I'm no foreign policy expert, and I wouldn't even call myself especially informed when it comes to the state of the outside world. So I'm really in no position to offer any keen or prescient views on the situation in Iraq. But I think it's safe to say that things must have gotten better there lately, because suddenly the defining issue in the 2008 presidential campaign -- what arguably proved the difference in the Democratic primary, since there really were no other substantive differences between the two candidates -- has suddenly taken a back seat to that perennial hobgoblin of presidential elections, the economy. Stories about the sectarian carnage on the streets of Baghdad (or lack thereof) are relegated to the inside pages, read only by the most die-hard wonks, while every nightly network newscast features oppressive segments cataloging the high price of pretty much everything everybody wants to buy, and most of all, gasoline.
Every night, average Joe Sixpick earnestly, drearily informs the cameras that it's getting harder and harder to fill up, that the family vacation to the beach is on hold now, and that he's just about fed up with it. Sound familiar?
High gas prices are the story de jour, and increasingly, the loudest talking point in the upcoming election. John McCain knows it; witness his recent TV ads blaming Barack Obama for record-high gas prices. (I believe the phrase "energy crisis" is in there somewhere.) And Barack Obama knows it; he lost little time firing back at McCain, blaming him for failing to increase government fuel economy standards during his 30 years in the Senate.
Allow me, if I may, to summarize the gas-price drama, as I understand it: Gas used to be real cheap and that was great, but now all of a sudden, it's real expensive, and that's bad, because lots of people are driving trucks and SUVs that get bad mileage and so it's suddenly real important to buy cars that get good mileage. Right?
So now, everybody wants good mileage. Every car company does everything it can to play up its models' great fuel economy (even when it's not so great); Priuses are selling faster than Toyota can build them; and gas-guzzling SUVs are rusting on dealers' lots for want of buyers. And then there's the furor, just getting started in earnest, about ethanol, and how best to make it, and how high the government's CAFE standards should rise, and how fast.
But wait a minute. Lost in all the debate is a question I never hear asked: Why did it make sense, back in the Good Old Days of Cheap Gas, for everybody to drive 5,000-pound trucks and SUVs? Were gas stations giving the stuff away back then? Were oil wells gushing crude oil like 10,000 Old Faithfuls? Put more directly: Did it make sense up until recently to waste a finite natural resource for no good reason?
A quick trip back to the Good Old Days of Cheap Gas yields some interesting observations. "Cheap" is a subjective term, but I doubt anyone would disagree that back in 2003, when a gallon of regular unleaded cost $1.59 on average (per the Department of Energy), I doubt anyone would disagree that that was indeed cheap. So what cars were people buying back in that halcyon era, when George Bush was actually popular and the Iraq War looked so fresh and promising? Edmonds lists the top-ten best-sellers for '03, with the Ford F-150 pickup truck leading the way, followed by the Chevy Silverado and the Dodge Ram pickups. The lowly, gas-sipping Honda Civic, by comparison, ranks eighth, barely registering a third of F-150 sales.
Now, a quick trip over to www.fueleconomy.gov, which reports that an '03 F-150, in V-6 trim (versus the less efficient V-8) clocks 15 MPG. The 2003 Civic, equipped with an automatic, variable-ratio transmission (that is to say, not the most efficient model available) averages 32 MPG.
Now imagine yourself a prospective car buyer in 2003, facing $1.59 gas and a choice between 15 MPG and 32 MPG. And suppose you expect to drive 12,000 miles a year for the next five years, and you assume, stupidly, that the price of gas will never change, i.e., you'll continue living in the blissful era of cheap gas forever. Setting aside the obvious price differential between the truck and the car, and any insurance premium differences (ceteris paribus, if you like Latin), then you'd do your math and expect to pay $1,272 per year to fuel your F-150, and $596.25 if you opt for the Civic, for a difference of $675.75, in 2003-era dollars.
To make a long story short, unless you were a contractor who hauled around two-by-fours all day for his living, or lived at the end of a long, dirt road, buying the most popular vehicle in America was a really stupid decision. That's $675.75 you were giving away, EVERY YEAR. Just for the purposes of illustration, an annual savings of $675.75, beginning in 2003 and invested in the S&P 500 stock market (which averaged about 7.4 percent returns per year during this period), works out to a grand total, in 2008 dollars, of $4,203 by the end of 2008, assuming the stock market simply did nothing for the rest of this year. (Disclaimer: These calculations actually performed on the back of an envelop.)
So, in 2003, operating under a set of extremely conservative and unlikely assumptions, your former self would have foregone quite a tidy little sum of present-day dollars. Of course, more realistic assumptions -- namely, that gas prices might very well go up -- would only have widened the gap. And yet, 845,586 F-150s flew off the lot that year, along with a host of other big, gas-guzzling trucks. And five years later, most of them are still probably in service (even given Ford's notoriously lousy build quality). So the next time I see Joe Sixpack being interviewed at his local gas station in front of his pickup, I wish the local news correspondent would ask, "So five years ago, what made you do something so patently stupid even before gas doubled?" I'm curious to hear the answer.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
You Know What They Say About Cake...
Remember about 18 months ago when a very prominent cartoon caused an enormous uproar, which ultimately revealed more about the subject matter of the cartoon than its actual creator? Some obscure Danish cartoonist dared to depict Mohamed with a bomb on his head instead of a turban, and the Muslim world exploded, literally and figuratively. Death threats were issued, embassies were bombed, retractions were demanded. And anyone with half a brain and a shred of decency inwardly went "Well, that says an awful lot."
And this week, the phenomenon repeated itself, though without any death threats or bombings (yet). But the indignation pyrotechnics were spectacular, and very, very revealing. The New Yorker magazine, a noted bastion of reaction and bigotry, had the temerity to run a cover featuring Barrack Obama and wife Michelle in the guise of, respectively, a Muslim fundamentalist and a guerrilla warfare radical, both of them anti-American to the core. The second it hit the Internet, you could practically hear Obama Nation's collective inhalation, the gasping prelude to the torrent of moral outrage about to be loosed.
Of course, this was meant purely as satire, to lampoon the allegedly paranoid fear of the Obamas among right-wingers. Thus, The New Yorker printed a patently absurd image designed to ridicule the idea that Obama's presidential aspirations are somehow sinister and terrifying. I believe this is an example of a relatively new tack in politics called "sarcasm."
But a whole bunch of indignant liberals aren't laughing. Why not? Because all those rubes out there in Middle America might not GET IT. They might think he really IS a Muslim (heck, some of them already think just that). How dare The New Yorker publish a cartoon that could give people the wrong idea about their beloved, unassailable, manna-from-Heaven candidate? Free speech is all well and good, but in such an important election, are we really going to trust their television-addled brains to interpret the joke correctly?
Think I'm being melodramatic? Just read this analysis of why The New Yorker cover is actually really, really bad. Most revealing quote: "[V]isually-based racial, religious and character-based framing does carry cognitive weight across a spectrum of higher- and lower-level reasoning, and, more than anything, it gains strength and veracity through repetition." All those lower-reasoning voters out there might just take it the wrong way!
At play here is a very obvious hypocrisy. Either this cartoon has no basis in reality whatsoever, it's completely absurd and therefore laughable, or it isn't. If it is a pure inversion of the truth, why all the angst about the damage it might do? When in the same breath the liberal, blogging community announces that the Obamas bear absolutely no resemblance to this caricature (which was the artist's point all along) BUT this cartoon shouldn't have been printed because it could give people the wrong idea, the liberal blogging community doth protest too much.
And this week, the phenomenon repeated itself, though without any death threats or bombings (yet). But the indignation pyrotechnics were spectacular, and very, very revealing. The New Yorker magazine, a noted bastion of reaction and bigotry, had the temerity to run a cover featuring Barrack Obama and wife Michelle in the guise of, respectively, a Muslim fundamentalist and a guerrilla warfare radical, both of them anti-American to the core. The second it hit the Internet, you could practically hear Obama Nation's collective inhalation, the gasping prelude to the torrent of moral outrage about to be loosed.
Of course, this was meant purely as satire, to lampoon the allegedly paranoid fear of the Obamas among right-wingers. Thus, The New Yorker printed a patently absurd image designed to ridicule the idea that Obama's presidential aspirations are somehow sinister and terrifying. I believe this is an example of a relatively new tack in politics called "sarcasm."
But a whole bunch of indignant liberals aren't laughing. Why not? Because all those rubes out there in Middle America might not GET IT. They might think he really IS a Muslim (heck, some of them already think just that). How dare The New Yorker publish a cartoon that could give people the wrong idea about their beloved, unassailable, manna-from-Heaven candidate? Free speech is all well and good, but in such an important election, are we really going to trust their television-addled brains to interpret the joke correctly?
Think I'm being melodramatic? Just read this analysis of why The New Yorker cover is actually really, really bad. Most revealing quote: "[V]isually-based racial, religious and character-based framing does carry cognitive weight across a spectrum of higher- and lower-level reasoning, and, more than anything, it gains strength and veracity through repetition." All those lower-reasoning voters out there might just take it the wrong way!
At play here is a very obvious hypocrisy. Either this cartoon has no basis in reality whatsoever, it's completely absurd and therefore laughable, or it isn't. If it is a pure inversion of the truth, why all the angst about the damage it might do? When in the same breath the liberal, blogging community announces that the Obamas bear absolutely no resemblance to this caricature (which was the artist's point all along) BUT this cartoon shouldn't have been printed because it could give people the wrong idea, the liberal blogging community doth protest too much.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
A Relic From '06
A couple years ago, in a very rare fit of (unwarranted) confidence in my abilities as a writer, I submitted something for a DC political humor Web site's open submission contest. I promptly did not win.
I believe the assignment was to write George Bush's post-presidency cover letter, when he'd hypothetically be applying for a new job and describing his accomplishments as president. I recently discovered my submission in a folder I rarely open, and lest it sit on my hard drive forever gathering electronic dust, here it is. (In light of recent events in the '08 presidential campaign, it sounds a bit dated now. My apologies.)
Dear Sir (or possibly Madam - but hopefully Sir):
Eight years and two narrowly unsuccessful impeachment trials ago, I made a promise when I took office: that I would govern as a uniter, not a divider. And today, I can say with confidence that that promise has been fulfilled. American women are united by the renewed trust in their own bushes which I’ve inspired; Europe is firmly united against American intransigence (which I assume is French for “intrepid leadership”). Heck, I even reunited Dick Cheney with his beloved Girls Gone Wild: Spring Break DVD, which Lynn hid from him back in ‘02. All this while pursuing Al Quaeda on every continent (including their Antarctic stronghold) and winning a solid 60 percent of the preemptive wars I’ve launched. Last time I checked, that was a passing grade at both Harvard and Yale.
But don’t let my shrewd foreign policy overshadow my impressive domestic accomplishments. The prescription drug plan I engineered gives America’s seniors access to a health system at least as complicated as Finland’s, and possibly as good as Nicaragua’s. Meanwhile, the No Child Left Behind Act aims to ensure a bright future for our children by requiring a highly qualified teacher and a fully functional mechanical bull in every classroom in the nation by the year 2014. Critics say these bold initiatives are nothing but unfunded mandates that will bankrupt the country. I say: That’s Hillary’s problem now. Have fun crunching those budget numbers, Madam President.
And finally, allow me to remind you that, as far as surviving ex-presidents go, I’m probably your best bet. Bill’s doing his philanthropy work (or is it philandering work? He told me which one it was, but I can never keep ‘em straight); Jimmy’s busy with the peanut harvest; Gerry’s a good guy, but a little too brainy; and between you and me, dad can’t keep awake for more than about forty-five minutes at a stretch. Also, I’ve been hearing rumors lately that Ronny’s dead. But that’s probably just our liberally biased media talking.
Sincerely,
Pres. George Walker Bush
I believe the assignment was to write George Bush's post-presidency cover letter, when he'd hypothetically be applying for a new job and describing his accomplishments as president. I recently discovered my submission in a folder I rarely open, and lest it sit on my hard drive forever gathering electronic dust, here it is. (In light of recent events in the '08 presidential campaign, it sounds a bit dated now. My apologies.)
Dear Sir (or possibly Madam - but hopefully Sir):
Eight years and two narrowly unsuccessful impeachment trials ago, I made a promise when I took office: that I would govern as a uniter, not a divider. And today, I can say with confidence that that promise has been fulfilled. American women are united by the renewed trust in their own bushes which I’ve inspired; Europe is firmly united against American intransigence (which I assume is French for “intrepid leadership”). Heck, I even reunited Dick Cheney with his beloved Girls Gone Wild: Spring Break DVD, which Lynn hid from him back in ‘02. All this while pursuing Al Quaeda on every continent (including their Antarctic stronghold) and winning a solid 60 percent of the preemptive wars I’ve launched. Last time I checked, that was a passing grade at both Harvard and Yale.
But don’t let my shrewd foreign policy overshadow my impressive domestic accomplishments. The prescription drug plan I engineered gives America’s seniors access to a health system at least as complicated as Finland’s, and possibly as good as Nicaragua’s. Meanwhile, the No Child Left Behind Act aims to ensure a bright future for our children by requiring a highly qualified teacher and a fully functional mechanical bull in every classroom in the nation by the year 2014. Critics say these bold initiatives are nothing but unfunded mandates that will bankrupt the country. I say: That’s Hillary’s problem now. Have fun crunching those budget numbers, Madam President.
And finally, allow me to remind you that, as far as surviving ex-presidents go, I’m probably your best bet. Bill’s doing his philanthropy work (or is it philandering work? He told me which one it was, but I can never keep ‘em straight); Jimmy’s busy with the peanut harvest; Gerry’s a good guy, but a little too brainy; and between you and me, dad can’t keep awake for more than about forty-five minutes at a stretch. Also, I’ve been hearing rumors lately that Ronny’s dead. But that’s probably just our liberally biased media talking.
Sincerely,
Pres. George Walker Bush
Decline of the West, as Measured in Skyscrapers
Since today is a fairly slow day, I was able to indulge in one of my favorite pastimes: Scanning the "news" headlines on MSN.com after signing out of Hotmail. Call it a slightly sick fascination, but there's just something irresistible about the junk content I see routinely splashed on this and other quasi-news sites, because I get the feeling that more and more people get their information, and worse, their opinions from such outlets. Sometimes it's pure fluff, and thus, non-threatening; the other day, I saw a headline that asked "Can You Rent a Beehive?" Stupid, to be sure, but also pretty innocuous.
But then, there's the stupid stuff with the potential to poison innocent minds. Today I found just such a whopper. In this very, very ominous survey of America's continuing fall from greatness, we're told various countries that you've probably never even heard of before are zooming past the U.S. on the world's economic totem pole. Among my favorite indicators cited as proof of our national decline:
1) In the most recent Forbes survey of billionaires, Russia (Russia!) ran the U.S. a close second, with 87 citizens with net worths of 10 figures.
Well, let's see. Eighty-seven Russian tycoons with ties to the state-dominated oil industry have cashed in on record oil prices and become billionaires. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization reports 1.6 million HIV cases in Russia (an increase of 150 percent since 2001), a national per-capita income approximately one-fourth that of the U.S., and an average life expectancy roughly 10 years shorter. But what does any of that matter, so long as a tiny plutocracy enjoys virtually all of the country's alleged prosperity? (For now, anyway. Most of that wealth is the result of oil revenues, and Russia's aging oil fields are in major decline.)
2) Toyota is threatening to displace GM as the largest auto manufacturer in the world, thanks to its vehicles' superior gas mileage.
There's no denying that Toyota is a well-run company, and GM has been a basket case lately. But as the Wall Street Journal reported this morning, both are struggling in the North American market these days, and that largely spells the difference between profit and loss. Patriotic "Buy American!" sentiment to the contrary, Toyota is having the same problems as GM; namely, trying to switch from making big, inefficient SUVs to small cars. For years, SUVs were huge money-makers for GM, and foreign competitors like Toyota did their best to get in on the action. Now the Toyota plants that build its trucks and SUVs are largely idle, and the company is scrambling to ramp up production of the thrifty fuel-sippers that people actually want to buy. (Go into a Toyota dealership to buy a Prius and they'll be happy to put you on the three-month waiting list for one.)
3) London is competing with New York City to be the world's financial capital.
Gee, talk about lightning from a clear blue sky! Back-water, podunk London, the city that once administered a quarter of the world's surface and dominated global commerce for centuries is suddenly a financial powerhouse? Get out of here! Worrying that the City is becoming as important as New York in the banking and financing arena is like worrying that Pepsi sells almost as much cola as Coke: the planet is big enough for the both of them.
4) The world's tallest building is in Taiwan.
What!?
The common thread that seems to string all these stupid assertions together is an obsession with superlatives. "Oh no, they almost have more billionaires than we do! Their banks might become bigger than ours! Their tallest skyscraper is taller than our tallest skyscraper!" The rational response to each is: Who cares? None of these things measures the quality of life here versus abroad, and none even constitutes a significant economic indicator. If this is how the "average American" decides how he feels about his country, it's no wonder opinion polls consistently report that people think we're in trouble, even when they consistently say they feel good about their own economic situation.
But then, there's the stupid stuff with the potential to poison innocent minds. Today I found just such a whopper. In this very, very ominous survey of America's continuing fall from greatness, we're told various countries that you've probably never even heard of before are zooming past the U.S. on the world's economic totem pole. Among my favorite indicators cited as proof of our national decline:
1) In the most recent Forbes survey of billionaires, Russia (Russia!) ran the U.S. a close second, with 87 citizens with net worths of 10 figures.
Well, let's see. Eighty-seven Russian tycoons with ties to the state-dominated oil industry have cashed in on record oil prices and become billionaires. Meanwhile, the World Health Organization reports 1.6 million HIV cases in Russia (an increase of 150 percent since 2001), a national per-capita income approximately one-fourth that of the U.S., and an average life expectancy roughly 10 years shorter. But what does any of that matter, so long as a tiny plutocracy enjoys virtually all of the country's alleged prosperity? (For now, anyway. Most of that wealth is the result of oil revenues, and Russia's aging oil fields are in major decline.)
2) Toyota is threatening to displace GM as the largest auto manufacturer in the world, thanks to its vehicles' superior gas mileage.
There's no denying that Toyota is a well-run company, and GM has been a basket case lately. But as the Wall Street Journal reported this morning, both are struggling in the North American market these days, and that largely spells the difference between profit and loss. Patriotic "Buy American!" sentiment to the contrary, Toyota is having the same problems as GM; namely, trying to switch from making big, inefficient SUVs to small cars. For years, SUVs were huge money-makers for GM, and foreign competitors like Toyota did their best to get in on the action. Now the Toyota plants that build its trucks and SUVs are largely idle, and the company is scrambling to ramp up production of the thrifty fuel-sippers that people actually want to buy. (Go into a Toyota dealership to buy a Prius and they'll be happy to put you on the three-month waiting list for one.)
3) London is competing with New York City to be the world's financial capital.
Gee, talk about lightning from a clear blue sky! Back-water, podunk London, the city that once administered a quarter of the world's surface and dominated global commerce for centuries is suddenly a financial powerhouse? Get out of here! Worrying that the City is becoming as important as New York in the banking and financing arena is like worrying that Pepsi sells almost as much cola as Coke: the planet is big enough for the both of them.
4) The world's tallest building is in Taiwan.
What!?
The common thread that seems to string all these stupid assertions together is an obsession with superlatives. "Oh no, they almost have more billionaires than we do! Their banks might become bigger than ours! Their tallest skyscraper is taller than our tallest skyscraper!" The rational response to each is: Who cares? None of these things measures the quality of life here versus abroad, and none even constitutes a significant economic indicator. If this is how the "average American" decides how he feels about his country, it's no wonder opinion polls consistently report that people think we're in trouble, even when they consistently say they feel good about their own economic situation.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
A Letter to Thomas Frank (from the archives)
This morning, I happened to read the following op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, and it struck close enough to home that I couldn't help but send the author the following reply:
FIGHTING WORDS
By THOMAS FRANK
The Tragic Irony of Beltway Libertarianism
May 21, 2008; Page A17
Consider the poor Washington libertarian. Everywhere else in America his type is an exotic species, a coffee-shop heretic who quotes from "Atlas Shrugged" and steers every conversation toward Ron Paul or gold. Take him or leave him, he doesn't care. He is his own master.
Not so the Beltway variety. Here, in the very home of the taxing, regulating leviathan, the libertarian is such a commonplace and unremarkable bird that no one gives him a second glance. Here he is a factotum of the establishment, a tiny voice in a vast choir assembled by business and its tax-exempt front groups to sing the virtues of the entrepreneur.
And therein lies his dilemma. Almost by definition, our young libertarian's job is to celebrate the profit motive from the offices of a not-for-profit organization. He is subsidized, in other words, to hymn the unsubsidized way of life. Rugged individualism may be his creed, but a rugged individual he ain't.
This is more than just an abstract problem, as I discovered last week at a panel discussion hosted by America's Future Foundation, one of the lesser libertarian nonprofits in the city. The questions that night were whether nonprofit work constituted a "real job" and if moving to the private sector was "selling out" – ideas well known to any liberal do-gooder.
The audience of young professionals learned about the need to find a job that you loved. It heard the inevitable complaint that "there are plenty of people who are choosing for-profit over nonprofit" when their heart tells them to do the opposite. A panelist asked the audience to imagine a foundation worker saying to his boss, "I love what I do, but in the end I've got a wife and three kids, and we live in McLean, and the mortgage is through the roof, and my commute sucks, or whatever, I need a little bit more cash," only to have his employer turn him down.
These plaints sounded so familiar that I felt like suggesting that everyone there hop out and grab a copy of Daniel Brook's fine but distinctly unlibertarian 2007 book "The Trap." By skewing society's rewards so lopsidedly to the top in the country's richest cities, Mr. Brook writes, the tax-reducing, market-minded economic policies of the last few decades have priced all sorts of high-minded occupations to the bottom of the middle class: teaching, the arts, and, of course, nonprofit work.
Many of the people Mr. Brook talks to in such cities haven't given up on these pursuits because they're "sellouts"; they've given up because they want proper health care or decent housing or good schools for their kids.
In traditional sellout theory there is always some grand cause or principle that is being exchanged for immediate gain – artistic independence, for example, or the fate of the panda, trembling piteously before the onrushing bulldozers of modernity.
But what is it that libertarians are selling when they accept the fat paychecks of corporate America? The noble principle of self interest? The utopia of the market itself? Will the workings of supply and demand really seize up if some young Ayn Randette chooses to forsake, say, the Cato Institute and instead help ExxonMobil pile up the pelf?
Fortunately, there were a few plainspoken men of the market present at the gathering to set things straight. Capitalists were the world's real heroes, they reminded us, delivering value to the public and seeing that value quantified precisely by the numbers on the balance sheet. That was reality. the idea that "there's something special about nonprofits," scoffed one forthright fellow – "well, that's crap. Nonprofits are an artifice of the law, and what's special about them is not that they do different things or that they are organized in a special way, it's that they don't pay taxes."
Personally, I would take this hard line one step further: Selling out is not a threat to the market order; selling out is how the market gets its way. Just look at the city in which all these remarks were made. Private-sector Washington is one of the wealthiest places in America. Public-service Washington lags considerably behind. The chance of ditching the one for the other is what accounts for everything from the power of K Street to the infamous "revolving door," by which a public servant takes a cushy corporate job after engineering some extravagant government favor for the corporation in question – or its clients.
The libertarian nonprofits that line the city's streets often serve merely to rationalize this operation after the fact, giving a pious shine to the policies that are made in this unholy manner.
To their credit, the nonprofit libertarians I watched the other night did not ask for sympathy. Their own doctrine won't permit it. Having spent years urging lawmakers to wreck the social order that once made occupations like theirs tenable, they will cling stubbornly to their free-market idol all the way down.
Mr Frank,
As a young libertarian working in Washington (albeit at a for-profit publishing company) who just read your Wall Street Journal column of May 21, I feel the need to proffer an alternative to your conclusion that libertarians toiling away in nonprofit advocacy organizations to defend capitalism are mindlessly working against their own self-interest because they are prisoners of their flawed ideology. Correct me if I've misconstrued your position, but I believe your closing paragraph is quite unambiguous:
"To their credit, the nonprofit libertarians I watched the other night did not ask for sympathy. Their own doctrine won't permit it. Having spent years urging lawmakers to wreck the social order that once made occupations like theirs tenable, they will cling stubbornly to their free-market idol all the way down."
Instead of concluding that these poor saps are too blind to even know what's good for them, I would posit that they're principled people who care more about promoting their beliefs than they do about pulling down big salaries. Furthermore, I would suggest that they are responsible adults who chose their line of work despite knowing that they'll never get rich in the nonprofit sector, and that like responsible adults, they accept the consequences of their own choices in life. They do not demand that they and their "high-minded" (to use your own phrase) peers somehow "deserve" more money than their employers are willing to pay them.
So the next time you grace the opinion page of the Journal with your leftist cant, please at least try to formulate some sort of philosophical argument, or attempt to refute one of the core arguments of your opponents, rather than simply writing them off as hapless stooges who don't even have the sense to seek out the best paycheck. Not everyone is as obsessed with wealth as you seem to be.
And if somewhere in the political machinations of our nation's capital - where lawmakers are busy handing out millions in subsidies to wealthy farmers, billions for a senseless war in the Middle East, and trillions in future entitlement obligations like Social Security - you can detect the sinister influence of free-market libertarianism, I implore you to seek psychiatric help.
Respectfully,
Jim Patterson, 25, Alexandria, Va
FIGHTING WORDS
By THOMAS FRANK
The Tragic Irony of Beltway Libertarianism
May 21, 2008; Page A17
Consider the poor Washington libertarian. Everywhere else in America his type is an exotic species, a coffee-shop heretic who quotes from "Atlas Shrugged" and steers every conversation toward Ron Paul or gold. Take him or leave him, he doesn't care. He is his own master.
Not so the Beltway variety. Here, in the very home of the taxing, regulating leviathan, the libertarian is such a commonplace and unremarkable bird that no one gives him a second glance. Here he is a factotum of the establishment, a tiny voice in a vast choir assembled by business and its tax-exempt front groups to sing the virtues of the entrepreneur.
And therein lies his dilemma. Almost by definition, our young libertarian's job is to celebrate the profit motive from the offices of a not-for-profit organization. He is subsidized, in other words, to hymn the unsubsidized way of life. Rugged individualism may be his creed, but a rugged individual he ain't.
This is more than just an abstract problem, as I discovered last week at a panel discussion hosted by America's Future Foundation, one of the lesser libertarian nonprofits in the city. The questions that night were whether nonprofit work constituted a "real job" and if moving to the private sector was "selling out" – ideas well known to any liberal do-gooder.
The audience of young professionals learned about the need to find a job that you loved. It heard the inevitable complaint that "there are plenty of people who are choosing for-profit over nonprofit" when their heart tells them to do the opposite. A panelist asked the audience to imagine a foundation worker saying to his boss, "I love what I do, but in the end I've got a wife and three kids, and we live in McLean, and the mortgage is through the roof, and my commute sucks, or whatever, I need a little bit more cash," only to have his employer turn him down.
These plaints sounded so familiar that I felt like suggesting that everyone there hop out and grab a copy of Daniel Brook's fine but distinctly unlibertarian 2007 book "The Trap." By skewing society's rewards so lopsidedly to the top in the country's richest cities, Mr. Brook writes, the tax-reducing, market-minded economic policies of the last few decades have priced all sorts of high-minded occupations to the bottom of the middle class: teaching, the arts, and, of course, nonprofit work.
Many of the people Mr. Brook talks to in such cities haven't given up on these pursuits because they're "sellouts"; they've given up because they want proper health care or decent housing or good schools for their kids.
In traditional sellout theory there is always some grand cause or principle that is being exchanged for immediate gain – artistic independence, for example, or the fate of the panda, trembling piteously before the onrushing bulldozers of modernity.
But what is it that libertarians are selling when they accept the fat paychecks of corporate America? The noble principle of self interest? The utopia of the market itself? Will the workings of supply and demand really seize up if some young Ayn Randette chooses to forsake, say, the Cato Institute and instead help ExxonMobil pile up the pelf?
Fortunately, there were a few plainspoken men of the market present at the gathering to set things straight. Capitalists were the world's real heroes, they reminded us, delivering value to the public and seeing that value quantified precisely by the numbers on the balance sheet. That was reality. the idea that "there's something special about nonprofits," scoffed one forthright fellow – "well, that's crap. Nonprofits are an artifice of the law, and what's special about them is not that they do different things or that they are organized in a special way, it's that they don't pay taxes."
Personally, I would take this hard line one step further: Selling out is not a threat to the market order; selling out is how the market gets its way. Just look at the city in which all these remarks were made. Private-sector Washington is one of the wealthiest places in America. Public-service Washington lags considerably behind. The chance of ditching the one for the other is what accounts for everything from the power of K Street to the infamous "revolving door," by which a public servant takes a cushy corporate job after engineering some extravagant government favor for the corporation in question – or its clients.
The libertarian nonprofits that line the city's streets often serve merely to rationalize this operation after the fact, giving a pious shine to the policies that are made in this unholy manner.
To their credit, the nonprofit libertarians I watched the other night did not ask for sympathy. Their own doctrine won't permit it. Having spent years urging lawmakers to wreck the social order that once made occupations like theirs tenable, they will cling stubbornly to their free-market idol all the way down.
Mr Frank,
As a young libertarian working in Washington (albeit at a for-profit publishing company) who just read your Wall Street Journal column of May 21, I feel the need to proffer an alternative to your conclusion that libertarians toiling away in nonprofit advocacy organizations to defend capitalism are mindlessly working against their own self-interest because they are prisoners of their flawed ideology. Correct me if I've misconstrued your position, but I believe your closing paragraph is quite unambiguous:
"To their credit, the nonprofit libertarians I watched the other night did not ask for sympathy. Their own doctrine won't permit it. Having spent years urging lawmakers to wreck the social order that once made occupations like theirs tenable, they will cling stubbornly to their free-market idol all the way down."
Instead of concluding that these poor saps are too blind to even know what's good for them, I would posit that they're principled people who care more about promoting their beliefs than they do about pulling down big salaries. Furthermore, I would suggest that they are responsible adults who chose their line of work despite knowing that they'll never get rich in the nonprofit sector, and that like responsible adults, they accept the consequences of their own choices in life. They do not demand that they and their "high-minded" (to use your own phrase) peers somehow "deserve" more money than their employers are willing to pay them.
So the next time you grace the opinion page of the Journal with your leftist cant, please at least try to formulate some sort of philosophical argument, or attempt to refute one of the core arguments of your opponents, rather than simply writing them off as hapless stooges who don't even have the sense to seek out the best paycheck. Not everyone is as obsessed with wealth as you seem to be.
And if somewhere in the political machinations of our nation's capital - where lawmakers are busy handing out millions in subsidies to wealthy farmers, billions for a senseless war in the Middle East, and trillions in future entitlement obligations like Social Security - you can detect the sinister influence of free-market libertarianism, I implore you to seek psychiatric help.
Respectfully,
Jim Patterson, 25, Alexandria, Va
On first looking into Kos' blog (from the archive)
On my daily stop at NFL.com today, I was reminded of something very sad: the start of the regular NFL season is still an interminable four and a half months away. In the meantime, I'm left with nothing better than politics, an utterly inadequate substitute. But play the hand you're dealt, I've always said.
So, Barack Obama. Last week he said something kind of dumb. I'm sure everyone's already heard it, so I won't quote him. You know the soundbite I mean, the one where he told wealthy San Francisco liberals what they already know: that blue-collar, "heartland" Americans are a bunch of podunk rubes who love guns, hate immigrants, go to church instead of college and don't even have the sense to vote in their own economic self-interest. If you have the misfortune to be exposed to as much news, punditry and water-cooler bull sessions as I am, you've already heard the big outcry, both from the Hillary Camp and John McCain Land. Suddenly Obama, heretofore the healer of all our woes, the uniter of all our differences, sounds a tad condescending, even "elitist."
Elitism from a Harvard-educated lawyer worth millions of dollars? No! I for one refuse to believe it.
So I'm bored with this story, except for one seldom-mentioned aspect. I hear Obama supporters defending his remarks, explaining that they were "poorly phrased" but "fundamentally true," and I can't help but chuckle. Because I know that somewhere, deep down in their psyche (or maybe not so deeply buried), they're going, "What's the big deal? He's right! They ARE just a bunch of podunk rubes." Most of them won't admit to it on TV or in print, but I decided to look elsewhere for confirmation. And I found it, in the Daily Kos.
Sure, I had to search a bit. This was my first trip to Kos (surprise!), and frankly, I was unprepared for the all-out internecine party warfare being fought out there in the blogosphere. I don't know how many people are posting on that site, but judging by the frequent updates and the never-ending string of verbal sniping at Hillary Clinton (sorry, couldn't resist), I quickly figured out that this is ground zero for the Hillary/Obama battle. Mentions of "bittergate" weren't hard to find, but practically every one emphasized what a non-story this is, and ended by exulting that Obama's remarks haven't hurt him in the Pennsylvania polls. More than a few bloggers seemed to be hyperventilating over how unworthy of mention this story is, because it's just the latest futile attempt by the Hillary campaign to find a chink in the Obama armor.
But finally I found what I was looking for. A blogger named "Asinus Asinum Fricat," who appears to be some sort of European correspondent for Kos, summed up the "bitter" fracas thusly:
I suppose I am an elitist since I care about our planet, as does the Senator from Illinois. ... Ignore the clamoring repukes [sic], elect Obama and get on with it. We are all elitists and proud to be!"
So now I get it. It's GOOD to be an elitist, as long as you're part of the MORAL elite. Remarks like this one, coupled with Kos' oft-repeated declaration that the "bitter" story is "nonsense" and mud-slinging, dovetail pretty neatly with what I assumed from the beginning.
But what I really learned from my first foray into the world of Kos is that this country is a dreadful mess. The present recession is worse than anyone realizes, nobody has any money, because it's all going to "the top," nobody's got health insurance (except one or two Kos bloggers) and if Democratic Congressman Edward Markey is to be believed, the planet is going to be "cooked" because of global warming by the year 2025. (I didn't realize Markey had a degree in climatology; guess I didn't read his Web biography carefully enough.)
Bottom line: This place sucks, and I had no idea. I was under the general impression that we live in the most prosperous, democratic country in the world, at the most prosperous and democratic moment in that country's history. But now that I think about it, maybe I should be bitter too!
God I can't wait until football starts. This country will be so much better off come September. Once they get old enough, I propose a Peyton/Eli Manning presidential ticket to bridge the AFC/NFC divide and bring in a lot of those bitter blue-collar midwesterners. The Manning brothers are good ol' boys from Louisiana, and unlike Hillary, they don't have to fake a heartland accent.
So, Barack Obama. Last week he said something kind of dumb. I'm sure everyone's already heard it, so I won't quote him. You know the soundbite I mean, the one where he told wealthy San Francisco liberals what they already know: that blue-collar, "heartland" Americans are a bunch of podunk rubes who love guns, hate immigrants, go to church instead of college and don't even have the sense to vote in their own economic self-interest. If you have the misfortune to be exposed to as much news, punditry and water-cooler bull sessions as I am, you've already heard the big outcry, both from the Hillary Camp and John McCain Land. Suddenly Obama, heretofore the healer of all our woes, the uniter of all our differences, sounds a tad condescending, even "elitist."
Elitism from a Harvard-educated lawyer worth millions of dollars? No! I for one refuse to believe it.
So I'm bored with this story, except for one seldom-mentioned aspect. I hear Obama supporters defending his remarks, explaining that they were "poorly phrased" but "fundamentally true," and I can't help but chuckle. Because I know that somewhere, deep down in their psyche (or maybe not so deeply buried), they're going, "What's the big deal? He's right! They ARE just a bunch of podunk rubes." Most of them won't admit to it on TV or in print, but I decided to look elsewhere for confirmation. And I found it, in the Daily Kos.
Sure, I had to search a bit. This was my first trip to Kos (surprise!), and frankly, I was unprepared for the all-out internecine party warfare being fought out there in the blogosphere. I don't know how many people are posting on that site, but judging by the frequent updates and the never-ending string of verbal sniping at Hillary Clinton (sorry, couldn't resist), I quickly figured out that this is ground zero for the Hillary/Obama battle. Mentions of "bittergate" weren't hard to find, but practically every one emphasized what a non-story this is, and ended by exulting that Obama's remarks haven't hurt him in the Pennsylvania polls. More than a few bloggers seemed to be hyperventilating over how unworthy of mention this story is, because it's just the latest futile attempt by the Hillary campaign to find a chink in the Obama armor.
But finally I found what I was looking for. A blogger named "Asinus Asinum Fricat," who appears to be some sort of European correspondent for Kos, summed up the "bitter" fracas thusly:
I suppose I am an elitist since I care about our planet, as does the Senator from Illinois. ... Ignore the clamoring repukes [sic], elect Obama and get on with it. We are all elitists and proud to be!"
So now I get it. It's GOOD to be an elitist, as long as you're part of the MORAL elite. Remarks like this one, coupled with Kos' oft-repeated declaration that the "bitter" story is "nonsense" and mud-slinging, dovetail pretty neatly with what I assumed from the beginning.
But what I really learned from my first foray into the world of Kos is that this country is a dreadful mess. The present recession is worse than anyone realizes, nobody has any money, because it's all going to "the top," nobody's got health insurance (except one or two Kos bloggers) and if Democratic Congressman Edward Markey is to be believed, the planet is going to be "cooked" because of global warming by the year 2025. (I didn't realize Markey had a degree in climatology; guess I didn't read his Web biography carefully enough.)
Bottom line: This place sucks, and I had no idea. I was under the general impression that we live in the most prosperous, democratic country in the world, at the most prosperous and democratic moment in that country's history. But now that I think about it, maybe I should be bitter too!
God I can't wait until football starts. This country will be so much better off come September. Once they get old enough, I propose a Peyton/Eli Manning presidential ticket to bridge the AFC/NFC divide and bring in a lot of those bitter blue-collar midwesterners. The Manning brothers are good ol' boys from Louisiana, and unlike Hillary, they don't have to fake a heartland accent.
I'd Be for it, if I Wasn't Against it (from the archives)
Reading a blog entry in the Wall Street Journal today reminded me just how much I loathe Sex and the City. Because wsj.com remains a subscription-based site in this era of free news, I can't link to the blog, so I'll just steal a little copyrighted material:
"The HBO series Sex and the City ended in 2004. But now with the upcoming release of the “Sex and the City” movie, the show is coming under scrutiny for its influence on the shopping, partying and dating habits of young women.
Starring Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw, the series chronicled the loves and lives of four very fashionable friends in New York. Were Juggle [the name of the blog in question] writers fans? In the immortal words of Mr. Big: “Abso- $#@&* - lutely!” But BusinessWeek columnist Lindsey Gerdes writes recently that the characters’ preoccupation with men is bad for young career women who still look to Carrie Bradshaw as a role model. She also points out that in newer shows like Cashmere Mafia and Lipstick Jungle, the basis for women’s career success is unrealistic, “predicated on the ability to navigate an exciting web of power struggles and sexually charged innuendos. All in stilettos!”
But really, how much influence do such shows actually have on young women? Ask Julia Allison, a 27-year-old relationship columnist and Sex and the City fan profiled last weekend by the New York Times. The article says that her devotion to the show was in part why she moved to New York City after college. She also keeps up with habits of Carrie Bradshaw, dancing at celebrity-rich clubs, throwing parties and collecting trendy shoes. The problem is that the lifestyle portrayed in the show is difficult to afford; for example, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side — where Carrie lived as a single professional on the show - - is $2,448 per month. (Indeed, Ms. Allison says even with a six-figure income, she lives in a tiny studio.)"
Now, when I loathe something, I want to know why. And from the very few episodes (or snippets of episodes) I've actually seen, I've never been able to rationally explain my deep-seated detestation of this show. It just seemed that whenever it intruded upon my otherwise calm and tranquil mind, waves of hot, blinding rage would well up from deep within me, until I had to scream and leave the room. But why? The answer always eluded me, but this blog post, and especially the comments that fans of the show posted in reply, have finally shed some light on the source of my aversion.
But first, a disclaimer: I have heard it said many times by female fans that SATC appeals to women because it connects with women, that it depicts situations and relationships that "every woman can relate to." I have no idea whether this is true, and clearly, I'm not equipped to judge such statements. So I will avoid that nebulously impenetrable aspect of the show entirely. I can only say that the idea of a television show geared to a female audience doesn't bother me as a concept, and that I'm quite sure it's something else about SATC that makes my blood boil.
Again, based on my very limited exposure (never voluntary), my impression has always been that a certain materialism permeates SATC characters' lives. They all live in a chic part of Manhattan (the Upper East Side...?), they all dress fabulously and spend heavily on clothes, and shopping appears to be a fairly routine pastime. And yet, I can't recall seeing any of them doing much work to support such a lifestyle. From what I've gathered, Sarah Jessica Parker's character lives in a pricey, spacious one-bedroom, in a city with the highest rents in the country, and manages to do so by writing a weekly column that takes up about five minutes of her weekly routine. A mite implausible, but I'll set that aside.
What I didn't appreciate, until I read some comments on this blog entry, was just how important this lavish lifestyle is to many fans, particularly younger ones. Witness this Boston University student's gushing:
"Are people in college still obsessed with “Sex and the City”? ABSOLUTELY. Almost all of my friends watch the show, and many of them have the entire series on DVD. Granted, I go to school at Boston University, where many girls are Carrie-obsessed, driven, type A’s planning to move to New York, but I would venture to say that the show influences many college students’ decisions to live a very glamorous lifestyle and move to NYC after college. That’s where I’ll be headed!"
A TV sitcom influencing college students' decisions about where to live after college? Fascinating! But read on:
"Many of my friends who are graduating this year are going to New York and have no intention of giving up that lifestyle. Most would probably rather live in a shoe box and have no furniture than stop buying clothes, shoes, cocktails, and Hamptons summer shares. All of them plan on going out every weekend to chic night clubs, and will probably go out for drinks after work many nights a week.
So, do I feel pressure to live this lifestyle? No, but who wouldn’t want to? When “Sex and the City” came out, it let all of my friends have a small glimpse of the most glamorous lifestyle they’d ever seen. There is no pressure to buy tons of shoes and $12 cocktails–everyone just WANTS to!"
Of the 197 comments posted on this blog, many were in the same vein. Others, from older women who are fans of the show, express considerable surprise at how many young women, who were literally girls when SATC first aired, have become such huge fans. But the more I think about this, the less surprised I am, because there are striking parallels between SATC and college life. From what I can (or choose) to recall of my college experience, those four years are a time of epic sloth for many people. While there are plenty of aspiring engineers and doctors and yes, even some diligent, studious liberal arts types, college is a period of astonishing leisure. It's really the only period of one's life when it's acceptable, even popular, to stay up to all hours, drink like a fish, and generally while away mountains of free time. There's no nine-to-five job to be late for, no house to keep up, no kids to take care of. All in all, it's got to be the most self-indulgent, laziest period of many people's lives.
And suddenly along comes this hit TV show that shows, what? Young, attractive people wasting time and having fun! They shop on Fifth Ave, they meet for coffee, they gossip, they dish, they pick up men at bars. It's really not so very different from what's undoubtedly going on right now at a thousand college campuses. But the clothes, the digs, the food, the drinks on SATC? Way nicer. So, same great lifestyle, better stuff.
Aside from the material excess, the aspect of SATC I found most striking was, quite honestly, the sex. More specifically, that it takes on sex as one of its core subject matters. And not just in the way that so many sitcoms dance around it, substituting innuendo for detail and leaving much to the viewer's imagination. For a sitcom to depict sex with jokes that trail off suggestively or scenes in which the lights fade out, followed by canned laugh tracks or titillated "oohs!" from the nonexistent audience is standard. For a sitcom to actually show sex, and write dialog that goes into the gory details of sex, is fairly unprecedented (and obviously, a cable network like HBO can take a lot more liberties than Fox or NBC).
And as far as it goes, I find such earthiness refreshing. We live in a fairly prudish country; for anyone who doubts it, just consider the media's obsession with pop stars like Britney Spears behaving naughtily. So to see a show that deals with something so real, so everyday (and oftentimes, so funny) in a very unsqueamish way can be a breath of fresh air. After all, real people have sex and talk about it, so why can't TV resemble reality?
But SATC goes well beyond realist depictions of sex. Aside from shoe shopping, the women on the show seem to positively live for sex, and for sex with whoever strikes their fancy that particular week. And I object, not on grounds of decency or anything like that, but on the grounds that such a normal, everyday human affair has been elevated to a sort of sport, to be pursued for pure self-gratification. That some people undoubtedly do approach sex this way is not my point; my point is that it's not an approach that ought to be glorified, because ultimately, it's empty and vain.
I believe that last clause is a pretty good summation of SATC, at least to the extent that it can be understood by a man such as myself. The lifestyles portrayed evince a certain egotistic impulse to gratify whatever physical desire happens to rule at any given moment. At bottom, all I can see is material excess and selfish indulgence, conveniently untethered from the constraints of economic or social reality. That such qualities are the stuff of many a human fantasy is old news. But to see them dressed up and passed off as "witty" or "smart" entertainment strikes me as oppressively, almost viciously insipid.
God I can't wait for the movie.
"The HBO series Sex and the City ended in 2004. But now with the upcoming release of the “Sex and the City” movie, the show is coming under scrutiny for its influence on the shopping, partying and dating habits of young women.
Starring Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw, the series chronicled the loves and lives of four very fashionable friends in New York. Were Juggle [the name of the blog in question] writers fans? In the immortal words of Mr. Big: “Abso- $#@&* - lutely!” But BusinessWeek columnist Lindsey Gerdes writes recently that the characters’ preoccupation with men is bad for young career women who still look to Carrie Bradshaw as a role model. She also points out that in newer shows like Cashmere Mafia and Lipstick Jungle, the basis for women’s career success is unrealistic, “predicated on the ability to navigate an exciting web of power struggles and sexually charged innuendos. All in stilettos!”
But really, how much influence do such shows actually have on young women? Ask Julia Allison, a 27-year-old relationship columnist and Sex and the City fan profiled last weekend by the New York Times. The article says that her devotion to the show was in part why she moved to New York City after college. She also keeps up with habits of Carrie Bradshaw, dancing at celebrity-rich clubs, throwing parties and collecting trendy shoes. The problem is that the lifestyle portrayed in the show is difficult to afford; for example, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side — where Carrie lived as a single professional on the show - - is $2,448 per month. (Indeed, Ms. Allison says even with a six-figure income, she lives in a tiny studio.)"
Now, when I loathe something, I want to know why. And from the very few episodes (or snippets of episodes) I've actually seen, I've never been able to rationally explain my deep-seated detestation of this show. It just seemed that whenever it intruded upon my otherwise calm and tranquil mind, waves of hot, blinding rage would well up from deep within me, until I had to scream and leave the room. But why? The answer always eluded me, but this blog post, and especially the comments that fans of the show posted in reply, have finally shed some light on the source of my aversion.
But first, a disclaimer: I have heard it said many times by female fans that SATC appeals to women because it connects with women, that it depicts situations and relationships that "every woman can relate to." I have no idea whether this is true, and clearly, I'm not equipped to judge such statements. So I will avoid that nebulously impenetrable aspect of the show entirely. I can only say that the idea of a television show geared to a female audience doesn't bother me as a concept, and that I'm quite sure it's something else about SATC that makes my blood boil.
Again, based on my very limited exposure (never voluntary), my impression has always been that a certain materialism permeates SATC characters' lives. They all live in a chic part of Manhattan (the Upper East Side...?), they all dress fabulously and spend heavily on clothes, and shopping appears to be a fairly routine pastime. And yet, I can't recall seeing any of them doing much work to support such a lifestyle. From what I've gathered, Sarah Jessica Parker's character lives in a pricey, spacious one-bedroom, in a city with the highest rents in the country, and manages to do so by writing a weekly column that takes up about five minutes of her weekly routine. A mite implausible, but I'll set that aside.
What I didn't appreciate, until I read some comments on this blog entry, was just how important this lavish lifestyle is to many fans, particularly younger ones. Witness this Boston University student's gushing:
"Are people in college still obsessed with “Sex and the City”? ABSOLUTELY. Almost all of my friends watch the show, and many of them have the entire series on DVD. Granted, I go to school at Boston University, where many girls are Carrie-obsessed, driven, type A’s planning to move to New York, but I would venture to say that the show influences many college students’ decisions to live a very glamorous lifestyle and move to NYC after college. That’s where I’ll be headed!"
A TV sitcom influencing college students' decisions about where to live after college? Fascinating! But read on:
"Many of my friends who are graduating this year are going to New York and have no intention of giving up that lifestyle. Most would probably rather live in a shoe box and have no furniture than stop buying clothes, shoes, cocktails, and Hamptons summer shares. All of them plan on going out every weekend to chic night clubs, and will probably go out for drinks after work many nights a week.
So, do I feel pressure to live this lifestyle? No, but who wouldn’t want to? When “Sex and the City” came out, it let all of my friends have a small glimpse of the most glamorous lifestyle they’d ever seen. There is no pressure to buy tons of shoes and $12 cocktails–everyone just WANTS to!"
Of the 197 comments posted on this blog, many were in the same vein. Others, from older women who are fans of the show, express considerable surprise at how many young women, who were literally girls when SATC first aired, have become such huge fans. But the more I think about this, the less surprised I am, because there are striking parallels between SATC and college life. From what I can (or choose) to recall of my college experience, those four years are a time of epic sloth for many people. While there are plenty of aspiring engineers and doctors and yes, even some diligent, studious liberal arts types, college is a period of astonishing leisure. It's really the only period of one's life when it's acceptable, even popular, to stay up to all hours, drink like a fish, and generally while away mountains of free time. There's no nine-to-five job to be late for, no house to keep up, no kids to take care of. All in all, it's got to be the most self-indulgent, laziest period of many people's lives.
And suddenly along comes this hit TV show that shows, what? Young, attractive people wasting time and having fun! They shop on Fifth Ave, they meet for coffee, they gossip, they dish, they pick up men at bars. It's really not so very different from what's undoubtedly going on right now at a thousand college campuses. But the clothes, the digs, the food, the drinks on SATC? Way nicer. So, same great lifestyle, better stuff.
Aside from the material excess, the aspect of SATC I found most striking was, quite honestly, the sex. More specifically, that it takes on sex as one of its core subject matters. And not just in the way that so many sitcoms dance around it, substituting innuendo for detail and leaving much to the viewer's imagination. For a sitcom to depict sex with jokes that trail off suggestively or scenes in which the lights fade out, followed by canned laugh tracks or titillated "oohs!" from the nonexistent audience is standard. For a sitcom to actually show sex, and write dialog that goes into the gory details of sex, is fairly unprecedented (and obviously, a cable network like HBO can take a lot more liberties than Fox or NBC).
And as far as it goes, I find such earthiness refreshing. We live in a fairly prudish country; for anyone who doubts it, just consider the media's obsession with pop stars like Britney Spears behaving naughtily. So to see a show that deals with something so real, so everyday (and oftentimes, so funny) in a very unsqueamish way can be a breath of fresh air. After all, real people have sex and talk about it, so why can't TV resemble reality?
But SATC goes well beyond realist depictions of sex. Aside from shoe shopping, the women on the show seem to positively live for sex, and for sex with whoever strikes their fancy that particular week. And I object, not on grounds of decency or anything like that, but on the grounds that such a normal, everyday human affair has been elevated to a sort of sport, to be pursued for pure self-gratification. That some people undoubtedly do approach sex this way is not my point; my point is that it's not an approach that ought to be glorified, because ultimately, it's empty and vain.
I believe that last clause is a pretty good summation of SATC, at least to the extent that it can be understood by a man such as myself. The lifestyles portrayed evince a certain egotistic impulse to gratify whatever physical desire happens to rule at any given moment. At bottom, all I can see is material excess and selfish indulgence, conveniently untethered from the constraints of economic or social reality. That such qualities are the stuff of many a human fantasy is old news. But to see them dressed up and passed off as "witty" or "smart" entertainment strikes me as oppressively, almost viciously insipid.
God I can't wait for the movie.
Newspeak, Resurrected (from the archives)
"A certain degree of truthfulness was possible so long as it was admitted that a fact may be true even if you don't like it."
~Eric Blair
I know this is old news now, but I think it's ominous and disturbing enough to merit a few words anyway. By "it," I mean Hillary Clinton's debunked account of her trip to Bosnia 12 years ago; specifically, her claim that her entourage came under gunfire shortly after landing at the airport. I won't bother quoting; I'll let her speak for herself:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=TKe2rBbGGEA&feature=related
Within hours of making this outrageous claim, which should have struck anyone with a brain as spurious simply on the grounds that the Secret Service probably doesn't allow First Ladies into combat zones, everyone knew the truth, that there was no "sniper fire," that Clinton in fact was welcomed with a brief ceremony, and even received a poem from a little Bosnian girl, right on the tarmac. Once the video of the event in question surfaced on YouTube, reporters pounced, and asked her how her story could be squared with the facts. Her response: She misspoke. She didn't remember correctly.
Now, I've never come under gunfire in my life. The closest thing I've experienced is being shot at with paintballs, and even that was frightening enough that I remember it quite vividly, seven years later. So I think it's safe to assume that dodging real bullets leaves a very strong impression on one's memory, especially for a civilian with no military or police training. No doubt pretty much everyone familiar with this story has already come to this conclusion on their own. It's simply impossible to believe that someone could misremember such an experience and truly believe their false memory, unless that person is mentally ill, in the clinical sense.
So which is it, a horrendous lie or dementia? I choose to believe the former. Faced with the prospect of losing out to an upstart senator from Illinois named Obama, Clinton's doing everything she can to highlight her superior "experience." Having watched the video a few times now, I can't help but see this as completely premeditated, just one of the gritty anecdotes that a battle-tested old hand like Hillary can toss off with studied nonchalance as proof that she's been around the block, and the world, during her long "experience" in public life. Except for the truth part, that is.
But that a politician named Clinton could tell a lie to further his or her political career hardly comes as a shocker. The real story is the reaction to the lie. Obama supporters, many of them liberal Democrats who voted for Bill Clinton in the 90s and (until recently) tacitly accepted the Hillary succession, are outraged, and rightly so. That anger has been building for months -- witness the reaction to Bill's race-baiting after he insinuated that Obama only won South Carolina because he's black, that he's just another Jesse Jackson -- but this latest gaffe has really opened the floodgates. For the first time in literally decades, Democratic voters have a viable presidential candidate who's not a Clinton, and many of them want to see the aggregated Bill/Hillary scandals and baggage banished to political oblivion so that they can get on with electing an infinitely more palatable, honest candidate.
Meanwhile, Jay Leno, et al, must have been delighted that such a can't-miss joke landed in their lap. The sheer absurdity of the lie has a comedic dimension, and plenty of people are laughing. Such unambiguously ludicrous claims don't come along very often, and when they do, they invite plenty of ridicule.
But I'm not laughing. Of course it's anathema to Obama voters, and of course it's absurd; both reactions miss the point. Here we have a serious contender for the highest office in the land who apparently thinks she can say anything she wants, regardless of its veracity, and then dismiss it as "misspeaking" when she gets caught. And she's not some lunatic, fringe candidate; though behind by a hundred-some delegates, Hillary is still alive. With convincing wins in the remaining primaries, she could conceivably cajole or browbeat enough super delegates into voting for her to capture the nomination. She still has literally millions of supporters, people who apparently aren't troubled by her naked disdain for the truth. So the question I've been asking myself all week is: What are these people thinking?
Just watch the video. Watch Hillary's adviser try to explain away the lie; watch the guy from Politico hem and haw about whether this was a lie or not; watch Chelsea outright defend the lie. Just what exactly is going on here? If Hillary went on TV and announced that two plus two equals five, would any of these people admit she's a liar? To her legions of voters and supporters, what would actually give them pause, make them change their vote? After all, they have a perfectly good candidate who espouses the same basic positions as Hillary, and he's much more likely to win the election in November. They have an out, a very good one, but they're not exercising it. Watch one of her campaign rallies and see how enthusiastic her backers remain. I see it, and my mind hits a brick wall.
Lest I sound completely naive, I do realize that politicians play fast and loose with the truth as a matter of course. I imagine there're some honest politicians somewhere in this country, people who've been elected to office without compromising their integrity, but I can't name one offhand. So I'm not suddenly shocked and appalled that Hillary LIED about something. What does shock me is the brutal honesty with which she admitted to having lied ("I misspoke") and then, in the same breath, announced that doing so is acceptable ("It proves I'm human"). Evidently she regards objective reality as a concept to be dispensed with when doing so suits her purposes. And evidently a lot of people don't disagree with her.
Am I the only one who finds this frightening?
~Eric Blair
I know this is old news now, but I think it's ominous and disturbing enough to merit a few words anyway. By "it," I mean Hillary Clinton's debunked account of her trip to Bosnia 12 years ago; specifically, her claim that her entourage came under gunfire shortly after landing at the airport. I won't bother quoting; I'll let her speak for herself:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=TKe2rBbG
Within hours of making this outrageous claim, which should have struck anyone with a brain as spurious simply on the grounds that the Secret Service probably doesn't allow First Ladies into combat zones, everyone knew the truth, that there was no "sniper fire," that Clinton in fact was welcomed with a brief ceremony, and even received a poem from a little Bosnian girl, right on the tarmac. Once the video of the event in question surfaced on YouTube, reporters pounced, and asked her how her story could be squared with the facts. Her response: She misspoke. She didn't remember correctly.
Now, I've never come under gunfire in my life. The closest thing I've experienced is being shot at with paintballs, and even that was frightening enough that I remember it quite vividly, seven years later. So I think it's safe to assume that dodging real bullets leaves a very strong impression on one's memory, especially for a civilian with no military or police training. No doubt pretty much everyone familiar with this story has already come to this conclusion on their own. It's simply impossible to believe that someone could misremember such an experience and truly believe their false memory, unless that person is mentally ill, in the clinical sense.
So which is it, a horrendous lie or dementia? I choose to believe the former. Faced with the prospect of losing out to an upstart senator from Illinois named Obama, Clinton's doing everything she can to highlight her superior "experience." Having watched the video a few times now, I can't help but see this as completely premeditated, just one of the gritty anecdotes that a battle-tested old hand like Hillary can toss off with studied nonchalance as proof that she's been around the block, and the world, during her long "experience" in public life. Except for the truth part, that is.
But that a politician named Clinton could tell a lie to further his or her political career hardly comes as a shocker. The real story is the reaction to the lie. Obama supporters, many of them liberal Democrats who voted for Bill Clinton in the 90s and (until recently) tacitly accepted the Hillary succession, are outraged, and rightly so. That anger has been building for months -- witness the reaction to Bill's race-baiting after he insinuated that Obama only won South Carolina because he's black, that he's just another Jesse Jackson -- but this latest gaffe has really opened the floodgates. For the first time in literally decades, Democratic voters have a viable presidential candidate who's not a Clinton, and many of them want to see the aggregated Bill/Hillary scandals and baggage banished to political oblivion so that they can get on with electing an infinitely more palatable, honest candidate.
Meanwhile, Jay Leno, et al, must have been delighted that such a can't-miss joke landed in their lap. The sheer absurdity of the lie has a comedic dimension, and plenty of people are laughing. Such unambiguously ludicrous claims don't come along very often, and when they do, they invite plenty of ridicule.
But I'm not laughing. Of course it's anathema to Obama voters, and of course it's absurd; both reactions miss the point. Here we have a serious contender for the highest office in the land who apparently thinks she can say anything she wants, regardless of its veracity, and then dismiss it as "misspeaking" when she gets caught. And she's not some lunatic, fringe candidate; though behind by a hundred-some delegates, Hillary is still alive. With convincing wins in the remaining primaries, she could conceivably cajole or browbeat enough super delegates into voting for her to capture the nomination. She still has literally millions of supporters, people who apparently aren't troubled by her naked disdain for the truth. So the question I've been asking myself all week is: What are these people thinking?
Just watch the video. Watch Hillary's adviser try to explain away the lie; watch the guy from Politico hem and haw about whether this was a lie or not; watch Chelsea outright defend the lie. Just what exactly is going on here? If Hillary went on TV and announced that two plus two equals five, would any of these people admit she's a liar? To her legions of voters and supporters, what would actually give them pause, make them change their vote? After all, they have a perfectly good candidate who espouses the same basic positions as Hillary, and he's much more likely to win the election in November. They have an out, a very good one, but they're not exercising it. Watch one of her campaign rallies and see how enthusiastic her backers remain. I see it, and my mind hits a brick wall.
Lest I sound completely naive, I do realize that politicians play fast and loose with the truth as a matter of course. I imagine there're some honest politicians somewhere in this country, people who've been elected to office without compromising their integrity, but I can't name one offhand. So I'm not suddenly shocked and appalled that Hillary LIED about something. What does shock me is the brutal honesty with which she admitted to having lied ("I misspoke") and then, in the same breath, announced that doing so is acceptable ("It proves I'm human"). Evidently she regards objective reality as a concept to be dispensed with when doing so suits her purposes. And evidently a lot of people don't disagree with her.
Am I the only one who finds this frightening?
This statement is a lie: Discuss (from the archives)
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, commenting on the economic "stimulus" package that Congress and President Bush are apparently close to signing into law:
"I can't say that I'm totally pleased with the package, but I do know that it will help stimulate the economy. But if it does not, then there will be more to come."
Translation: "I know that doing A will make B happen. But if doing A doesn't make B happen, then we'll do more of A."
This is why politicians should not screw around with the economy. Not only do they not understand the most basic economic principles, they apparently have no concept of formal logic.
"I can't say that I'm totally pleased with the package, but I do know that it will help stimulate the economy. But if it does not, then there will be more to come."
Translation: "I know that doing A will make B happen. But if doing A doesn't make B happen, then we'll do more of A."
This is why politicians should not screw around with the economy. Not only do they not understand the most basic economic principles, they apparently have no concept of formal logic.
Sanity Check (from the archives)
Every once in a while, I come across something so completely stupid that I just can't let it go without saying something. Today, while signing out of my old-school hotmail account, I noticed a headline on MSN.com (the default site where you get dumped when you sign out) that proclaimed, in scary red font: "The Middle Class Crunch." Below were a bunch of equally dire sub-titles: "How to Fix: Fill in the Blank Perceived Problem With Our Country." Out of morbid curiosity, I clicked on "How to Fix: America's Energy Woes." Here's the opening paragraph:
"Everybody says this country needs a Sputnik-style challenge to get us motivated again. But Americans already face such a challenge in climate change and an energy crunch - and they threaten us far more dramatically than the Soviet space program ever did."
First of all, everybody says that? I don't. Nor have I heard anyone ever say anything so stupid (until today). When trotting out an argument espousing fundamental policy changes, it's always good to start with an erroneous, meaningless statement.
But the next sentence is even better. The "energy crunch" and global warming pose a greater danger to our country than the Sputnik space program that led directly to the nuclear arms race, when thousands of Soviet ICBMs were targeted on our cities and school children practiced duck-and-cover drills to prepare for nuclear holocaust? Just how in the name of bugger-all could anyone possibly say something so ignorant? I'm literally angry just thinking about the magnitude of stupidity and generational egoism on display here. "Oh no, poor us! Gas costs four dollars a gallon and ice is melting! We have things so much tougher than anyone before us ever did! My latte has too much foam! Wahhhhhhhhhhh!!!"
If the people reading this nonsense would ever bother to crack a history book, they'd quickly realize just how good life is today, and how much worse it used to be. Not to say that everything today is perfect, but considering that 40 years ago, we were literally afraid of being vaporized within minutes, four-dollar gas and global warming sound like manageable challenges.
"Everybody says this country needs a Sputnik-style challenge to get us motivated again. But Americans already face such a challenge in climate change and an energy crunch - and they threaten us far more dramatically than the Soviet space program ever did."
First of all, everybody says that? I don't. Nor have I heard anyone ever say anything so stupid (until today). When trotting out an argument espousing fundamental policy changes, it's always good to start with an erroneous, meaningless statement.
But the next sentence is even better. The "energy crunch" and global warming pose a greater danger to our country than the Sputnik space program that led directly to the nuclear arms race, when thousands of Soviet ICBMs were targeted on our cities and school children practiced duck-and-cover drills to prepare for nuclear holocaust? Just how in the name of bugger-all could anyone possibly say something so ignorant? I'm literally angry just thinking about the magnitude of stupidity and generational egoism on display here. "Oh no, poor us! Gas costs four dollars a gallon and ice is melting! We have things so much tougher than anyone before us ever did! My latte has too much foam! Wahhhhhhhhhhh!!!"
If the people reading this nonsense would ever bother to crack a history book, they'd quickly realize just how good life is today, and how much worse it used to be. Not to say that everything today is perfect, but considering that 40 years ago, we were literally afraid of being vaporized within minutes, four-dollar gas and global warming sound like manageable challenges.
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