I know I haven’t posted here in a while, but this article about the White House’s involvement in trying to weaken Sarbanes-Oxley put me over the edge and back in the game.
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel has always had a special place in my heart for being the real basis for West Wing Deputy C.O.S. and childhood (okay, not just childhood) inspiration Josh Lyman, but this shit is inexcusable. The White House – through Emmanuel’s “gavel-wielding veins” – is backing Rep Carolyn Maloney’s (D-NY) amendment to the Investor Protection act of 2009 that would continue to exempt firms with market capitalization of less than $75 million from reporting requirements designed to begin in 2010. As if the White House trying to weaken a consumer-protection bill weren’t bad enough, there’s this graf in the Huff Post story:
The White House position, according to those familiar with Emmanuel’s argument, is that small businesses should not be the focus of onerous regulations because they aren’t the ones causing the problems. And if the Maloney amendment passes, it would allow Democrats to say they’re the champions of small business.
This is just appalling. Here’s a hint in trying to figure what is and what is not a small business: the use of the words “market capitalization.” Democrats can claim to be the defenders of small business with this amendment just like Republicans claimed to be the champions of the middle class with their tax breaks for the rich. Add to this John Nadler’s (D-NJ) amendment to extend it to firms with under $700 million in market capitalization, also in the name of “small businesses” according to his spokesman. Just in case anyone though that a major economic crisis would shock the country into really going after the Nero-esque financial sector, this is reality. Sorry.
When Americans think of small businesses, they think of this:
And that’s what politicians are counting on when they defend lightening regulation on $699 million firms. This is craven and misrepresentative with real consequences for our political culture. If we can’t trust the abstractions our politicians use – and we clearly can’t – then we can’t trust what they say in general. If our leaders are using different literal referents for their abstractions than we are (e.g. a half-a-billion dollar corporation as a “small business”) then public debate is an exercise in semantic games instead of policy. This is more or less what my thesis is about, so if you want another 100 or so pages on this issue and Marx, get back to me in May.
First, sorry for abandoning y’all, the last couple of weeks have been hectic but I’ll do better. For now I just want to make some points about Roman Polanski. There is no excuse for drugging and raping a thirteen year-old. There is no excuse for drugging and raping anyone. There is no excuse for drugging and/or raping anyone independently. Being very good at your job is not an excuse. Mike Tyson was a very good boxer, but he went to jail because he raped a woman. AND YOU CAN’T FUCKING DO THAT. I don’t know when child-rape became defensible again, but count me out. Not to mention, the guy’s a fugitive, it’s not like you can run away until the law forgets about you. Unless you’re rich and famous.
I want to make the point that Hollywood isn’t monolithic and there are surely still some actors and actresses who won’t defend a fugitive rapist, but it really is embarrassing for them. As my crush Jill Filipovic lists, the numbers are not encouraging. Here’s her list of Polanski supporters: Pedro Almodovar. Wes Anderson. Natalie Portman. Kristin Scott Thomas. Darren Aronofsky. Diane von Furstenberg. Julian Schnabel. Martin Scorsese. Tilda Swinton. Gael Garcia Bernal. Penelope Cruz. That makes me very sad. I mean, Darren Aronofsky? Really? I guess judging the person by the quality of their art is a bad idea. Thanks for reminding me, I guess.
The point I really want to make about the whole thing though is a thought experiment. Imagine that Roman Polanski is black. Now tell me how many years he would have been in prison as of today.
Any of you who have been following budget issues at UMD know that budget transparency has been a huge problem, with the actual budget under lock and key at Hornbake Library. When I asked the administration about it at the town hall, VP for Administrative Affairs Ann Wylie ($266,602/year, not bad Ann, not bad…) told me it was already online. I told her she was lying and President Mote clarified that anyone could see it at the library. Here was Wylie’s quote: “I’m not going to take the time to post it online to the world. I don’t feel that it’s my responsibility to put it online, to put our people’s salaries all over the nation. Why do I have to? I have no obligation to publish it.” Well Wylie might not feel she’s under an obligation, but I do. Here for the first time on the interwebs is the budget for the University of Maryland College Park. (Thanks to SGA legislator/student power organizer Kenton Stalder for going and getting this out of the vault. Buy him a beer and he’ll tell you how he did it.)
Keep it mind budget transparency isn’t just an end to itself. At nearly 900 pages and without a table of contents, this document is almost impossible to read and interpret. Budget transparency is important for a lot of reasons, but one important one is accountability and shared governance when it comes to cuts. Without the budget, there’s no way anyone but the administration can make realistic cut suggestions. Unfortunately, this budget isn’t nearly comprehensive enough. For instance, after a few cursory searches I found a budget line for nearly $5 million in outside consulting fees listed under student services. “Outside consultant” is not nearly good enough, where is this money going and could it be put to better use? We need major institutional reforms and asking everyone to pitch in for cuts without giving everyone the same knowledge in terms of where we could cut from is ridiculous and we shouldn’t stand for it. For some inspiration, here are some more students fighting for, among other things, budget transparency and shared governance:
Today was supposed to be the first day of classes for students at the Universities of California. Instead students, along with faculty and staff, will be walking out to protest cuts and a lack of budget transparency. Here’s my favorite part from the SF Gate article about the 14 arrests that happened at the regents meeting yesterday:
“‘Whose university? Our university!’ chanted dozens of UC students, alumni, faculty and staff who expressed fury at UC President Mark Yudof”
Amazing. To all the organizers on the Best Coast, you’re an inspiration to the rest of us, and keep up the good work. For those that want to know more, John at Cosmic Variance writes about why he’s walking out. Hopefully these are signs of a national movement to come, but until then I’m glad to say go bears, aggies, slugs, tritons and (sigh) bruins. UCSB can get on the list when they get a less-racist mascot.
It’s always nice when the media I consume develops any sort of thematic coherence. I figure if you read enough books, watch enough movies and listen to enough music, the three will sync up eventually and then you can write a post stitching them together into something that means something. This week and last, I happened to read, see and listen about one thing: masculinity. Last week I watched two documentaries which both ended up being about the same thing, despite starting in diametrically opposite places. The first was Bigger, Stronger, Faster made by former competitive weightlifter Chris Bell. The movie centers around Bell’s brothers, Mark and Mike, neither of whom have abandoned their dreams of stardom, whether in weightlifting or pro wrestling. Both Mark and Mike take illegal steroids and the ostensible purpose of the documentary is to investigate why they both ended up using while Chris ended up behind a camera. BSF is very well made and the director refuses to come to easy conclusions. He wants to know why his brothers wanted to do steroids in the first place, so he turns to American culture. I won’t try to summarize his analysis too much, but his basic conclusion is that steroids are dangerous because they’re too American. His brothers’ masculinity exists in a precarious place, threatening to deflate with failure or a decrease in bicep size. The struggle to keep up the illusion of fame and fortune right around the corner stretches both subject-brothers to their breaking points. The cultural emphasis on winning at all costs and domination is oppressive and leaves these men leaving stunted lives. The movie’s on NetFlix instant view and definitely worth a watch. It’s always exciting when an arbitrary movie turns out to be enjoyable, but I’m always a bit sad that it didn’t get wider distribution or more buzz.
The second documentary I saw was The King of Kong which is about Steve Wiebe’s challenge to classic arcade game legend Billy Mitchell’s Donkey Kong record. King also takes on the subject of victory at any costs, with Mitchell and his cronies – seriously, he has cronies – doing whatever they can in order to invalidate Weibe’s assault on a record that was supposed to be unassailable. Wiebe is an unemployed father who had consistently showed promise in a lot of areas but never reached his potential at anything. That is, until he took up Kong with the expressed intent of topping Billy’s record. The realm of classic video games just happens to act as the backdrop for the classic story of how the big fish in a small pond acts when another big fish shows up. The fact that the subject is something as stereotypically nerdy as classic video games creates a tension between the game’s infantile simplicity and the hyper-masculine power struggle. Wiebe and Mitchell’s need to hold the top score strips the game of any independent meaning and it becomes an empty vehicle for pure competition. Also on instant view, also worth a watch.
Shifting gears, has anyone heard the Kid Cudi album yet? I like his mixtape stuff, but the album is a whole different ballgame. He eschews a lot of rap conventions, both lyrically and musically. His beats and samples are ethereal and spacey – fitting for a CD called Man On The Moon. But what interests me most are his lyrics. Cudi is probably the only MC I’ve ever heard cop to being shy. His verses are full of pathos and alienation, and not in the one-”sensitive”-track-out-of-16 way. Take these lines from Man’s title track:
“They can’t comprehend/They even come close to understanding him/I guess if I was borin’ they would love me more/Guess if I was simple in the mind/Everything would be fine/Maybe if I was jerk to girls/Instead of being nice and speakin kind words/Then maybe it would be ok to say then/I wasn’t a good guy to begin with.”
He’s so alienated that he refers himself in the third person. Cudi’s most repeated theme in his lyrics is his existential distance from other people – he is the man on the Moon, orbiting the Earth but not of it. His lamentations wouldn’t be out-of-place in nerdcore, but Cudi doesn’t have any of the irony that characterizes the genre. He also lacks the self-conscious indie status of someone like Murs. The refrain of “No No Yeah Yeah No” in “Heart of a Lion” sounds like something John Cage would write if he was feeling particularly ambivalent. Instead of the stereotypical hip-hop aggression, Cudi seems to have an underlying fear of other people that he’s not afraid to voice. But his cerebral and introspective material doesn’t take away from his masculinity, he makes no apologies for being thoughtful. Cudi is a living argument that getting stoned and thinking about your place in the universe is just as manly as dealing drugs and threatening people. (Not that I’m done with music about dealing drugs and threatening people). Man On The Moon is getting hyped all over the place and well within the mainstream, so his 8th-grader-on-Kierkegaard rhymes don’t seem to be hurting his commercial viability. I’m not arguing for any sort of bogus trend, but if the album goes big, look for it to have some serious influence.
And now to the literary world. As part of my ongoing quest to read all of Percival Everett’s seven-dozen or so books, I read Grand Canyon, Inc. It’s the story of Rhino Tanner, a big game hunter and entrepreneur living the American dream. After making millions on a bet with the Sultan of Brunei, Rhino starts his plan to own the Grand Canyon. Rhino’s almost autistic devotion to a stereotype of masculinity leads him to succeed in a country that seems to value things like that. He builds an empire based on braggadocio, aggression and momentum until he gets in far over his head – literally at the bottom of a canyon. I couldn’t help thinking of our 43rd president, who shares Rhino’s insecure playground bully conception of what it is to be a man. Like the Bell brothers, Billy Mitchell and the U.S. economy, Tanner inflates himself into a hyperbolic vision who he is and must then maintain the perception. I won’t give away the ending, but we all know what happened with the economy…
Finally, I return to the silver screen with the film Big Fan which I saw with my dad at E Street this week. Patton Oswalt stars as Paul, a parking lot attendant who lives with his mom and lives for the New York Giants. He writes out his sports radio rants - the funniest moments of the film might be (for anyone who’s ever listen to sports radio) the fake intros for his favorite show – before reading them live nightly. Things take a turn for the ugly when Paul and his friend Sal (the always hilarious Kevin Corrigan) find themselves following Paul’s idol and Giants enforcer Quantrelle Bishop, who ends up putting Paul in the hospital with serious head injuries. Paul must struggle between the self he sees as part of the Giants organization (as in, “We really kicked ass on Sunday”) and the corporeal self that’s lying in the hospital. But as the movie develops, it becomes about much more than sports. When Paul’s family and the media start using racially charged insults at Bishop (thug, animal, monster, etc.) he angrily rejects them. When his brother the personal injury lawyer wants to sue, Paul refuses even though he could sure use the money. Paul’s mother asks him why he doesn’t have what his siblings have – a normal suburban life with a family, house and career. He shouts, “Because I don’t want that! I don’t want that! I don’t want that! I don’t want that!” His sports addiction is more than pathetic hero-worship, it’s the only way he can find true community outside structures of racism and greed. At the same time, it’s reliant upon artificial conflict, his nemesis is fellow radio caller Philadelphia Phil who seems like a slightly more vindictive Paul. Once again I don’t want to give away the ending, but Paul makes the audience aware that he understands that it’s a game, even if it’s not just one. The movie is written and directed by Robert D. Siegel, the writer behind last year’s best movie, The Wrestler. It’s his directorial debut and I’m looking forward to seeing more from him.
Like I said, I’m not asserting any sort of trend toward alternative forms of masculinity in our media or anything, but I thought it was interesting to see the different portrayals that popped up in my life over the past week or so. But normatively, I think it’s time America left the Bell bros/Billy Mitchell/Rhino Tanner masculinity behind. After the economic crisis and the fall of the hedge fund managers bragging about their 10 foot cocks, maybe it’s time we looked to Cudi’s introspective model or Paul’s collectivist solidarity as alternatives.
… is never something I thought I’d type. But still, if I were Taylor Swift, I’d find the next public event at which Kanye was speaking, then finagle my way backstage and get a mic and interrupt him. In fact, I’d do it like three or four times so he’d finally break down and scream to the Heavens, “I should have never fucked with Taylor Swift!” See how he likes it. Probably a lot because he really likes attention, but who cares? Would anyone get really mad if celebrities took themselves a little less seriously and started treating award shows like the jokes they are?
Of course there’s a gender angle to Kanye’s interruption, something tells me he would be less likely to grab the stage from Tim McGraw. But in general I have to say I’m in favor of more people running on stages and saying crazy shit. Sure, why not. She wasn’t accepting the PEN/Faulkner award or anything, it was the Video Music Awards. Music videos are now legitimizing shells for networks that mainly broadcast shows about formerly famous people and rich teenagers, it doesn’t matter. The only reason most of us knew they happened is because Kanye acted like a jackass. As for the president, spend more time talking trash about Max Baucus and less about things happening at the fucking Video Music Awards.
As for Kanye, in terms of both stage interruptions and music I’d rather listen to Big Baby Jesus:
- Jack Halberstam on Serena Williams and whiteness in tennis, always great when scholars give you stuff for free.
- Over at Kos, Devilstower has what some of us in the biz call a “radicalizing moment” reading Life Inc.
- McSweeney’s regular John Moe has what might be the best eulogy for David Foster Wallace I’ve ever read, or at least the one I identify with most.
- Apparently Gloria Steinem can still kick ass.
- My newest column in the Diamondback has one anonymous commenter (literally) raving: “Watch out! Malcolm is going to use his crazy organizing skills to bring people together to leave a flaming bag on Mote’s door step!”
- Lastly, before it goes viral, here’s my friend Patrick St. John’s N.W.A. remix of Joe Wilson’s interruption:
I, like a lot of Americans I’d imagine, did a lot of thinking about grief this weekend. And like a lot of Americans on the left, I have a lot of trouble mourning along with the rest of the country on 9/11. I have to admit I felt a certain anger when I walked past the campus flags at half-mast with two marines, heads bowed, standing beneath them silently all day. I feel almost confessional writing that sentence, we’re allowed to mock Rudy Giuliani’s single-minded and craven use of a national tragedy only as long as it’s grounded in a sincere practice of mourning on certain days. For me, grief for the victims of the September 11th attack will always be tied to its politicization. We all watched as bodies were still being dragged from wreckage as the president and the media turned misery into murderous vengeance. I can’t think about the innocent lives lost in New York, DC and Pennsylvania without bitterly thinking about the innocent lives lost in Afghanistan and Iraq. Every year on the 11th I feel ashamed at my inability to grieve without weighing and comparing suffering, something that can never be weighed or compared anyway. Every year I’m enraged at the leaders who made sure this country’s dominant response to being wounded was to lash out and victimize others, and in my name.
James Traub’s profile of J Street in the Times Magazine made me think about how politicization has the same effect when it comes to mourning victims of the Holocaust. The piece quickly goes from a view of J Street’s progressive location in the right-heavy Israel lobby spectrum to an investigation of how Jewish fear and grief is used in foreign policy. AIPAC and others on the right have used the memory of millions of dead Jews to perpetuate an oppressive apartheid system. For my whole life, this is how I’ve seen the Holocaust used. The disgust at seeing bloodshed met with bloodshed leaves me unable to isolate the event from its rhetorical functions. It seems like as long as we mourn with war, I can’t mourn in peace.
I haven’t read Judith Butler’s new book on grief, but Precarious Life really changed the way I look at dealing with deaths politically, and I’m looking forward to Frames of War. I hadn’t thought a lot about mourning and 9/11 until I heard Bill Clinton’s memorial speech after what was then the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, the Oklahoma City bombing:
Our words seem small beside the loss you have endured. But I found a few I wanted to share today. I’ve received a lot of letters in these last terrible days. One stood out because it came from a young widow and a mother of three whose own husband was murdered with over 200 other Americans when Pan Am 103 was shot down. Here is what that woman said I should say to you today:
The anger you feel is valid, but you must not allow yourselves to be consumed by it. The hurt you feel must not be allowed to turn into hate, but instead into the search for justice. The loss you feel must not paralyze your own lives. Instead, you must try to pay tribute to your loved ones by continuing to do all the things they left undone, thus ensuring they did not die in vain.
Wise words from one who also knows.
You have lost too much, but you have not lost everything. And you have certainly not lost America, for we will stand with you for as many tomorrows as it takes.
Let us let our own children know that we will stand against the forces of fear. When there is talk of hatred, let us stand up and talk against it. When there is talk of violence, let us stand up and talk against it. In the face of death, let us honor life. As St. Paul admonished us, Let us “not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
The full text is here courtesy of American Rhetoric. I don’t want to make this about term limits, but can you imagine what the World would look like if that’s what the president’s response to 9/11 had sounded like? And wouldn’t you rather live there?
perusing DCist’s gallery of 9/12 Teaparty pics, I found this one:
For right now I’m going to leave alone the child cruelty aspect in this picture and focus on grumpy lady and her sign. The quote, if you can’t quite make it out is “It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from the government.” Cute, right? Because the teabaggers are protecting us all from Barack Hussein Hitler Stalin Pol-Pot Goebbels Obama and his socialist fascist Nazi health care plan. Tom Paine, as a guy who had a strong distrust for the government, would clearly be on the side of the protesters.
The problem is that quote could be useful for anyone protesting anything the government does. Free Mumia? Works. Truthers? Absolutely. Revolutionary Communist Party? Why not? It’s a pretty generic quote. If the teabaggers want to be the ideological heirs to Tom Paine, they’re gonna have to do a little bit better. For some context, here’s what Paine proposed in Agrarian Justice:
“To create a national fund, out of which there shall be paid to every person, when arrived at the age of twenty-one years, the sum of fifteen pounds sterling, as a compensation in part, for the loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property. And also, the sum of ten pounds per annum, during life, to every person now living, of the age of fifty years, and to all others as they shall arrive at that age.”
That’s a national pension system and a general redistribution of wealth. And he suggested paying for it by levying a ten percent inheritance tax against property owners. That’s right, Tom Paine was in favor of the death tax. The ten pounds he’s talking about isn’t a small sum either, Wiki puts the average agricultural laborer’s yearly pay at 23 pounds. The truth is that Paine was a socialist revolutionary, the Democrats don’t get to use him, nevermind these teabag yahoos. I guess that’s the problem with being conservative, history always proves their ideological parents wrong. The new rule should be only Bernie Sanders (I-VT) supporters get to use Tom Paine quotes and everyone else has to go back to eighth-grade history class and learn their shit.
If Tim Pawlenty wants to have a debate about federalism, Jerry Nadler looks ready to give it to him.
As unenthusiastic as I am about gay marriage, the Defense of Marriage Act is offensive on constitutional and intellectual-honesty grounds. No one can look at DOMA and say it doesn’t violate the Full Faith and Credit Clause of Article IV without smirking in hateful glee, which is why Congress had to pass the lesser-known Marriage Protection Act in 2007 which amends the federal judicial code in order to gay-bash. They passed a law saying judges couldn’t assess DOMA’s constitutionality. Here’s a hint for lawmakers, if you have to pass a law saying judges can’t look at another law, that’s a good sign neither of them is a very good idea. Homophobes.
Last week I watched two documentaries which both ended up being about the same thing, despite starting in diametrically opposite places. The first was Bigger, Stronger, Faster made by former competitive weightlifter Chris Bell. The movie centers around Bell’s brothers, Mark and Mike, neither of whom have abandoned their dreams of stardom, whether in weightlifting or pro wrestling. Both Mark and Mike take illegal steroids and the ostensible purpose of the documentary is to investigate why they both ended up using while Chris ended up behind a camera. BSF is very well made and the director refuses to come to easy conclusions. He wants to know why his brothers wanted to do steroids in the first place, so he turns to American culture. I won’t try to summarize his analysis too much, but his basic conclusion is that steroids are dangerous because they’re too American. His brothers’ masculinity exists in a precarious place, threatening to deflate with failure or a decrease in bicep size. The struggle to keep up the illusion of fame and fortune right around the corner stretches both subject-brothers to their breaking points. The cultural emphasis on winning at all costs and domination is oppressive and leaves these men leaving stunted lives. The movie’s on NetFlix instant view and definitely worth a watch. It’s always exciting when an arbitrary movie turns out to be enjoyable, but I’m always a bit sad that it didn’t get wider distribution or more buzz.
