UP@NIGHT

After a taking a hiatus from blogging, I thought that I wanted to return with a some sort of scathing political commentary, filled with wit and an almost adolescent exuberance.   But then I spied this billboard along the West Side Highway.   I was horrified.  The Birthers had infiltrated the heart of New York City, my town, and were in the process of disenfranchising the place.   Never again would we vote in a national election.  Never again would someone from the five boroughs become president.  We aren’t in America.

But then I reconsidered.  More likely this was the work of an insidiously clever Republican operative.  He knows that Donald Trump is a danger to the Republican chances in 2012, if only because of the hair, which looks just like his half brother’s (this is not intended to be a factual statement), the very former governor of Illinois.  You know, what’s his name, Blagojevich.  If only natural born Americans can run for president, and if New Yorkers are not Americans, then as a native New Yorker Trump can’t run for president.   QED   And every Birther, including Trump, would have to agree.

A further clue to this dastardly mischief is supplied by one word from a sibling billboard.

   Although there is much evidence to support the operative hypothesis, I grant that it could be wrong.  It would require the operative to be too clever by half, and judging by the recent budget that the Republicans put forward, we can’t assume that anyone in the GOP has the extra half going for them.  So who did the deed?  It’s possible, just possible, it was a New Yorker with some extra attitude

Oh, I can understand why New Yorkers might have attitude.  After all, why would they have put Times Square, the Empire State Building, King Kong, Broadway, the UN, Wall Street, Steven Colbert, Lincoln Center, Batman, Superman, the Statue of Liberty, and the Yankees (of course), etc., here if this wasn’t actually the center of the planet?  Why else would “New Directions,”  the club from Glee, have to travel to New York to compete in the national finals?   And let’s face it, when the ball drops in Times Square on New Year’s Eve, everything else is just anti-climatic.

But just because NYC might be the center of the planet doesn’t mean it isn’t in the United States.  Where else would it be?  So let’s be clear.  The sign should have read, “If you leave New York, you will have to live somewhere else in America.”  Unless of course there is a Republican operative out there who is too clever by half.

We will remain vigilant at UP@NIGHT.

Well, here we are again.  Elections around the corner and about to let the FOX guard the henhouse, yet again.

Yes, we are all angry.   But let us not forget how we got into the present economic mess as we listen to the Republicans promising new ideas, once again.   Stewart and friends nail this one.

The manner in which FOX has been stirring up hatred, yes hatred, against Muslims in his country is appalling.  They have done so through mind numbing lies and innuendo.  This clip from The Daily Show is one of the most cogent and funniest send ups of FOX I have seen to date.  Enjoy.  (Give Jon a few minutes to get really going.)

So, you think of yourself as an honest soul.  You understand that stealing property or money is wrong.  You wouldn’t do it.  You wouldn’t want your kids or friends to do it.  It’s unthinkable.   But I have a proposition for you.

Here is a button.   All you have to do is press it and $100,000 will be transferred from Goldman Sachs, BP–or any other giant corporation whose resources are larger than most countries–into your bank account.   Nobody will ever know.  It’s a magic button.  Well, not really magic.  Some geek has wired it in a fashion so that money can be transferred to your account without anyone being able to trace it–in the tradition of how derivatives were traded.

Just think of how much money Goldman Sachs and its executives made in the last few years as the Market tanked, while you probably lost money in your hard-earned retirement account.   Not only did you recently lose money, but if you had invested $1,000 dollars eleven years ago in the Dow, that’s just about what it would be worth today, $1,000 (less if inflation is factored in).  But you know, and I know, how much money these guys have made trading your money and my money.  But that’s capitalism, you say.  It’s the way the game is played.

But would you push the button?  Would you be tempted to do it?  Or perhaps a better question: how many of your fellow Americans do you think would be tempted?  A lot, right?  (Or an even better question, how many more would push it today than ten or twenty years ago?)

The recent Melt Down on Wall Street, and the ensuing profits made by big trading firms and banks, have been corrosive in ways that we may not fully understand for years.   You’ve got Tea Baggers screaming about Washington, but the revelations about how Wall Street operates have buried themselves deep in our collective subconscious.  Real damage has been done.  Yes, we knew that there was big money out there and that big money corrupts.  (Before the present Melt Down, there was Enron and assorted other travesties.)   Yet “knowing” is one thing.  Seeing it in front of your eyes day after day, year after year, undermines confidence that the system is anything close to fair.  Yes, Obama has attempted to tame Wall Street with new regulations.  They will do some good.  Yet as long as we continue to see different rules of the game for a small strata of society, which is indeed what we have seen, our belief in the benefits of capitalism will be undermined by a gnawing sense that it is corrupting us, our children, our society.  From a sanctified economic system, it will become what we have to put up with, sort of like the Roman emperors in Imperial Rome.  It won’t go away anytime soon but we aren’t going to feel good about it.

There was a time in American business when many people believed that a handshake was as good as a contract, or so I am told.  People kept their word.  It now seems that handshakes still function in this manner for a small elite segment of corporate America that makes deals for unimaginable sums.  The rest of us can’t depend on them when we deal with companies.  (How about a handshake between you and your medical insurance company to guarantee your coverage?  Any takers?)   The middle class will need more and more contracts and lawyers to protect them in an economy in which money has gone wild.  And they will have relatively less money to hire these lawyers.

No doubt there are problems with the way government functions.  But anyone who thinks that this is the major source of the declining confidence in how our society works really needs to look at Wall Street with suitable eyewear.   The business of America is no longer doing business but being given the business.

I kid you not.  The editors at Newsweek have presented us with one of the most biting pieces of (indirect) commentary yet to appear in a major American periodical.  On the last page of this week’s Newsweek (November 2, 2009), Governor Mark Sanford’s wife is quoted as saying about his affair, “I know that I’m going to be fine, and not only will I survive, I’ll thrive”  (Jenny Sanford).   This quotation is found among statements from the spouses of several other unfaithful hubbies, all public figures.  Okay, pretty tacky.  But I am not here to complain about tackiness.

Six pages earlier in the magazine there is a two page piece by the Governor himself.  Title you ask?  “Atlas Hugged,”  which appears to be referring to Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged, but is no doubt also talking about Sanford’s relationship to Rand. So now poor Jenny has to deal not only with the woman in Argentina but Ayn Rand, a serious swinger in her day.  Could Sanford have been responsible for this title?  Did he know that Jenny’s words would appear just pages after his?  Did he care?  Can this man handle not having his fifteen minutes of fame endlessly loop around the air waves?  The mind boggles.  But the piece does sing the praises of the true individual.

Ah, the piece.  It is about how this is a good time for an Ayn Rand revival.  And yes, while Sanford does have some reservations these days about Rand, he was once a true believer, and he still appears smitten.  There are some wonderful passages in the Newsweek article.  Take this one from Sanford’s pen on Roark, the hero of Rand’s book.

The Fountainhead is a stunning evocation of the individual and what he can achieve when unhindered by government or society. Howard Roark is an architect who cares nothing about the world’s approval; his only concerns are his integrity and the perfection of his designs….

[Let's just stop here for a moment.  Did Sanford really say, "his only concerns are his integrity and the perfection of his designs."  Freud is always out smoking a cigar when you need him.]

Near the end of the book, Roark is on trial for demolishing a building he had designed—he had insisted it be built exactly as drawn, but when some bureaucrats alter the structure, Roark feels he has no choice but to dynamite it. Representing himself, Roark pleads, in characteristically Randian terms: “I do not recognize anyone’s right to one minute of my life. Nor to any part of my energy. Nor to any achievement of mine. No matter who makes the claim, how large their number or how great their need … I recognize no obligations toward men except one: to respect their freedom and to take no part in a slave society.” Cold though they sound, these words contain two basic truths. First, an individual can achieve great things without governmental benevolence, and second, one man has no right to another’s achievement. These are lessons we should all remember today, when each week is seemingly marked by another government program designed to fix society. [Emphasis added.]

“Cold though they sound?”  No, Mark, not cold.  The man was willing to blow up a building because he didn’t like the way that his plans, his designs, were executed.  (Some might suggest that this smacks a bit of terrorism, no?  I don’t like what you have done to my work.  Okay, I’ll blow up a building.)  Think about all of those folks who worked on the building.  All of their work is for naught, because Roark has not gotten the building that he designed.  Narcissism you say?  Narcissism being supported by the good Governor of South Carolina?

I think at a fundamental level many people recognize Rand’s essential truth—government doesn’t know best. Those in power in Washington—or indeed in Columbia, S.C.—often lead themselves to believe that our prosperity depends on their wisdom. It doesn’t. The prosperity and opportunity we enjoy comes ultimately from the creative energies of the country’s businessmen, entrepreneurs, investors, marketers, and inventors. The longer it takes this country to reawaken to this reality, the worse we—and in turn, our children’s standard of living—will be.

Well, this is certainly the case in S.C. with the old governor disappearing for days on end.  Hiking that trail.  But on a more serious note, notice that Sanford doesn’t mention in his list of prosperity creators: workers, teachers, scientists, etc.   Whatever reservations Sanford may have about Rand–she “doesn’t include the human needs we have for grace, love, faith, or any form of social compact”–I would say that he is still in love, in love with a narcissistic ideal of what it means to be a good human being or a good productive citizen.  It is as if the choice were between golden knights on corporate horseback (just what we need right now) and demons clothed in government garb.  If only life were this black and white.  If only all the good guys were those involved in the private sphere and the corrupt (or soon to be corrupt) were allied with the government.  What sophomoric pablum.   Soap opera is more nuanced.  I say, if the right thinks that it is time to bring back Ayn Rand, more power to them.  There are few political thinkers, and I am being generous here in calling her a political thinker–as Sanford points out, “William F. Buckley called objectivism ‘stillborn’ in a column he wrote when she died”–who are less relevant to the world that we face.  It’s clear that we are going to need to stand together if we don’t want to fall apart.  And this doesn’t mean collectivism.  It means responsible citizenship.  We are citizens, after all, and not just Roarks.

I am prepared to admit that my sense of humor can be as sick and dark as the next guy.  But I was not prepared for the front page of Sunday’s New York Times.

Splashed across most of the top of the front page was this photo, with this headline:

A Place Where Cancer Is the Norm

The article was about about M.D. Anderson hospital in Houston.

As I recall, there was recently much press over the fortieth anniversary of the Beatles’ iconic Abby Road photo:

So, here is my conclusion: there are people at the New York Times with a pretty sick sense of humor (no pun intended) or this is one of the most brilliant pieces of political commentary that we have seen in years.  The Times is really making a statement about the health care system in the U.S., comparing it to the British system which manages to produce healthy and beloved artists, while we have people walking around in the Texas sun with I.V’s and pink sandals.

Perhaps there is a third option: incompetence.

I had been planning to write a blog on the bogus ways that the notion of “impartiality” has been used in the hearings for Judge Sotomayor.  I still plan to, even though Colbert and his writers have hit one out of the park on the rather implausible notion of  “neutrality” that has been bandied about by Republican senators and pundits.

Nice to know that the new senator from Minnesota, Al Franken, has his priorities right.

Well, just when you think that you have carved out a niche for yourself, it seems that the whole planet has moved in.  In June 2008 I posted a blog,” Obama, Spock, and the New Star Trek Nation,” in which I drew a connection between Spock and Obama, and I also discussed how the times might be right (once again) for Star Trek’s positive utopian vision.  I even quoted from Shatner’s (Captain Kirk’s) book, Up Till Now, about how the fans had saved the original Star Trek.

“As a result of this campaign, NBC received, trumpets blare here, more than 1,000,000 letters urging the network not to cancel the show….[It was not cancelled] Perhaps more important the people who wrote the letters suddenly had an emotional attachment to a television program unlike any viewers ever before. They had actually influenced a network’s programming decision. They had ownership. Star Trek really had become their show. This marked the beginning of the most unusual relationship between viewers and a TV series in history.”

I compared this sense of ownership to what many of Obama’s supporters were experiencing due to their involvement in his campaign.  In any case, I/we now have to deal with this:

It seems that sometime last year a toy company, a one Jailbreak Toys, starting selling Obama action figures.   Is nothing sacred?  Or perhaps this is how we express what we most admire in America, we turn them into action toys.

….

UPDATE, May 10.  It turns out the the Jailbreak Toys does make action figures, including ones of Obama, but those of Obama and Biden (above) were from an event held in NYC in which artists created action figures.  The photo, which I thought had come from the company, can be found at iPhoneSavior.