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Mitchell Aboulafia

Posts Tagged ‘comedy

The Problem with New York

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M. Slonecker

“That’s the problem with being born in New York…You’ve got no New York to run away to.”

A line from the novel, Rules of Civility, by Amor Towles.   (Reviewed by Liesl Schillinger in today’s New York Times Book Review.)

Written by Mitchell Aboulafia

August 14, 2011 at 4:45 pm

Corporations are People: Pillow Fight Time

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International Pillow Fight Day

Well, now we have it.  As the ad below highlights, Romney thinks that corporations are people.   They are not.   They cannot vote.  They cannot serve in the military.  They cannot feel pain.  And they are treated quite differently in terms of taxes, etc., etc.

What Romney seems to want to suggest is that people make up and benefit from corporations.   And this is precisely the problem.  The biggest benefit from corporations, money, has become so concentrated in the hands of a few that it is harder and harder to see these legal fictions as responsible players.   And people are angry about this.

I believe that we need a collective venting of the anger.  I propose a pillow fight.  But given the vast disparities in power and wealth, I suggest that the sides be picked in the following fashion:  the pay of workers vs. the pay of CEO’s at the largest U.S. companies.  In 1980 one survey showed it was 42 to 1.   Another in 2010, 343 to 1 (based on the median U.S. worker pay).

So I say we match 100 CEO’s from the largest companies against 34,300 of their workers.  Each will be supplied with identical pillows.

Further, I request that the Colbert Super-PAC (Making a better Tomorrow, Tomorrow) fund the event.  We will need a rather large stadium.  (Colbert this is a challenge.  I hope you are man enough to respond.)

Written by Mitchell Aboulafia

August 13, 2011 at 4:53 pm

Depression Comedy, Then and Now

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Well, forget the statistics.  The depression is official. We now have the silly sort of humor that helped an earlier generation get through their Big One.
Here is the drinking song from “Just Imagine,” a 1930 sci fi film.  (Btw, BSG fans, the airship is called the Pegasus.)

And here is Late Night with Conan O’Brien – Stephen Colbert String Dance Off (2/17/09)

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