Review: Crazy, Stupid, Love.

Crazy, Stupid, Love. is rarely crazy, occasionally stupid and, well, all about love. It starts with the revelation of an affair by Cal's (Steve Carrell) wife Emily (Julianne Moore). Cal jumps ship and ends up biding his time in a local bar, where he is ultimately taken under the wing of the establishment's lothario Jacob (Ryan Gosling). Jacob is the classic ladies man, well-dressed, wealthy, smooth and largely devoid of real depth. He changes Cal's look, gives him insight into his craft and actually helps the buffoon to a short stint as a Don Juan himself, including a hook-up with one of their children's teacher (Marisa Tomei). From here, things do go a little crazy as Jacob falls in love with Hannah (Emma Stone), who was originally unimpressed with his charms but goes for him to get back at a nondescript boyfriend who doesn't propose when she expects him to, the babysitter Jessica falls in love with Cal while Cal's son Robbie is in love with her, we find out Hannah is Cal's older daughter and Cal and Emily are considering reconciliation. The rom-com ends more or less as one would expect, but there are plenty of funny and touching moments along the way. The interesting thing is how it challenges a recent trend in Hollywood to play with the opposite end of the romance spectrum -- the friends with benefits relationship. Here marriage and commitment are the trope; returning us to Hollywood's love affair with monogamy and the normative family structure. Sure both spouses end up in bed with others, but they come back together in the end and, we assume, live happily ever after. Cal and Hannah also end up in love and the classic "tamed lothario" theme relived yet again and even Robbie is given some hope of future nookie with his love interest Jessica. Could it be that Hollywood is trying to revive that institution that has fallen out of favor with the young disaffected crowd? Or is it just that most of the FWB films have floundered at the box office? In any case, the movie is probably worth a viewing if you like the genre and can look past the predictable arc of the narrative. Of course, if you like the genre, you probably like the predictable arc ...

Arsenal Reprieve

The football media in England is almost as bad as the celebrity reporters all across the U.S. They make drama of the mundane, cry glory and disgrace in the same breathe, predict doom without compunction (or evidence), spread rumour as gospel and beat a story to the point where it becomes more meaningless than a Thomas Kincaid painting. This press has been piling it on Arsene Wenger and my beloved Arsenal for weeks now -- and not without cause. The sagacious Wenger has wilted in the last six years, coming close to several trophies including an FA Cup, coveted Champions League, a few league titles and the infamous Carling Cup flop last year -- but come up empty in them all. He has been relative inactive in the transfer market the past two years and, obviously, just lost his two best players. A loss to Liverpool at home for the first time in over a decade and a nil-nil draw with Newcastle the week before was a terrible start to the season and injuries and a tight 1-0 victory in the home leg of the Udinese tie left many wondering if Arsenal would fall ignominiously out of the Champions League before the group stage. In recent weeks, old Arsenal stars, coaches and just about anyone with a blog, microphone or Twitter account has been imploring Wenger to spend some Fing money (including several of his own players).

Heading into the second leg of the tie today,  all seemed doom and gloom. And at halftime matters were even worse, with the tie even overall and Udinese looking the much more active team. Yet Arsenal came out strong in the second half and won 2-1 (for an aggregate 3-1 victory). Now the rumor mill is awash with news of a number of targets coming into sight (though unfortunately it looks like we might not get top target Hazard after all -- a big loss). Three big signings -- including a centre back, midfielder and forward (who can score) -- could put Arsenal back on track and even if Man U wins at Old Trafford this weekend, which I sort of expect to happen given our injuries and youth, the schedule opens up afterwards, players will be back from suspensions and injuries and Arsenal could very well get back in the hunt.

One of the tendencies of media saturation is overcoverage of stories and hyperbolic predictions of apocalypse. While we should certainly heed those calls more regarding the American economy and political process today, we should also recognize that what matters isn't necessarily aligned in any profound way with what sells. As Wenger has been saying -- calm down Gooners and enjoy a respite from the panic!

Pope on Higher Education

One of the troubling trends in Higher Education today is the call to make it predominantly about providing technical skills to future workers. Lost in this discourse of essentially vocationalizing post-secondary education are more holistic notions of education as a means to expand the mind, do independent research, think critically about contemporary problems and future solutions and, hopefully, develop a love of learning that will follow you as you embark on your adult life. Pope Benedict XVI gave a speech to university professors in Madrid last Friday that captures the essence of my own critique of the movement toward instrumentalizing education in colleges and universities today:

"At times one has the idea that the mission of a university professor nowadays is exclusively that of forming competent and efficient professionals capable of satisfying the demand for labor at any given time. One also hears it said that the only thing that matters at the present moment is pure technical ability," he said. "This sort of utilitarian approach to education is in fact becoming more widespread, even at the university level, promoted especially by sectors outside the university. All the same, you who, like myself, have had an experience of the university, and now are members of the teaching staff, surely are looking for something more lofty and capable of embracing the full measure of what it is to be human. We know that when mere utility and pure pragmatism become the principal criteria, much is lost and the results can be tragic: from the abuses associated with a science which acknowledges no limits beyond itself, to the political totalitarianism which easily arises when one eliminates any higher reference than the mere calculus of power. The authentic idea of the university, on the other hand, is precisely what saves us from this reductionist and curtailed vision of humanity."

Buffet Rebuffed by Right

Last week billionaire Warren Buffett argued that billionaires should be paying more in taxes -- through an increase in capital gains taxes and a more progressive tax system for those making over $1,000,000 and $10,000,000. Not surprisingly, the right is attacking him on all fronts. Fox News has been particularly incisive in their charges, claiming he is engaging in "class warfare" (which of course indicates talking about class at all; not killing unions, cutting jobs and helping the wealthy to get wealthier) and even that one of the richest men in the world is a "socialist." Jon Stewart, one of the few voices around willing to actually attack the absurdity of the GOP and media these days, had a wonderful bit on Fox's coverage of Buffett's op ed: Washington Post. Have we really reached the point in America where progressive taxation is a form of "socialism"? Have we gotten to the point where any tax increase is beyond the scope of reasonable? And what does this mean for our future? I would argue that unless we ask the wealthiest Americans to start paying their fair share, cut defense spending and have a real stimulus from DC we are on the cusp of a long decline not unlike the one that seems destined for my beloved Arsenal.

Arsenal Blues

Arsenal fans are apoplectic about the just started season, worrying about the lack of quality signings, the loss of our captain and best player (Fabergas) and the imminent departure of one of our other greats Sam Nasri. As one of those fans, I am apoplectic as well. Every day, several times a day, I go onto the various blogs and websites with sparkles in my eyes, hoping to finally see the signing of Mata or Cahill or Hazard, or anyone I've ever heard of. But with only 12 days left in the summer transfer window, the situation is starting to look dire. What is to become of our beloved team? Are we to fade toward mediocrity that will make it harder to attract top players in the future? Are we just in the midst of a short-term decline that will be fixed by all the young talent we have maturing to first team glory? Or will they follow the march out of the Emirates as so many players have in recent years as they hit their prime, looking for the glory of silverware and salaries with top clubs that double the 90,000 pound a week max that Arsenal pays their players. In the end, it appears the issue is one of money.

Money has come to define sports in recent years, and even as the biggest spenders don't always win, it is becoming increasingly clear that money is the great divider today. For six years, since the last time Arsenal won anything, they have spent substantially less than any other club in England (in either the first or second division). Given this reality, it is commendable that they have maintained their position in the top four and competed each year for the league and other trophies. Yet the late season collapses have shown the lack of leadership and winning tradition that have befallen a team based primarily on youth. Should sports come down to money? Is loyalty an erstwhile attribute lost in the modern world of greed and winning at any cost? And does money guarantee success? The answer to the last question is no. While teams that spend do tend to succeed in football (aka soccer), baseball, And basketball and other sports, there are exceptions to the rule on both sides of the equation. The MetSs have been spending like crazy, for example, but are already essentially done for the year. Chelsea has been spending a fortune and though they've had success, walked away with nothing to show for the money last year. And the San Francisco Giants and Dallas Mavericks beat out the competition with lower total payrolls then, for example, the New York Yankess or Miami Heat -- who clearly tried to buy their way to a championship.

Back to Arsenal, the next week could very well determine the contours of our entire season. Tomorrow we face off against a revamped Liverpool team that spent huge (and arguably overpaid for several players) to try to regain their former mainstay in the top four. Next up is a Champions League qualifier second leg against a dangerous team from Udinese that has the advantage of home field in trying to prematurely end Arsenal's CL season for the first time in years. And then dreaded Man U, the team I despise more than any other in sport. One hopes a big signing next week will at least give us a chance against Man U and a surprisingly resilient early defense can hold off the competition in the other two fixtures. I still dream of waking up each day with two or three big signings again restoring hope. A boy can dream ...

The State of the GOP Nation

Newly anointed as a leading candidate for the GOP Presidential nomination, Rick Perry has gotten off to an interesting start. Yesterday he claimed Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke will be engaging in treason if he calls for the expected third round of quantitative easing, meant to lower borrowing costs: Think Progress Article. The actual quote: “If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I don’t know what you all would do to him in Iowa, but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas. Printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treacherous—or treasonous in my opinion.” The argument is absurdly ignorant of economic policy and seems like further proof that Republicans would rather prolong the economic crisis and win elections then actually help solve the problems plaguing us. When Karl Rove criticizes you, you know something is wrong (Slate), but given the slate of candidates for 2012 and the way Republicans have been winning for 30 years -- one really expects this to just be the start of the lies, half-truths, fear-mongering, hate-mongering and ad hominem after ad hominem that they will use to try to unseat Obama.

Perry has also rewritten history in his first campaign video (TPM) blaming Obama for the S&P downgrade of the U.S. credit rating. Sounds like the sort of revisionist history that also blamed Obama for the financial crisis Bush wrought. While we're at it, let's blame Obama for 911, the Iraq War and, hell, Stalin and Mao (since he's clearly a socialist and we have no idea where he was born). With the future of the country in the balance, this nod to the relative ignorance of the American public is truly disheartening -- and with a media that has become endeared to the he said-she said form of reporting, few will realize the ridiculousness of the claim.

Finally, it has come out that Perry tends to carry a gun around with him (even when he jobs): Slate. Taking the gunslinger persona of Bush to the next level, we could look forward to a President that has an extra form of persuasion with foreign leaders in his holster -- literally.  The current state of the GOP defies logic ...

Buffet Speaks in Tongues

Like E.F. Hutton, when Warren Buffett speaks, people listen. He has offered his sage advice on market reform, larger economic trends and a host of other issues. Now Buffett has come out of the closet arguing that the super-rich should pay more taxes: Slate Article. “My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress,” Buffett wrote in a New York Times op-ed Monday. “It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.”

So will Congress listen? Will the super-rich add their voice to Buffett's clarion call for tax reform, which could solve our budget woes and allow us to move onto the more important business of allowing the federal government to try to simulate the economy? One hopes so, but the previous record on these matters has been suspect at best. Back in 2001 when was Bush was suspending the estate tax, many famous wealthy Americans came forward to tell us they were willing to pay these taxes upon their death. But Bush and Congress went forth anyway, and together with the other tax cuts, helped facilitate the current debt crisis we face.

Is there a chance to restore sanity to DC debates? Will corporations ever pay their fair share? One thought I had was a corporate tax structure that rewarded companies for reinvestment in infrastructure and particularly hiring new workers. Rather than allowing the Fortune 500 to continue garnering huge profits without increasing their payrolls, penalize them for their greed and short-sidedness. Rather than continuing to support the absurdly retrograde argument that raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans will hurt the economy, let's laugh off the Laffer Curve once and for all. Rather than demanding that the middle class and poor suffer for the insatiable greed of our most fortunate fathers and mothers, let's allow progressive taxation to create more equity in social, economic and political terms. The reality is that the poor and middle class spend a larger proportion of their disposable income, meaning aggregate demand (aka consumption) will increase and the economy will start to grow again. This can only occur if increase employment (and disposable income).

After the Great Depression, as I've written before, there appeared to be a consensus that corporate leaders needed to sacrifice to ensure the long-term stability and prosperity of America. For the past 30 years, that consensus has been chipped away at, replaced by the idea that greed and self-interest should be the raison d'etre of all Americans. Taxes have become the bete noire of not only the right, but the center disabling the power of the government to intervene when greed overwhelms the law and reason and corporate frugality undermines economic growth. Today we need to restore order, restore the notion that there is not only freedom but responsibility in a democratic society. Without responsibility and obligation, we move closer and closer to fascistic anarchy every day ...

The Crazies

So Michelle Bachmann won the Iowa straw poll today (CNN Story). And Rick Perry has made it official, he's running as well. We still don't know about Sarah Palin, but it is safe to say that the crazies are ruling the day in Republican politics. As many have recently pointed out (including the lead story in TNR's The Mall this week), Iowa is an overrated event that has little to do with the overall primary -- except that the media makes so much of it and it can thus kill a candidacy prematurely. In any case, I have already written on Bachmann in the past and imagine I will be writing a lot more about her in the coming months. For today, I would like to focus on the newest crazy to join the fray -- Rick Perry. Let's highlight some of the lovely facts about the latest Republican governor to put his name in the Presidential ring ...

- Perry believes that Senators should not be directly elected by the people: Dailykos

- Perry wants to end social security and medicare/medicaid. In fact he called both "Ponzi Schemes":  Hullabaloo

- In May, talking about the financial crisis, he made the following argument: "I think it’s time for us to just hand it over to God, and say, ‘God: You’re going to have to fix this." Hullabaloo 2

- Perry is a big fan of the 10th amendment, except of course when it comes to abortion and gay marriage. 

- Perry once argued for secession as a viable strategy for Texas. 

It is just this sort of crazy that should have no semblance of a chance in American politics. But just as crisis was barely averted with the debt ceiling, as the U.S. debt rating is dropped by one of the big 3 raters and as our financial crisis continues to persist and in some ways grow, the answer appears to be that we should simply shrink the size of the federal government, rely on states that are in even worse financial shape and rely on the market and/or God to save us from complete collapse. Sounds like the script for a good sci fi film; unfortunately these are supposedly viable candidates to lead the largest economy on earth.

Corrupting the First Amendment From All Sides

A couple of months ago, I wrote a post on the troubling conservative turn of the Supreme Court under Robert's tutelage. Today I read of another case that looks at the First Amendment from the other side, instead of being used to support corporations and the unlimited private funding of elections, this case successfully overturned a public financing system in Arizona (see "Strong Opinions" by Jeffrey Rosen in The New Republic, August 18, 2011). In Arizona Free Enterprise Club v. Bennett, the usual suspects (in a 5-4 decision) accepted the challenging of Arizona's public campaign financing law by one of the state's PACs. The absurd claim was that by providing $20,000 in public funding to candidates in state House races, and an additional matching dollar for every dollar raised above that amount, the law was violating the First Amendment. Robert's claim was that "leveling the playing field" accomplished this verboten result and somehow "inhibit[s] robust and wide-open political debate without sufficient justification" How does supporting candidates who cannot get sufficient private funding somehow undermine wide-open political debate? Should we really think of leveling the playing field as unconstitutional (even if affirmative action is essentially dead)?

It appears as if the Bush v. Gore decision of 2000 has opened the floodgates for partisan decisions that essentially use the constitution and precedent as mere  instruments to endorse the political interests of the majority. Of course the Supreme Court has never been truly neutral, and decisions like Plessy v. Ferguson and the Dred Scott case certainly show the lengths the court will go to support their politics. But something appears new today -- a complete disregard for rationality or reason in the decisions the majority decide. If we go back to the Bush/Gore case, the 16th amendment was invoked, claiming that citizen's would not be treated equally if a recount was done (a spurious claim that led that same majority to caution that this was essentially a one off and should not be used as precedent in future cases). With the more recent pro-corporate decisions, the First Amendment both protects corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money on candidates and disallows the state government from spending any. Luckily in the same session, we find, in Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn, that state government can offer tuition tax credit to organizations that then spend the money on scholarships for students attending religious and secular private schools; which many would argue is a direct violation of the very same First Amendment. So why couldn't Arizona taxpayers challenge the law? The five conservative judges said the taxpayers had no standing to sue -- which led Elena Kagan to argue that the decision "threatens to eliminate all occasions for a taxpayer to contest the government's monetary support of religion."

It is bad enough that the Court appears willing to both bolster corporation's political clout and limit its legal and financial liability in case after case, but if they are to continue stripping citizens of their rights at the same time, we will soon find ourselves in a plutocracy that is not much different than Russia. As I have always argued in this blog, if we allow the wealthy and powerful to act without constraint while limiting the power of the people to voice their consent or challenge entrenched power, we end up with only a facade of democracy. Should we really be giving that much power over our collective future to unelected lifetime judges who have far surpassed their intended constitutional power?

Dude, Who is that Pretentious Director Trying to Make Me Think?

I have been absent from my blog for too long, but decided to start it up again today and try to get to it at least five days a week from now on. I wanted to discuss an interesting article from the New York Times, published back in early June: In Defense of Slow and Boring.

The article discusses a new train of thought emerging among movie critics that there is really no place for the slow, artistic film anymore. Their problem is that these films are too boring and really don't understand the medium itself, which is apparently aimed merely at entertaining us these days. The article emerged in response to a piece by Dan Kois, who admitted that he had grown tired of "eating his cultural vegetables" and would rather just be entertained at the movies. He felt that the tedium and abstractions of the popular artistic films undermined any deeper intellectual or artistic aspirations they might hold.

While I certainly understand his point and believe that many films in the cannon of great are almost unwatchable, it is troubling to consider that many critics would rather watch Hangover II than Tree of Life. Is this the latest parry in our collective nod to the yellow brick road of anti-intellectualism? Is it the result of a world where focusing on anything for more than 10 minutes seems unproductive or dull? Or is it a nod to our collective need to be amused most of the time, undermining time for unnecessarily exhausting activities like actually thinking? I think however we explain the phenomenon, we must acknowledge that while mainstream movies will probably rarely aim at deeper, more profound ideas or aesthetic heights, there should always be a space for the small, ambitious film -- whether it be the beautifully rendered Blue Valentine, the slow, prodding brilliance of Paris, Texas or the long epic grandeur of a Che or Shoah.

As one intellectual or artistic space after another is attacked for its intellectualism (which is essentially an attack on making us think too hard about anything), we lose the outlets that can actually challenge us to think more deeply about the world around us. My fear is that we are entering the world that McLuhan foretold in 1962, where mysticism and surface replace rationalism and depth. I am not arguing that there is nothing to be gained in this new world, just that deep thought and rumination are the very foundation of not only democracy, but social progress itself. One cannot help but draw a connecting line between the anti-intellectualism of popular culture and even universities today and the ascendency of the Tea Party and absurdism as the general tenor of political discourse today.

A few thoughts on three specific quotes from the article:

"Of course, what I think is boring,” Warhol wrote in his memoir “Popism,” “must not be the same as what other people think is, since I could never stand to watch all the most popular action shows on TV, because they’re essentially the same plots and the same shots and the same cuts over and over again. Apparently, most people love watching the same basic thing, as long as the details are different.” - After taking a tour of the Tate Modern in London several years ago, I gained a new respect for Andy Warhol and his work. More than just his famously prescient notion of 15-minutes of fame that now seems to be the raison d'etre of far too many youth today, he captured the changing nature of our reality -- not only the ascendancy of consumer culture as culture itself, but the reproducibility of images and text until they were rendered truly meaningless. His thoughts on boredom makes me consider a deeper idea -- that what we seek in the formulaic is an escape from that which surrounds us: namely the reproduction in slightly varied narrative forms of formulas that give us comfort merely because they are ascribed with meaning and garnished with false emotional commitment that invests them with an impact we otherwise don't feel in our daily lives.

MOVIES may be the only art form whose core audience is widely believed to be actively hostile to ambition, difficulty or anything that seems to demand too much work on their part. In other words, there is, at every level of the culture — among studio executives, entertainment reporters, fans and quite a few critics — a lingering bias against the notion that movies should aspire to the highest levels of artistic accomplishment. - This might be the most troubling quote of the entire article. It is expectations of the audience that are so important to how messages are formulated and delivered. Whether it be the shrinking size of the soundbite, the shorter news and magazine article size, the fact that advertisers assume that men are stupid and make advertising targeted at them meet that expectation or this idea that movies and all popular culture should serve the lowest common denominator, we are left in a world where stupidity is sold back to us on a relatively perpetual basis, affirming and even eliciting stupidity as a normative form of human existence. Me thinks that is not so good a idea!

Movies, Mr. Schickel writes, “are an essentially worldly medium, playful and romantic, particularly in America, where, on the whole our best directors have stated whatever serious intentions they may harbor as ignorable asides. There are other ways of making movies, naturally, and there’s always a small audience available for these noble strivings — and good for them, I guess.” - Is this really true? Have we moved so far away from the ambitions of the 60s and 70s (that reemerged with some directors in the 90s) that our "best directors" no longer think that they have anything terribly important to say beyond the filmic techniques and narrative structure they employ? If that is true, I believe it is a harbinger of a very troubling future. One could say a very similar thing about many popular artists today, who have deferred any deeper political meaning in their works in deference to deconstructing the formalist elements of art, focusing on their production and reception. There are certainly exceptions, with Banksy coming immediately to mind, but together with the more comedic and less politically invested novel and the pushing out of political music from the mainstream, there appears to be a growing consensus that there is no real place for politics in the arts (at least in the mainstream). When we add to this the push to make education "apolitical" and my aforementioned notion that the same is occurring in the mainstream media (who some believe should report the news without offering their opinion or perspective, or even checking the validity of the claims being made), we are left with few spaces where politics can actually be discussed cogently. So if we eliminate politics from the arts, from mainstream media, in K-12 education and even the university, then where can we turn? Washington DC? Hmm ...

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 ...