Sympathy for Aunt Gert

Posted on November 13, 2010 by oddmanout215

Keith endures one of Mick's Aunt Gert moments.

Mick Jagger… prances inexhaustibly through a two-hour set, at his best evoking the spawn of James Brown and Gumby, at his worst coming off like someone’s liquored-up Aunt Gert, determined to trash her prettier sister’s wedding with a gruesome performance on the dance floor. — from James Remnick’s Nov. 1 New Yorker review of Keith Richards’s autobiography, Life

I won’t try to top Remnick’s description of Jagger onstage or challenge his mostly favorable assessment of the book Richards wrote with help from James Fox, especially since I can’t afford the $30 hardcover and probably won’t read it until it turns up at the library. But I will say that Remnick’s is the best-written review of Life I’ve seen — the worst is by Liz Phair, in today’s New York Times — and as much a profile as it is a book review.

Remnick notes that Life is an addict’s narrative, like the opium-eating Thomas de Quincey’s, but in the subcategory of musician-addict memoir, like Miles Davis’s autobiography. He mentions biographies of Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker and notes there is “something almost creepy” about Richards’s having dodged most of the legal, financial and health problems that brought low so many down other famous junkie musicians. Forget “almost” — the 66-year-old ex-heroin addict’s uncanny good fortune definitely is creepy. But it’s also funny. As Remnick notes, “Maybe you can’t get what you want. The rule doesn’t apply to Keith.”

I’ll probably skim over Keith the junkie — his boastful recounting of drug binges with John Lennon and so on — and zero in on Keith the guitar player and key component of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band that hasn’t recorded a memorable song in decades. And on the parts where he acknowledges his artistic debt to Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters and the other greats whose lives weren’t as charmed as his.

I’m lying. I love addiction stories, especially when the drugs are top-shelf. I’m already wondering if Keith’s “pure Merck cocaine, the fluffy pharmaceutical blow” was as potent as good meth. I’m sure it was much more expensive.

One concern: I hope Richards the writer wasn’t as tough on Jagger as Remnick was in his review. It’s true that the Rolling Stones’ famous front man turned into an uptown fashionista and first-class poof, but the great lyrics and vocals are his and always will be. In the end, it’s about the recordings. The rest is gossip.

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Wingnuts to Daddy Limbaugh: Lie to us

Posted on November 11, 2010 by oddmanout215

C.E.O.’s of the largest American companies earned an average of 42 times as much as the average worker in 1980, but 531 times as much in 2001… Perhaps the most astounding statistic is this: From 1980 to 2005, more than four-fifths of the total increase in American incomes went to the richest 1 percent.

— Nicholas Kristof, Nov. 6 New York Times

Conservative bloggers and talk-radio hosts (Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and so on) and tea party darling Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) claim that [President Obama’s trip to India] is costing taxpayers a staggering $200 million a day… It’s sad that someone even has to debunk these ridiculous claims. Any reasonable person who heard the $200 million a day number should realize that it’s off by at least an order of magnitude.

— Gulliver, Nov. 6 in The Economist
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Indulge me for a minute. Picture America as a big family rather than a pack of beaten-down dogs. The father is a benevolent dictator who pays the kids well to do their fair share of the chores. But then the old man dies and the mother — she’s turned into a timid, apple pie-baking nonentity — marries an ogre who doubles the kids’ chores and slashes their pay to chump change. They get skinnier every month. “I have no choice,” the ogre says. “Your mother spoiled you and you’re wasteful.”

The kids are angry and demand fair treatment, but reality kicks in and they realize the ogre owns everything. It’s his way or the highway, so they blame their ineffectual Mom and each other for their situation and work longer and harder for less and less. Meanwhile, the ogre sits on his fat ass and stashes away their earning in his private account.

That’s America today. Many people don’t want to think about what their corporate step-dad is doing to them, which is why the facts rattled off by Kristof — four-fifths of the total increase in incomes went to the richest 1 percent — were unknown or ignored by most voters on Election Day. The need to not think is why so many Americans apparently like Limbaugh, Beck and other media frauds. Better to get mad at Mama Obama than admit their resources have been stolen by their step-dad and are unrecoverable under the current political system.

Eventually, their modest savings will run out and they will have to look the ogre in the eye and say, “We want back what you stole.” Even then, I’ll bet they (we) find someone else to blame.

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Kristof to Obama: Do you sweat?

Posted on November 5, 2010 by oddmanout215

“Mr. Obama has a far better product to sell than Tea Partiers like Mr. [Jim] DeMint. But Mr. Obama needs to connect better with American voters. He needs to lose the cool and start sweating — and slugging.” — Nicholas Kristof in the Nov. 4 New York Times.

Mr. Kristof’s advice to Mr. Obama reminds me of something Mr. Odd Man Out wrote back on July 22: “[Obama’s] failure to respond in a passionate and coherent way to Republican lies regarding the stimulus package, health care reform, the Gulf oil spill, jobless benefits and other issues large and small has cost us dearly. We all lose every time he fails to fight back.” This was under the heading: “Be an aggressor, or a counterpuncher. Anything but a stiff.”

Kristof seems an innately civil chap, eminently reasonable, not unlike Obama seems. Maybe that’s why it took him until after the midterms to understand that many Americans have come to perceive Obama as not reasonable but rather — putting it as politely as possible — overly cautious.

Obama’s meek approach to dealing with his sworn enemies is hard to fathom, given the fact that he’s well educated and surely knows that American politics has always been not only undignified but downright savage. He should remember that the best presidents, Lincoln and FDR, were attacked the most fiercely, by much more formidable foes than Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and Jim DeMint.

Better late than never, though it’s still inexcusable that Kristof and other well-intentioned liberals didn’t exhort Obama to fight earlier this year, when he hid out rather than push back against rightwing liars.

Posted in Congress, economic collapse, Great Depression, Gulf, mainstream media, mid-term elections, New York Times, Obama, Philadelphia, Politics, unemployment, Wall Street | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

She voted to burn down her house

Posted on November 4, 2010 by oddmanout215

“‘I voted Republican, which is unusual for me,’ said one woman… ‘My main concern is the economy. I couldn’t stand by and watch it continue to crumble.'” — from the Nov. 3 Philadelphia Metro.

You have to love the logic. The woman may as well have said, “I voted for arson, which is unusual for me. My main concern is my home. I couldn’t stand by and let it continue to crumble, so I set it on fire.”

How ironic that our ever-improving communications systems don’t make us any better informed than people in past eras, even about issues that directly affect our livelihoods. If they had bothered to look, the newbie Republican woman and tens of thousands of other confused PA voters could have accessed a ton of information that explains why voting Republican, if you’re poor and middle-class, is like voting to burn down your house.

They would have learned that Senator-to-be Pat Toomey has a well-documented history of support for the corporate elite and contempt for working people. He’s an ex-president of the Club for Growth, which sounds like a support group for balding men in denial but is actually a powerful right-wing lobbying organization that opposes all taxation and regulation of corporations. With Club for Growth, he fought for abolition of the minimum wage and was a direct advocate for outsourcing jobs.

In his campaign, Toomey did a good job of avoiding discussion of the role he has played in undermining the economy as it affects millions of working people. So good that I’ll bet the woman quoted in the Metro was unaware that she’d voted for a man who, over the next six years, will work hard to boost corporate profits while lowering her standard of living.

Most likely, the woman was too busy to do research; too disappointed by Barack Obama’s poor leadership skills and cozy relationship with Wall Street; and/or too scared by the current unemployment rate to do anything other than cast a knee-jerk vote for candidates offering false remedies for a sick economy.

She’s the sort of person the Democratic Party will have to begin connecting with in order to make a respectable showing in the 2012 elections. She is, or was, the base.

Unfortunately, Dem politicians still don’t seem to understand how important it is to pursue an agenda that is unmistakably opposed to the sort of corporate ruthlessness that hurts working people. Obama is still saying he “made progress” during his first to years instead of admitting he squandered a great opportunity to reverse destructive Republican policies. He has promised to continue reaching across the aisle, to use an insipid cliche, while Republicans remain dead set on cutting off both of his arms.

Posted in Congress, economic collapse, globalization, Great Depression, mainstream media, mid-term elections, Obama, Philadelphia, Politics, unemployment, Wall Street | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Where’s the sanity, dude?

Posted on November 2, 2010 by oddmanout215

Memo to Stewart: There’s no point to rallying about nothing.

Jon Stewart should stick to mild satire. His interviews can be politely irreverent, and he does an amusing job of using news clips to show that the media is, by and large, lazy and hypocritical in its coverage of national politics. (As if we didn’t already know that.)

But now Stewart is becoming grandiose, and that’s the same as boring. His weekend Rally to Restore Sanity was nothing but an opportunity for his fans — the ones who apparently don’t have anything better to do — to graze like lily-white sheep in Washington, D.C., pretending to be hip, while Stewart basked in their adulation and avoided voicing his opinions on issues that are changing our lives. Instead, he railed against the big, bad media.

Watching video of the event, I asked myself the same questions I’d asked while following Stewart’s promotion of his “non-partisan” rally last month: If you’re not taking a political stand, aren’t you merely standing around?

Alex Pareene of Salon thinks Stewart’s rally was implicitly Democratic: “An endorsement of civility and reason is basically an endorsement of Barack Obama,” Pareene wrote. “‘Reason and civility’ are practically the Democratic party’s platform. The rally was a call to keep fighting for the things that make educated young liberals support Democrats in the first place.”

I say “Bullshit.” I’ll bet most of the reasonable, allegedly educated liberals at Stewart’s rally won’t even vote today. They’re too busy pretending to be too reasonable to participate in partisan politics. The right-wing kooks who overwhelmingly represent the Republican Party in the mid-terms are happy that these liberals are so reasonable. Their reasonableness will make it all the more likely that the kooks will take control of Congress and, in the next two years, do their best to make the federal government even more dysfunctional.

I have seen and heard enough of this year’s Republicans to know they’re my enemies, and enemies of everyone else who isn’t wealthy. Most of the Democratic candidates aren’t good for much, but they’re saints compared to the GOP, which exists to serve the wealthy at the expense of the rest of us.

Sometimes you have to temper reason with anger. I voted today because my contempt for Republicans — the people who talk about creating jobs while helping corporations outsource American jobs — trumps my contempt for cowardly Democrats. My vote was cast in anger, but it was also the reasonable — and sane — thing to do.

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Obama on the boob tube

Posted on October 28, 2010 by oddmanout215

2010 is like 1933, but without the good songs

“Conspirators have a logic and a daring beyond our reach. All conspiracies are the same taut story of men who find coherence in some criminal act. Or maybe not.” — Don DeLillo

I was re-reading DeLillo’s Libra and feeling paranoid, so I put down the book and turned on the TV, and there was President Obama taking questions from the sage of Comedy Central, Jon Stewart.

I shouldn’t knock Stewart, he did OK. He suggested a fitting revision to Obama’s 2008 campaign slogan (“Yes we can, but…”) and suggested that the White House had been “timid” on health care reform. Obama pooh-poohed him, noting that the new health care bill will result in coverage for 30 million previously uninsured people. He conceded that the country’s 9.6 unemployment rate (the unofficial rate is 17 percent) was daunting, but insisted that progress was being made. Blah blah.

Channel-surfing, I bumped into Garry Wills, the journalist and historian, who was pushing his new book on the Charlie Rose Show. Asked by Rose to assess Obama’s job performance, Wills said he was “enormously disappointed,” and he went straight to the health care issue to explain his response. Obama wasted most of 2009 trying to “ingratiate himself” with Republicans, Wills said, instead of pushing for genuine reform.

Wills added, “So what [Obama] did was get a health care plan with all kinds of crippling provisions, which means it’s going to cost more than the previous establishment… And it is because he would not say the only way to bring down costs is the public option.”

Exactly. Not proposing a public option — alternative coverage for people who can’t afford the insurance companies — was a major disservice to those of us who voted for him, but Obama is too arrogant to concede this point, on Stuart’s show or anywhere else.

I switched channels in time to catch the end of Gold Diggers of 1933, in which Dick Powell plays a millionaire composer who writes a Broadway musical that rescues a bunch of theater people from poverty. Ginger Rogers, backed by chorus girls wearing giant coins, sings “We’re In the Money.” Joan Blondell lip-syncs “Remember My Forgotten Man,” a song inspired by a phrase FDR used in a stirring speech during the Great Depression.

Watching this, it occurred to me that Obama isn’t likely to deliver any stirring speeches about the Great Recession. He’s more interested in defending his failed half-measures than in putting together an effective jobs program for the millions of forgotten men and women who had hoped he would do much more to jump-start the economy.

Even worse are Obama’s foes, from slimy John Boehner on down, who barely even pretend to represent anyone other than the small percentage of rich thieves who profit from the misery of the poor and near-poor.

Worst of all is the suspicion there is something almost criminal going on; that Obama, just like the lizards trying to bring him down, never had any intention of pursuing any policies that might threaten the interests of the thieves. (See Roger Hodge’s The Mendacity of Hope.)

I’d better stop reading DeLillo, or I might not even vote on Tuesday.

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(Nearly) fatal distraction

Posted on October 25, 2010 by oddmanout215

How can a poor man stand such teams and live?

“These days people want beer with their circuses, not bread.” – A contemporary South Philly descendant of the ancient Roman satirist Juvenal.

The beer flowed Wednesday night but the circus, telecast from San Francisco, was a flop. The Phillies and Giants swapped the lead and were tied for a while in a clumsy game that ended in the ninth inning when the Giants scored against Roy Oswalt. Why was the Phils’ No. 2 starting pitcher used in relief, and why hadn’t their No. 1, Roy Halladay, started the game? What was manager Charlie Manuel smoking?

This was the sort of setback I’d dreaded. The relentlessly grim unemployment figures, John Boehner’s Pledge to America, Zach Galifianakis having Mel Gibson fired from Hangover 2 — all of these horrors I’d withstood, but the thought of the Phils being eliminated in five games in the NLCS was pushing me to Kurt Cobain-level despair. I ordered Lafcadio, my longtime chef and valet, to hide my Glock 9 in a place I’d never guess.

All was not lost. On Thursday, The Phils rebounded thanks to Halladay and the relievers and some timely hits, including a ninth inning home run by Jason Werth, who looks like a cross between a movie Viking and an Appalachian meth cook. The series moved from the land of fruits and nuts back to Philly, where the stage was set for two dramatic contests that could end with another pennant for the Phils, followed by their third straight appearance in the World Series.

But there was only one more contest. Ryan Howard, the Phils’ $25 million chump, was caught looking at Strike Three in the ninth inning of Game 6 with the bases loaded and the Giants up 3-2. The circus was over and the beer went flat. I shouted, “Lafcadio, where’s my goddamn gun?” But my lackey remained mum, so I sulked for 24 hours, all the way through the Eagles game.

They lost, too. I went to the kitchen to fetch another beer and carve some beef off of last night’s roast, but Lafcadio had hidden all the sharp knives.

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Take away my rights, not my toys

Posted on October 4, 2010 by oddmanout215

Why FDR’s words wouldn’t resonate today

“No country, however rich, can afford the waste of its human resources. Demoralization caused by vast unemployment is our greatest extravagance. Morally, it is the greatest menace to our social order.”

Waiting for the new iPhone in 1934

In 1934, FDR’s point was obvious to most Americans, even those who were part of the tiny privileged class that is always immune to depressions and recessions. Nowadays, even the leaders of the Democratic Party don’t seem to make the connection between sky-high unemployment and the threat of serious social disorder. Apparently, they’re convinced a steady diet of beer and circuses will keep Americans enervated, even after homes are foreclosed on and unemployment checks stop.

They might be right, at least for now. The percentage of Americans who lack food, shelter and clothing is small compared to what it was in the 1930s, at the peak of the Great Depression. Most Americans, even the ones out of work and/or in danger of losing their homes, still have resources to fall back on, whether it’s savings or even emergency lodgings with relatives. There’s more food than there was then, even if most of it is swill, and a vast array of consumer goodies — TVs, iPhones, iPods, video games, vibrators and so on — that weren’t available 76 years ago to distract people from their misery, or impending misery.

Also, most people are oblivious to legal and political realities until they are hit over the head by them. I’ll bet not one in ten of us know the implications of the Patriot Act or care that it’s now legal for corporations to anonymously steer vast sums to candidates who represent their interests.

But will we remain as brain-dead if our toys are gone? If they are repossessed or can’t be had because our credit is exhausted? If we can’t afford to watch gladiators on cable TV or the new version of Grand Theft Auto?

It won’t come to that, at least for a while, if Wall Street witch doctors can conjure up another phony boom and we can keep it going with more borrowed money. But a new boom is unlikely, given the depth of the national debt, and the fact that most of the jobs lost so far in this century — millions of them — have been off-shored or eliminated by technology.

I’m going to stop writing now before I really depress myself. Besides, it’s almost time for the Phillies game and, after that, The Real Housewives of Pitman, NJ. Go team!

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A new casino in this economy? Are you crazy?

Posted on September 29, 2010 by oddmanout215

The utilitarian gambling hall erected on North Delaware Avenue at the border of Fishtown and Northern Liberties puts 1,600 slot machines and 40 card tables within easy reach of neighborhoods across the city, many of them low-income. With the illusive promise of winnings, look for the casino to feed gambling addictions that will trouble thousands of city residents.

— The Philadelphia Inquirer, Sept. 23

For 30 years, Philly’s leaders made grand plans for the Delaware riverfront. In the end, all we got was a casino.

The editorial writers at the Inky have a gift for understatement. Gambling at the “utilitarian” SugarHouse casino — the building is functional but ugly — is likely to trouble a whole lot more people than the thousands directly affected by gambling addiction. Half of the drop at SugarHouse will go to the state treasury, ostensibly to be used for tax relief, and the rest will be kept by the casino, its parent company and investors. That giant sucking sound you’ll hear will be all that’s left of hundreds of millions of dollars disappearing from the local economy.

The situation invites big questions. How much of the loot kicked back to the state will actually benefit Philly taxpayers? To what extent will casino revenues funneled to Philly for tax relief be offset by increases in crime and other expensive social problems that inevitably occur in urban areas where casinos do business? Is casino gambling likely to help or hurt Philly in the long run?

The Inquirer has been confronted with these questions for years but to my knowledge it has never done any of the in-depth stories that might provide answers, or at least point the way to answers. Its editorials are consistently skeptical but its reporters rarely write anything other than standard news and feature stories on the casino issue.

That’s how it went on Sept. 23, when SugarHouse opened. There was the skeptical editorial and there was the news story by Suzette Parmley who, at times, writes like a publicist for a casino. Yes, it was cute that Ben Franklin and the Mummers were at the opening, and it warmed my heart that the casino’s owner, billionaire Neil Bluhm, “looked on proudly” with his two daughters, but what about the likely impact of a casino on a city with an alarming unemployment rate?

Parmley quoted Las Vegas gambling analyst Jacob Oberman, who declared that “the Philadelphia casino-goer will be the ultimate winner” because the presence of of a third casino in southeastern PA — Harrah’s in Chester and Parx in Bensalem are the others — will force “better and more numerous incentive offers” to gamblers.

Amazing.  If you were an editor, wouldn’t you have told Parmley to include counterpoint from an analyst who isn’t part of the casino industry, someone who might have pointed out that nobody ever wins against a casino in the long run?

A bigger question:  Where are the Inquirer and Daily News stories that would research the arguments of the many economists and other analysts who think ongoing expansion of casino gambling is a disaster; those who think casinos are exactly what we don’t need in the wake of a recession that has washed away the savings and assets of millions of Americans?

For starters, I’m talking about people like Temple University economist Fred Murphy; Robert Goodman, former director of the U.S. Gambling Research Institute and author of The Luck Business; University of Nevada economist William Eadington, who heads The Institute for the Study of Gambling & Commercial Gaming; and University of Illinois economist Earl Grinols, who started doing extensive cost-benefit reviews of casino gambling back in the 1990s.

SugarHouse is open for business, but that doesn’t mean the debate on the wisdom of expanding casino gambling is over. Unfortunately, few of the editors and  reporters at the Philly dailies seem interested in this debate.

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Fashion-conscious thugs prefer the Bronx Bombers

Posted on September 21, 2010 by oddmanout215

But you don’t have to be a hood to love corporate logos

From the Sept. 15 New York Times:

A curious phenomenon has emerged at the intersection of fashion, sports and crime: dozens of men and women who have robbed, beaten, stabbed and shot at their fellow New Yorkers have done so while wearing Yankees caps or clothing.

You, too, can be a walking advertisement for corporations

The writer notes that people who wear sports garb during or just after committing a crime are much more likely to be wearing New York Yankees clothing than that of any other pro or college team. One criminologist attributes the phenomenon to the popular rapper Jay-Z, who has been wearing Yankees caps for years, while other analysts are “wondering whether criminals are identifying with the team’s aura of money, power and success.”

Buried in the text is a more mundane explanation for the phenomenon —  the Yankees hold a 25.13 percent market share of merchandise licensed by Major League Baseball. In other words, how could there not be a disproportionate number of thugs wearing Yankees garb? A great many non-thugs are wearing it, too.

It’s not much of a story, so far as statistics go. The writer states that criminals who sport Yankees logos  are all over the country but he only supplies numbers for New York City crimes.

On the other hand, there’s poetic justice in the idea that fashion-conscious thugs would tend to identify with what has been, historically, the best team money could buy. A team whose players tend to be arrogant and proud of it, just like its owners.

If you wear a Phillies or Mets cap backwards or cocked to one side, you will probably look like a slob in a ball cap who has a favorite team. But if you wear a Yankees cap — forwards, backwards or sideways — you are more likely to be making a statement about how you worship the rich and powerful.

The real story is bigger than what’s in the crime blotter: Why are so many people — young  and old, crooked and law-abiding, sports fan or no — eager to wear clothes that corporate logos, to turn themselves into free advertisements? When and why did this custom become popular?

A comprehensive story on this subject has yet to be written. I can’t wait to read it.

Posted in globalization, mainstream media, New York Times, sports | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment