Disney Disarms Merida - Guest post from Catherine Nemser

Most recently I've been seeing articles about feminism and it's discontents, so to speak. Without digressing into the ridiculous debate about whether the word "feminism" should be abandoned, yet moreover blamed for lack of progress for women, the Merida debacle is yet another example of how the male dominated toy industry with its roots enmeshed in general manufacturing and fashion industries are woefully out of step with women's needs for justice and equality in today's society. A woman still only makes $.77 for every dollar a man earns. The number of women in top executive positions as well as in Congress are still painfully low for the amount of the population that we represent.  Arguments around the work/life balance still center upon women's lives; super women who are still presumed to be the primary caretakers of children with very little attention given to male responsibility for juggling all of the work/household duties. Unfortunately, girls are still being objectified, commodified and devalued in their childhood years in comparison with the way boys' identities are shaped. Perhaps when adults, being they parents, relatives, friends or caregivers, stop dressing up little girls in princess outfits, taking them for mani pedis and giving them toys with outlandish feminine traits (skinny waists, large breasts, pumped up lips and doe eyes), will Disney et al stop tinkering with their strong, smart and empowering heroines and deflating them for young, female consumption. Let's continue to put baseballs, trucks, blocks, fishing rods, compasses, calculators, chemistry sets, and screwdrivers in our daughters hands.  As with anything, the answer is never completely black or white, pink or blue, or supply or demand, but a combination of both sides of the economic relationship making changes. However, it can start with consumers changing spending habits.

Peggy Noonan Is The Problem

Peggy Noonan, a former Reagan speechwriter is a regular staple on the Sunday Morning "News" Talk Shows.  When it comes to explaining why America has become so dysfunctional she is rarely cited as a reason.  No, there are far more extreme pundits out there spewing venom to their cadres of acolytes.  Twas ever thus.  A person with a predisposition to believe the most outlandish claims of the radio talk show bubble is basically a lost cause.  They will generally remain impervious to facts and are therefore not susceptible to argumentation based upon facts.

This brings us back to Ms Noonan.  Soft spoken and careful, she presents the most reasonable face to those people in the middle who are susceptible to argument.  Those are the people for whom ideology is secondary to simple facts.  Peggy plays to that audience.  Indeed she lives to play the mother; reasonable, responsible, down to earth, patriotic.  Yet her motherly charms are the craft of a master thespian.  Behind her smile and flowery rhetoric, she is every bit the political operator and in fact one of the slickest and smarmiest of them all.

Watch Meet the Press or This Week in Washington.  Barely a week goes by where Ms. Noonan does not sigh to the camera and say "Americans just don't trust their Government".  Her intonation is one of seemingly sad regret at our malaise. "Nobody trusts Congress." she writes. "We all know this. Approval of Congress is at 13% in the polls. Part of this is the general decline in respect that Americans feel for their institutions."   The general decline in respect.  What an innocuous way of describing it, as if it moved of its own accord. What she fails to mention is that she has had a non-trivial role in the development and nurturing of that mistrust from the very beginning of her career in politics. 

"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'" Ronald Reagan said that many years ago.  To him it was the joke that summed up his disdain for the very function of Government.  Funny isn't it?  As the person literally tasked with putting words in his mouth Peggy Noonan used her talents to prop up and expand this viewpoint.  She put a kindly face and noble words in the service of nihilism and distrust.  She is worse than the fire-breathers to her right because she appears to be what she is not.  In short, she does not let you know her real agenda.

If we are to believe Reagan, and by extension his speechwriter, we should distrust our Government. Those are the words of her mentor.  When in her career did Peggy Noonan switch from advocating distrust to sighing on television about the lack of trust?  Its hard to know.  What we do know is this.  When New Orleans was inundated by Katrina, the poor folk of the area were certainly sorry that the Federal Government was not there to help.  When Sandy made landfall, the residents of New Jersey and New York, were sure glad that FEMA was there to help...indeed they wished for more help.  And as Boston was ripped by bombs, they were certainly glad that there was an FBI that helped nab the terrorists within a week of their heinous act.

Our Government represents ourselves.  It is a reflection of our society.  When we mistrust it it is a sign of a deep sickness within ourselves...a failure of self confidence.  Peggy Noonan, who beat the drums of mistrust for many years would have us believe that our loss of belief in our institutions is entirely external to the political process.  It is not.  

"Falling" A new play by Amy Witting

A Guest Review by Frau Snoobler

Currently playing on stage at the Connelly Theater in the East Village is “Falling”, playwright and producer Amy Witting’s entry into this year’s New York International Fringe Festival.  Poignantly recreating the viewpoints of victims and their loved ones, the drama moves backward and forward in time to describe the events leading up to and in the aftermath of a horrifying accident.

 

Witting weaves her narrative into an intricate web which encompasses the budding romantic relationship between the tightly wound Mildred (Kerry Fitzgibbons), who yearns to free her spirit from the monotony of a dull relationship and the stymied James (Josh Bywater), bound in the confines of an amicable but passionless 20 year marriage.  Mildred and James meet on a train going up the Connecticut coast, discovering that they share the same taste in history books as well as a love of Winston Churchill and the pleasures of the sea.  Impulsively opting to spend the weekend together, Bywater and Fitzgibbons convincingly recreate the doomed courtship of these two encumbered, yet lonely dreamers enabling the audience to be transported into what becomes a mesmerizing affair.

 

Paralleling the story of the lovers, we learn abruptly about the lives of those family members and friends who have raced to the hospital to deal with the unexpected accident; a wife, Jessica, a woman complacent in her current marriage and her young sister-in-law, Poly Anna, a disturbed woman with a frenetic motor mouth and a seemingly intense hatred of Jessica.   We also meet Drew, a sad sack fiancé and Beth, the prim, yet compassionate Drew’s soon to be sister-in-law.  How these people cope with the impact of a 3 car, 1 motorcycle pileup generates much of the drama of the play. The accident which hangs over the entire play inflicts more than physical damage for all involved. Through this one focal event, we learn of crumbled relationships, clandestine betrayals and unspoken bonds that are revealed.

 

Witting uses a combination of abstract verbal patter and straight story telling to create an initial mystery and dynamic energy that draws viewer into the lives of those who wait at the hospital. Riffs on such visual images as “moon fish” and travelling through shark infested waters with babies slung on backs, challenge the narrative flow to produce a poetic experience out of what could have been a mere kitchen sink melodrama.  Interspersed with these staccato exchanges Witting lets the plot points unfold, carefully incorporating mundane images such as soggy diner shrimp and clocks- with-broken-arms to break away from the grueling agony of waiting for life or death updates.  The counterpoint of the two narrative styles builds a rhythm that lends to the emotional impact of secrets revealed after the cataclysmic accident. Director Jacob Titus breaks the theater into three planes, manipulating the lighting in lieu of a grand set in order to break out each scene, creating a compelling montage effect.

 

Once we connect the dots with all the characters, the last quarter of the play, particularly concerning the blossomed relationship of Mildred and James tends to slow down the pacing, while dragging out the misery of those left behind in the wake of their romance. How Drew, Jessica, Poly Ann and Beth will move forward takes on a greater dramatic weight than just the cutesy romance of the renegade pair, perhaps diminishing the initial sparkle and appeal of their amour fou. Overall, “Falling” is a witty and smart production and a welcome addition to this year’s festival.

Ryan and Marx. Together in fantasyland.

Guest post by Brudder Snoobler

“It has undoubtedly been correct to emphasize the ethical demands that form the basis of the Marxist dream. It must, in all fairness, be said, before examining the check to Marxism, that in them lies the real greatness of Marx. The very core of his theory was that work is profoundly dignified and unjustly despised. He rebelled against the degradation of work to the level of a commodity and of the worker to the level of an object. He reminded the privileged that their privileges were not divine and that property was not an eternal right. He gave a bad conscience to those who had no right to a clear conscience, and denounced with unparalleled profundity a class whose crime is not so much having had power as having used it to advance the ends of a mediocre society deprived of any real nobility. To him we owe the idea which is the despair of our times – but here despair is worth more than any hope – that when work is a degradation, it is not life, even though it occupies every moment of a life. Who, despite the pretensions of this society, can sleep in it in peace when they know that it derives its mediocre pleasures from the work of millions of dead souls? By demanding for the worker real riches, which are not the riches of money but of leisure and creation, he has reclaimed, despite all appearance to the contrary, the dignity of man. In doing so, and this can be said with conviction, he never wanted the additional degradation that has been imposed on man in his name. One of his phrases, which for once is clear and trenchant, forever withholds from his triumphant disciples the greatness and the humanity which once were his: “An end that requires unjust means is not a just end.”  Albert Camus on Karl Marx

To many, the failure of Soviet Communism, begs the question of why Communism ever held any allure; bereft as it was of a realistic understanding of human nature.  Who today would believe that political apparatchiks would use their power wisely and fairly instead of using it to feather their own nests?  So State Communism died as an ideal, if not as an idea.  Corruption, buttressed by the extreme power of the state, caused the system to atrophy and decay from the inside out.  Hope in Lenin’s revolution turned to a fearful acquiescence to Stalin’s excesses which finally settled into an exhausted resignation of the way things were.  Those outside the cocoon of the party’s monopoly on the fruits of society’s labor were forced to grin and bear it, or participate in black market activities.  Ultimately the system collapsed on itself, weighed down by a race it couldn’t win against the West and its need to keep its restive empire passive.  It all came apart rather quickly and drearily, as if throwing in the towel on this failed experiment in social engineering reflected more melancholy and regret than joy.  

Of course the West did not have so subdued a reaction.  Instead we rejoiced in our triumph as we debated what we were going to do with a “peace dividend” which would never materialize.  We used the opportunity to reassure ourselves that we had been right all along; that our capitalist democratic systems were, to paraphrase Churchill “the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried” and that Communism had been exposed as a naïve and cruel hoax.  The naiveté angle was one that enjoyed particular resonance in many articles around that time.  How could a society which had attempted to divide things equitably amongst its citizens work?  Surely, the power to marshal the state’s resources would lead to corruption and downright theft given man’s proclivity to become intoxicated by its exercise. 

And so the world left communism behind; even most of the left has given up thinking about it; truly, the “God that Died”, as Gide had put it.  We forgot the fact that Marxism existed as a reaction and a proposed solution to real world problems.  The fact that it failed didn’t in any way mean that the problems had all been eliminated. In fact many of them are still with us.  Class warfare has not, after all disappeared.    And yet, in the ensuing years the West, prideful of its superiority, would begin to erect its own God; a God of individual achievement for the me generation and its handmaidens “Laissez Faire” capitalism, free markets, deregulation and tax shifting.  

The new religion was founded in the bitter wake of Barry Goldwater’s electoral defeat;  it became a vibrant flowering movement under Ronald Reagan and has reached its apex with the ascendency of people like Paul Ryan.  It claims to be about liberation and freedom but its outcomes are profoundly reactionary.  How can one claim otherwise when the implementation of its policies have resulted in ever growing stratification of wealth in fewer hands. 

It really is about preserving wealth and privilege, but it hides behind an individualist, meritocratic veneer that promises “if you work hard and take risks, you too can be one of us”, despite copious statistical evidence to the contrary.  Once you are in the club, you can feel free to look down from Olympus and congratulate yourself that it was well deserved; more pluck than luck. 

Paul Ryan represents the current high priest of this new religion, which gives permission to forget or at very least to downplay society’s role in one’s success.  Of course moving up to the upper 1% is more difficult than all that, unless of course you are born into it, at which point it is quite easy and vastly more common.  Certainly there are many more instances of people working hard and failing than there are people who make it into the upper tier.  To listen to Free Market ideologues like Ryan, you may come to the conclusion that simply taking the risk is enough and that your failure in spite of the risks is your own fault alone.   But taking risks is inherently; how shall we say it; risky.  The chance of success is often very small and unless one is financially well endowed, little safety net awaits to cushion the blow for those whose risk taking goes bad.   For people like Paul Ryan, this is the way of things.  While decrying Darwin's science in nature, they adopt it whole cloth when it comes to human interaction. 

Now, there is nothing wrong with taking risk in order to achieve great things.  From a societal point of view, it is certainly in everyone’s interest that some people feel emboldened to take calculated risks as such risks are often necessary to fashion the next great thing.  We wouldn’t want to live in a society where risk takers had such a clear eyed view of things that they decided that what they envisioned wasn’t worth chancing; thus a certain balance of mythology is necessary to promote the common good.  That is hardly a reason, however to continue to promote a Ryan/Rand “you did it on your own” mystique and if you didnt the fault lies solely with you.  Do we really need to live in a society where someone must take monumental and frequently irreversible risks in order to just survive?  To strive for greatness yes, to merely live? 

The mythology that allows people to believe that they alone are responsible for their success is of course merely a permission to believe what they would like to believe about themselves.  That is its power and allure.  It is certainly more complicated to recognize the fact that all achievements in life occur as a result of many factors, which include Franklin’s inspiration and perspiration, as well as timing, market forces, availability of capital and credit, regulatory change, etc.  No one who witnessed the demise of Lehman Brothers, a 158 year old financial powerhouse only weeks before its implosion, cannot see how we may all be swept away by a tidal wave of bad circumstances. What was once obvious to ancient man (namely that you can be ruined by circumstances beyond your control and elevated by them as well) is gone.  To Ryan, we are all self made, the winner and the loser alike.  What about the deli owner who goes out of business because they opened a new mall down the road?  Unforeseen factors play a huge role in one’s success or failure.  Ryan's fantasy of personaly agency is ascendent in the Republican Party, but it is a fantasy and scizophrenic one at that.

I once had a discussion with what I would call an ultra conservative Limbaugh style conservative.  We spent a large amount of time on a tit for tat argument about the supposed evils of government; we even agreed upon a few, but he stuck to his story line until I asked him this series of questions:

Me:  What do you think about military spending?

Conservative:  I think it’s important to maintain a strong military.

Me: So you are in favor of high defense budgets.

Conservative:  Yes the military keeps us safe.

Me:  And what about the police.

Conservative:  Yes of course.  I’m a law and order man.

Me:  So let me ask you this, if Government is dangerous and is about taking away our freedoms, then why do you support the confiscation of your money (as you call taxation) to pay for the very means with which the government enforces the authority to take away your freedoms?

After some hemming and hawing he responded with something about ensuring our borders and protecting our interests abroad but it was obvious to me that he was dissatisfied with his answer.  He ended the conversation at that point, promising a better answer within the next few days.  Although I never received an answer from him on this point, I figured it out a few days later.   It goes back into something primal from the earliest days of civilization and it is the key driver of the conservative agenda; preservation of the status quo.   The agents of the state, the Army and the Police are necessary because they protect the property rights of those with something to lose from those with nothing to lose.  As far back as ancient times, one’s property was always at risk from seizure by someone with more strength or power. Thus in order to ensure its protection one had to raise a militia.  This is as true of tribal cultures as it is of more advanced societies and as it developed it became more complex and more widespread.  This dynamic gave rise to the citizen movement in Ancient Rome just as it gave birth to the feudal system of fealty and to the enshrinement of property rights in our own constitution.  Without a police force and an Army, a rich man would have to hire his own army to protect his property; in fact this state of affairs still exists in many areas of the world.  Not so in in the U.S. today; ironically, the government performs this service for him with mony extracted from his fellow citizens.    Would anyone deny that this service is far more valuable to those with money than it is to those without it?

It is at this point that we begin to see the unraveling of the “Ryan/Randian” ideal in a democratic society.  Once one admits the need for a government to do something upon which the majority agrees (enforce property rights), it opens itself up to all kinds other things that the majority agrees to do (such as paying for social programs to help the poor).  In fact, both of these things go hand in hand as part of a social compact.  Clearly, on an absolute basis, the wealthy benefit far more than the poor do from an enforcement of actual property rights (in saying this I do not discount the effects of poor on poor property rights violations) just as the poor benefit from social programs designed to help them.  This kind of balance is necessary if we really want to maintain the freedoms that the “Ryan/Randians” call for.  If we were to do away with it; tilting society so much towards the rich that the poor view society as fundamentally unfair, there is every reason to believe that they, as the vast majority, would do away with the system altogether?  Don’t believe me?  Ask Louis XV about it.  Better yet, ask his son. 

In any case, assuming that we continue to go down the path of rewarding the successful while punishing the unsuccessful; or consigning them to unabated misery, do we really believe that this will result in more risk taking and more innovation?  People with power tend to stay in power not because they continue to work as hard as they did to get it, but because they have more resources at their disposal to stay there WITHOUT working.  They also have more ability to influence public policy by lobbying public officials, or, as is in fashion today, by underwriting the election of those who will support tilting the table even more in their direction.  That people use their money and influence to maintain or augment their power is as predictable as it should have been to supporters of communism.  It is what we should expect to happen given human nature and the historical lessons that resound throughout time.  

Why solar energy beats natural gas.

No, this is not going to be a screed about the environmental benefits of solar energy over the burning of even supposedly clean fuels like natural gas.  That is an important case to be made, but I'll not make it here.

I propose instead to take on natural gas on the simplest economic basis, that of supply and demand.  For while natural gas prices are at their lowest in a very long time there is one fundamental difference between the sun and an earthbound finite commodity such as natural gas and that is that the price of that commodity responds to supply and demand and the price of sunlight does not.  All the rest is smoke and mirrors.

I call your attention to a fairly recent article in Finding Alpha entitled "Natural Gas Has Nowhere to Go but Up"

http://seekingalpha.com/article/530191-natural-gas-has-nowhere-to-go-but-up

Written by industry expert Kenneth Worth, this article suggests that at current 20 year lows, it is uneconomical to pump natural gas and certainly not to frack it using the latest and most expensive technologies.  I do not intend here to debate whether natural gas is due to rise now or later but will instead suggest one iron clad law about it; namely that it CAN go up or down in price.  Indeed if you look at the price of natural gas over the last 20 years (neatly conveyed in a chart in the same article) you will note that in the last 4 years the price has fallen from $14 per mmBTU to $2 per mm BTU.  No one would ever argue that the price couldn't rise again.  One thing should be obvious to any casual observer, however,...if we converted the car fleet to natural gas...it would rise...and by a lot! 

Contrast that with energy from the sun.  No matter how much we consume of it, the sun will continue to shine.  The price of sunlight for our purpose is essentially zero.  We are not betting on something that might drastically increase in price leaving us holding the bag.  The vast majority of the cost of solar energy is the up front installation of the project.  Once built and deployed, the array will produce energy for the next 40 years or so with little or no additional capital expenditures required.  Compare that to a complex system where the raw material must be extracted, piped all over the country and then burned under controlled conditions (hopefully with a discrete distance from population centers)....lots of maintenance there.

The sad truth is that this simple distinction; between something that nature provides for free and something for which some highly interested party is going to charge you as much as he can, explains why solar energy has no constituency and why there will always be someone to yell drill baby drill.  Nobody can get rich selling sunlight but they can sure get rich buying a commodity like natural gas on the cheap and then selling it to the gullible public when they've already spent money on the darn plant! 

In 2008 gasoline was below $2 per gallon in 30 states.  Imagine if you went out and bought the biggest Hummer you could find.  How much would you be hurting now?   Natural gas is the same thing.  Case closed.

John Adams on Lolo Jones...Wait for it!

"People will take their sides in the Lolo Jones debate, but there are no easy answers"  Michael Wilbon of ESPN intones solemnly about the story that won't go away.  For those of you who are unaware of the story, the NY Times of all places wrote a hit piece on Lolo Jones, describing her as a cynical marketer who has taken attention away from athletes that are more worthy and credentialed than her in terms of actual achievement.  Citing her "exotic beauty" and overly wrought personal story, the Times decries the fate of other more talented athletes who get nowhere near the attention that Jones gets.  Quelle horreur!  Jones played her part brilliantly; going on the air and breaking down in tears over the trashing that she received at the hands of the esteemed paper...ensuring that she gets yet more coverage and the Times gets more clicks to the offending article. 

Thus Michael Wilbon and others are induced to create flabby post mortems, ostentatiously describing the difficult moral dimensions of the story and the sad unfairness of it all.  For his part, Mr. Wilbon gets to write about something that people will read beause it contains all the elements that he decries.  But Michael is dead wrong.  There is an easy answer...it is the 5,000 lb. gorilla sitting in the middle of the room.

John Adam's, the most deep thinking of our Founders saw that Gorilla in 1813 and described it in a letter to Thomas Jefferson.

"Now, my Friend, who are the [aristocrats]? Philosophy may Answer "The Wise and Good." But the World, Mankind, have by their practice always answered, "the rich the beautiful and well born." And Philosophers themselves in marrying their Children prefer the rich the handsome and the well descended to the wise and good.

What chance have Talents and Virtues in competition, with Wealth and Birth? and Beauty?

...One truth is clear, by all the World confess'd Slow rises worth, by Poverty oppress'd.

The five Pillars of Aristocracy, are Beauty Wealth, Birth, Genius and Virtues. Any one of the three first, can at any time over-bear any one or both of the two last."

As sad as it is, studies have show that many husbands and wives will systematically favor more attractive children over unattractive ones...and those are the Parents!  Lolo Jones has made her attractivness a virtue for her and it has over-born others.  It has even over-born the mighty NY Times which tut-tuts this unfair state of affairs but runs its business by placing ads of skimpily clad models to sell clothes (among other things) and has even gone so far as to publish an article explaining how to ogle the women of water polo as they battle beneath the water.

The Five Pillars are the bedrock of America.  We see ourselves as an unaristocratic nation, a nation of equality.  At the very founding of our nation John Adams knew differently....he knew. 
  

David Brooks takes on Elitism.

Nobody does elitism right any more decries David Brooks in todays NY Times Op-Ed where he wistfully pines for the great old days of Waspy (read lilly white) domination of our nation.

I remember working with Specialist firms on the New York Stock Exchange.  These firms had a monopoly on making bid and offer markets for NYSE listed stocks.  With this monopoly the Specialists would siphon off huge amounts of cash from investors while taking very little risk themselves.  Because of this privileged position, these firms would be willing to stand in and buy when the market was tanking (up to a point).  Why let the game blow up when you know you can make it all back and more when things stabilize?  In other words, the monopolist has a vested interest in keeping the rigged game rigged and is willing to pay off on the odd occasion where the system is threatened.

That is exactly the problem with the old Wasp elite.  They were not more ethical or moral, they simply knew that it was in their own interest not to kill the golden goose.  Stability was their birthright.  The current "meritocracy" that Brooks discusses is an entirely different world.  In the first place, it is hardly a meritocracy.  The same advantages of wealth and access exist as before, it is just that overall the system is vastly less secure and so the elite have less of a handle on what they need to risk in order to maintain it.
 
The people who get ahead in this system know that their status can be taken away from them as quickly as they got it.  While they delude themselves into believing that their innate cognitive abilities and effort got them this far, in fact they are not secure in the way that the old Wasps were.  They have adopted a fatalistic throw away view of the future that leads them to try and score quick because the rules may change.