Medicaid.
• Cut $100 billion out of "non-security discretionary spending" this year - requiring cuts of 20 percent in everything from the FBI to cancer research, Pell grants for students, Head Start and grants to public school districts.

It appears "compassionate conservativism" has died a natural death and is being replaced by Social Darwinism and survival of the richest.

State of the Union

Yesterday, I happened to catch most of the Republican response to the SOTU speech. One thing I found fascinating was the series of myths that continued to be utilized as if they were unquestionable truths. The first was the rather obvious, and reported, reference to the cost of the healthcare reform package -- which appears to actually cut the deficit, not increase it. But the much more important mythology revolves around an ideology that continues to be promoted as if it is received truth -- essentially that government is the problem and markets the solution. Even after the latest financial crisis, and the fact that unemployment and foreclosures remain high, there appears to be a general belief among conservatives (and unfortunately a more center-right post-mid term election Obama administration) that we must now deal with the deficit and long term debt over working to stimulate the economy in any way. This belief, which stands in stark contradiction to sensible analysis of the causes of the crisis including financial deregulation, poor risk management and lack of effective oversight, essentially argues that more of the same will save us. It is backed by two rather absurd assumptions: 1. The stimulus did nothing to help the recovery, but rather hindered it (an argument completely unsupported by any credible economists) and 2. Somehow the crisis accelerated under Obama. The rewriting of history is a popular modern political strategy for both parties, but conservatives have come to assume a public that has the memory of Leonard in the 2000 movie Memento. And they seem right. Ryan appeared to argue last night that Obama took a small financial mess and made it into a full-blown crisis, a ridiculous claim that stretches the edges of credulity, if similar arguments haven't been used effectively for years. Remember that surplus we had when Bush entered office; that never happened. Remember those weapons of mass destruction we never found -- well we went in there to spread democracy and freedom anyway.

The most troubling aspect of the new common sense to me is the complete lack of empirical evidence to support their claims. Economic research tends to show that government intervention, while it may lower profitability and technological advancement in the short run (in some cases), tends to reduce inequality, lessen the magnitude and frequency of financial crises and lead to more robust and sustained growth. That is exactly the case in the BRIC countries today -- and the model used by not only China but the four tigers to grow rapidly over the past decades (irrespective of their financial crisis of 1997-8). It is also worth noting that it was the model employed by the United States, with the federal government subsidizing new technology and strategic goods, placing barriers to trade that helped these nascent ("or infant") industries grow and helped maintain comparative advantages to this day in international trade arrangements. While America has always been fearful of the dangers of excessive government power (as they should be), there is also the fear of excessive corporate and financial market power that should now be thought of in a similar light. Is tyranny of the market really that different than the tyranny of a crazy King who doesn't care much for a colony across an ocean? Can we really trust those ideas and people that got us into this mess to get us out, particularly if they plan to just give us more of the same? When (if ever) will a real populist movement emerge to challenge this myopic view?

Investment Just Another Name for Spending to GOP

In preparation for the State of the Union address, Republicans showed up on the Sunday talk shows to warn that they seek cuts in all areas of the economy: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/24/us/politics/24union.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print. "Investment" in silly luxuries like education, infrastructure and technology is just a democratic trick to try to help those who are unemployed, underemployed or working for meager wages (i.e., the lazy and "illegal immigrants"). Obviously in these difficult times of soaring corporate profits and growing wealth at the top, it is still unfathomable to either raise taxes on the richest Americans or seek to stimulate the economy through approaches that worked for the better part of 30 years, until the stagflation crisis of the 70s. The underanalyzed (at least outside of academia) language games of conservatives have altered political debate in this country away from even a modicum of reason or sanity; continuing unabated by truth, an even cursory understanding of economics or a reasonable discussion of the growing underclass in America. "Social justice" is just another word for "socialism," (as is government stimulus spending or tax hikes), talking about race is "race baiting," talking about social class is engaging in "class warfare," all democrats are "tax and spend" addicts and the deficits they continuously accumulate while they are in the White House become magically based on the policies of those who inherit them. Now "investment," one of the pillars of neoliberal discourse for the past 30 years, is a bad word itself and many Republicans are seriously considering letting states go bankrupt. When will the madness end? Maybe when they outlaw the democratic party itself and can simply spew their destructive policies with no resistance at all.

So That Explains It?

News that astronomer signs are misaligned by as much as a month (due to "wobble" in the earth) has sent people into identity crises that rival that following news the earth was not the center of the universe and that Liberace was gay: http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/style/113100139.html?elr=KArksUUUoDEy3LGDiO7aiU. Tauruses are trying to be less aggressive and not as impressive in bed, Scorpios less vindictive and Virgos less accommodating. People who have long wondered why daily horoscopes have not led them along the path to success and fortune are reading a paragraph down, hoping happiness is just around the corner. Historians are now trying to determine if this explains the Reagan presidency and the continued success of boy bands. Lawsuits against the Psychic Discovery Network are being filed at record levels, though they have hired the leading global warming doubter PR firm to challenge the new theory.