I can't remember when I've seen such a first-rate combination of staging and singing as we saw today in the HD theatre broadcast of Offenbach's Tales of Hoffman from the Met.
The singing, to coin a phrase, kind of speaks for itself (but I will say more infra). The staging--well, if you don't like it, you will say that it is cluttery and intrusive. If you like it, you know that the reason it works lies in the nature of the opera itself and its composer. Recall this is Offenbach's only "serious" opera (or the only one that persists in the repertoire). He wrote it toward the end of a career, in which he felt increasingly the need not just to prove himself but to justify himself.
And everything about Offenbach is a contradiction. He is a Frenchman, but he's not. He's a Jew, but he's not. He's a serious composer, but he's not. He's a divided soul. He's a cosmopolitan. And that is the point. I've never seen any production that goes further to identify the welter of cultural connections that Offenbach can exemplify.
Offenbach wrote the opera in the 1870s--a troubled time in France, hard on their humiliation by the Germans in the Franco-Prussian war (he staged a performance at his home in 1879, but then died in 1880, before any full public staging). The Met's director, Bartlett Sher, says he has pushed it forward to the 1920s, which is true enough but only up to a point. Granted, there are enough cabaret touches that you half expect Joel Grey to pop out and shout "Wilkommen!" But there's a lot more than that; there's plenty of leftover Belle Epoque; there's an anchoring pub scene and for the finale, the whole gang goes to Venice. The point is that the music seems to be able go resonate with all of these.
Joseph Calleja here in his first outing as Hoffman is the glue that holds it all together, the same way James Gandolfini holds together The Sopranos. Calleja has said himself that the voice is a fine fit for the music and he's right: Calleja seems as much at home in Hoffman as Anthony Dean Griffey is in Peter Grimes (except that Griffey may be a one-opera singer; Calleja has given every evidence that he is nurturing a full career). Calleja gives you a Hoffman who is all of a piece, a searcher and a sensitive soul. And also something of an outsider; Sher likes to talk about Kafka and that is not wrong, but you could tell the story as a chapter in the long history of romanticism without any reference to Kafka at all--or putting it the other way around, calling him "Byron" would do just as well.
Aside from Calleja, I thought the most winning personality onstage today was Kate Lindsey as the muse. She doesn't have the strongest voice but she knows exactly what she wants to convey, and she is on stage through almost the entire production--detached and ironic, yet still sympathetic with her somewhat bewildered protege. The star turn belonged to Anna Netrebko as the thwarted prima donna. She turned in a perfectly creditable performance, but it's remarkable that this segment actually seems somewhat thin in a presentation like this where a different woman sings each of the three leads.
James Levine was back at the podium, dealing (to all appearances) graciously with a back brace. Sher got to join the onstage applause line at the end, along with Michael Yeargan the set designer Catherine Zuber who did the costumes--and well deserved, I say, probably should happen more often.
A side note: if you're having as much trouble as I did getting a grip on Offenbach, you might consider starting with La Vie Parisienne, which must be about the most successful of his undertakings in opéra bouffe. "Comic" is just exactly what Hoffman is not, but this blowout extravaganza in a medium with which he was much more familiar may give you a more accessible sense of what he thought the musical stage might be.
Afterthought: Just a few days ago, we watched Red Shoes--Michael Powell's high-kitsch mash note to The Arts. Powell weent on to do Hoffman, and I can see now how much Powell's Hoffman is a sequel to his Red Shoes. In retrospect, Powell's Hoffman is good fun, but it's got about as much to do with Offenbach as it does with John Wayne.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Friday, December 18, 2009
Gomorrah
I got a look last night at Matteo Garrone 's Gomorrah --the movie based on Roberto Saviano's book about the Neapolitan Mob. It's worth the watching, though not as good I might have expected from its passel of awards and its 91 percent Rotten Tomatoes ranking (that's as of this writing).
Tbe film is presented as six not-very-interwoven stories of footsoldiers trying to scrimp out a living in the life of crime. Perhaps the most interesting is he account of "Don Ciro," the poor slob who has to deliver money every week to the mob's retainers. It's one of those vignettes (like my favorite scene in Donnie Brasco--the one where Al Pacino cracks open the parking meter) the reminds you that the mob is just another business, and not a very good one, at that. You can only wonder how in the devil Don Ciro--far more frightened than naturally violent, or even corrupt--ever got into this mess and, for whatever it is worth, you are left wondering how he will get out of it.
Overall, the movie is well shot in a lot of soul-draining suburban Naples locations, with a style refreshingly free of the "violence porn" that proved all too seductive in some of the late episodes of The Sopranos. There's plenty of death here but (as it should be) it seems off-handed and stupid more often than dramatic or spectacular.
The trouble is that the director seems (or wants you) to believe that he is presenting the epic of a vast international crime syndicate. And there may very well be such a syndicate but he hasn't shown it. For the most part, he hasn't even hinted it. The most ambitious and enterprising of all the mobsters (if can call him that) is the Franco, who takes a trip north to Mestre, the ugly backwater just inland of Venice, where he acquires a waste disposal contract. We are to assume that the waste is toxic, and that it does great harm to a trucker, and that the disposal operation is illegal. This is a nasty business, but you can't help feeling at least a bit of sympathy for Franco who is, after all, doing a job that a lot of people want done. Too, you've got to admire his enterprise when, in the movie's most memorable scene, short of "real" drivers, he recruits a bunch of street kids to pilot his giant disposal vans.
But Franco is as far up the chain as you go, and for all we see here, he might just be a freelancer. As to poor Don Ciro--we don't even really get to know who it is that he is delivering money from. As to the rest, they are just street punks (and one cadet punk) or neighborhood heavies. So, a good movie, perhaps a welcome corrective after the excesses of The Sopranos (which, to be fair, I liked a lot). But still not a major movie, nothing that redefines the landscape (unless, of course, you count the truckloads of toxic waste).
Tbe film is presented as six not-very-interwoven stories of footsoldiers trying to scrimp out a living in the life of crime. Perhaps the most interesting is he account of "Don Ciro," the poor slob who has to deliver money every week to the mob's retainers. It's one of those vignettes (like my favorite scene in Donnie Brasco--the one where Al Pacino cracks open the parking meter) the reminds you that the mob is just another business, and not a very good one, at that. You can only wonder how in the devil Don Ciro--far more frightened than naturally violent, or even corrupt--ever got into this mess and, for whatever it is worth, you are left wondering how he will get out of it.
Overall, the movie is well shot in a lot of soul-draining suburban Naples locations, with a style refreshingly free of the "violence porn" that proved all too seductive in some of the late episodes of The Sopranos. There's plenty of death here but (as it should be) it seems off-handed and stupid more often than dramatic or spectacular.
The trouble is that the director seems (or wants you) to believe that he is presenting the epic of a vast international crime syndicate. And there may very well be such a syndicate but he hasn't shown it. For the most part, he hasn't even hinted it. The most ambitious and enterprising of all the mobsters (if can call him that) is the Franco, who takes a trip north to Mestre, the ugly backwater just inland of Venice, where he acquires a waste disposal contract. We are to assume that the waste is toxic, and that it does great harm to a trucker, and that the disposal operation is illegal. This is a nasty business, but you can't help feeling at least a bit of sympathy for Franco who is, after all, doing a job that a lot of people want done. Too, you've got to admire his enterprise when, in the movie's most memorable scene, short of "real" drivers, he recruits a bunch of street kids to pilot his giant disposal vans.
But Franco is as far up the chain as you go, and for all we see here, he might just be a freelancer. As to poor Don Ciro--we don't even really get to know who it is that he is delivering money from. As to the rest, they are just street punks (and one cadet punk) or neighborhood heavies. So, a good movie, perhaps a welcome corrective after the excesses of The Sopranos (which, to be fair, I liked a lot). But still not a major movie, nothing that redefines the landscape (unless, of course, you count the truckloads of toxic waste).
Makes You Glad You Never Wrote a Book
Self-important, pompous, pretentious, solipsistic, often obscure, sometimes barely coherent, [this] book seems to address itself only to those in the know.Let's see, did I forget anything? Oh yes:
The translation ... renders these faults with exemplary accuracy.That's Richard J. Evans ending s book review in the London Review of Books,12-14, 14 3 December 2009
Are You Ready for Eight Questions?
It's a few days old, but this is the first, second or third-best thing I've read this week so it deserves a shoutout--Kent Thune offering eight questions to ask yourself as you consider investment advice. Not least, number eight:
Three, you say? So, what are the other two? In no particular order, Sanchez on ressentiment, and this cranky morsel from Delong's comments:
- Have you ever made money by following a “where to invest” article’s suggestions?
Three, you say? So, what are the other two? In no particular order, Sanchez on ressentiment, and this cranky morsel from Delong's comments:
WTF does Republican Party has to do with it? At City CEO tried to dilute the shares to kick the government out of ownership - and failed. In the normal country he'd be in jail for gaming the stock. In the moderately corrupt country (think Russia or Uzbekistan) he'd be out of the job for doing the same and failing. In the howling-at-the-Moon United States he ... gets to try again. In the meantime, the guy in Texas gets 8 years for being caught doing graffiti. Can we please wipe this place from the face of the Earth and try again?Per "Baboon," and damifiknow.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Appreciation: Murakami's Wind-up Bird Chronicle
Reading Haruki Murakami's Wind-up Bird Chronicle, I sometimes had to remind myself that it's held in high esteem in Japan. This is not to say it's a bore; rather, on a page-by-page basis, it's a lot of fun. Murakami knows how to spin a story, in the sense of making you ask "what happens next?" But I believe I read somewhere that he starts out not knowing where his characters are going to go. He might have been bragging; Dickens said something the same of himself, and Murakami probably wouldn't mind keeping such company. But in Murakami's case, I think it has to be counted a defect. In the end, he makes no more thn perfunctory effort to draw them all together. We are left with what reads more like a collection of classroom exercises, elegant in their way, but lacking any sense of a larger whole.
Yet some general themes emerge in spite of all. One is the pervading influence of western culture--not just American; a theme from Rossini's Thieving Magpie comes as close as anything to being a motif in this book. It might be just Murakami; I'm inclined to suspect thst it's more general and indeed, might explain his popularity with Japanese readers.
Another "recurrence" (if not exactly a theme) is the persistent passivity of the protagonist. Granted novelistic protagonists are often passive (Guy Crouchback was in Sword of Honor). But one suspects the Western reader may be encountering something more remarkable here--that phenomenon the Japanese call hikikomori, the disposition to turn in and drop out so much remarked upon among young Japanese, particularly men. Toro Okada, the protagonist here, may not be quite a typical case: at 30 he perhaps a bit too old. But there's something eerie about his capacity to stay disconnected, and perhaps equally eerie about the capacity of those around him to treat his passivity as unremarkable.
Two other "themes"--if you cvan call that--provide a bit more specific intereset. One is Toro's brother-in-law, the villain of the piece, a rising young politician. From the brother-in-law, we do get a plausible sniff of the aroma of avarive and corruption thst seems to have formed so durable a part of Japanese political life.
The other is easier to describe, if harder to integrate. Among many other stories, Murukami gives us a string of anecdotes from the ugly years in and around World War II, and in particular, the dreadful campaign of the Japanese to plant a "new nation" of sorts in Mancuria, north China. Although it is never made clear just what they are doing here, Murukami offer some of his most powerful and persuasive material in these accounts related to the Manchurian campaign.
A final curiosity: I've read a number of reviews of Wind-up Bird (which was first published in the United States in 1998). Most of them seem impelled to speak highly of it, to give it high marks. Yet on close reading, one gets the sense that most of the readers didn't like it very much. Is this some kind of reviewer trade code--say what you want about a "famous and important" book, as long as you give it high marks at the end?
Yet some general themes emerge in spite of all. One is the pervading influence of western culture--not just American; a theme from Rossini's Thieving Magpie comes as close as anything to being a motif in this book. It might be just Murakami; I'm inclined to suspect thst it's more general and indeed, might explain his popularity with Japanese readers.
Another "recurrence" (if not exactly a theme) is the persistent passivity of the protagonist. Granted novelistic protagonists are often passive (Guy Crouchback was in Sword of Honor). But one suspects the Western reader may be encountering something more remarkable here--that phenomenon the Japanese call hikikomori, the disposition to turn in and drop out so much remarked upon among young Japanese, particularly men. Toro Okada, the protagonist here, may not be quite a typical case: at 30 he perhaps a bit too old. But there's something eerie about his capacity to stay disconnected, and perhaps equally eerie about the capacity of those around him to treat his passivity as unremarkable.
Two other "themes"--if you cvan call that--provide a bit more specific intereset. One is Toro's brother-in-law, the villain of the piece, a rising young politician. From the brother-in-law, we do get a plausible sniff of the aroma of avarive and corruption thst seems to have formed so durable a part of Japanese political life.
The other is easier to describe, if harder to integrate. Among many other stories, Murukami gives us a string of anecdotes from the ugly years in and around World War II, and in particular, the dreadful campaign of the Japanese to plant a "new nation" of sorts in Mancuria, north China. Although it is never made clear just what they are doing here, Murukami offer some of his most powerful and persuasive material in these accounts related to the Manchurian campaign.
A final curiosity: I've read a number of reviews of Wind-up Bird (which was first published in the United States in 1998). Most of them seem impelled to speak highly of it, to give it high marks. Yet on close reading, one gets the sense that most of the readers didn't like it very much. Is this some kind of reviewer trade code--say what you want about a "famous and important" book, as long as you give it high marks at the end?
Waugh and his Precursor
Chez Buce enjoyed a viewing of Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honor trilogy on the big screen at the Buce Odeon last week. We'd both read the novels, though separately (this is a strong pro-Waugh household). We give it two thumbs up; it's one of those rare events, a really successful screen representation of what was already a pretty good book. Or so I would have thought; but if so it confounds my theory that good books don't make good movies--only mediocre books make the transition, because there's too much going on in a really good book to be satisfactorily transmitted to the screen. But this doesn't seem right; I retain my high opinion of Waugh, on paper and on screen. The clue might be that Waugh makes his points by understatement: by setting up character and situation and then letting the voices speak for themselves. Perhaps this is something that really does transfer well to the screen. Besides, we all know that the Brits just do these movie transfers better than anybody else, so if anyone has a chance, it is they.
One point that had never struck me before: how much of the overarching plot of the Waugh trilogy is a reflection--okay, almost a direct steal--from the other great British multivolume war novel. That would be Parade's End by Ford Madox Ford, which we read just last winter. Think about it: old-school (if slightly down-market) aristo, wedded to a creed almost comically antique (think Don Quixote here)--and yoked to a woman so richly undeserving as to make you gasp (but admit it now: British girls never did look like a lot of fun, did they?). He moves more or less impassively through his War surrrounded by lunatics whose capacity for harm is limited only by their incompetence. Poor Ford. He never did get the respect he felt he deserved, and had he lived long enough to read Sword, I'll be he would have thought it actionable.
It brings to mind what I've always seen as an other case of arrant imitation in high places. That would be Henry James and George Eliot--in particular, James' sniffy, dismissive review* of Middlemarch, (one of) whose plot(s) he then suavely lifted for Portrait of a Lady. Perhaps we should just write it up as homage.
*In the Library of America Henry James: Essays on Literature--American Writers, English Writers at 958-66. See also his comments on Daniel Deronda, id. at 973-92 (1984).
One point that had never struck me before: how much of the overarching plot of the Waugh trilogy is a reflection--okay, almost a direct steal--from the other great British multivolume war novel. That would be Parade's End by Ford Madox Ford, which we read just last winter. Think about it: old-school (if slightly down-market) aristo, wedded to a creed almost comically antique (think Don Quixote here)--and yoked to a woman so richly undeserving as to make you gasp (but admit it now: British girls never did look like a lot of fun, did they?). He moves more or less impassively through his War surrrounded by lunatics whose capacity for harm is limited only by their incompetence. Poor Ford. He never did get the respect he felt he deserved, and had he lived long enough to read Sword, I'll be he would have thought it actionable.
It brings to mind what I've always seen as an other case of arrant imitation in high places. That would be Henry James and George Eliot--in particular, James' sniffy, dismissive review* of Middlemarch, (one of) whose plot(s) he then suavely lifted for Portrait of a Lady. Perhaps we should just write it up as homage.
*In the Library of America Henry James: Essays on Literature--American Writers, English Writers at 958-66. See also his comments on Daniel Deronda, id. at 973-92 (1984).
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Sanchez on the GOP Mood
I agree with almost everything Julian Sanchez says about the distinction between schadenfreude and ressentiment, and how the latter, not the former, is what ails the Republicans today. He might have gone a step further and pointed out tht ressentiment, per Nietzsche, is Christianity's natural home. In Genealogy of Morals (and elsewhere) he isolates it as the mainspring of a slave morality, in odious comparison to the heroic morality that is Nietzsche's beau ideal. There's whole academic industry devoted to the task of expunging this blood libel, but the concept does continue to raise its head.
Soul-searching a Goldman Sachs
Partner #1: How come nobody loves us any more?
Partner #2: Dunno. Screw 'em.
Link.
Update: Yes, you're right,they aren't "partners" any more. That may or may not be part of the problem.
Partner #2: Dunno. Screw 'em.
Link.
Update: Yes, you're right,they aren't "partners" any more. That may or may not be part of the problem.
Yegor Gaidar, 1956-2009
A brief personal anecdote: I did one consulting gig in Russia, back in 1995 during the rush to privatization. My brief was bankruptcy law. I remember how, tucked away in a tiny and poorly lit office, I told my American interlocutor: look, I cannot begin to tell you what kind of bankruptcy law you want unless I know how you collect a debt in Russia now. My interlocutor turned to his Russian "expert;" after a brief exchange in Russian, he turned back and said: "she says they don't have any collection law now; if you need to collect a debt, you just get together a bunch of your friends and go get it."
Such was my brush with "shock therapy," the swift and painful program of transistion from socialism to a market economy imposed in Russia after the fall of communism, under the leadership of, among others, Yedor Gaidar, whose death is reported today . News stories say he died of "complications following a blood clot," but if this story sticks, then there are bound to be conspiracy theories, and I will cheerfully join them. As co-architect-in-chief of the Russian transition to capitalism in the 1990s, Gaidar certainly had plenty of enemies, high and low. Forget about tiny and poorly lit offices: just walk the streets of Moscow back in those days and see the babushkas hawking Mars bars outside the the subway stations in the snow, and you could understand that not everybody saw virtue in the program of mass privatization that Gaidar espoused. There were plenty of others, not so directly harmed, who argued at least in hindsight that Russian privatization moved to quickly, with too little attention to the creation of a legal infrastructure. Proponents of market reform stayed mostly unapologetic: you had to grasp the moment, they said; any other scheme would have become bogged down and come to naught [but for some subtle second thoughts, go here].
But like it or not, the fact remains that Russia was and remains a Wild West show, with huge rewards available to those willing to take huge risks, and where players cannot be certain that they will die quietly in their own beedr. Gaidar himself appears to have been the victim of an attempted poisoning in Ireland in 2006, just a day after a Russian dissident was poisoned in London.
Gaidar himself exercised real political power for just a brief moment at the height of the transition. Like market liberals everywhere, his program was attractive enough to win him attention in the western press, but never enough to compel any more than a rump minority of voters.
Gaidar seems to have taken the decline of his influence in stride. He continued to write and speak about Russia and the cause of market reform. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitri Medvedev uttered kind words in his memory this morning--perhaps easy enough, now that he is safely dead. It would be interesting to know how the real Putin, unbuttoned or under truth serum, thinks about the task of market reform, flawed or otherwise.
An Economist obit of Gaidar is here. DeLong has a brief personal remembrance here. "Chris" in DeLong's comments links to a postmortem on shock therapy by Gaidar himself.
Update: here's a striking personal tribute that suggests we need to seek no conspiracy theory, and that casts doubt on my suggestion that he took his decline from power "in stride" link.
Such was my brush with "shock therapy," the swift and painful program of transistion from socialism to a market economy imposed in Russia after the fall of communism, under the leadership of, among others, Yedor Gaidar, whose death is reported today . News stories say he died of "complications following a blood clot," but if this story sticks, then there are bound to be conspiracy theories, and I will cheerfully join them. As co-architect-in-chief of the Russian transition to capitalism in the 1990s, Gaidar certainly had plenty of enemies, high and low. Forget about tiny and poorly lit offices: just walk the streets of Moscow back in those days and see the babushkas hawking Mars bars outside the the subway stations in the snow, and you could understand that not everybody saw virtue in the program of mass privatization that Gaidar espoused. There were plenty of others, not so directly harmed, who argued at least in hindsight that Russian privatization moved to quickly, with too little attention to the creation of a legal infrastructure. Proponents of market reform stayed mostly unapologetic: you had to grasp the moment, they said; any other scheme would have become bogged down and come to naught [but for some subtle second thoughts, go here].
But like it or not, the fact remains that Russia was and remains a Wild West show, with huge rewards available to those willing to take huge risks, and where players cannot be certain that they will die quietly in their own beedr. Gaidar himself appears to have been the victim of an attempted poisoning in Ireland in 2006, just a day after a Russian dissident was poisoned in London.
Gaidar himself exercised real political power for just a brief moment at the height of the transition. Like market liberals everywhere, his program was attractive enough to win him attention in the western press, but never enough to compel any more than a rump minority of voters.
Gaidar seems to have taken the decline of his influence in stride. He continued to write and speak about Russia and the cause of market reform. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitri Medvedev uttered kind words in his memory this morning--perhaps easy enough, now that he is safely dead. It would be interesting to know how the real Putin, unbuttoned or under truth serum, thinks about the task of market reform, flawed or otherwise.
An Economist obit of Gaidar is here. DeLong has a brief personal remembrance here. "Chris" in DeLong's comments links to a postmortem on shock therapy by Gaidar himself.
Update: here's a striking personal tribute that suggests we need to seek no conspiracy theory, and that casts doubt on my suggestion that he took his decline from power "in stride" link.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Silliest Statement I've Read All Day
From a blog entry by Randall Holcombe, otherwise unknown to me, which I first took to be a howler reprinted as comedy from a student exam:
Let's begin. Of course Marx said nice things about unions. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. And if the bourgeoisie is going to get itself organized, then the workers had better get organized too.
But the whole point of the bourgeois-proletarian conflict is that it is a point of transition, where the name of the game is dynamism. It depends on--it makes headway among--a proletariat when the proletariat is fluid, alien, ungovernable and ungoverned. Comes the revolution, all this will pass a way.
And this is why Marxism in its golden age had no more implacable enemy than a strong, focused, effective program of democratic trade unionism. Marxism is revolution. Trade unionism is stability and order. The democracies that emerged as bulwarks against Russian Communism in Europe understood that they knew that the way to fight off Communism was to nurture the unions and keep them strong. So did the Soviets, who understood that nothing stood higher in the program of revolution than to isolate the unions and leave them emasculated and paralyzed.
Do unions go sour? Of course. Recall Enoch Powell's dictum that all politics ends in failure. Unions get corrupt, entrenched, elitist, the enemies of a dynamic society. Ironically it is in this phase that unions most evidently lose precisely what made them so attractive to Marx--their energy and creativity as part of a functioning economy. It's a delicate balancing act, this attempt at equipoise between anarchy and reaction. But any way you read it, if you want to get to the socialist nirvana, the unions must be pushed out of the way. So to say that union programs are "some examples of Marx’s ideology at work"--that's a pretty good giveaway of a writer who doesn't understand the first thing of what Marxism was about.
Extra credit question: Marx liked cigars. Cigar smoking is an "example[] of Marx’s ideology at work.
Marx was a supporter of unions, because unions could give workers some collective power to limit their exploitation. Legislation like the proposed “card check” to extend union representation, and the ceding of substantial shares of GM and Chrysler to the UAW are some examples of Marx’s ideology at work.Boy, if that is what passes for teaching at Florida State, then we have one more argument for the abolition of public education.
Let's begin. Of course Marx said nice things about unions. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. And if the bourgeoisie is going to get itself organized, then the workers had better get organized too.
But the whole point of the bourgeois-proletarian conflict is that it is a point of transition, where the name of the game is dynamism. It depends on--it makes headway among--a proletariat when the proletariat is fluid, alien, ungovernable and ungoverned. Comes the revolution, all this will pass a way.
And this is why Marxism in its golden age had no more implacable enemy than a strong, focused, effective program of democratic trade unionism. Marxism is revolution. Trade unionism is stability and order. The democracies that emerged as bulwarks against Russian Communism in Europe understood that they knew that the way to fight off Communism was to nurture the unions and keep them strong. So did the Soviets, who understood that nothing stood higher in the program of revolution than to isolate the unions and leave them emasculated and paralyzed.
Do unions go sour? Of course. Recall Enoch Powell's dictum that all politics ends in failure. Unions get corrupt, entrenched, elitist, the enemies of a dynamic society. Ironically it is in this phase that unions most evidently lose precisely what made them so attractive to Marx--their energy and creativity as part of a functioning economy. It's a delicate balancing act, this attempt at equipoise between anarchy and reaction. But any way you read it, if you want to get to the socialist nirvana, the unions must be pushed out of the way. So to say that union programs are "some examples of Marx’s ideology at work"--that's a pretty good giveaway of a writer who doesn't understand the first thing of what Marxism was about.
Extra credit question: Marx liked cigars. Cigar smoking is an "example[] of Marx’s ideology at work.
19th Century Shakespeare
We (=I) tend to dismiss 19th Century Shakespeare as just so much arm-waving and bluster, as if nothing much happened before Granville Barker.
We (=I) may be mostly right, but it is useful not to get carried away. But here is an appraisal that strikes me as surprisingly modern, and from a surprising source-the famously irascible sixth President of the United States, John Quincy Adams:
We (=I) may be mostly right, but it is useful not to get carried away. But here is an appraisal that strikes me as surprisingly modern, and from a surprising source-the famously irascible sixth President of the United States, John Quincy Adams:
Hamlet is the personification of a man, in the prime of life, with a mind cultivated by learning, combining intelligence and sensibility in their highest degrees, within a step of the highest distinction attainable on earth. He is crushed to extinction by the pressure of calamities inflicted, not by nature, but against nature, not by physical, but by moral evil. Hamlet is the heart and soul of man, in all their perfection and all their frailty, in agonizing conflict with human crime, also in its highest pre-eminence of guilt.H/T: CrankYankee, who evidently does historical dress-up recreations of JQA. Credited to a journl entry for February 19, 1839.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Farnsworth's Legal Analyst
Getting ready to begin my 40th year in the classroom, I took a spin through Ward Farnsworth's The Legal Analyst: A Toolkit for Thinking About the Law (2007). It's fun and rewarding on its own terms, but also a rewarding opportunity to reflect on how things have changed over my professional lifetime. And before anything else, I should specify that Farnsworth is a superb explainer, topnotch at packing some difficult concepts in accessible, yet still intellectually honest, terms. Farnsworth says in his preface that he hopes it will appeal to "law students, lawyers, scholars and anyone else with an interest in the legal system." Right enough, although I suspect its primary audience may be students just finished with their first year, perhaps waiting for a jingle on the employment hotline. Or perhaps even more important, it will be another one of those books that the professor tucks in his own top drawer, so as to trade on some bits of intellectual capital that he hasn't earned.
As one might guess, the heart and soul of Farnsworth's book is the stuff drawn from "economics," or more precisely "law-and-economics," that congeries of insights, puzzles and provocations drawn mostly from the first-year micro econ curriculum. And here is the field in which the evolution of the modern law curriculum is most obvious. I sat down for my first law school class in the fall of 1963. That would be three years after the publication date for the publication of Ronald Coase's The Problem of Social Cost, which serves s the law-and-econ analog to the role played in mainstream econ by Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. My own guess is that none of my own professors* ever heard of Coase--or if they had, that they ever troubled themselves to find out much about him. This isn't to say they were bad teachers. Well: some were bad teachers, but one or two (or three?) were among the best teachers I ever had in my life. They just didn't see this law-and-econ stuff as in any way relevant to the (formidable?) traditional education that they undertook to impart.
I suppose I read Coase before I started teaching in 1969, by which the article had been abroad on the land for nine years (and Farnsworth himself would have reached the age of two). I have to admit I had trouble grasping it at first, but in this apparently I was not alone. Anyway, I got on board soon enough that I was able to track a good deal of the intellectual current as law professors grasped and then embraced the new economic learning. For a while it seemed as if everyone was styling himself a "law and econ" person; hiring committees were hot for law-and-econ people, and everybody was offering, or planning to offer, or pretending to offer, law and econ courses.
What was my point here? Oh yes: my point is that I'm struck by how much those days have passed us by now; to what extent "law and econ" has become common sense, common knowledge, part of the substrate. We once thought that Coase, etc., required a separate course. I suspect now that a good deal of the Coasean wisdom has passed, at least in vulgarized form, into the mainstream curriculum. The same might be said for some of the other, closely related, topics in Farnsworth's book: the stuff on game theory, for example, or the small dose of basic probability learning.
If I'm right so far, it may seem that I raise an awkward question: to what extent are Farnsworth's insights part of a "toolkit," and to what extent just "stuff that you learn in law school?" I don't have a pat answer to that one and in any event,I suppose I am taking aim at a moving target. But if we've reached the point where one guy can sketch the stuff out and put it into a (highly readable) short book, then we are veering close to the point where it isn't really specialized knowledge at all.
This offering provides background for my take on the latter portion of the book, where Farnsworth discusses topics from (as he calls it) "psychology"--with chapter headings like "hindsight bias" and "attribution effects." If you've followed the literature at all, you know we are now out there beyond the bob wire, in tht uncertain no-man's land where the economists and the psychologists come head to head. Or where, more sharply, the economists are laying down an imperialist claim to be masters of all knowledge.
The provenance is clear enough. An abundance of evidence has persuaded even the diehards that traditional economic models of human behavior were crude to the point of caricature. The current agenda is to try to find ways to refine the crude models into a more subtle and appreciative understanding of human behavior. It's all the rage and it has indeed generated some interesting results.
Well, fine. Yet I have to wonder how much of this stuff counts as "new insight" and how much as "things we knew or should have known all along." I need to tread with delicacy here: I do not want to come across as a total Philistine. I suppose it does help at least to be reminded that people value risk asymmetrically; that the benchmark determines the agenda, and that the person who sets the agenda wins tahe argument. Maybe I want to say that these are all things that a smart cop or a successful political consultant knew all along.
Indeed, maybe it is only the professors who did not know--and I don't think this suggestion is quite as ridiculous as it might seem on the surface. I suspect it might well be that professors are the class so disposed to get bound up with their theories that they forget what they might learn from their intuitions. And recall Peter Drucker who said that the hardest thing to know is what you are good at, precisely because you are good at it, so it becomes invisible. A corollary may well be that one becomes a professor of (a) sociology; (b) psychology, (c) economics; (d) law, precisely because one does not have a knack for those things that make up the common-sense parts of the discipline. Admit it now: how many of us heard a psychologist at a seminar presentation report "we were surprised that"--only to report something tht doesn't strike you as very surprising st all?
Or maybe not. This seems to me to be a question rife with difficulties which neither I nor anyone else has explored with the insight it deserves. Meanwhile it is good to have Farnsworth as a field guide to the state of play. I think I'll stock up on a few extra copies, for young friends who are thinking about taking the plunge into law school themselves.
--
*At the University of Louisville, where I got my first law degree. After Louisville I did a "cleansing masters'" at Yale, where Coase was hot stuff.
As one might guess, the heart and soul of Farnsworth's book is the stuff drawn from "economics," or more precisely "law-and-economics," that congeries of insights, puzzles and provocations drawn mostly from the first-year micro econ curriculum. And here is the field in which the evolution of the modern law curriculum is most obvious. I sat down for my first law school class in the fall of 1963. That would be three years after the publication date for the publication of Ronald Coase's The Problem of Social Cost, which serves s the law-and-econ analog to the role played in mainstream econ by Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. My own guess is that none of my own professors* ever heard of Coase--or if they had, that they ever troubled themselves to find out much about him. This isn't to say they were bad teachers. Well: some were bad teachers, but one or two (or three?) were among the best teachers I ever had in my life. They just didn't see this law-and-econ stuff as in any way relevant to the (formidable?) traditional education that they undertook to impart.
I suppose I read Coase before I started teaching in 1969, by which the article had been abroad on the land for nine years (and Farnsworth himself would have reached the age of two). I have to admit I had trouble grasping it at first, but in this apparently I was not alone. Anyway, I got on board soon enough that I was able to track a good deal of the intellectual current as law professors grasped and then embraced the new economic learning. For a while it seemed as if everyone was styling himself a "law and econ" person; hiring committees were hot for law-and-econ people, and everybody was offering, or planning to offer, or pretending to offer, law and econ courses.
What was my point here? Oh yes: my point is that I'm struck by how much those days have passed us by now; to what extent "law and econ" has become common sense, common knowledge, part of the substrate. We once thought that Coase, etc., required a separate course. I suspect now that a good deal of the Coasean wisdom has passed, at least in vulgarized form, into the mainstream curriculum. The same might be said for some of the other, closely related, topics in Farnsworth's book: the stuff on game theory, for example, or the small dose of basic probability learning.
If I'm right so far, it may seem that I raise an awkward question: to what extent are Farnsworth's insights part of a "toolkit," and to what extent just "stuff that you learn in law school?" I don't have a pat answer to that one and in any event,I suppose I am taking aim at a moving target. But if we've reached the point where one guy can sketch the stuff out and put it into a (highly readable) short book, then we are veering close to the point where it isn't really specialized knowledge at all.
This offering provides background for my take on the latter portion of the book, where Farnsworth discusses topics from (as he calls it) "psychology"--with chapter headings like "hindsight bias" and "attribution effects." If you've followed the literature at all, you know we are now out there beyond the bob wire, in tht uncertain no-man's land where the economists and the psychologists come head to head. Or where, more sharply, the economists are laying down an imperialist claim to be masters of all knowledge.
The provenance is clear enough. An abundance of evidence has persuaded even the diehards that traditional economic models of human behavior were crude to the point of caricature. The current agenda is to try to find ways to refine the crude models into a more subtle and appreciative understanding of human behavior. It's all the rage and it has indeed generated some interesting results.
Well, fine. Yet I have to wonder how much of this stuff counts as "new insight" and how much as "things we knew or should have known all along." I need to tread with delicacy here: I do not want to come across as a total Philistine. I suppose it does help at least to be reminded that people value risk asymmetrically; that the benchmark determines the agenda, and that the person who sets the agenda wins tahe argument. Maybe I want to say that these are all things that a smart cop or a successful political consultant knew all along.
Indeed, maybe it is only the professors who did not know--and I don't think this suggestion is quite as ridiculous as it might seem on the surface. I suspect it might well be that professors are the class so disposed to get bound up with their theories that they forget what they might learn from their intuitions. And recall Peter Drucker who said that the hardest thing to know is what you are good at, precisely because you are good at it, so it becomes invisible. A corollary may well be that one becomes a professor of (a) sociology; (b) psychology, (c) economics; (d) law, precisely because one does not have a knack for those things that make up the common-sense parts of the discipline. Admit it now: how many of us heard a psychologist at a seminar presentation report "we were surprised that"--only to report something tht doesn't strike you as very surprising st all?
Or maybe not. This seems to me to be a question rife with difficulties which neither I nor anyone else has explored with the insight it deserves. Meanwhile it is good to have Farnsworth as a field guide to the state of play. I think I'll stock up on a few extra copies, for young friends who are thinking about taking the plunge into law school themselves.
--
*At the University of Louisville, where I got my first law degree. After Louisville I did a "cleansing masters'" at Yale, where Coase was hot stuff.
The Thing About Lieberman...
Is not that he is "conservative." Whatever that may mean, he's been one since before he was elected to the Senate; for the voters of Connecticut, what they saw is what they got. And it isn't that he is a whore for the insurance industry: every senator, bar none, is in the pocket of his dominant local constituency. And it isn't even that he is against "health care reform;" there are a lot of wonky issues in the fabric here and it is (would be) possible to go a long way with particular issues without exciting quite so much ire.
The thing about Lieberman is that he seems determined to do it all in a way that is calculated to irritate the maximum number of Democrats.
I really haven't any good idea why this might be so. I guess you could say that he's always had a bit of a chip on his shoulder, although that doesn't explain very much. Or that he is still mad about the Ned Lamont challenge, though heaven knows why that would be enough to set him off: politicians win some, and they lose some. That's politics.
There really is something different about his determination to put a different stylistic stamp on his opposition; to make sue that when St. Peter (or whoever does it for orthodox Jews) checks his clipboard, he'll say "aren't you the guy who....?" I had a cousin who, as an infant, when frustrated, would sit on the floor and shout "pisty hog!" We've always remembered that.
The thing about Lieberman is that he seems determined to do it all in a way that is calculated to irritate the maximum number of Democrats.
I really haven't any good idea why this might be so. I guess you could say that he's always had a bit of a chip on his shoulder, although that doesn't explain very much. Or that he is still mad about the Ned Lamont challenge, though heaven knows why that would be enough to set him off: politicians win some, and they lose some. That's politics.
There really is something different about his determination to put a different stylistic stamp on his opposition; to make sue that when St. Peter (or whoever does it for orthodox Jews) checks his clipboard, he'll say "aren't you the guy who....?" I had a cousin who, as an infant, when frustrated, would sit on the floor and shout "pisty hog!" We've always remembered that.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
One Year On
The Archbishop of York, with friends, conspires to rebellion against Bolingbrook, now King Henry IV, who just a short while before unseated the hated Richard II:
The commonwealth is sick of their own choice;
Their over-greedy love hath surfeited:
An habitation giddy and unsure
Hath he that buildeth on the vulgar heart.
O thou fond many, with what loud applause
Didst thou beat heaven with blessing Bolingbroke,
Before he was what thou wouldst have him be!
And being now trimm'd in thine own desires,
Thou, beastly feeder, art so full of him,
That thou provokest thyself to cast him up.
So, so, thou common dog, didst thou disgorge
Thy glutton bosom of the royal Richard;
And now thou wouldst eat thy dead vomit up,
And howl'st to find it. What trust is in
these times?
They that, when Richard lived, would have him die,
Are now become enamour'd on his grave:
Thou, that threw'st dust upon his goodly head
When through proud London he came sighing on
After the admired heels of Bolingbroke,
Criest now 'O earth, yield us that king again,
And take thou this!' O thoughts of men accursed!
Past and to come seems best; things present worst.
--Shakespeare, Henry IV Part II, I, iii.
Coolidge on Race
Jonathan Bean gives a well-deserved shout-out to a President who well deserves credit for his record on race--Calvin Coolidge:
Bean seems a bit surprised by the find, though I'm not sure he needs to be. Anybody who knows anything at all about him knows that the private Coolidge was a decent, straightforward, unpompous old Yankee, with a firm set of principles and, for what it is worth, a self-deflationary sense of humor. And anybody who thought Herbert Hoover was a tiresome busybody can't be all bad.
But it raises the persistent puzzle about politicians. Of all 20th Century presidents, I'd say that perhaps the only ones I'd actually want to spend any time with are Calvin Coolidge and Gerald Ford. Yet would anybody say that these are the Century's two greatest Presidents (i.e., certainly not I)?
My dear Sir:Link. Evidently Coolidge was proud enough of the letter that he included it in a collection of his public utterances.Your letter is received, accompanied by a newspaper clipping which discusses the possibility that a colored man may be the Republican nominee for Congress from one of the New York districts. Referring to this newspaper statement, you say:
“It is of some concern whether a Negro is allowed to run for Congress anywhere, at any time, in any party, in this, a white man’s country. Repeated ignoring of the growing race problem does not excuse us for allowing encroachments. Temporizing with the Negro whether he will or will not vote either a Democratic or a Republican ticket, as evidenced by the recent turnover in Oklahoma, is contemptible.”
Leaving out of consideration the manifest impropriety of the President intruding himself in a local contest for nomination, I was amazed to receive such a letter. During the war 500,000 colored men and boys were called up under the draft, not one of whom sought to evade it. They took their places wherever assigned in defense of the nation of which they are just as truly citizens as are any others. The suggestion of denying any measure of their full political rights to such a great group of our population as the colored people is one which, however it might be received in some other quarters, could not possibly be permitted by one who feels a responsibility for living up to the traditions and maintaining the principles of the Republican Party. Our Constitution guarantees equal rights to all our citizens, without discrimination on account of race or color, I have taken my oath to support that Constitution. It is the source of your rights and my rights. I propose to regard it, and administer it, as the source of the rights of all the people, whatever their belief or race. A colored man is precisely as much entitled to submit his candidacy in a party primary, as is any other citizen. The decision must be made by the constituents to whom he offers himself, and by nobody else. . . .
Bean seems a bit surprised by the find, though I'm not sure he needs to be. Anybody who knows anything at all about him knows that the private Coolidge was a decent, straightforward, unpompous old Yankee, with a firm set of principles and, for what it is worth, a self-deflationary sense of humor. And anybody who thought Herbert Hoover was a tiresome busybody can't be all bad.
But it raises the persistent puzzle about politicians. Of all 20th Century presidents, I'd say that perhaps the only ones I'd actually want to spend any time with are Calvin Coolidge and Gerald Ford. Yet would anybody say that these are the Century's two greatest Presidents (i.e., certainly not I)?
You're Not Sure, Are You?
In a society beyond parody, Ken wants to know if this is as parody:
Al Sharpton blasts Tiger WoodsParody, or? Answer here, but no peeking until you have made your own guess.
The Rev Al Sharpton held a press conference yesterday to blast Tiger Woods for the lack of diversity among his mistresses.
Sharpton claims that the lack of African-American women among Woods’ harem will have a negative affect on the black community, specifically young black girls.
“Why is it that a man who calls himself black can’t bring himself to cheat on his wife with a black woman?” said Sharpton, speaking to a group of supporters in Harlem....
In the Long Run, It Happens to All of Us
Paul Samuelson died. If winning is outliving your enemies, I guess he gets the prize.
Small Business Confidence: Say Again?
I can see how they say that economic confidence among American small business owners is "plummeting:" here's a major index that is down by 14 percent. That's the lowest since they started counting, though in fairness, they started counting only in 2006.
But wait: the new all-time low is 76.5 percent--having fallen from 88.5 percent. That leaves it still more than half again ahead of the highest-ever major league baseball batting average (achieved by?--guess first and then go here). From there is an inevitable conclusion: small businessmen are insane optimists. I suppose they have to be: few things in life are more hazardous, more doomed to failure, than opening a small business. Heaven save us from a world run by realists.
But wait: the new all-time low is 76.5 percent--having fallen from 88.5 percent. That leaves it still more than half again ahead of the highest-ever major league baseball batting average (achieved by?--guess first and then go here). From there is an inevitable conclusion: small businessmen are insane optimists. I suppose they have to be: few things in life are more hazardous, more doomed to failure, than opening a small business. Heaven save us from a world run by realists.
Satsumas
The fruit was brought from Asia to New Spain by Jesuits. Groves started by Jesuits in the 18th century in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana have continued to the present day.Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
The fruit became much more common in the United States starting in the late 19th century. In 1876 during the Meiji period, satsuma were brought to the United States from the Satsuma Province in Kyūshū, Japan by a spouse of a member of the U.S. Embassy. While the species originates from Japan, it does not originate from the Satsuma Province in particular. The towns of Satsuma, Alabama, Satsuma, Florida, Satsuma, Texas and Satsuma, Louisiana were named after this fruit. By 1920 Jackson County in the Florida Panhandle had billed itself as the "Satsuma Capital of the World." However, the commercial industry was wiped out during a very cold period in the late 1930's. It has been planted in colder locations, because of its cold-hardiness and because colder weather will sweeten the fruit. A mature satsuma tree can survive down to –9.5°C (15°F) for a few hours. Of the edible citrus varieties, only the kumquat is more cold-hardy.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Our Saviors
Rings true to me, with one qualification (see infra):
Drug money saved banks in global crisis, claims UN advisorLink, bur see the bold face in the last paragraph added by Buce. I should think the problem is not just drug money but money from the whole panoply of illegal activities--gun running, human trafficking, the works (cf. link). So, why focus on drugs? I don't have a good answer but it might be that the single word is more instantly recognizable as a proxy for illegal hoards of any sort.Drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis, the United Nations' drugs and crime tsar has told the Observer.
Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organised crime were "the only liquid investment capital" available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result.
... This will raise questions about crime's influence on the economic system at times of crisis. It will also prompt further examination of the banking sector as world leaders, including Barack Obama and Gordon Brown, call for new International Monetary Fund regulations. Speaking from his office in Vienna, Costa said evidence that illegal money was being absorbed into the financial system was first drawn to his attention by intelligence agencies and prosecutors around 18 months ago. "In many instances, the money from drugs was the only liquid investment capital. In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system's main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor," he said.
Some of the evidence put before his office indicated that gang money was used to save some banks from collapse when lending seized up, he said.
"Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade and other illegal activities... There were signs that some banks were rescued that way." Costa declined to identify countries or banks that may have received any drugs money, saying that would be inappropriate because his office is supposed to address the problem, not apportion blame. But he said the money is now a part of the official system and had been effectively laundered.
Thirty Deaths and the Porcupine Rule
When I was a kid back in the country in New Hampshire, the Town Selectmen would pay you to get rid of varmints. You got your payment by presenting the nose. The Selectmen paid 35 cents for a porcupine. 50 cents for a hedgehog. Can you tell the difference between a porcupine and a hedgehog, via a disembodied nose? Neither can I. One reason why I can't is that in all my time there, nobody ever demanded payment for a porcupine. It was the hedgehog every time.
Next issue: when we kill bad guys in Afghanistan, why does it always appear that we take out a group of thirty? Here's one response:
Next issue: when we kill bad guys in Afghanistan, why does it always appear that we take out a group of thirty? Here's one response:
In 2003, an air strike killing 30 civilians could be launched w/o issues. 31 dead civilians and Rummy had to approve.So a Tweeter by the name of Registan, as reported here, and H/T Marginal Revolution.
Get a Good Government Job...
...keep your nose clean, and live well (link):
When the recession started, the Transportation Department had only one person earning a salary of $170,000 or more. Eighteen months later, 1,690 employees had salaries above $170,000.
Friday, December 11, 2009
No Sissies Need Apply
A lawyer friend has been warned:
I am in discussions with a legal male practice attorney of which has expressed a great desire to push forward.
Just Askin'
If you become the master of game of cards for two to four persons, played with a special deck of 48 cards, with points being scored by taking tricks and forming certain combinations--
--have you achieved the pinochle of success?
[Jointly liable: Buce and CT]
--have you achieved the pinochle of success?
[Jointly liable: Buce and CT]
The Two Lives of E&P
Mr. Commonplace Blog, observing the demise of Editor & Publisher, remarks (dismissively?) that he never read it. "So what?" he responds. There will be others to provide whatever it offered.
So what? Two reasons, CPB, once ancient history one current. First, in the old (1950s) days--sure E&P was a dreary piece of management self-help. But for the marginal hack on the edge of nowhere, it filled an additional role: suicide prevention. I'm talking specifically about the classified ads (the only part we ever read) and the ever-present dream of elevating yourself from Podunk to Palookaville:
C&C" = "car and camera." It was you who did the police blotter and the divorce records at the courthouse in the morning, and you who snapped the photos of the 4-H prizewinners in the afternoon, and you who spent your evenings in sweat-soaked high-school gymnasia, watching "duels" or "standoffs" on the basketball court (some of this could actually be fun). And you who scratched the next morning for names to fill the box scores, and scrabbled for something novel in the way of a headline ("Coldwater Douses Sandwich," my friend Bob once wrote--and very nearly got himself fired for impertinence. "Mother of Mercy" Suffocates "Holy Innocent" was probably never actually written).
For all this they paid you--what? Oh, it depends. My future ex-wife (as she was then) made her journalistic bones at the News Herald in Russellville, Kentucky (about 1955), for a princely $25 a week. This was thought ungenerous. At Washington CH Ohio, I actually got the biggest percentage pay raise of my life when some compassionate benefactor extended the minimum wage to cover me (plus overtime!) and catapulted me all the way from $37.50 to $48 a week.
The E&P ads started around $35, and ranged --well, not very far. If it was a Guild shop, they offered a scale that more or less doubled your pay over six years, up to perhaps as much as (gasp!) $105.50 a week. I figured if I made it to $5,000 a year, I would be getting some traction. And $20,000 was tall cotton, fat city, a dream beyond the reach of avarice.
And remember, these were the jobs that E&P dangled before us--the ones we dreamed of because they were better than the one we had. From this, you can sketch your own picture of the ones we were trying to escape.
This sounds like penury. Okay, it was penury. But a bit of perspective. One, we were mostly children--I for example was a college dropout with the first crush of adulthood just settling down upon me. And two, we were doing journalism which we, little darlings, thought an honorable profession.
But we were waking up to the fact that "doing journalism" was a lot of boring and dreary work for which somebody else made all the money, and we began to look around. And then we could always dream of a real ticket out. And sometimes, it worked. The late David Halberstam who started his career on pretty much this same circuit (West Point, Mississippi) leveraged his post-adolescent grassroots experience up to Nashville and on to Viet Nam, riches, fame, power, the love of beautiful women, the whole works. For my part, I clawed my way off to law school, and the professoriate. Having come from journalism,I have always said that I am the only person I know who went into teaching for the money.
Anyway, it was the old E&P that kept us from drinking the fixative in the photo lab (where we also presided). The new (soon to be defunct) E&P is a rather different story. Somewhere along the line, I know now how or why, E&P morphed into a first-rate chronicler of the news biz, with particular reference to its lies and evasions.
CPM says ho hum. Others will fill the gap. But think he is missing the point here, several points. He's treating it as a problem of form--print versus whatever (the medium of the media?). If that were all there was to it, he'd be right. Something will come along.
But it is more thn a matter of form. One, good journalism is always in short supply, nd if you lose any of it, you are in error to sigh and say something else will take its place. And two, it appears that E&P's passage may not be a mere death--it might be murder. Apparently E&P stepped on some toes. Not all who step on toes are good journalists, but stepping on toes might be part of the definition of good journalism. In any event, there is more than a little reason to suspect that E&P is not merely being allowed to expire in a hospice; rather, that its being killed off as an act of spite or vengeance. Anyway, I will miss both E&Ps, one with wry nostalgia, the other with a greater sense of sadness and urgency.
Footnote: CPB also says ho hum to the passage of Kirkus Service, the serial book reviewer. On this one, I guess I am with him. Kirkus has always been a mystery to me. I don't think I have ever actually seen a "copy" of Kirkus--or whatever avatar embodies the idea. But as CPB suggests, Kirkus always lie on a continuum somewhere between the anodyne and the soporific, and it is hard to imagine what, if anything, we lose by losing that.
So what? Two reasons, CPB, once ancient history one current. First, in the old (1950s) days--sure E&P was a dreary piece of management self-help. But for the marginal hack on the edge of nowhere, it filled an additional role: suicide prevention. I'm talking specifically about the classified ads (the only part we ever read) and the ever-present dream of elevating yourself from Podunk to Palookaville:
Reporter. Must have c&c. ...So: no matter how miserable your life seemed to be, no matter how dead-end your dead-end job, E&P always offered the possibility of another chance, a new start, a new cobblestone on the yellowbrick road.
C&C" = "car and camera." It was you who did the police blotter and the divorce records at the courthouse in the morning, and you who snapped the photos of the 4-H prizewinners in the afternoon, and you who spent your evenings in sweat-soaked high-school gymnasia, watching "duels" or "standoffs" on the basketball court (some of this could actually be fun). And you who scratched the next morning for names to fill the box scores, and scrabbled for something novel in the way of a headline ("Coldwater Douses Sandwich," my friend Bob once wrote--and very nearly got himself fired for impertinence. "Mother of Mercy" Suffocates "Holy Innocent" was probably never actually written).
For all this they paid you--what? Oh, it depends. My future ex-wife (as she was then) made her journalistic bones at the News Herald in Russellville, Kentucky (about 1955), for a princely $25 a week. This was thought ungenerous. At Washington CH Ohio, I actually got the biggest percentage pay raise of my life when some compassionate benefactor extended the minimum wage to cover me (plus overtime!) and catapulted me all the way from $37.50 to $48 a week.
The E&P ads started around $35, and ranged --well, not very far. If it was a Guild shop, they offered a scale that more or less doubled your pay over six years, up to perhaps as much as (gasp!) $105.50 a week. I figured if I made it to $5,000 a year, I would be getting some traction. And $20,000 was tall cotton, fat city, a dream beyond the reach of avarice.
And remember, these were the jobs that E&P dangled before us--the ones we dreamed of because they were better than the one we had. From this, you can sketch your own picture of the ones we were trying to escape.
This sounds like penury. Okay, it was penury. But a bit of perspective. One, we were mostly children--I for example was a college dropout with the first crush of adulthood just settling down upon me. And two, we were doing journalism which we, little darlings, thought an honorable profession.
But we were waking up to the fact that "doing journalism" was a lot of boring and dreary work for which somebody else made all the money, and we began to look around. And then we could always dream of a real ticket out. And sometimes, it worked. The late David Halberstam who started his career on pretty much this same circuit (West Point, Mississippi) leveraged his post-adolescent grassroots experience up to Nashville and on to Viet Nam, riches, fame, power, the love of beautiful women, the whole works. For my part, I clawed my way off to law school, and the professoriate. Having come from journalism,I have always said that I am the only person I know who went into teaching for the money.
Anyway, it was the old E&P that kept us from drinking the fixative in the photo lab (where we also presided). The new (soon to be defunct) E&P is a rather different story. Somewhere along the line, I know now how or why, E&P morphed into a first-rate chronicler of the news biz, with particular reference to its lies and evasions.
CPM says ho hum. Others will fill the gap. But think he is missing the point here, several points. He's treating it as a problem of form--print versus whatever (the medium of the media?). If that were all there was to it, he'd be right. Something will come along.
But it is more thn a matter of form. One, good journalism is always in short supply, nd if you lose any of it, you are in error to sigh and say something else will take its place. And two, it appears that E&P's passage may not be a mere death--it might be murder. Apparently E&P stepped on some toes. Not all who step on toes are good journalists, but stepping on toes might be part of the definition of good journalism. In any event, there is more than a little reason to suspect that E&P is not merely being allowed to expire in a hospice; rather, that its being killed off as an act of spite or vengeance. Anyway, I will miss both E&Ps, one with wry nostalgia, the other with a greater sense of sadness and urgency.
Footnote: CPB also says ho hum to the passage of Kirkus Service, the serial book reviewer. On this one, I guess I am with him. Kirkus has always been a mystery to me. I don't think I have ever actually seen a "copy" of Kirkus--or whatever avatar embodies the idea. But as CPB suggests, Kirkus always lie on a continuum somewhere between the anodyne and the soporific, and it is hard to imagine what, if anything, we lose by losing that.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Red Shoes and "Culture"
I took a look at Michael Powell's Red Shoes earlier this week, for the first time in 54 years and I'd say it was worth the effort. Not that it was any kind of nostalgia trip: the only thing I remember about this movie from the first time around(in the Little Art Theatre in Yellow Springs, Ohio, about 1955) is that I so didn't get it: lots of dancing, and posturing, and a story-within-a-story. All the initiated in my circle knew about it, and knew that one had to see it (many had seen it before). But I was only a connected guy at that point , and I knew what I didn't know and what I'd better shut up about. A bit surprising, perhaps, when you consider that way back in high school, I had already seen and loved American in Paris (though I certainly kept that fact secret from my uninitiated high school friends). I certainly didn't know it then, but I can see now that American in Paris is just one of the many progeny of Red Shoes.
Indeed, perhaps "progeny" is the operative word here--or better, "genealogy" because it is eye-opening to recognize (in retrospect) just how deeply embedded into the history of American culture this movie is. A Star is Born is an important ancestor; Wizard of Oz gets cameo credit.
But the real point is what neither I nor anyone else could have understood ini 1955. That is--just how pervasive its later influence would come to be. Riffing on David Thompson, I'd say tha Red Shoes came to define just about everything that my generation came to understand as "culture." I mean--how many fluttery schoolgirls from Ohio showed up at the stage doors in Manhattan, cardboard suitcases in hand, tutus on the ready, set to take their place in the spotlight? And not just the schoolgirls at the stage door: how many others who stayed home and read about life in the big city--how many of these, too, got their definition of "culture" from what was presented to them by Michael Hoffman? I'd venture to say you couldn't imagine Public Television without them: all those nights at the opera, with Beverly Sills and Hugh Downs telling us what to love and how to love it--how could we have known how to love it, without Red Shoes go show us how it was done?
Indeed, perhaps "progeny" is the operative word here--or better, "genealogy" because it is eye-opening to recognize (in retrospect) just how deeply embedded into the history of American culture this movie is. A Star is Born is an important ancestor; Wizard of Oz gets cameo credit.
But the real point is what neither I nor anyone else could have understood ini 1955. That is--just how pervasive its later influence would come to be. Riffing on David Thompson, I'd say tha Red Shoes came to define just about everything that my generation came to understand as "culture." I mean--how many fluttery schoolgirls from Ohio showed up at the stage doors in Manhattan, cardboard suitcases in hand, tutus on the ready, set to take their place in the spotlight? And not just the schoolgirls at the stage door: how many others who stayed home and read about life in the big city--how many of these, too, got their definition of "culture" from what was presented to them by Michael Hoffman? I'd venture to say you couldn't imagine Public Television without them: all those nights at the opera, with Beverly Sills and Hugh Downs telling us what to love and how to love it--how could we have known how to love it, without Red Shoes go show us how it was done?
Riding the Tiger
My friend Michael, fluent in journalese, unpacks the Tiger Wood story:
Wall Street Journal reports that, "according to persons familiar with the situation" (Don't you love that expression?) about two years ago the National Enquirer was looking into rumors that Tiger Woods was having, or had had, an affair. The Woods camp got wind of the Natl. Enq. investigation. I now give you a script for the meeting that may have taken place:
Tiger Woods representative: Tiger denies this story, but you can understand that, true or false, it will hurt his reputation if published. Surely you want to do the responsible thing and not spread these vile rumors?
Nat. Enquirer editor: We are the tribunes of the people! Our readers expect us to expose hypocrisy and deceit wherever we find them! ... (Pauses for breath)
Rep.: OK, OK. ... Tell me, is the National Enquirer your only publication, or does your company have other outlets?
Editor: Our family of publications consists of many fine titles. You may have heard of Men's Health, for example.
Rep.: Oh, yes. I believe I have seen it on newsstands. Tell me, would Men's Health be interested in an exclusive interview with Tiger Woods? The interview, of course, to cover his athletic accomplishments? [Woods is apparently notoriously tight in giving interviews]
Editor: Possibly ...
Rep.: Accompanied by a cover photograph of Tiger Woods?
Editor: That would definitely be attractive.
Rep.: In which case, of course, the Enquirer would not want to crowd out its sister publication by printing additional information about Mr. Woods?
And so it came to pass, or so the WSJ tells us.
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
Lemon Harvest
Frost coming again tonight...
Mrs. Buce fought it off the last couple of nights with cuddly blankets, but tonight it's going to get even colder. Next up: zest 'em and juice 'em and save the hulls to stuff into roasting chickens.
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
Mrs. Buce fought it off the last couple of nights with cuddly blankets, but tonight it's going to get even colder. Next up: zest 'em and juice 'em and save the hulls to stuff into roasting chickens.
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Greenwald on Obama,Palin and Bush
Greenwald finds similarities between the President, the former President, and the would-be President. Or at any rate, among their fans. He's been watching a video of interviews with Palin supporters:
I think I have said before that I'm surprised and disappointed at Obama's low level of political skill--his considerable incapacity to sell himself or generally to make it happen. This may sound like sheer nattering over process, but it's more than that: the job of a leader is to lead, which includes being able to explain and justify an agenda, and to convince the Folks tht it is worthwhile.
And in an odd way, this seems to turn the "nice man" argument on its head. I think there is fairly general (certainly not universal) agreement that Carter and Hoover were "nice men" in the sense of being decent and honorable and loyal to their families (though you can get carried away here: Hoover was apparently a pious gasbag, and Carter had a mean streak). Yet in the end, nobody gave a damn: we remember them as prisoners of events, just out of their depth.
Mrs. B, a more charitable soul than I, says I am being to hard on Obama. Yes, he has made rookie mistakes, she concedes, but he is a rookie. He'll learn. Well, I hope he'll learn, is learning. And some people do grow into it. Yet he'll never have as much opportunity as he has had during the last 11 months, and it is a rotten shame how much of it he has thrown away.
Most of them profess their deep respect and admiration for Palin even though they're barely able to defend a single substantive position she holds. The video is clearly intended to depict Palin supporters as some sort of uniquely ignorant and vacuous fan club devotees more appropriate for a movie star than a politician.Greenwald's point of departure was a pair of Andrew Sullivan posts; see here and here; cf. here. I haven't quite sorted out what I think of it yet, but I can start with this: I'm not quite as unhappy with Obama substance as Greenwald is, yet I've had to swallow a few shocks along the way. Rattled as I may be, I'd have to say (a) we get only one President at s time and he deserves a decent chance to make it work (in a long-distant time, I even felt this about W); and (b) I haven't seen anything close to the mendacity, cynicism and sheer corrruption in the Obama White House that we came to see in his predecessor--with, of course, feeds back into (a).
Indeed, at first, I was mesmerized by the video. After all, these were not just random, politically apathetic people selected off the street. They are politically interested and engaged enough to spend hours waiting to see Sarah Palin. They have deep convictions about politics and overwhelming faith in her judgment and abilities. And yet they have virtually no ability to justify any of her specific views on issues. They don't really care about those. What they know is that she's a culturally familiar and admirable person. They share her values and know she's a good person, and thus trust that she will "do the right thing" on specific issues regardless of whether they agree or even understand what she's doing. They have a personal connection with her that makes them place their faith in her.
After watching slack-jawed for a few minutes, I quickly realized that there was nothing unusual at all about their reaction to Palin. This was exactly what led so many Bush followers to defend him no matter what he did -- as he tortured and invaded without cause and chronically broke the law. He was, like most of them, a "good Christian" who had a nice family and meant well, and thus, while he might err, he was not capable of any truly bad or evil acts. Anyone who criticized him too harshly or too viciously was, by definition, revealing something flawed about themselves. None of the specific arguments mattered. None of it had to do with reason. Like Palin's admirers, Bush's were convinced of the core goodness of his character, and they thus loved him and hated those who suggested that there was something deeply wrong in what he was doing.
The similarity between that mentality and the one driving the Obama defenses ... is too self-evident to require any elaboration. Those who venerated Bush because he was a morally upright and strong evangelical-warrior-family man and revere Palin as a common-sense Christian hockey mom see Obama as an inspiring, kind, sophisticated, soothing and mature intellectual. These are personality types bolstered with sophisticated marketing techniques, not policies, governing approaches or ideologies. But for those looking for some emotional attachment to a leader, rather than policies they believe are right, personality attachments are far more important. They're also far more potent. Loyalty grounded in admiration for character will inspire support regardless of policy, and will produce and sustain the fantasy that this is not a mere politician, but a person of deep importance to one's life who -- like a loved one or close friend or religious leader -- must be protected and defended at all costs.
I think I have said before that I'm surprised and disappointed at Obama's low level of political skill--his considerable incapacity to sell himself or generally to make it happen. This may sound like sheer nattering over process, but it's more than that: the job of a leader is to lead, which includes being able to explain and justify an agenda, and to convince the Folks tht it is worthwhile.
And in an odd way, this seems to turn the "nice man" argument on its head. I think there is fairly general (certainly not universal) agreement that Carter and Hoover were "nice men" in the sense of being decent and honorable and loyal to their families (though you can get carried away here: Hoover was apparently a pious gasbag, and Carter had a mean streak). Yet in the end, nobody gave a damn: we remember them as prisoners of events, just out of their depth.
Mrs. B, a more charitable soul than I, says I am being to hard on Obama. Yes, he has made rookie mistakes, she concedes, but he is a rookie. He'll learn. Well, I hope he'll learn, is learning. And some people do grow into it. Yet he'll never have as much opportunity as he has had during the last 11 months, and it is a rotten shame how much of it he has thrown away.
Monday, December 07, 2009
Proust's Monocles, and Other Man/Machine Confusions
In his indispensable Reader's Guide to Remembrance of Things Past ((1984) translator Terence Kilmartin devotes a 12-line entry to the topic of "monocles." I find fully a dozen characters whose lives are enhanced, clarified or otherwise made this little sliver of glass.
Some are straightforward. Baron de Charlus, perhaps the most interesting (male) character in the book, has the least problematical monocle; it is just there. (II: 278) Mme de Verdurin (newly redefined as the Princess de Guermantes, at least get to use hers: She "fixe[s] her great monocle in her round eye, with an expression half of amusement, half of apology for her inability to sustain gaiety for any length of time ... " (III: 1033)
Monocles come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Thus the Marquis de Foresetelle's is "minute and rimless...like a superfluous cartilage the presence of which is inexplicable and its substance unimaginable." (I:356) But M. de Saint-Candé's "encircled, like Saturn, with an enormous ring, was the center of gravity of the face.." (I:356)
Other monocles have more complex assignments. General de Frobervilles's is "stuck between his eyelids like a shell-splinter ... a monstrous wound which it might have been glorious to receive but which it was indecent to expose" (I:355). M. de Bréauté sports his "as a festive badge...[it] bore, glued to its other side, like a specimen prepared on a slide for the microscope, an infinitesimal gaze..." (I:356); his "smiles [come] filtered through the glass of his monocle" (II:447); cf. (II:679). But Mr. Palancy, with "his huge carp's head ... had the air of carrying about upon his person only an accidental and perhaps purely symbolical fragment of the glass wall of his aquarium..." (I:356-7); cf. ( II: 39): "unconscious of the press of curious gazers, behind the glass wall of an aquarium."
But in others, there is a sometimes-subtle shift to a more unsettling role. Thus,
The Marquis de Cambramer's monocle "protect[s], like the glass over a valuable picture," a deformity in his eyeball. (II:1101) Protects? Granted we may be observing a mere passive instrumentality, but it is hard to escape the suspicion that it may be the monocle itself engaged in the act of protecting.
So also, the duc de Guermantes:his monocle has a "gay flash" (II:49) We can accept the "flash" as as reflection of the sunlight, but in what sense is the monocle "gay"? If this seems too picky; note that few pages earlier we were told tht the monocle is "quizzical." (II:27). Quizzical? So also Swann's monocle. Odette finds it "tremendously smart" (I:268). Swann removes it "like an importunate, worrying thought ... from whose misty surface, with his handkerchief, he sought to obliterate his cares" (1:377-8). Worrying? The Monocle has his cares?
Two other monocles exceed all others in their purposeful activity. First, consider Marcel's old friend, Bloch: "By introducing an element of machinery into Bloch's face [his] monocle absolved it of all those difficulties which a human face is normally called upon to discharge, such as being beautiful or expressing intelligence or kindliness or effort. The monocle's mere presence even absolved an interlocutor ... from asking himself whether the face was pleasant to look at or not... [B]ehind the lens of this monocle, Block was newly installed in a position as lofty, as remote and as comfortable as if it had been the glass partiation of a limousine ..." (III: 996)
And if he monocle engaged in the act of absolution is not enough, consider at last the most active, the most playful, the most alive of all monocles--a monocle with at least as much character as its owner himelf. That would be the monocle of Marcel's friend Robrt St. Loup, who "strode rapidly across he whole width of the hotel, seeming to be in pursuit of his monocle, which kept darting away in front of him like a butterfly." (I: 783-4). Later it "resume[s] its gambolings on the sunlit road, with the elegance and mastery which a great piaanist contrives to display in the simplest stroke of execution..." Elsewhere we have "...his monocle spinning in the air before him..." (II: 68)
I think there may be a more pervasive point underneath all this frivolity. Start with one clear principle: Proust is a very funny writer--sometimes and earthy or a bawdy writer with a sense of the absurd that could come straight out of a Feydeau farce. Moreview Proust acquired a lot of his world-view from his near-contemporary, the philosopher Henry Bergson. For Bergson, comedy was a person acting like a machine. There may be more to it than that; others have suggested that you can make comedy when a machine acts like a person.
Once you think about Proust in this context, you find suggestive examples everywhere. Madame Cambramer, seeking to impress on those around her that she has an appreciation for great music, undertakes to bob her head back and forth like a metronome; but her diamond earrings snag in her bodice show show she has ceaselessly to rearrange herself, all the time seeking not to miss a beat. Berma in Phèdre is a branch of coral in an aquarium (M. de Palancey's?) (I:732) Marcel remembers Albertine the cyclist "speeding through Balbec on her mythological wheels" (II: 498) ((Kilmartin gives eight lines to "bicycles"). Marcel disgraces Aunt Léonie's sofa by losing his virginity on it; he disgraces his beloved grandmother's sofa by presenting it to a brothel. The 1.22 train to Normandy is "fine, generous." (I:418-19) The aeroplane over Versailles is a "little insect." (III:413). And so it goes. In a world like this, for a man to be led around by his monocle is a small matter indeed.
Some are straightforward. Baron de Charlus, perhaps the most interesting (male) character in the book, has the least problematical monocle; it is just there. (II: 278) Mme de Verdurin (newly redefined as the Princess de Guermantes, at least get to use hers: She "fixe[s] her great monocle in her round eye, with an expression half of amusement, half of apology for her inability to sustain gaiety for any length of time ... " (III: 1033)
Monocles come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Thus the Marquis de Foresetelle's is "minute and rimless...like a superfluous cartilage the presence of which is inexplicable and its substance unimaginable." (I:356) But M. de Saint-Candé's "encircled, like Saturn, with an enormous ring, was the center of gravity of the face.." (I:356)
Other monocles have more complex assignments. General de Frobervilles's is "stuck between his eyelids like a shell-splinter ... a monstrous wound which it might have been glorious to receive but which it was indecent to expose" (I:355). M. de Bréauté sports his "as a festive badge...[it] bore, glued to its other side, like a specimen prepared on a slide for the microscope, an infinitesimal gaze..." (I:356); his "smiles [come] filtered through the glass of his monocle" (II:447); cf. (II:679). But Mr. Palancy, with "his huge carp's head ... had the air of carrying about upon his person only an accidental and perhaps purely symbolical fragment of the glass wall of his aquarium..." (I:356-7); cf. ( II: 39): "unconscious of the press of curious gazers, behind the glass wall of an aquarium."
But in others, there is a sometimes-subtle shift to a more unsettling role. Thus,
The Marquis de Cambramer's monocle "protect[s], like the glass over a valuable picture," a deformity in his eyeball. (II:1101) Protects? Granted we may be observing a mere passive instrumentality, but it is hard to escape the suspicion that it may be the monocle itself engaged in the act of protecting.
So also, the duc de Guermantes:his monocle has a "gay flash" (II:49) We can accept the "flash" as as reflection of the sunlight, but in what sense is the monocle "gay"? If this seems too picky; note that few pages earlier we were told tht the monocle is "quizzical." (II:27). Quizzical? So also Swann's monocle. Odette finds it "tremendously smart" (I:268). Swann removes it "like an importunate, worrying thought ... from whose misty surface, with his handkerchief, he sought to obliterate his cares" (1:377-8). Worrying? The Monocle has his cares?
Two other monocles exceed all others in their purposeful activity. First, consider Marcel's old friend, Bloch: "By introducing an element of machinery into Bloch's face [his] monocle absolved it of all those difficulties which a human face is normally called upon to discharge, such as being beautiful or expressing intelligence or kindliness or effort. The monocle's mere presence even absolved an interlocutor ... from asking himself whether the face was pleasant to look at or not... [B]ehind the lens of this monocle, Block was newly installed in a position as lofty, as remote and as comfortable as if it had been the glass partiation of a limousine ..." (III: 996)
And if he monocle engaged in the act of absolution is not enough, consider at last the most active, the most playful, the most alive of all monocles--a monocle with at least as much character as its owner himelf. That would be the monocle of Marcel's friend Robrt St. Loup, who "strode rapidly across he whole width of the hotel, seeming to be in pursuit of his monocle, which kept darting away in front of him like a butterfly." (I: 783-4). Later it "resume[s] its gambolings on the sunlit road, with the elegance and mastery which a great piaanist contrives to display in the simplest stroke of execution..." Elsewhere we have "...his monocle spinning in the air before him..." (II: 68)
I think there may be a more pervasive point underneath all this frivolity. Start with one clear principle: Proust is a very funny writer--sometimes and earthy or a bawdy writer with a sense of the absurd that could come straight out of a Feydeau farce. Moreview Proust acquired a lot of his world-view from his near-contemporary, the philosopher Henry Bergson. For Bergson, comedy was a person acting like a machine. There may be more to it than that; others have suggested that you can make comedy when a machine acts like a person.
Once you think about Proust in this context, you find suggestive examples everywhere. Madame Cambramer, seeking to impress on those around her that she has an appreciation for great music, undertakes to bob her head back and forth like a metronome; but her diamond earrings snag in her bodice show show she has ceaselessly to rearrange herself, all the time seeking not to miss a beat. Berma in Phèdre is a branch of coral in an aquarium (M. de Palancey's?) (I:732) Marcel remembers Albertine the cyclist "speeding through Balbec on her mythological wheels" (II: 498) ((Kilmartin gives eight lines to "bicycles"). Marcel disgraces Aunt Léonie's sofa by losing his virginity on it; he disgraces his beloved grandmother's sofa by presenting it to a brothel. The 1.22 train to Normandy is "fine, generous." (I:418-19) The aeroplane over Versailles is a "little insect." (III:413). And so it goes. In a world like this, for a man to be led around by his monocle is a small matter indeed.
This Could Be the Start of Something Big...
Scientific American shows you the beginnings of the internet on a cocktail napkin. Okay, I exaggerate, but not by much. Thanks, BAM.
Sunday, December 06, 2009
Good Listening: Harcourt on the Market
Update: And see Mike's link to the paper from whence it came, in the comments (infra).
About the most interesting Podcast I've heard lately is a University of Chicago Law School presentation by Bernard Harcourt his work on the the history and theory of "the market." That's my title, not his: he calls it ""Neoliberal Penality: A Genealogy of Excess," but I'm presumptuous enough to think I understand his thrust better than he does. From scan of his web page I gather his agenda for years now has been populated by issues in criminal penalties. That might account for his supposed focus here, but in fact I think his current work addresses a somewhat different set of concerns. One is his inquiry into what you might call the archaeology of the market: his exploration of the highly non-obvious idea--no older than the 18th Century--that the government might just set some traffic cop rules and stay out of the way. For so long now we have taken Adam Smith as more or less an article of faith, so much so that we lose sight of how novel, even radical, were the set of ideas that he was showcasing (but did not invent) in his time. One virtue of reconstructing the history of this complex is that it helps to articulate a hobby horse of mine: no market is "natural; every market is a cultural artifact, bound up with a set of rules, conventions, whatever, that define and constrain it.
Given the limits of the genre, I thought he did a stellar job with his archaeology. In another part of the presentation, I thought he was less successful. He suggested (plausibly enough) that the next item would be to try to identify which (non-inevitable) rules of market governance are worth the trouble, which not. He's entirely right that this is a worthwhile task but his thinking, at least as here presented, doesn't seem to go much beyond the conventional: he rattles off the familiar mantra about allocational efficiency and distributional equity and more or less leaves it t that.
But it's early yet. He seems to have presented the talk way back last spring and there is only so much you can expect in 60-odd minutes. But it's a highly promising line of inqauiry; he's made a fast start and I look forward to a strong finish.
About the most interesting Podcast I've heard lately is a University of Chicago Law School presentation by Bernard Harcourt his work on the the history and theory of "the market." That's my title, not his: he calls it ""Neoliberal Penality: A Genealogy of Excess," but I'm presumptuous enough to think I understand his thrust better than he does. From scan of his web page I gather his agenda for years now has been populated by issues in criminal penalties. That might account for his supposed focus here, but in fact I think his current work addresses a somewhat different set of concerns. One is his inquiry into what you might call the archaeology of the market: his exploration of the highly non-obvious idea--no older than the 18th Century--that the government might just set some traffic cop rules and stay out of the way. For so long now we have taken Adam Smith as more or less an article of faith, so much so that we lose sight of how novel, even radical, were the set of ideas that he was showcasing (but did not invent) in his time. One virtue of reconstructing the history of this complex is that it helps to articulate a hobby horse of mine: no market is "natural; every market is a cultural artifact, bound up with a set of rules, conventions, whatever, that define and constrain it.
Given the limits of the genre, I thought he did a stellar job with his archaeology. In another part of the presentation, I thought he was less successful. He suggested (plausibly enough) that the next item would be to try to identify which (non-inevitable) rules of market governance are worth the trouble, which not. He's entirely right that this is a worthwhile task but his thinking, at least as here presented, doesn't seem to go much beyond the conventional: he rattles off the familiar mantra about allocational efficiency and distributional equity and more or less leaves it t that.
But it's early yet. He seems to have presented the talk way back last spring and there is only so much you can expect in 60-odd minutes. But it's a highly promising line of inqauiry; he's made a fast start and I look forward to a strong finish.
Ushikawa Doesn't Want to Scare You...
If you believe Haruki Murakami, Japan has the politest thugs. Here is Ushikawa in The Wind-up Bird Chronicles, trying to enlist the cooperation of Mr. Okada:
This is just between you and me, Mr. Okada, but I have to confess I really admire you. No flattery intended. This may sound odd, but you're basically a really ordinary guy. Or to put it even more bluntly, there's absolutely nothing special about you. Sorry about that, but don't take it to the wrong way. It's true, though, in terms of how you fit into society. Meeting you face-to-face and talking with you like this, though, I'm very, very impressed with you--with how you handle yourself. ... I like guys like you, Mr. Okada, who've done it all on their own. ...
You can't keep it up forever, though. You're going to burn out sooner or later. Everybody does. It's the way people are. In terms of evolutionary history, it was only yesterday that men learned to walk around on two legs and get into trouble thinking complicated thoughts. So don't worry, you'll burn out. Especially in the world that you're trying to deal with; everybody burns out. There are too many tricky things going on in it, too many ways of getting into trouble. It's a world made of tricky things. ... I used to do risky stuff for a living. If I had kept it up, I'd be in jail now--or dead. No kidding. ... ... So these little eyes of mine have seen a hell of a lot. Everybody burns out in this world; amateur, pro, it doesn't matter, they all burn out, they all get hurt, the Ok guys and the not-OK guys both. That's why everybody takes out a little insurance. I've got some too, here at the bottom of the heap. That way, you manage to survive if you burn out. If you're all by yourself and don't belong anywhere, you go down once, and you're out. Finished.
Maybe I shouldn't say this to you, Mr. Okada, but you're ready to go down. It's a sure thing. It says so in my book, in big, black letters about two or three pages ahead: 'TORU OKADA READY TO FALL.' It's true. I'm not trying to scare you. I'm a whole lot more accurate in this world than weather forecasts on TV. So all I want to tell you is this: There's a time when things are right for pulling out. ...
So let's stop feeling each other out, Mr. Okada, and get down to business. ... Which brings us to the end of a very long introduction, so now I can make you the offer I came here to make. ...
--Haruki Murakami, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle 453-4 (Jay Rubin Trans. 1997)
Saturday, December 05, 2009
Lutz' New Assignment: I Should Be So Unlucky
The topic for the moment is Robert Lutz, lately head of marketing at General Motors who is (a) being kicked upstairs; or (b) graciously stepping aside--in the current, latest reorganization of GM. The Wall Street Journal calls him a "veteran auto guru" who has "relinquished [his] duties;" the New York Times (though definitely not the Journal seems to detect a whiff of tragedy. Per the Times (Bill Vlasic): "[T]here is no operational role for Mr. Lutz in the new era. He has no direct reports ... People familiar with the latest executive changes said that Mr. Lutz was a casualty of the youth movement..."
Let's review the bidding. Lutz is 77. He has been in the biz 40-plus years; per Wiki, he oversaw "the Dodge Viper, Plymouth Prowler and Chrysler LH platform automobiles;" also the Ford Sierra, and the Ford Explorer (okay, maybe he wrote this stuff himself). He's had just about every interesting job in the industry.
He'd already retired once; he was called back as part of the rescue effort last year. And now he gets to sit around and mouth off all day with no command responsibilities? Hey, where do I sign up (hello, Dean?).
Let's review the bidding. Lutz is 77. He has been in the biz 40-plus years; per Wiki, he oversaw "the Dodge Viper, Plymouth Prowler and Chrysler LH platform automobiles;" also the Ford Sierra, and the Ford Explorer (okay, maybe he wrote this stuff himself). He's had just about every interesting job in the industry.
He'd already retired once; he was called back as part of the rescue effort last year. And now he gets to sit around and mouth off all day with no command responsibilities? Hey, where do I sign up (hello, Dean?).
The Thing about Yiddish
Benjamin Harshav catches and undertakes to explain a paradox of Yiddish: for such a rich language, it has a curiously limited vocabulary. But Harhav says:
Yiddish speakers speak not so much with individual referring words as with such clusters of relations, ready-made idioms, quotations and situational responses. Since each word may belong to several heterogeneous or contradictory knots, ironies are always at hand. It is precisely the small vocabulary of the language that makes the words more repetitive and more dependent on their habitual contexts, hence weightier in their impact (like the words in the limited vocabulary of the Bible). It is not the range of denotations that the languages covers but the emotive snd semantic direcctions of the hearer's empathy. In this mode of discourse, the overt clash, ironic or clever, between words of different stock languages in one sentence is a major source of meaning, impact and delight.Quoted by Harold Bloom in his review of Max Weinreich, Hitory of the Yiddish Language, a steal from Yale UP at $300. He's quoting Benjamin Harshav, The Meaning of Yiddish (1990). See "The Glories of Yiddish," New York Review of Books, Nov. 6, 2008 (I am gleaning the old newspapers).
Um, Yep...
Sovereign wealth funds not all that long ago were generally seen as sophisticated to at least competent. But so were university endowments, and in many cases, “sophisticated” turned out to be tantamount to “has a higher appetite for risk than most” which in a bull market can look very clever.Link.
Friday, December 04, 2009
I So Don't Understand This
My high school classmates voted me the Boy Least Likely to Buy a Knockoff Designer Handbag, so it is perhaps understandable that I do not get this story. But can it be true that people who buy a handbag often have previously bought a knockoff? Wouldn't have been better to save the money so they could get the real one sooner? Oy, am I out of it.
By the way--is it just me, or is there a decline in the species of junk email that pushes cures for baldness? They still want to enhance my dangly part and, yes, sell me the designer knockoffs, but the hair restorers, which used to account for perhaps 30 percent of my daily volume, seem to have moved on ot other work.
By the way--is it just me, or is there a decline in the species of junk email that pushes cures for baldness? They still want to enhance my dangly part and, yes, sell me the designer knockoffs, but the hair restorers, which used to account for perhaps 30 percent of my daily volume, seem to have moved on ot other work.
Not so Different: "Mental Illness" a Generation Later
In and out of the car this morning, I caught some snatches of a radio talk show on the problem of "the mental health profession"--specifically how to answer the question of quality control, the measure of effective treatment. I was struck by how little this issue seems to have changed since I first paid attention to it some 30 years ago. Apparently we still have loads of cases where the patient will have one view of whether the outcome was successful; the "therapist" (but cf. infra) will have a different view; and a third-party evaluator yet a different view altogether. The questions are: should we be doing a better job of articulating standards for success or failure in the mental health biz? And if so, how and by whom?
I have to confess, I love this stuff, perhaps particularly because it seems so hard. I also plead guilty to having flirted back in my younger days with some of the wilder excesses of the anti-psychiatry movement--most visibly Thomas Szasz and R. D. Laing (though I gather Szasz detested Laing, and it didn't take me long tofigure out why). But I had a psychiatrist friend in those days (we made music together on Wednesday nights) who did his best to set me straight: "Look," he would say, "there are some people who are just nuts."
I think I came to believe he was probably right; at least I wasn't disposed to argue the point. My Wall Street Journal this morning tells me of a man, descendant of an old New England family, who was fired from a Gloucester Massachusetts fish-processing plant for ""attempting to put nuts and bolts into the fish." "One big loose screw," the commentator remarks, and I think the pun may have been unintentional. Anyway he--the former fish procesor, not the commentator--later accosted "a popular local teacher [and] smashed her skull with a rock, dragged her to a hiding place, pushed her face into the ground and left her to die in the thick growth." And on a lighter note, a headline in today's American Bar Association newsfeed says: "Jesus Christ’ Excused From Jury Duty for Being Disruptive:" no class A felonies noted.
I suspect my old bud would have consigned both of these to the "just nuts" file. But this--our music making phase--was also a time when it was easy to find stories about how the old Soviet Union was clapping people into nuthouses for the offense of annoying the Powers that Be.
In the United States, this stream of inquiry proved to be a peculiarly treacherous channel of eddies and undercurrents because of its intersection with the campaign for women's rights. We all knew --know--stories of women who were carted off to the loony bin for no offense greater than simply being themselves. On the other hand, we knew of psychiatrists who would give the girlies a fistful of Valium and pat them on the head and tell them to calm down and go home, while the girlies (ahem) were shouting LISTEN TO ME YOU BOZO I AM IN PAIN. I know my psychiatrist bud made it clear--without ever breaching client confidence--that he spent a fair amount of his time with women who seemed just generally disappointed with life, and I don't think he thought they were "nuts," even though they might have been "just."
One of my favorite law-teaching cases in those days was something called Ortelere v. Retirement Board (looks like it is still in the lineup)--the story of a New York school teacher who retired and quickly died leaving a husband by all appearances rather near destitute. Apparently just before death she had made some kind of voluntary "pension election" which was, from his view, catastrophic. The question was: could the pension payor claim the protection of the election, or must it pay a pension to the husband anyway? A (divided) New York court ruled against the election, citing "serious mental illness, namely psychosis."
I'm one who always believed that the job of the contracts teacher is to make simple things complicted, and in the case of Ortelere, this task is about as difficult as dynamiting whales in a barrel. Who are we protecting here, anyway, "her," or her dependent husband? And who are we to say she didn't know damn good and well what she was doing. And by the way--the particular psychosis cited was something called "involutional melancholia." It was fun to point out that "involutional melancholia" stood in the legions of mental illness in those days alongside "homosexuality"--and that both were later struck from the regimental roster on grounds that they were not mental illness at all.
I don't have much to add to the conflicting crosscurrents already surfaced, except to mention one hobbyhorse of mine. That is: I think some of these issues would go away if we simply narrowed our definition of "therapy." Apparently one fascinating datum in the literature of psychiatric "cure" is that a lot of different techniques seem to work, and that the more powerful determinant seems to be the skill of the particular purpose.
Follow this line of reasoning very far and you come to the ironic insight that maybe some people would be cured just as well by their bartender or their Labrador Retriever. Suggestions like this are oft offered in jest, but I don't see anything funny about them. Indeed, a lot of life's agonies can be eased by a steady, patient and compassionate friend. Calling these interventions "therapy" may just confuse the issue.
For whatever it may be worth, most of my students considering Orteleree wanted to allow the poor widower a pension, but they weren't comfortable with making it rest on the premise that the decedent was somehow nuts. For myself, I haven't taught this sort of stuff in years (I moved on to other stuff). But from listening to the conversation this morning, I suspect I could have pretty much the same conversation today.
I have to confess, I love this stuff, perhaps particularly because it seems so hard. I also plead guilty to having flirted back in my younger days with some of the wilder excesses of the anti-psychiatry movement--most visibly Thomas Szasz and R. D. Laing (though I gather Szasz detested Laing, and it didn't take me long tofigure out why). But I had a psychiatrist friend in those days (we made music together on Wednesday nights) who did his best to set me straight: "Look," he would say, "there are some people who are just nuts."
I think I came to believe he was probably right; at least I wasn't disposed to argue the point. My Wall Street Journal this morning tells me of a man, descendant of an old New England family, who was fired from a Gloucester Massachusetts fish-processing plant for ""attempting to put nuts and bolts into the fish." "One big loose screw," the commentator remarks, and I think the pun may have been unintentional. Anyway he--the former fish procesor, not the commentator--later accosted "a popular local teacher [and] smashed her skull with a rock, dragged her to a hiding place, pushed her face into the ground and left her to die in the thick growth." And on a lighter note, a headline in today's American Bar Association newsfeed says: "Jesus Christ’ Excused From Jury Duty for Being Disruptive:" no class A felonies noted.
I suspect my old bud would have consigned both of these to the "just nuts" file. But this--our music making phase--was also a time when it was easy to find stories about how the old Soviet Union was clapping people into nuthouses for the offense of annoying the Powers that Be.
In the United States, this stream of inquiry proved to be a peculiarly treacherous channel of eddies and undercurrents because of its intersection with the campaign for women's rights. We all knew --know--stories of women who were carted off to the loony bin for no offense greater than simply being themselves. On the other hand, we knew of psychiatrists who would give the girlies a fistful of Valium and pat them on the head and tell them to calm down and go home, while the girlies (ahem) were shouting LISTEN TO ME YOU BOZO I AM IN PAIN. I know my psychiatrist bud made it clear--without ever breaching client confidence--that he spent a fair amount of his time with women who seemed just generally disappointed with life, and I don't think he thought they were "nuts," even though they might have been "just."
One of my favorite law-teaching cases in those days was something called Ortelere v. Retirement Board (looks like it is still in the lineup)--the story of a New York school teacher who retired and quickly died leaving a husband by all appearances rather near destitute. Apparently just before death she had made some kind of voluntary "pension election" which was, from his view, catastrophic. The question was: could the pension payor claim the protection of the election, or must it pay a pension to the husband anyway? A (divided) New York court ruled against the election, citing "serious mental illness, namely psychosis."
I'm one who always believed that the job of the contracts teacher is to make simple things complicted, and in the case of Ortelere, this task is about as difficult as dynamiting whales in a barrel. Who are we protecting here, anyway, "her," or her dependent husband? And who are we to say she didn't know damn good and well what she was doing. And by the way--the particular psychosis cited was something called "involutional melancholia." It was fun to point out that "involutional melancholia" stood in the legions of mental illness in those days alongside "homosexuality"--and that both were later struck from the regimental roster on grounds that they were not mental illness at all.
I don't have much to add to the conflicting crosscurrents already surfaced, except to mention one hobbyhorse of mine. That is: I think some of these issues would go away if we simply narrowed our definition of "therapy." Apparently one fascinating datum in the literature of psychiatric "cure" is that a lot of different techniques seem to work, and that the more powerful determinant seems to be the skill of the particular purpose.
Follow this line of reasoning very far and you come to the ironic insight that maybe some people would be cured just as well by their bartender or their Labrador Retriever. Suggestions like this are oft offered in jest, but I don't see anything funny about them. Indeed, a lot of life's agonies can be eased by a steady, patient and compassionate friend. Calling these interventions "therapy" may just confuse the issue.
For whatever it may be worth, most of my students considering Orteleree wanted to allow the poor widower a pension, but they weren't comfortable with making it rest on the premise that the decedent was somehow nuts. For myself, I haven't taught this sort of stuff in years (I moved on to other stuff). But from listening to the conversation this morning, I suspect I could have pretty much the same conversation today.
Thursday, December 03, 2009
Hey, I Used to Own One of These!
Somebody--Yglesias?--was talking about War Bonds in World War II. Hey, I used to own one of these! Given to me for my--seventh? eighth?--birthday. The face was $18.75 and the maturity was 10 years with a maturity value of $25. This all looked like pretty heavy sugar to me but I suspected--correctly, as it turned out--that I'd never see any of it. Probably went for something silly like education.
My recollection is that it was a 10-year term bond. I've long assumed it was a pretty terrible investment, but here's something I didn't know how to do in those days: extract the 0.1th root out of that series and you have the implied annual rate. So (25/18.75)^(1/10)-1 = just a shade under three percent. The CPI Calculator shows me that the inflation rate starting in 1943 was about four percent. So, it is a loser.
But wait, folks. Flipping through my copy of Homer and Sylla A History of Interest Rates (I knew I would be glad to have this book someday), I find that the yield on a prime corporate bond in February (birthday month!) 1943 was 2.57 percent--in 1944, just a gnat's eyebrow different, at 2.56 percent.
So the government bond was actually better than a corporate (and come to think of it, as I recall, the income on each was taxable).
Meanwhile, if I count right, the return on the Dow was about seven percent annual, without counting dividends. But there is that pesky business of capital gains...
My recollection is that it was a 10-year term bond. I've long assumed it was a pretty terrible investment, but here's something I didn't know how to do in those days: extract the 0.1th root out of that series and you have the implied annual rate. So (25/18.75)^(1/10)-1 = just a shade under three percent. The CPI Calculator shows me that the inflation rate starting in 1943 was about four percent. So, it is a loser.
But wait, folks. Flipping through my copy of Homer and Sylla A History of Interest Rates (I knew I would be glad to have this book someday), I find that the yield on a prime corporate bond in February (birthday month!) 1943 was 2.57 percent--in 1944, just a gnat's eyebrow different, at 2.56 percent.
So the government bond was actually better than a corporate (and come to think of it, as I recall, the income on each was taxable).
Meanwhile, if I count right, the return on the Dow was about seven percent annual, without counting dividends. But there is that pesky business of capital gains...
ClimateGate and the Enterprise of Big Science
I'm not even close to on top of the ClimateGate story (hell, I haven't even read Al Gore's book, but that is a different issue). But in the interim,the most useful thing I've seen so far is David Harsanyi's piece in Reason Magazine. The hed is "A Reason to be Skeptical," but it's not quite what you think. From Harsanyi I draw two lessons: one, any way you slice it, this is a megamess for the climate change global warming lobby. Even if the CCs win on points (which I am virtually certain they will, or have), they're truck in a PR swamp that they will never quite escape.
Second is a point we ought to have known,but I guess we need to be reminded. That is: big science is big in every way: money, power, prestige, and a support apparatus just as complex and byzantine and, oh yes, self-propelled as you might expect. Recall the old canard about law and sausages: you don't want to watch either one being made. The nominal butt of the joke is big government but you could apply it just as well to General Motors or the Catholic Church, or, well, to big science itself.
Like I say, this is hardly new: anyone who has read any of the excellent histories of the Manhattan Project understands the relationship between science and biography--and the Manhattan Project has to be counted by almost any measure as a "success" (unless you happened to be one of those unfortunates living in Hiroshimas or Nagasaki). The idea that it is propelled forward by (inter alia) greed, lust and blind ambition--plus an ample dollop of bureaucrtic weaseling--is just one more glorious facet of this great invention we call life.
Granted: we would so much love to turn the facet off (oh tee hee; couldn't help myself). Meanwhile, we are going to have to cope with things pretty much as they are. But we remind ourselves one more time: don't anybody, ever, not even once, write an email.
Second is a point we ought to have known,but I guess we need to be reminded. That is: big science is big in every way: money, power, prestige, and a support apparatus just as complex and byzantine and, oh yes, self-propelled as you might expect. Recall the old canard about law and sausages: you don't want to watch either one being made. The nominal butt of the joke is big government but you could apply it just as well to General Motors or the Catholic Church, or, well, to big science itself.
Like I say, this is hardly new: anyone who has read any of the excellent histories of the Manhattan Project understands the relationship between science and biography--and the Manhattan Project has to be counted by almost any measure as a "success" (unless you happened to be one of those unfortunates living in Hiroshimas or Nagasaki). The idea that it is propelled forward by (inter alia) greed, lust and blind ambition--plus an ample dollop of bureaucrtic weaseling--is just one more glorious facet of this great invention we call life.
Granted: we would so much love to turn the facet off (oh tee hee; couldn't help myself). Meanwhile, we are going to have to cope with things pretty much as they are. But we remind ourselves one more time: don't anybody, ever, not even once, write an email.
Andrew Bacevich Is Not Impressed
Our most eloquent and forceful critic of th military solution may be predictable but it doesn't mean he is wrong:
To double down in Afghanistan is to ignore the unmistakable lesson of Bush's thoroughly discredited "global war on terror": Sending U.S. troops to fight interminable wars in distant countries does more to inflame than to extinguish the resentments giving rise to violent anti-Western jihadism.That's Andrew J. Bacevich, Jr., (link). Would be good to hear him weigh in on the other side of the equation, i.e., just what do we do with an aggregation of angry Sunnis, almost within rock-throwing distance of Pakistan's 60-80 nukes?
There's always a temptation when heading in the wrong direction on the wrong highway to press on a bit further. Perhaps down the road a piece some shortcut will appear: Grandma's house this way.
Yet as any navigationally challenged father who has ever taken his family on a road trip will tell you, to give in to that temptation is to err. When lost, take the first offramp that presents itself and turn around. That Obama -- by all accounts a thoughtful and conscientious father -- seems unable to grasp this basic rule is disturbing.
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
Now, I Ask You....
... is there anything on this list to which any serious policy wonk could possibly object (link)? Remarkable how straightforward and intelligible all this seems, and how difficult it is to get it into the public forum. HT: Bruce Bartlett.
Is This a Variant Of...
"I want to die quietly in my sleep like grandpa and not screaming in terror like his passengers:"
GM's Chairman Seizes the Wheel
(Link).Tuesday, December 01, 2009
Isn't That Special...
Pack the bags, mama! We're off to join the llama!
Last month, top organised crime investigator Felix Murga said police had arrested four suspects who confessed to murdering up to 60 people.
He said they were selling their fat for thousands of dollars a litre.
But the macabre tale now appears to be nothing more than a tall story - or a big fat lie.
Link. One more thing I don't have to worry about.
You Could Deal With That Guy
James Fallows observes the spectacle that is Dick Cheney and marvels over the discontinuity from the Dick Cheney he knew back when Cheney worked for Gerald Ford and Fallows worked for Jimmy Carter:
Anyway, she--my friend--thinks it's the history of heart problems. Cheney had his first heart attach in 1978, not long after he left the Ford White House. He had a pacemaker installed early in the Bush years. Or maybe it was a Darth Vader control device.
As chief of staff in Gerald Ford's White House, he was in charge of the transition to the Jimmy Carter team after Ford narrowly lost in 1976. Anyone who dealt with him then was impressed by his openness, his awareness of continuing national interest, his lack of bitterness -- and overall his resemblance to the George W. Bush of 2009. Whatever happened to that Dick Cheney is a matter of mystery.I have friend whose experience parallels Fallows'. My friend worked as a GOP operative in New York City back in the 70s--that would be the Lindsey administration, maybe even Jacob Javits, when the NYC GOP was a hotbed and heartbed of Eastern Liberalism. My friend says: yes, he was conservative, but you oculd deal with that guy--he kept his word.
Anyway, she--my friend--thinks it's the history of heart problems. Cheney had his first heart attach in 1978, not long after he left the Ford White House. He had a pacemaker installed early in the Bush years. Or maybe it was a Darth Vader control device.
Welcome, Credit Slips Readers
Welcome Credit Slips readers. That Lawless, he's a sweety and I hope we can live up to his encomium (and I hope it doesn't extend his time in purgatory too much). Anyway, enjoy!
...and consider these golden oldies:
...and consider these golden oldies:
Nine Dumb Arguments Against Health Care Reform, and One Dumb Argument For It
Nial Ferguson Doesn't Know Diddly Squat About Bankruptcy (and note the comment from Ferguson)
Two More Guys Who Don't Know What They're Talking About
Blackacre as an Out of the Money Option
DeLong's Nightmarish Dream
Who Would JP Morgn Invitee?
"Have Her Stripped and Washed and Brought to my Tent"
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