"Beware any blog that has the words musings, thoughts, and ramblings in it. This is a clear sign of the bad, boring amateur writer as deer poop is for a hunter."
Was looking out the kitchen window just now, and outside saw one of the kids across the way, looking through a bag for something. What Xmas goodies would be hiding outside in below-freezing weather, I'm not sure, but I was convinced it must be just that, something holiday related --what else would he be doing this afternoon? From this distance I couldn't make out what he finally grabbed, but perhaps it was only a soda or sweet-treat (hey, they have their laundry and dryer outside, why not save on refrigerator space?). Still most likely what he and his family, like a lot, if not most, people on this block, in this city, across the country, and many other parts of the world, are doing right now--celebrating Xmas.
Leaving aside the meaning, practice, and politics of the holiday itself for the moment, it shares with other such days or events a reflected ubiquity: part of what makes occasions like these transcend the norm is some kind of self-identification with a prevailing tide. Of course, this is just an extremely amplified quotidian condition. (You might say that in a city, especially like NY, this everyday experience is generally more amplified than the rest of the world. Riding the subway at certain times of certain days allows quite a bit of certainty about where people are going or what they're doing--going home, "out," to work, to school, to a game, or, especially this time of year, shopping--and a bond can be formed around it. But, then again, NY, as much as or more than any other place, has such a diversity of peoples and cultures, that at any given time there are more divergent streams of human activity to temper whatever calendrical monolith might be at hand--disasters, natural and otherwise notwithstanding. Indeed, this is one of the many things I love about NY. So it is true, at this moment, that any place outside the city in any direction has a probably greater homogeneity of holiday than does my charming Bushwick block. That said...)
(disclaimer: no he doesn't)
This above-average unanimity can be both beautiful and terrifying. Most migratory birds having already fled south, their stationary brethren remain: pigeons still share the fluid simplicity of their group-think flight, even in the most casual and daring aerial acrobatics, that we, begrudgingly perhaps, admire from our earth-bound in(if you consider that we on the ground move as individuals more easily)dependence, and are left with our self-identities intact. If hesitant with appreciation, perhaps it's only the formality of their movement that can't help remind us of the lock-step of jack-boots, from the twentieth century and of today. Although China's displays of mass-maneuvering now titillate for those with Olympic fervor, their neighbors to the east prepare for thermonuclear Armageddon with similarly militaristic moves, and dressed not too dissimilar to boot.
NY in a way gets a special dispensation for being especially Xmas-y, despite our low-density celebration, and yet not in spite of but for our dour and multicultural norm--everybody's rooting for us (of course, Hollywood and literature haven't hurt). In a similar fashion, the city has now become sacred ground for those who, before almost a decade ago, would've have rejoiced if Manhattan ever wound up underwater (ironically, if puzzlingly, many of the newly devout still would). The same could be said though of most I've known, including those who were there, who now morn the loss of the towers, despite their own unique aesthetic and economic villainy they maintained while standing.
For all my resident lonely-Jew-on-Xmas status, I've had a handful/fair share of uniform Christmastime. But, today, like many, I'm the outsider looking in. Only, and here's why it's actually really hard to ever be completely alone--no matter the feeling or lack of corporal or even digital proof--there are plenty of other people similarly, for want of or for wont, passing the day like any other Saturday and yet are singularly aware of narrow focus of so many around, if for no other reason than it's a little more quiet around than usual. But, like in front of some window display, standing in the cold, there is a warmth, actually and emotionally, to be felt in a group.
OK, not really. But I love that we finally have a tea-patsy (I'll get to that later*) who makes no bones (he probably uses this phrase, because, you know, he "works in construction") about his flagrant prejudices--against everyone who’s not male, white and right--and total lack of governing skills. This tells us two things, at least, about the people who support him: they are equally prejudiced and have no interest in making government any better, only negating its existence.
It also wakes us (or maybe just me) from the somnambulism that this is New York City and "it can't happen here," in such a progressive northern metropolis. (Well, actually it can't, but, for better or worse, we're not just us. We’re a big-ass state full of rural and suburban upstate communities where this guy has all his support. It was Rick Lazio that took the Republican vote in the downstate counties.) We can't be blamed for this indulgence, after the usually status quo-loving Mike Bloomberg recently came to the defense of the downtown Islamic center (and Constitution and reason), and lulled all of us (or just me) into thinking the divisive moment had passed--north of the Mason-Dixon, anyway. But apparently it hasn't, at least until November 2nd.
But is he really a racist/sexist/general scumbag? The jokes, the comments, the idiotic ideas. But let's focus, as most are, on the jokes, emails actually, that he "forwarded" to a "select group of friends.” (Must not have been too select if they got out, huh Carl?) Defenders, calling into Brian Lehrer on WNYC (two out of three, aggravatingly and surprisingly, were women), claimed they don't make him anything, except maybe someone with a sense of humor. I'd agree, only, for one of the cartoons mentioned, it's a racist sense of humor, thus making him a racist.
Why not “call a spade a spade,” as one caller offered what she thought was one of Paladino’s attractive qualities? She suggested this right after denouncing the specific charge of racism from the email; Lehrer commented on her choice of words. Was she so oblivious to the fact that that expression shares a very common racial epithet for blacks, making her an idiot, or was she purposefully using thinly veiled language to tout his, and her, racist leanings?
All of which is a good distillation of the conundrum we find ourselves in, gazing into the psyche of these tea-freaks: either they really are that clueless, and that’s what passes for being anti-establishment these days—in part, now that The Man es moreno—or they’re not as dumb as we’d be comfortable believing. Paladino knows his audience; hell, he might’ve leaked the damn emails himself.
Hot Carl, by M. (thanks!)
“I’ll take you out!”
And if to prove my point, Paladino is now on video threatening, goomba-style, a journalist who had the gall to challenge him about unsubstantiated attack on his opponent, Cuomo, concerning something he himself is admittedly guilty—out of wedlock fatherhood. And, more tellingly, the reporter was from The New York Post, the super-conservative, Rupert Murdoch-owned city’s daily. Paladino doesn’t have a problem with just the left-wing media conspiracy, but with ANY media.
Both of these, the threat and that it was against an ostensible ally, bring out the larger point—it’s not so much the obvious hypocrisy involved, but that it reveals what people who like him don’t care about. This isn’t about politics or, what conservatives might usually call, morals; it’s about tearing down the system, which to them represents, and is represented by, progress of any kind. This is the extreme-libertarian ideology.
However, despite the tea-partisan antipathy toward their institutional brethren, Republicans, as Paul Krugman points out in The New York Times, the latter shares their anarchic lack of policy or any real agenda, at least when it comes to fiscal policy. I would argue that the tea-partiers have necessitated the Republican’s shift rightward into pure platitude, devoid of the desire to help the country or even “make sense.”
“So how did we get to the point where one of our two major political parties isn’t even trying to make sense?
The answer isn’t a secret. The late Irving Kristol, one of the intellectual godfathers of modern conservatism, once wrote frankly about why he threw his support behind tax cuts that would worsen the budget deficit: his task, as he saw it, was to create a Republican majority, “so political effectiveness was the priority, not the accounting deficiencies of government.” In short, say whatever it takes to gain power. That’s a philosophy that now, more than ever, holds sway in the movement Kristol helped shape.
And what happens once the movement achieves the power it seeks? The answer, presumably, is that it turns to its real, not-so-secret agenda, which mainly involves privatizing and dismantling Medicare and Social Security.
Realistically, though, Republicans aren’t going to have the power to enact their true agenda any time soon — if ever. Remember, the Bush administration’s attack on Social Security was a fiasco, despite its large majority in Congress — and it actually increased Medicare spending.
So the clear and present danger isn’t that the G.O.P. will be able to achieve its long-run goals. It is, rather, that Republicans will gain just enough power to make the country ungovernable, unable to address its fiscal problems or anything else in a serious way. As I said, banana republic, here we come.”
I got your cartoon right here, Carl.
(A still from a cartoon remake of Night of the Living Dead.)
Callers also said that everyone gets these kinds of emails "nowadays." That's not the case for me. The few times I have, I either spammed the sender, or, if I knew them and didn't just want to just dismiss them (family or friends), I would tell them to "cut the shit;" perhaps not always in those words. Of course, nowadays prejudice (except for Muslims, at the moment) isn't as overtly bandied about in mainstream speech; it's coded in more appropriate ways, though sometimes not very much, as with this guy.
For one thing, humor, as it is for many touchy subjects, can be a chief mode by which extreme speech, whether you agree with it or not, can gain social acceptance. Where I grew up just below the M&D line, in a MD suburb, one of a few Jews until high school, I was hardly ever called a kike or Christ-killer (thought it happened), but I did hear a whole hell of a lot of Jew jokes. Both made my heart flush and my throat swell just the same, and yet I knew, even at the time, that there was a difference between the two.
Was one preferable to the other? Sure. I’d go so far as to say that the relegation of racism to jokes told on playgrounds and at water-coolers (do offices still have those?) is in itself a sign of progress. But was it ever cool? Hell no. Did I let it slide? Not if I thought I had a chance to get a few punches in, or more, before I got my ass kicked or it was broken up. And this was a fairly progressive era, the 80s, and area of the country.
Satire, especially, for good reason and effect, can engender discussion about uncomfortable topics that can easily get mired in undemanding silence--or it can be a, sometimes not so subtle, cover for hate. Not to realize the difference is either ignorance or wink-and-a-smile acceptance tantamount to collusion.
I just had to.
*Finally, why would I call Paladino a patsy, or any of these folks who are running for office or voting for them, for that matter? Because, as the Right have been doing for years, by appealing to the concomitants of fear and anger, thereby obfuscating any talk of substantive issues, they have managed to get people to vote against their own interests. But so too the politicians, using the term broadly here—and I’m no politico lover—are for the most part dupes for bigger interests of deregulation and privatization (see the Koch brothers, et al.).
Carl, himself has made his fortune in large part by state and local government largess up in Albany, as reported by The Village Voice—and he wants to “throw the bums out”? He was one of the bums, from the other side of it. Maybe he’s thinking of expanding into defense department contracting or “clean” coal. Maybe he’s so stupid he doesn’t understand the ramifications of his own rhetoric. Or maybe he knows, like the rest of us, probably nothing much will no matter who’s in office. In that way, then, he’d windup gaming the system form both sides. Yeah, he’s racist—like a fox.
[My apologies to all non-racist foxes, such as the enjoyable Fleet Foxes.]
It was at least a bracket on which to construct memory and, more so, a place of departure—perhaps the wrong way, like an elbow bent backwards. It became context: a way to delineate and map New York’s, and my, existence.
It’s my A.D. she said. Yeah, everything is before or after. After is when it all started to go bad.
Did you loose someone? No, luckily. Not that day, but soon enough. At the time, I thought I could have lost anyone, everyone. Or I was lost, and others were mourning the loss. For some, close enough to the epicenter, all those in the falls were our loss, and, too, something that had been collectively all of ours before was now lost with them. Physical proximity can in part explain this discarnate connection between strangers, those remained and those gone; the ripple effect that dissipates as it moves outward from point of origin.
For weeks the smoke, ill-defined, crawled slowly out of lower Manhattan; crossing the East River onto Brooklyn, hanging in the sky over apartment buildings, like mine. Enmeshed with the afternoon sun of that clear day, the amalgam of the smoke and ash of paper and plane and body went on to hue the sunset a beautiful, if unnatural, charcoal-red blood orange.
When you have various union groups rallying outside City Hall that, for the most part, are there to yell at rich people, as a group, there's a problem. No strangers to giving grief, the unions usually frame their contention as labor to business, not just the rich. For them it's usually not a class issue, only a function of who they have to deal with, capital. Unions exist for the taking to task of capital that either doesn't respect them (the unions) or, more importantly, play within the rules of the past fifty years of labor/management relations.
And so, the rich (however you define that) are just going to have to step up and appease the mob. It would have been nice if it had not come this. But, here we are. Some people, who up till now have pretty much had economic free reign, are going to have to pay a little more.
A little--what many New Yorkers consider to be a fair share, like the group Fair Share Tax Reform, who argue for a "shared sacrifice" in these bad times by those who profited during the good. Government spending and services will be cut this year, how drastically is still in question. Major cuts in jobs and services vital to all those but the rich, doesn't seem very fair to me.
The "little" part is important because politicos tend to think and talk about these things in absolute terms: innovation-starving socialism or entrepreneurial-friendly capitalism, limited (ineffectual) or big (wasteful) government, progressive (distributing wealth downward) or regressive (distributing wealth upward) taxation, and most importantly, chocolate or peanut butter. Fortunately, much like Reese's Peanut Butter Cups lovers, you don't have to choose; you can have both or something in between. And, despite all the evidence to the contrary by temper-tantrumed TV-personalities and on bickering blogs, most people aren't as polarized either.
Most of the "rich" aren't going to move out of the state, decreasing state budget revenue, because of slight shift in the tax burden--the argument made by the conservative politicians in NY, and abroad, who rail against a so-called "Millionaires Tax," which would go a long way to mind-ing the billions of this year's budget gap.
You're telling me that some multimillionaire, nay billionaire is going to move 50 or 100 or more miles across state lines, away from friends and family and workplace, to save a few thousand dollars? Just because something is the best deal, doesn't mean it's the best deal. For those that do move: screw 'em--is that the kind of people we want as fellow state residents?
That goes for corporations, too. As when lamenting the loss of companies and jobs to lower taxes and wages in other countries, the same ballyhoo is proffered up by states for keeping corporate taxes low and the minimum-wage stagnant--the retention of businesses in the state. (A similar idea of "retention," of the "best and the brightest" by AIG, is being batted down as I write this. Though I don't think the AIG guys are an example of when a company would actually want to keep good employees--obviously they weren't.)
This diaspora-paranoia about businesses exodus from traditional sectors in America's industrial complex, from the 70's onward, isn't without basis in reality. Historically, far from it. But that's for increasingly fewer types of industry, like car manufacturing and textiles. Instead of trying to revive or keep alive old industries, we should incentivize technology (for example, alternative energy r&d) and explore new business models, such as public/private partnerships.
(It's key that historical processes, while true of a particular time and place, are not absolutes binding human behavior, that we must structure our lives and world around. Rather, in a more reciprocal relationship, as we structure society to fit our wants and needs, so too those structures influence and shape us. This is a good thing. It allows room for change and, maybe, progress.
With no disrespect to Mr. Wiesenthal, I think it takes more than simply remembering history to avoid repeating it: a contextual reading of that history is necessary. Too, an unnuanced look backward can engender the repetition of past mistakes, as recurring behavioral patterns can develop within contiguously similar contexts. How can someone be expected to stop fighting back when they keeps getting kicked in the face, even if they know their fight is futile?)
The following paragraph is from Paul Krugman this week, about what school teachers in my home town are doing to help out the school system, their workplace. It's something that's actually crossed my mind recently. But feeling foolish in its simplicity, I hesitated verbalizing the idea:
"The schoolteachers here [Montgomery County, MD], who make on average $67,000 a year, recently voted to voluntarily give up their 5 percent pay raise that was contractually agreed to for next year, saving our school system $89 million — so programs and teachers would not have to be terminated. If public schoolteachers can take one for schoolchildren and fellow teachers, A.I.G. brokers can take one for the country."
That's the sprirt--taking one for the team!
So, take a lesson Wall St.--even if it isn't the financial capital of the world anymore, or even the country, according to Ian Bremmer on WorldFoucs, a PBS program, recently. Still, they are a significant part of our tax base, and, even in these times of dwindling bonuses and expense accounts, and populist rage, they aren't people we have to run out of town.
Besides, when the alternative is a fiscally hand-tied government, with extreme cuts to health care, education, and unemployment, who could live here besides the rich?
With a shrug and a smirk, the woman from the LA Times response to criticism of the business media on News Hour, PBS. Greatdefense. Though some don't think that's enough.
Thanks, in large part to Jon Stewart, the world today (finally?) has been talking about what role the business media play in the economy and to what extent are they culpable for the mess we're in.
The breathtaking interview (more like debate... really a bitch slap) last night with Jim Cramer and Jon Stewart on the Daily Show was one of the peak moments so far in the aftermath of this money-mire. You have to give Cramer credit for diving head long into the home turf of a pissed-off Jon Stewart.
Of course, Jimmy was no match for Jon. But what got me was the attitude of disgust with which Stewart seemed possessed: he wasn't just showing Cramer as a fool, all too easy for the master, but chided him like a child who refuses to take serious his irresponsibility and lacks the gravitas of the situation.
"It's not a fucking game!"
"They burned the fucking house down, then walked away rich."
"This song ain't about you."
I haven't seen Stewart like this since after 9-11, when he broke out of his normal role (a good one to start) and helped to make TV something more than entertainment or advertising or even education. He was directly linked to us, the audience--at least here, in NY. He was living in the same world, with the same things going on around him. He didn't laugh because we weren't. He got choked up because we did, too. He was confused and scared and pissed--kind of like he was last night--and so we're we.
Wanted to share this really cool site, Curious Expeditions, for those of you who into all things interesting and a bit weird--historically, anthropologically, etc. You know, those of us who get off on museums and dusty books, filled with the minutia of worlds past.
I was drawn to the place by a post about a once hidden tunnel running along a good length of Atlantic Ave. One of the first major commercial hubs in the bustling city (later turned borough) of Brooklyn in the mid to late 1800's, just past the courts and politicos of Downtown and what was once the New York's main waterfront, in DUMBO and the Navy Yard, it remains so today (and finally with our very own Trade Joe's). Just beneath the surface, apparently, is what was for a short time the worlds first underground subway tunnel. Less built to save the Irish immigrants of the neighborhood that were being mowed down by the senior Vanderbilt's trains fairly regularly--interestingly, the story goes that originally the famous baseball team's full name was the the "Brooklyn Trolley-Dodgers," which were as much a hazard throughout the city--and more to avoid the costly delays resulting from the accidents.
Pictured here, from the site as well, this curiosity rather strikes me somehow as pertaining to the dance now engaged in by government and the economy and, of course, the rest of us. I'm not sure if what the fox represents is big finance or perhaps the new fangs barred by Congress and the Administration's new legislation to get a hold on things. But, I must admit, these days I think we're all feeling a bit like the duckling, no?
(disclaimer: no he doesn't)
