Just because there’ll never be another one, you should read Christopher Hitchens’ final column for Vanity Fair: on the eve of Charles Dickens’ bicentennial, a look at the contradictory impulses inside Dickens’ own heart and how they influenced him as a writer and as a human being. It’s probably not the last shot across the bow one might have expected from Hitchens, but it does leave you wanting a little bit more. Clever bastard.
Vanity Fair has a profile of Elizabeth Warren in its November issue that is more about the machinations behind the CFPB nomination brouhaha than it is about her individually or about the landscape here in Massachusetts as she gets her campaign underway. If you haven’t heard much about that particular battle, it is definitely worth reading, because it’s a good exploration of power politics in Washington.
Naked Capitalism’s Yves Smith has publicly opined that the whole Senate campaign is a bit of a payoff from the Obama Administration to keep Warren from turning against them and that it’s a mistake on her part to run — even if she wins, says Smith, she is all but powerless as a freshman Senator.
This Daily Beast article is frank about the difficulties female candidates have had making in-roads into the old-boy network of Democratic elected officials in Massachusetts. There are plenty of women in Massachusetts politics, but because this state has a high profile for candidates with national ambitions, the old guard plays hardball — only four women have ever represented Massachusetts in Congress.
It’s very encouraging to see that she came out of the gate already tied in polls with Scott Brown. Even the primary election isn’t until next September, and though her primary opponents are already considered DOA, that was the same position Martha Coakley was in at the same point. Coakley sailed through the primary and then got blind-sided by Brown. Brown doesn’t have the same stealth element he had last year, but time is definitely on his side.
I’ll grant you that Fourth Of July weekend isn’t typically spent sitting around reading, but if your holiday weekend gets rained out or you’ve eaten your entire body weight in hot dogs and pie and need to sit quietly for a while, maybe you might like something to look at.
Published in 1947, “Goodnight Moon” took hold as an omnipresent part of American culture as the Cult of Overindulged Childhood arrived in the 1980s and today is something of an institution in and of itself. The author of the book, Margaret Wise Brown, was a prolific writer of children’s books at a time when they were not nearly as big a deal as they are now, but she willed the royalties from several of her books to the three children of close family friends just shortly before her own sudden death in 1952. As the reputation and sales of “Goodnight Moon” grew over the years, the royalties turned into a small fortune for the beneficiary of that title, a fellow named Albert Clarke. This 2000 Wall Street Journal profile of Clarke by journalist Joshua Prager is not the story you’d like it to be, given the setup, but is fascinating nonetheless. (via longform.org)
Speaking of growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, this Splitsider post about Calvin & Hobbes by AJ Aronstein is a nice consideration of the problem with nostalgia, seen through the lens of a 20-something who is becoming aware of his own past and sees the overindulgence in nostalgia via the Internet as troubling. Personally, I am very glad that my own decade of childhood nostalgia happened before the Internet came along, because it helped preserve some of the “lostness”; now, of course, every decade of pop culture is so oversaturated online that it’s trivial to reclaim it, but without the sentimentality that comes with that reconnection that happens to people in their 20s.
This isn’t a terribly long piece, but bears reading: AdBusters.org recently ran this harrowing excerpt of a first-hand account of torture in an Egyptian jail from an Australian Muslim who was arrested in Pakistan after 9/11 and turned over to the CIA as a terrorist. The U.S. handed him over to Egypt, which was obligingly handling “coercive interrogation” for us in the years before we became torturers ourselves. He was tortured for five months before being sent to Guantanamo for three years. His torturer was the man who is now the U.S.-approved ruler who replaced Hosni Mubarak after the “Arab Spring” revolution. Keep that in mind when you tell yourself about how wonderful the “democratic revolution” in Egypt was.
From the “Be Careful What You Wish For” Department comes this Salon article by author Tim Johnston, who found himself the subject of some public praise by David Sedaris, which turned his novel into the Book Tour From Hell.
This Dangerous Minds post about the Greek financial crisis is a good backgrounder if you hadn’t followed much of the story prior to the onset of rioting and the austerity measures imposed by the parliament this week. By contrast, it’s worth reading this much-longer piece from the March issue of Vanity Fair which explores the Irish financial crisis, which somehow did NOT turn into riots and mayhem.
This article from the British conservative magazine Prospect is a short look at how the central government in China is cleverly managing a resurgence in a Mao personality cult among younger people who did not live through the uphevals of Mao’s rule in order to generate domestic support for the party and international interest in “red tourism” just in time for the Chinese Communist Party’s 90th anniversary.
A collection of articles you might take some time to read:
This Stanford Medical School journal article considers the question of at what point is a patient “dead enough” to ethically permit organ harvesting. Clinical standards of “brain death” developed in the 1970s and ’80s are giving way to a determination of death based on the cessation of cardiac activity alone as a way of procuring organs for transplantation very shortly after “death” to address the time-critical nature of transplantation, but it has met with resistance from medical ethicists and physicians.
It’s Opening Day at Fenway Park today, and thousands of Boston sports fans have suddenly developed all sorts of 24-hour illnesses that prevent them from going to work, but not from going to the baseball game, even though the Red Sox are off to their worst start since 1945. The Boston sports fan is a particular and peculiar beast, and this n+1 article about sports radio in Boston offers some insight into the nature of the animal. And I *do* mean animal.
If you’re a federal employee, you might just find yourself with plenty of spare time on your hands by the end of the day today. The Republican jihad on America continues full-blast, and just in case you haven’t been paying attention, they aren’t going to stop until they have destroyed everything in the middle, leaving a nation of serfs and super-millionaires only. Joseph Stiglitz, one of the economists who tried to warn us all about the economic collapse in 2008, has written a piece for Vanity Fair entitled “Of The 1%, By The 1%, For The 1%” that now tries to warn us about the perils of the wealth inequalities 30 years of Republican slash-and-burn economics have given us. You might also read this opinion piece at MarketWatch from a couple of weeks ago that sums it up neatly: “Tax the super-rich now or face a revolution”. (Personally, I am in favor of revolution)
The always-awesome “Beware Of The Blog” from ur-radio station WFMU recently had this piece about David Letterman’s early years as a performer, and how he developed his comedy through the 1970s equivalent of the old vaudeville circuit — radio DJ, local weatherman, late-night movie host, stand-up, bit performer, the works. It includes the stories of a number of other famous names from 1970s comedy, and revisits a lot of obscure TV shows from the era.
I also liked this Popular Mechanics article that’s a first-hand account of what it’s like to work at an Apple Store. There’s a lot of Kool-Aid you have to drink, apparently, and despite the casual appearance of the workers, it doesn’t sound like very much fun at all for what is essentially a glorified malljob. Better off sticking to the Playmobil version.
Finally, if you’re a student of television, you will immediately appreciate this Splitsider.com article called “In Defense of the Multi-Camera Sitcom”. As the very genre of the sitcom itself has waxed and waned over the years, the production format has similarly seen shifts in popularity. The multi-camera style features three or more cameras filming or taping what amounts to a live performance of an episode, played in front of a studio audience like a theatrical production. The single-camera style is shot more like a movie, with individual takes of every angle in every scene. Each has its advantages, both in terms of creativity and budget. The 1970s were a Golden Age of multi-camera shows like “All In The Family” and “Mary Tyler Moore”, while today’s sitcoms are predominantly single-camera.
Required reading:
This Vanity Fair profile of Sarah Palin by Michael Joseph Gross hit the web yesterday. Let’s hope it does for her career what the VF profile of General Stanley McChrystal did for his.
Jane Mayer’s profile of the Kochs, David and Charles, in The New Yorker a couple of weeks ago also helps to put a little sunlight on the monsters behind the Tea Party. If nothing else, it shows that Rupert Murdoch isn’t the only evil supervillian trying to take over the world. Now we just need a real-life James Bond to take these motherfuckers out.
Matt Taibbi is up to his usual snuff with a Rolling Stone post about the recent primary elections and the influence the Tea Party did and did not have on the outcome, and the insidious race-baiting of Murdoch’s FOX News.
Christopher Hitchens proves that he isn’t dead yet by giving the ol’ one-two to the Beckapalooza of last weekend. As infuriating as he is, we are going to sorely miss Hitch when he is gone. (If you’ve got the time, I also recommend this long video featuring interviews with teabaggers at the Beckapalooza for an up-close-and-personal look at the terminally stupid)
The always-funny “stupid customer” website Not Always Right.com had a little precautionary tale about what happens when teabaggers show up to vote.
And here’s a little history lesson about the origins of the Tea Party and its ilk:
Here’s a handful of things I wanted to share with you that didn’t seem to fit into posts of their own:
Everybody’s linking to Christopher Hitchens’ article in the newest issue of Vanity Fair wherein he talks a little bit about his recent diagnosis of esophageal cancer. I think it’s pretty impossible not to have a love-hate thing about Christopher Hitchens, because he manages to hold extremely contrasting opinions on a variety of subjects and argues his case so vehemently regardless of the side he’s on, but anytime someone has to come to terms with the suddenness of their own mortality and can do so in such an honest and unflinching way, it deserves to be appreciated. Additionally, you might want to read Hitchens’ Slate piece about confronting his lifelong issues with alcohol that came out just before he learned that he had cancer.
In a similar vein, I liked this interview with Penn Jillette in the June Vanity Fair. No, there’s nothing wrong with Jillette, but he’s cut from the same iconoclastic cloth as Hitchens and is equally able to hold his own passionately on sometimes diametrically opposing ideas.
Here’s a good article from Esquire by writer Chris Jones about a fellow named Terry Kniess, who appeared as a contestant on “The Price Is Right” in 2008 and was the first person since 1972 to guess the price of his showcase exactly correct down to the last dollar. Even as it was happening, the show’s producers were sure Kniess was cheating, but they couldn’t prove it right away. Eventually they came up with some clues…but you need to read the story to get the whole thing. Additionally, I recommend this MetaFilter post from the time when the episode aired, which includes a lot of discussion and some other related links that help flesh out the whole affair.
A few links about the neverending clusterfuck we have gotten ourselves into economically:
Harvard professor and darling-of-the-right Niall Ferguson gave this interview to Vanity Fair, where he asserts that the United States really has no choice but to walk away from its colossal foreign debt, because the only other option is complete collapse. He makes a few other salient points along the way, most notably that China is also completely fucked because of us and can’t really do anything about it economically, but absolutely has the upper hand on any diplomatic disputes that might arise for a long, long time to come. Coincidentally, he’s plugging his new book The Ascent of Money, which he says he planned to have published just as the entire world economy fell into the shitter, since that’s a GREAT way to sell books.
But it looks like he’s not talking out of his ass on this. This article on a financial news website called Seeking Alpha offers pretty much the same conclusions as Ferguson’s, albeit in more technical financial jargon (via Polymeme). The whole damn country is about to miss its mortgage payment, and when that happens you’ll be using your 401(k) statements for toilet paper. So don’t go calling Cash4Gold.com just yet.
Meanwhile, I think a lot of people are still trying to pick their jaws up off the floor over the reports of $18 BILLION dollars being handed out to Wall Street executives using our precious “bailout” money. Not to mention the daily stream of stories about banks spending millions on stadium naming rights, the BofA CEO with the multimillion-dollar decorating bill, and other such rubbing-your-nose-in-it shenanigans. At The Seminal, contributor Chris Edelson did a little quick math to come up with some of the other things we could have done with that $18B besides piss it away on the bailout. For example, the S-CHIP bill, which was passed by both houses of Congress last week (and was vetoed TWICE by George Bush) will add $32 billion per year to a program that already costs $25 billion per year. The bailout bonus money could have paid for that increase for two years running without the increase in cigarette taxes which will be the funding mechanism.
Now, some regular visitors here don’t much like Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, but I think he’s one of the best representatives any state in America could ask for. Like a lot of us, Bernie is simply PISSED OFF about the bailout and the flagrant contempt with which the Wall Street criminals are raping this country. Last week, Bernie sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry “Gutless Wonder” Reid demanding that the Senate begin investigations into the disbursement and use of TARP funds. President Obama’s “salary cap” proposal is a first step, but a laughable one when you consider the scope of the fraud being committed, and nothing short of an investigating committee with a freshly-sharpened guillotine is going to have any real impact.
Regular readers know that I have posted a couple of times about the economic disaster as it has played out in Iceland, and you probably heard that the government there fell, as well as the story about the new prime minister being a lesbian (which, like Obama being black is all well and good but not particularly relevant at this moment in history). But next on the chopping block is Latvia, where rioting nearly brought down the government last week. The problems in Latvia are strikingly similar to those in Iceland, but a compounding issue for the Balkan country is that a third of the population is Russian, and they are agitating over what they call discrimination against them. That, in turn, could give Russia an excuse to cause trouble, if it so chose.
And while those two cold northern countries are struggling, so is the “Las Vegas of the Arab World”, Dubai. Unlike Iceland and Latvia, though, Dubai’s troubles all come from their overheated real estate speculation. This post at The Daily Clarity outlines the heart of the problem, which has manifested itself in the rapid departure of hundreds of ex-pat workers and businessmen who were fueling the Dubai land grabs. They point to this Times of London article about the recent phenomenon of luxury cars being abandoned at Dubai’s international airport by businessmen getting out while the getting is good. I’m actually a little surprised that American businessmen haven’t started pulling the same shit, but maybe they’re waiting for those bailout bonus checks to clear first.
Noted British historian Niall Ferguson has an article in the December issue of Vanity Fair that tries to explain the current economic crisis by putting it into historical context. It’s a good way to get some perspective on the whole thing and doesn’t bog down in trying to explain all the financial technobabble*. If you read the “phony economy” piece from Harper’s that I linked to yesterday, this is a good expansion on that idea, as Ferguson looks at the historical origins of the finance sector as the driving force of American capitalism. I don’t know that I agree that the “American Dream” of single-family home ownership only dates back to the 1930s; I would argue that every pioneer who hitched up a wagon team and headed west across North America was looking for his own land and a home, and that the central notion of the land not belonging to the nobility but to whomever could make that land productive is as old as America itself. Nevertheless, the institutionalization of home ownership is indeed a unique American idea, and the impact it has had on our current economic state of affairs is undeniable.
*If you’d like a comprehensible explanation of the technobabble, I recommend these two “This American Life” programs: “Giant Pool Of Money” from May of this year, and “Another Frightening Show About The Economy” from October.
James Woolcott, writing in Vanity Fair earlier this week:
I harbor no grand illusions about Obama, he isn’t my messiah (I don’t have a messiah, the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson supplying more than enough transcendence to last a lifetime), and I’m still not sure how much he comprehends how gravely this country has been gutted over the last decade. My rooting interest is less about Obama himself than about how big a hurt he can put to the Republican Party. I don’t want the Republican Party simply defeated in November, I want to see it smashed beyond all recognition, in such wriggling, writhing, anguished disarray that it can barely reconstitute itself, so desperate for answers that it looks to Newt Gingrich for visionary guidance, his wisdom and insight providing the perfect cup of hemlock to finish off the conservative movement for good so that it can rot in the salted earth of memory unmissed and unmourned in toxic obscurity.
I really don’t think that’s too much to ask, even in these frugal times.
I’ll second that emotion.
Vanity Fair editor Cullen Murphy is only the latest person to consider the obvious comparisons between the United States and the Roman Empire in his new book “Are We Rome”, but I liked this interview with him on The Atlantic Monthly’s website (prior to joining Vanity Fair, Murphy was the editor of The Atlantic for many years). Compared to the pro-empire voices of people like Niall Ferguson, it’s worth having someone remind us that being the “New Rome” isn’t entirely a good thing.
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