It occurred to me the other day--the entirety of our political discourse these days could be boiled down into the utterly brilliant "Argument Clinic" sketch from Python. With apologies to Cleese and Palin...
M: (Knock)
A: Come in.
M: Ah, Is this the right room for an argument?
A: I told you once.
M: No you haven't.
A: Yes I have.
M: When?
A: Just now.
M: No you didn't.
A: Yes I did.
M: You didn't
A: I did!
M: You didn't!
A: I'm telling you I did!
M: You did not!!
A: Oh, I'm sorry, just one moment. Is this a five minute argument or the full half hour?
M: Oh, just the five minutes.
A: Ah, thank you. Anyway, I did.
M: You most certainly did not.
A: Look, let's get this thing clear; I quite definitely told you.
M: No you did not.
A: Yes I did.
M: No you didn't.
A: Yes I did.
M: No you didn't.
A: Yes I did.
M: No you didn't.
A: Yes I did.
M: You didn't.
A: Did.
M: Oh look, this isn't an argument.
A: Yes it is.
M: No it isn't. It's just contradiction.
A: No it isn't.
M: It is!
A: It is not.
M: Look, you just contradicted me.
A: I did not.
M: Oh you did!!
A: No, no, no.
M: You did just then.
A: Nonsense!
M: Oh, this is futile!
A: No it isn't.
M: I came here for a good argument.
A: No you didn't; no, you came here for an argument.
M: An argument isn't just contradiction.
A: It can be.
M: No it can't. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.
A: No it isn't.
M: Yes it is! It's not just contradiction.
A: Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position.
M: Yes, but that's not just saying 'No it isn't.'
A: Yes it is!
M: No it isn't!
A: Yes it is!
M: An argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes.
(short pause)
A: No it isn't.
M: It is.
A: Not at all.
M: Now look.
A: (Rings bell) Good Morning.
M: What?
A: That's it. Good morning.
M: I was just getting interested.
A: Sorry, the five minutes is up.
M: That was never five minutes!
A: I'm afraid it was.
M: It wasn't.
Pause
A: I'm sorry, but I'm not allowed to argue anymore.
M: What?!
A: If you want me to go on arguing, you'll have to pay for another five minutes.
M: Yes, but that was never five minutes, just now. Oh come on!
A: (Hums)
M: Look, this is ridiculous.
A: I'm sorry, but I'm not allowed to argue unless you've paid!
M: Oh, all right.
(pays money)
A: Thank you.
short pause
M: Well?
A: Well what?
M: That wasn't really five minutes, just now.
A: I told you, I'm not allowed to argue unless you've paid.
M: I just paid!
A: No you didn't.
M: I DID!
A: No you didn't.
M: Look, I don't want to argue about that.
A: Well, you didn't pay.
M: Aha. If I didn't pay, why are you arguing? I Got you!
A: No you haven't.
M: Yes I have. If you're arguing, I must have paid.
A: Not necessarily. I could be arguing in my spare time.
M: Oh I've had enough of this.
A: No you haven't.
M: Oh Shut up.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Anchor Babies
I was going to write something about the most recent immigration nonsense, but Jon Stewart left me with absolutely nothing more to add. Enjoy.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Born in the U.S.A. | ||||
| ||||
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Refudiate
Oh my stars, I’m agreeing with Sarah Palin. Thus surely shall the world end.
Let us not for a moment pretend that our language is static. New words are added to various dictionaries every year, and every year old, no-longer-used words are removed. Sometimes the meaning of a word shifts over time (which is why “flammable” and “inflammable” mean the same thing), sometimes words are created from other words (anyone enjoying a “staycation” this year?), and sometimes a word is born from simple human mistake. (The word “glamor” is actually a 10th century corruption of “grammar,” reflecting a belief that people who could read and write were thought to have almost-magical powers, a meaning that has itself drifted with time.) Languages are fluid things, with lifespans (the Ako-Bo language of India’s Andaman Islands was declared extinct just this year). And although I have a particularly extensive knowledge of current spelling and grammatical rules in English, I have always been perfectly willing to break those rules when an occasion seems to call for it. (One of my heroes, Bernard Shaw, devised a grammatical system entirely his own, eliminating most uses of apostrophes, for instance, so that he wrote “isnt” rather than “isn’t.”)
Recently, Governor Palin tweeted the following:
Yes, we liberals are tempted to snicker. Plenty of us are snickering. But here’s the lie (actually there are two, but I’m going to focus on one): the ones snickering don’t actually give a damn about the sanctity of the language, they’re simply doing it to score points against Ms. Palin’s policies. No great surprise, but it’s unjust and unfair and dishonest, and I don’t care who’s doing it, a lie is a lie and my job here is to call people out on lies. Even if that means taking the side of Sarah Palin.
(By the way: the second lie came when Governor Palin went back and corrected her tweet so that it says “refute,” which is correct. [Although “repudiate” would have actually been the better choice.] The usual practice with such things is to leave the original as it was and to add a notation afterward that the usage was in error, or that new information has been received. She should have done that. But it’s an easily-understood, human temptation to want to simply fix something so silly rather than have it live out there, so I’m really not bothered by it at all.)
But then a little later, the Governor tweeted this, as justification:
Okay, now she’s pushing it. Yes, Shakespeare did indeed make up new words. (And for that matter, in Shakespeare’s time even spelling was more fluid than it is today—there are multiple spellings of the Bard’s own name that survive, including “Shackspere” and “Shaxpere.”) But inventing words in a literary context, where the invention is deliberate and considered (see Shakespeare, see Joyce, and so on) is a very different thing from using a word incorrectly in a political context and then trying to pretend that it wasn’t a mistake but was instead part of some grand tradition of linguistic invention. That’s simply politics piled on top of politics; a lie on top of another lie. (Like turtles, they go all the way down.) There’s also a difference between Ms. Palin and the second President Bush, both of whom “coined” new words because they don’t particularly know or care about the language except to the extent that it can be used as a political tool, and Obama’s “wee-wee’d up,” an odd expression to be sure but no one doubts that this president understands the language and sometimes uses it colloquially (and deliberately, with consideration) for effect. Language is a living thing, yes, but politics is still politics and let’s please not pretend that it ain’t.
Okay, good. I’ve managed to work my way back around to criticizing Sarah Palin. I feel much better now.
Let us not for a moment pretend that our language is static. New words are added to various dictionaries every year, and every year old, no-longer-used words are removed. Sometimes the meaning of a word shifts over time (which is why “flammable” and “inflammable” mean the same thing), sometimes words are created from other words (anyone enjoying a “staycation” this year?), and sometimes a word is born from simple human mistake. (The word “glamor” is actually a 10th century corruption of “grammar,” reflecting a belief that people who could read and write were thought to have almost-magical powers, a meaning that has itself drifted with time.) Languages are fluid things, with lifespans (the Ako-Bo language of India’s Andaman Islands was declared extinct just this year). And although I have a particularly extensive knowledge of current spelling and grammatical rules in English, I have always been perfectly willing to break those rules when an occasion seems to call for it. (One of my heroes, Bernard Shaw, devised a grammatical system entirely his own, eliminating most uses of apostrophes, for instance, so that he wrote “isnt” rather than “isn’t.”)
Recently, Governor Palin tweeted the following:
Peaceful New Yorkers, pls refudiate the Ground Zero mosque plan if you believe catastrophic pain caused @ Twin Towers site is too raw, too real
Yes, we liberals are tempted to snicker. Plenty of us are snickering. But here’s the lie (actually there are two, but I’m going to focus on one): the ones snickering don’t actually give a damn about the sanctity of the language, they’re simply doing it to score points against Ms. Palin’s policies. No great surprise, but it’s unjust and unfair and dishonest, and I don’t care who’s doing it, a lie is a lie and my job here is to call people out on lies. Even if that means taking the side of Sarah Palin.
(By the way: the second lie came when Governor Palin went back and corrected her tweet so that it says “refute,” which is correct. [Although “repudiate” would have actually been the better choice.] The usual practice with such things is to leave the original as it was and to add a notation afterward that the usage was in error, or that new information has been received. She should have done that. But it’s an easily-understood, human temptation to want to simply fix something so silly rather than have it live out there, so I’m really not bothered by it at all.)
But then a little later, the Governor tweeted this, as justification:
“Refudiate,” “misunderestimate,” “wee-wee'd up.” English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!
Okay, now she’s pushing it. Yes, Shakespeare did indeed make up new words. (And for that matter, in Shakespeare’s time even spelling was more fluid than it is today—there are multiple spellings of the Bard’s own name that survive, including “Shackspere” and “Shaxpere.”) But inventing words in a literary context, where the invention is deliberate and considered (see Shakespeare, see Joyce, and so on) is a very different thing from using a word incorrectly in a political context and then trying to pretend that it wasn’t a mistake but was instead part of some grand tradition of linguistic invention. That’s simply politics piled on top of politics; a lie on top of another lie. (Like turtles, they go all the way down.) There’s also a difference between Ms. Palin and the second President Bush, both of whom “coined” new words because they don’t particularly know or care about the language except to the extent that it can be used as a political tool, and Obama’s “wee-wee’d up,” an odd expression to be sure but no one doubts that this president understands the language and sometimes uses it colloquially (and deliberately, with consideration) for effect. Language is a living thing, yes, but politics is still politics and let’s please not pretend that it ain’t.
Okay, good. I’ve managed to work my way back around to criticizing Sarah Palin. I feel much better now.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
The Big Lie
There is no such thing as heresy. No such thing as a “wrong thought.” You might take an action that society as a whole has deemed wrong, like killing a person, but I must maintain that the idea of killing a person is only wrong when put into action. (How many times have you thought “I’m gonna kill that sonofabitch” but not actually done it? Thousands of times, probably. This is okay, it’s really truly okay.)
Thought has to remain free. As in Socratic dialogue, it’s the tension between orthodoxy and what is labeled heresy that ultimately yields new ideas, new truths. If orthodoxy is never challenged, it stagnates and dies (and does a lot of damage in the process); and heresy is only heretical when it has an orthodoxy against which it can push. (Galileo springs to mind here.) The Catholic church tried very hard, through the burning of heretics and so forth, to suppress what it considered wrong thought; the Protestant Reformation happened anyway, and it can be argued that it happened more forcefully because of the attempts to suppress it. Thousands of lives, horribly wasted (burning, hanging, disemboweling, the whole bloody host of inventive ways they found to make someone not only die, but die hideously), all in a fruitless attempt to suppress an idea.
Let me be as clear as I possibly can:
The only way to effectively counter an idea is with a better idea. Period.
I bring this up because I was watching a documentary the other day, and one of the people interviewed said something that resonated: “We are dying of literalism.” By literalism, she meant all those groups that believe in, and take action on, the notion that only a literal reading of primary religious texts can be accepted. Jesus literally walked on water because the Gospels of John, Matthew and Mark say he did; Jerusalem must belong to the Muslims because the 17th sura of the Quran tells us that it was in Jerusalem that Muhammad began his night journey. And so forth.
These literalist groups include the jihadists who plotted and carried out the attacks of September 11th, influenced by—and taking action because of—the work of Sayyid Qutb, who wrote “The Prophet—peace be on him—clearly stated that, according to the Shari'ah, ‘to obey’ is ‘to worship.’ . . . Anyone who serves someone other than God [i.e., any secular government] in this sense is outside God's religion, although he may claim to profess this religion.” It also includes the current Texas GOP Party Platform, which declares that the party supports “the historic concept, established by our nations’ founders, of limited civil government jurisdiction under the natural laws of God, and repudiates the humanistic doctrine that the state is sovereign over the affairs of men, the family and the church.”
The original documents come from God and are therefore infallible. Anything that comes after is the work of man and therefore fallible. Thus thousands of years of thought get discarded instantly, and millions of “heretics” die in support of rigid orthodoxy. All in pursuit of something that only pretends to be truth, but is more pernicious than that: certainty. And, of course, that other word that begins with a C: control.
My overwhelming problem with the Bible is its endless emphasis upon blind obedience. Here I focus upon the Bible only because it is the text with which I am most familiar, but I’m pretty confident that the Quran has this flaw as well. (Certainly Qutb believes it does, except that to him blind obedience is not a flaw but an imperative.) Here’s the example that really leaped out at me when I read it, coming from probably my least favorite book of the Bible, Leviticus (Chapter 10): the sons of the high priest Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, perform a ceremony wrong. They offer incense in an “unlawful” manner. And for this, God burns them to death.
What do I take from this? Don’t interpret. Don’t think for yourself. Don’t ever dare to try something different from the way it has always been done. Individual thought and initiative will be punished; blind conformity will be rewarded.
It is impossible to overstate the enormity of my reaction against such a lesson. And the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, is full of this crap. Samson is told, do not allow anyone to cut your hair. The hair has nothing to do with anything, it’s just an arbitrary instruction, a way for YHWH to test his subject’s obedience. But of course Samson blabs, the hair gets cut, and so God strips him of his great strength and allows him to be captured and tortured. That’s what disobedience will get you. And of course Samson, suffering greatly, then relents and conforms, and is given his strength back—so that he can then get bloody, un-Christlike revenge on his tormentors (and die himself in the process).
Get thee hence from me! I care not for what thou wilt teach!
But for thousands, tens of thousands, millions of people, the Bible, the Torah and the Quran are the literal words of God and must be obeyed. Don’t worry about the parts that contradict each other, the priests will sort that out. Just obey. Only obey. Never think for yourself, never do anything but obey. And by the way, since the priests and rabbis and mullahs are chosen by God to carry out his will, you should go ahead and obey them too.
Which of course brings us to control. Once you’ve got your people conditioned to blind obedience, controlling them is easy. (That’s why Hitler created the cult of himself and insisted upon perfect loyalty. It worked like crazy.) The Palestinians already have a homeland, it’s called the Kingdom of Jordan. But they’ve been told that only the land currently called Israel is allowable in the eyes of God, and the result is decades of murders and reprisals and wars. (Similarly, the Israelis were offered other lands to settle after World War II, but only that land, the land promised to them by God, would do. With the results that we have seen ever since 1948.)
We are dying of literalism. And yes, I understand the whole notion of letting go your conscious self and surrendering to something greater, but the Buddhists manage this just fine without going out and killing thousands of people. (Well, mostly. There is such a thing as a “militant Buddhist,” believe it or not, which simply demonstrates that anyone can be lied to and manipulated, anyone can succumb to hideous literalism.)
There is nothing wrong with myths, nothing at all. We’ve been conditioned to think of a myth as something false, but it isn’t false, it’s simply a story that probably didn’t happen in real, literal life, but that nonetheless has instructive value. The tale of Icarus flying too close to the sun loses none of its resonance and power because it’s a myth—and the tale of Jesus walking on water wouldn’t either, if only we could detach it from dogma. If only people could accept that something doesn’t have to actually happen for it to be true.
Thought has to remain free. As in Socratic dialogue, it’s the tension between orthodoxy and what is labeled heresy that ultimately yields new ideas, new truths. If orthodoxy is never challenged, it stagnates and dies (and does a lot of damage in the process); and heresy is only heretical when it has an orthodoxy against which it can push. (Galileo springs to mind here.) The Catholic church tried very hard, through the burning of heretics and so forth, to suppress what it considered wrong thought; the Protestant Reformation happened anyway, and it can be argued that it happened more forcefully because of the attempts to suppress it. Thousands of lives, horribly wasted (burning, hanging, disemboweling, the whole bloody host of inventive ways they found to make someone not only die, but die hideously), all in a fruitless attempt to suppress an idea.
Let me be as clear as I possibly can:
The only way to effectively counter an idea is with a better idea. Period.
I bring this up because I was watching a documentary the other day, and one of the people interviewed said something that resonated: “We are dying of literalism.” By literalism, she meant all those groups that believe in, and take action on, the notion that only a literal reading of primary religious texts can be accepted. Jesus literally walked on water because the Gospels of John, Matthew and Mark say he did; Jerusalem must belong to the Muslims because the 17th sura of the Quran tells us that it was in Jerusalem that Muhammad began his night journey. And so forth.
These literalist groups include the jihadists who plotted and carried out the attacks of September 11th, influenced by—and taking action because of—the work of Sayyid Qutb, who wrote “The Prophet—peace be on him—clearly stated that, according to the Shari'ah, ‘to obey’ is ‘to worship.’ . . . Anyone who serves someone other than God [i.e., any secular government] in this sense is outside God's religion, although he may claim to profess this religion.” It also includes the current Texas GOP Party Platform, which declares that the party supports “the historic concept, established by our nations’ founders, of limited civil government jurisdiction under the natural laws of God, and repudiates the humanistic doctrine that the state is sovereign over the affairs of men, the family and the church.”
The original documents come from God and are therefore infallible. Anything that comes after is the work of man and therefore fallible. Thus thousands of years of thought get discarded instantly, and millions of “heretics” die in support of rigid orthodoxy. All in pursuit of something that only pretends to be truth, but is more pernicious than that: certainty. And, of course, that other word that begins with a C: control.
My overwhelming problem with the Bible is its endless emphasis upon blind obedience. Here I focus upon the Bible only because it is the text with which I am most familiar, but I’m pretty confident that the Quran has this flaw as well. (Certainly Qutb believes it does, except that to him blind obedience is not a flaw but an imperative.) Here’s the example that really leaped out at me when I read it, coming from probably my least favorite book of the Bible, Leviticus (Chapter 10): the sons of the high priest Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, perform a ceremony wrong. They offer incense in an “unlawful” manner. And for this, God burns them to death.
What do I take from this? Don’t interpret. Don’t think for yourself. Don’t ever dare to try something different from the way it has always been done. Individual thought and initiative will be punished; blind conformity will be rewarded.
It is impossible to overstate the enormity of my reaction against such a lesson. And the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, is full of this crap. Samson is told, do not allow anyone to cut your hair. The hair has nothing to do with anything, it’s just an arbitrary instruction, a way for YHWH to test his subject’s obedience. But of course Samson blabs, the hair gets cut, and so God strips him of his great strength and allows him to be captured and tortured. That’s what disobedience will get you. And of course Samson, suffering greatly, then relents and conforms, and is given his strength back—so that he can then get bloody, un-Christlike revenge on his tormentors (and die himself in the process).
Get thee hence from me! I care not for what thou wilt teach!
But for thousands, tens of thousands, millions of people, the Bible, the Torah and the Quran are the literal words of God and must be obeyed. Don’t worry about the parts that contradict each other, the priests will sort that out. Just obey. Only obey. Never think for yourself, never do anything but obey. And by the way, since the priests and rabbis and mullahs are chosen by God to carry out his will, you should go ahead and obey them too.
Which of course brings us to control. Once you’ve got your people conditioned to blind obedience, controlling them is easy. (That’s why Hitler created the cult of himself and insisted upon perfect loyalty. It worked like crazy.) The Palestinians already have a homeland, it’s called the Kingdom of Jordan. But they’ve been told that only the land currently called Israel is allowable in the eyes of God, and the result is decades of murders and reprisals and wars. (Similarly, the Israelis were offered other lands to settle after World War II, but only that land, the land promised to them by God, would do. With the results that we have seen ever since 1948.)
We are dying of literalism. And yes, I understand the whole notion of letting go your conscious self and surrendering to something greater, but the Buddhists manage this just fine without going out and killing thousands of people. (Well, mostly. There is such a thing as a “militant Buddhist,” believe it or not, which simply demonstrates that anyone can be lied to and manipulated, anyone can succumb to hideous literalism.)
There is nothing wrong with myths, nothing at all. We’ve been conditioned to think of a myth as something false, but it isn’t false, it’s simply a story that probably didn’t happen in real, literal life, but that nonetheless has instructive value. The tale of Icarus flying too close to the sun loses none of its resonance and power because it’s a myth—and the tale of Jesus walking on water wouldn’t either, if only we could detach it from dogma. If only people could accept that something doesn’t have to actually happen for it to be true.
Friday, June 11, 2010
The Limits of Personhood
Intellectually, I understand the argument the Supreme Court has been making lately regarding limits on corporate spending in an election. And if I’m honest, I have to admit that they have a point, that there was a potentially dangerous precedent being set in the original language of McCain-Feingold. (I’ll get to that in a minute.) But we’ve already seen one example of corporate spending run amok in the California battle over Proposition 16, and it won’t be the last by any means.
The recent Citizens United decision revolves around the question of whether a corporation has the same nearly-unlimited right to free speech that an individual person does. Specifically, an organization wanted to run a documentary called Hillary: The Movie on DirecTV during the 2008 primary season. There was general agreement that this film was more anti-Hillary propaganda than actual documentary, so the lower courts blocked it (and commercials advertising it) from being broadcast. Personally, and I say this without having actually seen Hillary: The Movie, I think they should have just let the movie be broadcast and relied on the marketplace to determine its value as a piece of election propaganda. If it was a bad movie, which it probably was, no one’s gonna care and it won’t make much impact beyond those who already agree with its viewpoint. (There have been, for instance, several attempts to balance Michael Moore’s documentaries with ones from the conservative side of the fence--they all fail because, simply enough, the documentarians aren’t half as good at it as Michael Moore is. Content is content, but content plus quality is one helluva combination.)
But once the case reached the Supreme Court, following the lead of First Amendment activists like Laurence Tribe (who argued on behalf of Citizens United), a majority of justices decided, in a marked change of position, that yes, money equals speech and speech is protected and if a corporation has a lot of money then they get to have a whole lot of protected free speech. Meaning that they can electioneer however they want to, as much as they want to. Those who worry about the effects of big-money donations on elections and governance turned twenty shades of pale.
See, the thing is, there have always been limits on corporate speech, just as there are limits on individual speech (the famous “Don’t shout ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theatre exception, for instance). And chief among the limits on corporate speech has been a limitation on corporate electioneering.
When I ran a non-profit theatre company, we were able to avoid a host of regulations and requirements simply because we never indulged in electioneering, that is to say, we never advocated for or against any one candidate, party or position. And that was perfectly fine with me: as an individual I can support whomever I want, but I see no reason why any company with which I’m involved should also get involved in the political process. Companies, after all, are in the end collections of individuals, and each of those individuals has, as a birthright, a vote in every election held after he or she reaches the age of majority. (By the way: denying the vote to someone under 18 is another limitation on an individual’s free speech that we all accept.) But extending that right to my company seems like it would effectively double my vote in a way that is blatantly unfair.
Here’s the obvious example. If a corporation, as a person, is entitled to all of a person’s rights, then shouldn’t a corporation be allowed to step into a booth and vote? (Even weirder: could a corporation get married?) And what if the corporation is a conglomerate with lots of subsidiaries? Does American Express Company get a vote, and American Express Bank FSB, and so on? Assuming each entity gets a single vote (the “one man/one vote” principle), who actually decides upon and casts that vote? If Joe CEO is designated the vote-maker for a corporation, the one who actually goes into the booth and casts a vote, then he is also entitled, as an individual, to go into that same booth and cast his own vote. Now, suddenly we’ve violated the principle: now it’s one man with two votes.
So this notion of corporate personhood must have some limitation (particularly since corporations are essentially eternal and never die, thus differentiating them yet further from mere mortals), and it simply becomes a question of deciding which limitations we want to impose. I would not for a second suggest that corporations be barred from the same rights against illegal search and seizure that apply to individuals, for instance--but why can’t we carve out the whole issue of elections as an area where corporate personhood has specific limits? Just as we’ve always done.
(It must be admitted that there have always been ways for corporations to get around these rules. All they have to do is create a Political Action Committee and give it a lot of money, and that entity does the actual electioneering, thus neatly bypassing the prohibitions in McCain-Feingold. Prop 16 was sponsored by a PAC called Californians to Protect Our Right to Vote, which of course got most of its money from Pacific Gas & Electric. But that’s just a loophole, and it can be closed--if the entire principle is deemed unconstitutional, however, there’s no way to close the floodgates without an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which is a mighty high wall to climb.)
The question then becomes, if we have for our entire history carved out this limitation on corporate personhood, why make a change now? Why is it that the Citizens United decision was so quickly followed by an order in the McComish matter, just this week, that blocked the State of Arizona from providing matching funds to candidates who have opted into their Clean Elections program? (It’s a public-financing program designed to reduce the impact of big-money donations.)
The court sure seems to have decided that there are no limits on corporate personhood--but they also seem to have decided that local governments, even though they too are organizations of individuals much like corporations, are limited. After all, if the State of Arizona has decided it’s in the public interest to provide a voluntary program offering financing to individuals running for elected office, provided they agree not to accept corporate money, then the court saying that program must be stopped would surely destroy the state’s right to free speech as well, wouldn’t it?
Thus, even as the Supremes extend the notion of personhood in one direction, they seem to be choking it off in another--and both instances heavily favor corporations. Clearly, something is seriously wrong there.
But here’s the problem.
If we decide that a corporation can’t electioneer, then what are we to do with advocacy groups like MoveOn.org on the left or The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association on the right? They electioneer all the time, that’s pretty much their whole reason for being. The original language of McCain-Feingold suggests that any and all electioneering, by any form of corporation or union, within thirty days of an election must be prohibited. Non-profits like MoveOn.org would definitely be included in that ban, if I’m reading it correctly. And the argument made before the Supreme Court was that the ban could be extended to any form of communication, including books and emails. Would Random House be prohibited from selling already-printed copies of books about Hillary Clinton if she was running for office? And would every item of that sort have to be screened by some panel to determined whether it amounted to electioneering? So I can see why the court was a little taken aback by that--but I also think their reaction was a bit much.
Because again, it’s about balance. The limitation on corporate electioneering we’ve always had is not an absolute, black-and-white sort of deal; rather, if you decide your organization is going into that business, then a whole host of new regulations and requirements will arise to govern your conduct. The Howard Jarvis organization can present materials to the public advocating a position, but it will have to abide by the rules. My old theatre company, however, can ignore those rules because it never does any electioneering. It’s a status quo that constantly needs adjustment and refinement, and certainly that’s annoying, and there will always be cases that test the limits of the various restrictions in place, just as Hillary: The Movie did. But I see no reason to entirely throw over those restrictions entirely just because, from to time, they get a little tricky.
And that’s exactly what the Roberts court did: Citizens United actually afforded them an opportunity to make a narrow decision only affecting the question of whether the documentary could be shown, without upsetting a couple centuries of precedent. But Roberts and his cohorts, completely belying the whole notion of judicial restraint they supposedly care so much about, went out of their way to do exactly that, to overturn an entire host of well-established precedents. To declare, boldly, that corporations are now free to say whatever the hell they want, and to spend as much money as they want in order to do that. One man/one vote was chucked right out the window.
I can’t escape the impression that there is a whopper of a lie being told here, when the Court says it’s looking out for everyone’s free-speech rights by making those rights as broad as possible, when in fact the real consequence is that corporations will be able to drown out free, protected speech by ordinary citizens who can’t hope to match a corporation’s resources. And here’s where Prop 16 serves as such a potent example: Pacific Gas & Electric spent something like $46 million flooding the airwaves with commercials that were well-crafted lies; their opponents were able to spend about a buck-fifty trying to counter those arguments.
You might well argue here that Prop 16 lost. And yes, it did. PG&E was defeated. They spent a ton of money and they lost. So surely this notion of corporate spending isn’t such a big deal. But remember, the measure lost by a very narrow margin, as I noted the other day. An utter falsehood that was transparent to a lot of people at first glance still drew 48% of the vote. It should have been laughed out of the room; instead it got nearly two million votes.
Don’t for a second think that the PG&Es of the world will look at this example and decide they shouldn’t bother trying anymore. They’ll simply spend more money next time. They’ll refine their propaganda techniques. They will lose some battles, but they’ll probably win more than they lose, and then you’ll find that you’re living in a world where your voice, your vote means nothing and the corporations get to do whatever the hell they damn well please, because they control the election process.
We’re close enough to that scary place already. I dread the thought of moving even farther in that direction.
The recent Citizens United decision revolves around the question of whether a corporation has the same nearly-unlimited right to free speech that an individual person does. Specifically, an organization wanted to run a documentary called Hillary: The Movie on DirecTV during the 2008 primary season. There was general agreement that this film was more anti-Hillary propaganda than actual documentary, so the lower courts blocked it (and commercials advertising it) from being broadcast. Personally, and I say this without having actually seen Hillary: The Movie, I think they should have just let the movie be broadcast and relied on the marketplace to determine its value as a piece of election propaganda. If it was a bad movie, which it probably was, no one’s gonna care and it won’t make much impact beyond those who already agree with its viewpoint. (There have been, for instance, several attempts to balance Michael Moore’s documentaries with ones from the conservative side of the fence--they all fail because, simply enough, the documentarians aren’t half as good at it as Michael Moore is. Content is content, but content plus quality is one helluva combination.)
But once the case reached the Supreme Court, following the lead of First Amendment activists like Laurence Tribe (who argued on behalf of Citizens United), a majority of justices decided, in a marked change of position, that yes, money equals speech and speech is protected and if a corporation has a lot of money then they get to have a whole lot of protected free speech. Meaning that they can electioneer however they want to, as much as they want to. Those who worry about the effects of big-money donations on elections and governance turned twenty shades of pale.
See, the thing is, there have always been limits on corporate speech, just as there are limits on individual speech (the famous “Don’t shout ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theatre exception, for instance). And chief among the limits on corporate speech has been a limitation on corporate electioneering.
When I ran a non-profit theatre company, we were able to avoid a host of regulations and requirements simply because we never indulged in electioneering, that is to say, we never advocated for or against any one candidate, party or position. And that was perfectly fine with me: as an individual I can support whomever I want, but I see no reason why any company with which I’m involved should also get involved in the political process. Companies, after all, are in the end collections of individuals, and each of those individuals has, as a birthright, a vote in every election held after he or she reaches the age of majority. (By the way: denying the vote to someone under 18 is another limitation on an individual’s free speech that we all accept.) But extending that right to my company seems like it would effectively double my vote in a way that is blatantly unfair.
Here’s the obvious example. If a corporation, as a person, is entitled to all of a person’s rights, then shouldn’t a corporation be allowed to step into a booth and vote? (Even weirder: could a corporation get married?) And what if the corporation is a conglomerate with lots of subsidiaries? Does American Express Company get a vote, and American Express Bank FSB, and so on? Assuming each entity gets a single vote (the “one man/one vote” principle), who actually decides upon and casts that vote? If Joe CEO is designated the vote-maker for a corporation, the one who actually goes into the booth and casts a vote, then he is also entitled, as an individual, to go into that same booth and cast his own vote. Now, suddenly we’ve violated the principle: now it’s one man with two votes.
So this notion of corporate personhood must have some limitation (particularly since corporations are essentially eternal and never die, thus differentiating them yet further from mere mortals), and it simply becomes a question of deciding which limitations we want to impose. I would not for a second suggest that corporations be barred from the same rights against illegal search and seizure that apply to individuals, for instance--but why can’t we carve out the whole issue of elections as an area where corporate personhood has specific limits? Just as we’ve always done.
(It must be admitted that there have always been ways for corporations to get around these rules. All they have to do is create a Political Action Committee and give it a lot of money, and that entity does the actual electioneering, thus neatly bypassing the prohibitions in McCain-Feingold. Prop 16 was sponsored by a PAC called Californians to Protect Our Right to Vote, which of course got most of its money from Pacific Gas & Electric. But that’s just a loophole, and it can be closed--if the entire principle is deemed unconstitutional, however, there’s no way to close the floodgates without an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which is a mighty high wall to climb.)
The question then becomes, if we have for our entire history carved out this limitation on corporate personhood, why make a change now? Why is it that the Citizens United decision was so quickly followed by an order in the McComish matter, just this week, that blocked the State of Arizona from providing matching funds to candidates who have opted into their Clean Elections program? (It’s a public-financing program designed to reduce the impact of big-money donations.)
The court sure seems to have decided that there are no limits on corporate personhood--but they also seem to have decided that local governments, even though they too are organizations of individuals much like corporations, are limited. After all, if the State of Arizona has decided it’s in the public interest to provide a voluntary program offering financing to individuals running for elected office, provided they agree not to accept corporate money, then the court saying that program must be stopped would surely destroy the state’s right to free speech as well, wouldn’t it?
Thus, even as the Supremes extend the notion of personhood in one direction, they seem to be choking it off in another--and both instances heavily favor corporations. Clearly, something is seriously wrong there.
But here’s the problem.
If we decide that a corporation can’t electioneer, then what are we to do with advocacy groups like MoveOn.org on the left or The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association on the right? They electioneer all the time, that’s pretty much their whole reason for being. The original language of McCain-Feingold suggests that any and all electioneering, by any form of corporation or union, within thirty days of an election must be prohibited. Non-profits like MoveOn.org would definitely be included in that ban, if I’m reading it correctly. And the argument made before the Supreme Court was that the ban could be extended to any form of communication, including books and emails. Would Random House be prohibited from selling already-printed copies of books about Hillary Clinton if she was running for office? And would every item of that sort have to be screened by some panel to determined whether it amounted to electioneering? So I can see why the court was a little taken aback by that--but I also think their reaction was a bit much.
Because again, it’s about balance. The limitation on corporate electioneering we’ve always had is not an absolute, black-and-white sort of deal; rather, if you decide your organization is going into that business, then a whole host of new regulations and requirements will arise to govern your conduct. The Howard Jarvis organization can present materials to the public advocating a position, but it will have to abide by the rules. My old theatre company, however, can ignore those rules because it never does any electioneering. It’s a status quo that constantly needs adjustment and refinement, and certainly that’s annoying, and there will always be cases that test the limits of the various restrictions in place, just as Hillary: The Movie did. But I see no reason to entirely throw over those restrictions entirely just because, from to time, they get a little tricky.
And that’s exactly what the Roberts court did: Citizens United actually afforded them an opportunity to make a narrow decision only affecting the question of whether the documentary could be shown, without upsetting a couple centuries of precedent. But Roberts and his cohorts, completely belying the whole notion of judicial restraint they supposedly care so much about, went out of their way to do exactly that, to overturn an entire host of well-established precedents. To declare, boldly, that corporations are now free to say whatever the hell they want, and to spend as much money as they want in order to do that. One man/one vote was chucked right out the window.
I can’t escape the impression that there is a whopper of a lie being told here, when the Court says it’s looking out for everyone’s free-speech rights by making those rights as broad as possible, when in fact the real consequence is that corporations will be able to drown out free, protected speech by ordinary citizens who can’t hope to match a corporation’s resources. And here’s where Prop 16 serves as such a potent example: Pacific Gas & Electric spent something like $46 million flooding the airwaves with commercials that were well-crafted lies; their opponents were able to spend about a buck-fifty trying to counter those arguments.
You might well argue here that Prop 16 lost. And yes, it did. PG&E was defeated. They spent a ton of money and they lost. So surely this notion of corporate spending isn’t such a big deal. But remember, the measure lost by a very narrow margin, as I noted the other day. An utter falsehood that was transparent to a lot of people at first glance still drew 48% of the vote. It should have been laughed out of the room; instead it got nearly two million votes.
Don’t for a second think that the PG&Es of the world will look at this example and decide they shouldn’t bother trying anymore. They’ll simply spend more money next time. They’ll refine their propaganda techniques. They will lose some battles, but they’ll probably win more than they lose, and then you’ll find that you’re living in a world where your voice, your vote means nothing and the corporations get to do whatever the hell they damn well please, because they control the election process.
We’re close enough to that scary place already. I dread the thought of moving even farther in that direction.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
UPDATE: That One Can Smile...
O great triumph of all that is good and right!
California's Proposition 16, about which I wrote before, has been defeated.
But not by much. This blatantly offensive power grab by a power company was defeated by only 185,000 votes out of nearly four million cast, a 52-48% margin. Clearly, then, my blog entry made a crucial difference as all twelve of my readers went out there and--aww, who'm I kidding?
Actually--I don't think it's too great a reach to suggest that this victory is also a victory for the internet. In the old days, if a utility company like PG&E had spent that much money to blanket the airwaves as they did, and if their opponents (i.e. the good guys) had been unable to come close to the $40+ million that PG&E spent, that would have effectively meant that PG&E was the only guy talking in the room. Which would have meant that only their viewpoint was being expressed, and they would have won easily.
But we have the internet, and for very little money the good guys were able to disseminate clear, specific information about exactly why Prop 16 was so pernicious and evil. And they were able to reach just enough people to eke out a narrow victory.
I'll be writing soon about the internet itself, and the lies being told by the telephone companies who want to make the internet less open and free, but for now there is a victory to relish.
Oh, and one last thing.
Pacific Gas & Electric? Bite me.
California's Proposition 16, about which I wrote before, has been defeated.
But not by much. This blatantly offensive power grab by a power company was defeated by only 185,000 votes out of nearly four million cast, a 52-48% margin. Clearly, then, my blog entry made a crucial difference as all twelve of my readers went out there and--aww, who'm I kidding?
Actually--I don't think it's too great a reach to suggest that this victory is also a victory for the internet. In the old days, if a utility company like PG&E had spent that much money to blanket the airwaves as they did, and if their opponents (i.e. the good guys) had been unable to come close to the $40+ million that PG&E spent, that would have effectively meant that PG&E was the only guy talking in the room. Which would have meant that only their viewpoint was being expressed, and they would have won easily.
But we have the internet, and for very little money the good guys were able to disseminate clear, specific information about exactly why Prop 16 was so pernicious and evil. And they were able to reach just enough people to eke out a narrow victory.
I'll be writing soon about the internet itself, and the lies being told by the telephone companies who want to make the internet less open and free, but for now there is a victory to relish.
Oh, and one last thing.
Pacific Gas & Electric? Bite me.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
One Thing is Certain...
...There’s no such thing as certainty.
Any good scientist will tell you that, scientifically speaking, nothing is ever proved. There is nothing in the universe that can be predicted with 100% certainty. My favorite example: we cannot say for sure that the sun will rise tomorrow. We just can’t. And that’s not because of a semantic nit-picking over the fact that the sun doesn’t actually rise, it’s because we can’t be altogether certain that our sun won’t go and explode on us without warning, in which case we’ve all been vaporized and no one will ever see a morning again, ever.
But what we can say is that the probability of the sun rising tomorrow is extremely high. So high that I think it’s safe to say we’re all pretty damn confident that this morning’s sunrise will be followed by another one tomorrow.
So when we talk about something as being proved, what we’re really talking about is probability. The likelihood that, based on a great deal of consistent observation, something will behave as it has behaved in the past. The earth will probably continue to rotate and the sun will probably continue to blaze forth way up there, and there’s no point in worrying about something so unlikely as a supernova.
Which is exactly why proof, or the demand for it, can be used as a lie.
The fossil record is incomplete, therefore evolution is a flawed theory and shouldn’t be taught in schools, or at least should be taught alongside other similarly-unproveable theories like, say, creationism. But this is a conflation of two entirely different standards of proof: a scientific standard, based on the slow but constant growth of a fossil record that goes back millions of years, and a religious standard that can only be based on faith.
The same can be said for the climate change debate. Give somebody an unusually cold day and they’ll say “But how can there be global warming when it’s this cold?” (There’s a typical example of this kind of thinking here.) Climate change is “only a theory,” the detractors say, therefore unproven and therefore flawed and therefore we should throw out all the evidence and keep burning fossil fuels because it’s easy and we like it and whattaya mean there are consequences? Nonsense! Just a theory!
Well then, here’s one for all the deniers out there. I’m going to share something with you, so lean close. You know that thing they say, about how staring at the sun will make you go blind? It’s just a theory. There’s no actual proof. Really, I’ve heard that from, y’know, somewhere. So go on, you know you want to. Step outside. Stare into the glory of God’s brilliant creation.
And lemme know how that goes, okay? Okay.
Any good scientist will tell you that, scientifically speaking, nothing is ever proved. There is nothing in the universe that can be predicted with 100% certainty. My favorite example: we cannot say for sure that the sun will rise tomorrow. We just can’t. And that’s not because of a semantic nit-picking over the fact that the sun doesn’t actually rise, it’s because we can’t be altogether certain that our sun won’t go and explode on us without warning, in which case we’ve all been vaporized and no one will ever see a morning again, ever.
But what we can say is that the probability of the sun rising tomorrow is extremely high. So high that I think it’s safe to say we’re all pretty damn confident that this morning’s sunrise will be followed by another one tomorrow.
So when we talk about something as being proved, what we’re really talking about is probability. The likelihood that, based on a great deal of consistent observation, something will behave as it has behaved in the past. The earth will probably continue to rotate and the sun will probably continue to blaze forth way up there, and there’s no point in worrying about something so unlikely as a supernova.
Which is exactly why proof, or the demand for it, can be used as a lie.
The fossil record is incomplete, therefore evolution is a flawed theory and shouldn’t be taught in schools, or at least should be taught alongside other similarly-unproveable theories like, say, creationism. But this is a conflation of two entirely different standards of proof: a scientific standard, based on the slow but constant growth of a fossil record that goes back millions of years, and a religious standard that can only be based on faith.
The same can be said for the climate change debate. Give somebody an unusually cold day and they’ll say “But how can there be global warming when it’s this cold?” (There’s a typical example of this kind of thinking here.) Climate change is “only a theory,” the detractors say, therefore unproven and therefore flawed and therefore we should throw out all the evidence and keep burning fossil fuels because it’s easy and we like it and whattaya mean there are consequences? Nonsense! Just a theory!
Well then, here’s one for all the deniers out there. I’m going to share something with you, so lean close. You know that thing they say, about how staring at the sun will make you go blind? It’s just a theory. There’s no actual proof. Really, I’ve heard that from, y’know, somewhere. So go on, you know you want to. Step outside. Stare into the glory of God’s brilliant creation.
And lemme know how that goes, okay? Okay.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
The Bank is Not Your Friend
Here’s what they do.
Like millions of Americans, you’re living paycheck to paycheck. You’ve cut corners, you scrimp wherever you can, and you’re getting by. The bills are covered. There’s almost nothing left over, and sometimes things get a little rough when you’ve got a bill due Tuesday but you don’t get paid till Thursday, but still, you’re getting by well enough.
Then the economy changes. Or the markets take a little dive, for reasons that passeth understanding. Or your bank makes a lousy investment and needs to shore up its books from some other direction. Or there’s a southerly wind and a bank executive gets a headcold. Whatever the reason is, something happens. And your bank decides they want more of your money. Here’s what they do.
You’ve got credit cards. Each individual balance is a little high, but nothing dramatic, and you’ve always been able to make the payments, with a little extra thrown in to get the balances down. Slowly. Sloooooowly. But one day you get a notice from the bank that provides your credit card, saying that they’re lowering your credit limit--to an amount just slightly above whatever balance you happen to be carrying that month. Okay, well, that’s annoying, you don’t have any available credit anymore, but it’s not that big a deal.
But here’s what they do.
A month or two passes, and this has now happened to all of your credit cards. And now you get a new notice from the bank. It says that the ratio of your debt to your available credit is way too high. Dangerously high. Why look, you’ve maxed out all your cards! (Yes, that's right, it's your fault.) The only reasonable response, they say, is to raise your interest rate since now you’re such a big risk.
You did nothing. Absolutely nothing. But the banks have manufactured a crisis, and now they’re moving in for the kill. They no longer have to provide you any extra credit, plus they’re making a boatload more money on the same amount of debt you’ve always had. This is simply fantastic. For the bank.
But your month-to-month budget just got a hell of a lot harder to manage. It may even have become impossible, and there’s no fat left to trim. After living honorably your entire life, you’re forced to make an arrangement with the bank, which will generously agree to drop the interest rate again (maybe back to what it was before they raised it), and they'll set a fixed payment plan--but the card will be canceled, and of course this will have to go on your credit report. Which will follow you around for years, so that when your car breaks down and you need a new one, well geez, we can’t give you a decent rate because look what a big risk you are. Or they just won’t let you get the new car at all.
It could get even worse. You might be forced to default. Then collection agencies start harassing you at home at all hours. Lawsuits get filed against you, adding costs and attorney fees to the pile of money they want from you. They file a lien on your future earnings so that a big chunk of everything you make goes to them. Bankruptcy. Foreclosure. People forced out of their homes and onto the streets. And if that sounds melodramatic, it isn’t. It’s happening to thousands of people every year.
“But it doesn’t make sense,” you say. “It just doesn’t make sense for a bank to destroy its customers, that just starves the bank itself, in the long run.” Quite right. It doesn’t make sense.
But big corporations aren’t very good at the long run. They’ve got shareholders, and shareholders are only interested in the short-term. They want positive growth every single damn quarter, and if they don’t get it, the CEO will most definitely hear about it. A lot. Like when his earnings report adds millions to the books but still “disappoints” Wall Street because they were expecting something even higher. So the executives do everything they can in the short term to keep earnings as high as possible, and if that means destroying a couple thousand customers, well, those customers were a bad risk anyway. And besides, it’s a big country and there will always be more people to destroy next quarter.
That’s how they do it.
Like millions of Americans, you’re living paycheck to paycheck. You’ve cut corners, you scrimp wherever you can, and you’re getting by. The bills are covered. There’s almost nothing left over, and sometimes things get a little rough when you’ve got a bill due Tuesday but you don’t get paid till Thursday, but still, you’re getting by well enough.
Then the economy changes. Or the markets take a little dive, for reasons that passeth understanding. Or your bank makes a lousy investment and needs to shore up its books from some other direction. Or there’s a southerly wind and a bank executive gets a headcold. Whatever the reason is, something happens. And your bank decides they want more of your money. Here’s what they do.
You’ve got credit cards. Each individual balance is a little high, but nothing dramatic, and you’ve always been able to make the payments, with a little extra thrown in to get the balances down. Slowly. Sloooooowly. But one day you get a notice from the bank that provides your credit card, saying that they’re lowering your credit limit--to an amount just slightly above whatever balance you happen to be carrying that month. Okay, well, that’s annoying, you don’t have any available credit anymore, but it’s not that big a deal.
But here’s what they do.
A month or two passes, and this has now happened to all of your credit cards. And now you get a new notice from the bank. It says that the ratio of your debt to your available credit is way too high. Dangerously high. Why look, you’ve maxed out all your cards! (Yes, that's right, it's your fault.) The only reasonable response, they say, is to raise your interest rate since now you’re such a big risk.
You did nothing. Absolutely nothing. But the banks have manufactured a crisis, and now they’re moving in for the kill. They no longer have to provide you any extra credit, plus they’re making a boatload more money on the same amount of debt you’ve always had. This is simply fantastic. For the bank.
But your month-to-month budget just got a hell of a lot harder to manage. It may even have become impossible, and there’s no fat left to trim. After living honorably your entire life, you’re forced to make an arrangement with the bank, which will generously agree to drop the interest rate again (maybe back to what it was before they raised it), and they'll set a fixed payment plan--but the card will be canceled, and of course this will have to go on your credit report. Which will follow you around for years, so that when your car breaks down and you need a new one, well geez, we can’t give you a decent rate because look what a big risk you are. Or they just won’t let you get the new car at all.
It could get even worse. You might be forced to default. Then collection agencies start harassing you at home at all hours. Lawsuits get filed against you, adding costs and attorney fees to the pile of money they want from you. They file a lien on your future earnings so that a big chunk of everything you make goes to them. Bankruptcy. Foreclosure. People forced out of their homes and onto the streets. And if that sounds melodramatic, it isn’t. It’s happening to thousands of people every year.
“But it doesn’t make sense,” you say. “It just doesn’t make sense for a bank to destroy its customers, that just starves the bank itself, in the long run.” Quite right. It doesn’t make sense.
But big corporations aren’t very good at the long run. They’ve got shareholders, and shareholders are only interested in the short-term. They want positive growth every single damn quarter, and if they don’t get it, the CEO will most definitely hear about it. A lot. Like when his earnings report adds millions to the books but still “disappoints” Wall Street because they were expecting something even higher. So the executives do everything they can in the short term to keep earnings as high as possible, and if that means destroying a couple thousand customers, well, those customers were a bad risk anyway. And besides, it’s a big country and there will always be more people to destroy next quarter.
That’s how they do it.
Monday, May 24, 2010
The Starving Artist
That damned Van Gogh. Sold only one painting in his lifetime, but now his work commands millions. Exhbitions sell out. There’s a very popular museum dedicated to him in Amsterdam. And every artist, I’m telling you every damn artist of any kind who has ever lived since Van Gogh’s time, has said to her- or himself at one time or other, “I’m starving. Can’t sell a thing. Nobody’s interested. But that’s okay, because I’m the new Van Gogh.”
That way insanity lies. Literally. Look at Van Gogh.
The Starving Artist Myth is a lie twice over: it’s a lie we tell to ourselves, which is bad enough; but it’s also a lie that the established powers like to reinforce, because it benefits them when you feel like you have to come to them on bended knee. If you’re starving, you’re desperate. If you’re desperate, then any time you’ve got a new project to sell, you’ve already got your hand out, you’ve already got desperation in your eyes. Brian Michael Bendis, among others, tells us to “Always be prepared to walk away from a bad deal.” But if you’re a Starving Artist, you don’t dare walk away from any kind of a deal--and with that kind of attitude, it’s a cold certainty that the only deals you’ll be offered will be bad ones.
Once you’ve bought into the myth, then, you find that it’s self-reinforcing, a snake eating its own tail. And the trouble is, you can’t just walk away from all deals altogether, tempting though that may be. Kafka was a typical starving artist, who bought into that way of thinking entirely. He sold very little during his lifetime, and when he died, left instructions with his executor to burn everything he’d written. Kafka, clearly, wrote for himself, and that’s fine so far as it goes—but art without public display is just, let’s face it, aesthetic wanking, and I think we are all grateful that Kafka’s executor decided to ignore his friend’s dying wish. (‘Cause in this rare case, that was some pretty damn good wanking.) (And there is a metaphor that has now been extended way too far....)
There are people like Mark Lipsky who have gone whole-hog for the starving artist mindset as a requirement for creating good art. In his blog he wrote that “commerce has no role – or at least should be the absolute last thought rather than the first, second or tenth – in the independent filmmaking process.” In other words, the only reason Van Gogh’s stuff is any good, the only reason it’s worth millions now and adored worldwide, is that he never compromised by indulging the interests of any potential benefactors he might have gained if he’d just been a little more, y’know, compliant.
(Lipsky, by the way, is an interesting case: he’s someone who came out of the very commercial movie world, having worked on a lot of Eddie Murphy films, from the good to the awful. I suspect that his newfound zeal for ultra-pure indie film is delivered with the passion of the converted, a kind of religious fervor with which one cannot argue. C’est la vie.)
But Lipsky’s line of reasoning ignores another artist named Shakespeare. (To pick only the most prominent example.) Shakespeare was subsidized throughout his entire career, first by Queen Elizabeth’s chamberlain and then by King James directly. It’s also well understood that these subsidies came with certain costs: the reason why Banquo comes off so well in Macbeth is that King James claimed to be descended from, yes, that same Banquo. (In Holinshed’s Chronicles, Shakespeare’s principal source, Banquo is an accomplice of Macbeth’s.) And in his time, Shakespeare was popular and acclaimed, and when he retired he was able to purchase a very nice property back in Stratford, not to mention a coat of arms for the family.
Was Shakespeare necessarily a hack because he compromised? Must we dismiss his work because it doesn’t meet some starving-artist purity test? Hell no.
Let me assert as clearly as I can: selling your work does not make you a sellout. Wanting to sell your work does not make you a bad artist. Developing the marketing skills to sell your work effectively does not, by some weird law of inverse proportion, turn your art into bad art. We’re rich, complicated individuals full of potential, and we can in fact do both without sacrificing a damn thing.
No one can help you if your art is bad art. No one would have cared if the work that Kafka’s executor rescued wasn’t good. In this, Mark Lipsky is right: your first job is to make good, creative, risk-taking art. But I must insist that that is not your exclusive job. And art that never makes it into the public arena is just plain worthless. If you buy into the Starving Artist Myth, you will be depriving yourself of the opportunities you deserve, you will be short-changing the art you pretend to care about, and you will be denying the world of a voice that the world needs to hear. A double-edged lie that produces a triple-edged catastrophe. Banish the Starving Artist from your thinking, get out there and create, then work just as hard to make sure that you can share that creation with as many of the rest of us as you possibly can.
And for god’s sake, have a nice meal now and then. You deserve it.
That way insanity lies. Literally. Look at Van Gogh.
The Starving Artist Myth is a lie twice over: it’s a lie we tell to ourselves, which is bad enough; but it’s also a lie that the established powers like to reinforce, because it benefits them when you feel like you have to come to them on bended knee. If you’re starving, you’re desperate. If you’re desperate, then any time you’ve got a new project to sell, you’ve already got your hand out, you’ve already got desperation in your eyes. Brian Michael Bendis, among others, tells us to “Always be prepared to walk away from a bad deal.” But if you’re a Starving Artist, you don’t dare walk away from any kind of a deal--and with that kind of attitude, it’s a cold certainty that the only deals you’ll be offered will be bad ones.
Once you’ve bought into the myth, then, you find that it’s self-reinforcing, a snake eating its own tail. And the trouble is, you can’t just walk away from all deals altogether, tempting though that may be. Kafka was a typical starving artist, who bought into that way of thinking entirely. He sold very little during his lifetime, and when he died, left instructions with his executor to burn everything he’d written. Kafka, clearly, wrote for himself, and that’s fine so far as it goes—but art without public display is just, let’s face it, aesthetic wanking, and I think we are all grateful that Kafka’s executor decided to ignore his friend’s dying wish. (‘Cause in this rare case, that was some pretty damn good wanking.) (And there is a metaphor that has now been extended way too far....)
There are people like Mark Lipsky who have gone whole-hog for the starving artist mindset as a requirement for creating good art. In his blog he wrote that “commerce has no role – or at least should be the absolute last thought rather than the first, second or tenth – in the independent filmmaking process.” In other words, the only reason Van Gogh’s stuff is any good, the only reason it’s worth millions now and adored worldwide, is that he never compromised by indulging the interests of any potential benefactors he might have gained if he’d just been a little more, y’know, compliant.
(Lipsky, by the way, is an interesting case: he’s someone who came out of the very commercial movie world, having worked on a lot of Eddie Murphy films, from the good to the awful. I suspect that his newfound zeal for ultra-pure indie film is delivered with the passion of the converted, a kind of religious fervor with which one cannot argue. C’est la vie.)
But Lipsky’s line of reasoning ignores another artist named Shakespeare. (To pick only the most prominent example.) Shakespeare was subsidized throughout his entire career, first by Queen Elizabeth’s chamberlain and then by King James directly. It’s also well understood that these subsidies came with certain costs: the reason why Banquo comes off so well in Macbeth is that King James claimed to be descended from, yes, that same Banquo. (In Holinshed’s Chronicles, Shakespeare’s principal source, Banquo is an accomplice of Macbeth’s.) And in his time, Shakespeare was popular and acclaimed, and when he retired he was able to purchase a very nice property back in Stratford, not to mention a coat of arms for the family.
Was Shakespeare necessarily a hack because he compromised? Must we dismiss his work because it doesn’t meet some starving-artist purity test? Hell no.
Let me assert as clearly as I can: selling your work does not make you a sellout. Wanting to sell your work does not make you a bad artist. Developing the marketing skills to sell your work effectively does not, by some weird law of inverse proportion, turn your art into bad art. We’re rich, complicated individuals full of potential, and we can in fact do both without sacrificing a damn thing.
No one can help you if your art is bad art. No one would have cared if the work that Kafka’s executor rescued wasn’t good. In this, Mark Lipsky is right: your first job is to make good, creative, risk-taking art. But I must insist that that is not your exclusive job. And art that never makes it into the public arena is just plain worthless. If you buy into the Starving Artist Myth, you will be depriving yourself of the opportunities you deserve, you will be short-changing the art you pretend to care about, and you will be denying the world of a voice that the world needs to hear. A double-edged lie that produces a triple-edged catastrophe. Banish the Starving Artist from your thinking, get out there and create, then work just as hard to make sure that you can share that creation with as many of the rest of us as you possibly can.
And for god’s sake, have a nice meal now and then. You deserve it.
Friday, May 21, 2010
That One Can Smile, and Smile, and Be a Villain
It’s from Hamlet, ranting about his family in the first act:
There’s something rotten in the state of California, and it’s called Proposition 16. And the people behind it, they smile and smile and tell you right to your face that this measure will give you more control over how the government spends your money, but in fact it’s really about stripping you of control and making sure that the state’s utility companies can retain their monopoly power.
Here’s the Official Summary provided to voters:
And here’s how Pacific Gas & Electric, which has provided all of the money funding the pro-16 effort, lies to you:
Their website is called www.taxpayersrighttovote.com. And on the home page, you are presented with this sensible and reassuring message:
First of all, local governments are not seeking to “take over private electric businesses,” either with or without letting local voters voice their opinions. The program in question is called Community Choice Aggregation, and it aims to provide competition in markets where one of the big public utilities has a monopoly. Customers may already choose, as individuals, whether they want to participate in the CCA or not, which sounds an awful lot like the free market at work. There’s a good summary of the program, as it was implemented in San Francisco, here.
So that’s one lie, right up front. An outright lie, a flat-out falsehood. But the bulk of their friendly message, their whole “we’re spending these millions of dollars to look out for you” campaign, turns on the notion that “voters deserve the right to have the final say about how our money is spent.” And ordinarily, I would consider voting for such a measure because yeah, if public money is going to be spent, then the public should have a voice in that decision.
But the thing they simply don’t mention at all on their home page, is in the first sentence of the official summary above: that any vote on a CCA program would require a two-thirds majority to pass.
Think about it. 66.6% percent of the voters would have to agree before any CCA program could go forward, anywhere, any time, every time. This is the entire thrust of Proposition 16, and how it actually denies choice to voters: because Pacific Gas & Electric knows damn well that if you required a two-thirds vote on everything, you couldn’t get a post office named for Mother Teresa.
PG&E doesn’t get to a discussion of this element of the measure until you’re three layers deep in the site, and here’s what they finally say, buried in the middle of the page:
So because everybody else is doing it, then it’s fine. But I think we’re all agreed that California has some devastating problems, and one of them is the two-thirds-approval requirement for all statewide budgets and any proposed tax increases. This means that minority Republicans have been able to block dozens of budget and tax initiatives at the legislative level, which is why so many of them go out to voters who are more easily swindled. I’ve written before about this failed attempt at direct democracy in California, so I won’t rehash the argument. But when a state is riding the road to ruin because of policies already in place, telling you that a measure should pass because it’s just like other measures already in place, that’s just pernicious and evil.
And that’s how they really lie to you. They tell you it’s about making sure you have choice, while rigging the system so that no one has any choice but to keep PG&E, or Southern California Gas, as their exclusive energy provider. No competition for lower rates, no incentive to produce clean energy, all the hideous faults of a monopoly system and none of the advantages of free-market competition.
O villain, villain, smiling, damnèd villain!
RESOURCES: There’s a good, thorough summary of just why Prop 16 is “the worst measure on the June ballot" here, and a more balanced summary of the arguments at a lovely site called Ballotpedia, here.
O most pernicious woman!
O villain, villain, smiling, damnèd villain!
My tables--mete it is I set it down
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain--
At least I am sure it may be so in Denmark.
There’s something rotten in the state of California, and it’s called Proposition 16. And the people behind it, they smile and smile and tell you right to your face that this measure will give you more control over how the government spends your money, but in fact it’s really about stripping you of control and making sure that the state’s utility companies can retain their monopoly power.
Here’s the Official Summary provided to voters:
Official summary: Requires two-thirds voter approval before local governments provide electricity service to new customers or establish a community choice electricity program using public funds or bonds.
And here’s how Pacific Gas & Electric, which has provided all of the money funding the pro-16 effort, lies to you:
Their website is called www.taxpayersrighttovote.com. And on the home page, you are presented with this sensible and reassuring message:
Right now local governments in California can spend public money or incur public debt to take over private electric businesses without letting local voters have the final say. That's why California needs Prop. 16. In tough economic times like these, voters deserve the right to have the final say about how our money is spent. Learn more about Prop 16 and join us to stand up for the Taxpayers Right to Vote - Yes on Prop 16.
First of all, local governments are not seeking to “take over private electric businesses,” either with or without letting local voters voice their opinions. The program in question is called Community Choice Aggregation, and it aims to provide competition in markets where one of the big public utilities has a monopoly. Customers may already choose, as individuals, whether they want to participate in the CCA or not, which sounds an awful lot like the free market at work. There’s a good summary of the program, as it was implemented in San Francisco, here.
So that’s one lie, right up front. An outright lie, a flat-out falsehood. But the bulk of their friendly message, their whole “we’re spending these millions of dollars to look out for you” campaign, turns on the notion that “voters deserve the right to have the final say about how our money is spent.” And ordinarily, I would consider voting for such a measure because yeah, if public money is going to be spent, then the public should have a voice in that decision.
But the thing they simply don’t mention at all on their home page, is in the first sentence of the official summary above: that any vote on a CCA program would require a two-thirds majority to pass.
Think about it. 66.6% percent of the voters would have to agree before any CCA program could go forward, anywhere, any time, every time. This is the entire thrust of Proposition 16, and how it actually denies choice to voters: because Pacific Gas & Electric knows damn well that if you required a two-thirds vote on everything, you couldn’t get a post office named for Mother Teresa.
PG&E doesn’t get to a discussion of this element of the measure until you’re three layers deep in the site, and here’s what they finally say, buried in the middle of the page:
Two-thirds voter approval is the standard for local General Obligation bonds for non-school related infrastructure and for local special taxes, both of which put taxpayers on the hook. Since 2002, California voters have given 2/3 voter approval to hundreds of important local projects with two-thirds majorities.
So because everybody else is doing it, then it’s fine. But I think we’re all agreed that California has some devastating problems, and one of them is the two-thirds-approval requirement for all statewide budgets and any proposed tax increases. This means that minority Republicans have been able to block dozens of budget and tax initiatives at the legislative level, which is why so many of them go out to voters who are more easily swindled. I’ve written before about this failed attempt at direct democracy in California, so I won’t rehash the argument. But when a state is riding the road to ruin because of policies already in place, telling you that a measure should pass because it’s just like other measures already in place, that’s just pernicious and evil.
And that’s how they really lie to you. They tell you it’s about making sure you have choice, while rigging the system so that no one has any choice but to keep PG&E, or Southern California Gas, as their exclusive energy provider. No competition for lower rates, no incentive to produce clean energy, all the hideous faults of a monopoly system and none of the advantages of free-market competition.
O villain, villain, smiling, damnèd villain!
RESOURCES: There’s a good, thorough summary of just why Prop 16 is “the worst measure on the June ballot" here, and a more balanced summary of the arguments at a lovely site called Ballotpedia, here.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
The First Journey Down the Rabbit-Hole
While writing my first novel I discovered my theme. Proust asserts that every writer only really has one theme, and every new work is a renewed attempt to express that theme, or a piece of it, better than the last work did. (If I could find the quote I would provide it, but those books are huge.) And so, while I was writing a novel that turned out to be about the way our lives are like stories that we tell to ourselves, I realized that this is the idea I will probably explore for my entire life. In my newest work, a play based on the infamous cadaver synod, I examine the ways institutions lie to us, but how the power of a good example, a good story, even if it’s just propaganda, can still transcend its manipulative origins.
Segue to this new blog.
As you can guess from the title, it will focus on the lies we’re told, and how those lies are used to exploit us. But from time to time I hope to also tell the other story, about how we’re able to, let’s just say, take a sad song and make it better. I’ll try to keep it light and entertaining, to restrain the impulse toward outrage that can make an outrageous subject seem muddy and clouded, thereby weakening its impact. But when anger is called for, angry I will be.
And now, a first taste of the kinds of things I’ll be dealing with:
Gift Cards and Calling Cards
For several years, my dearly-departed grandfather was fond of giving me, for Christmas, gift cards to restaurants I never visit. He didn’t know I never go to Outback Steakhouse or Chili’s, and there’s nothing wrong with them, they’re just not the sorts of places I happen to go. In his mind I’m sure he figured that they were big chains, very popular, and surely I would have occasion to enjoy a nice meal sometime, and to think of him when I did.
But since I never go to those restaurants, the gift cards sat in a pile and languished. The money he spent was wasted, his good intentions squandered.
The restaurants love this.
Because it’s free money for them. Those gift cards sat in a pile for three, four, five years before I discovered cardpool.com and got cash for them. (And, presumably, they were then bought by someone who was actively seeking cards for those exact restaurants. Win-win, at last.) Five years of money that Outback Steakhouse was able to use, and collect interest on, without providing any kind of service whatsoever. Remember, too, that the value of a gift card actually decreases over time.
Yes, the value of the card is static: a $25 gift card is always worth $25. But if a burger cost $7.95 in 2009, then a group of three people could each have a burger and the whole meal would fit on one card. But if the cost goes up to $8.95 a year later, now they would have to add cash on top of the gift card amount. The card is the same, but what it will buy has decreased. So if the card sits in a pile for a year and then you go out to dinner, you’re still getting less than you would have when the card was new. Advantage: the restaurant. Disadvantage: you.
And if the card expires, as some do? Or if you simply never go, and you never discover a service like cardpool.com? Twenty-five bucks, multiplied by the hundreds or thousands of people like yourself. A boatload of free money to these places, for which they have provided absolutely nothing.
Calling cards are even worse.
The existence of these pernicious instruments has, thankfully, waned with the rise of the cellphone. But remember that there are prepaid cellular cards as well, which operate on the same principle: you prepay a set amount onto a card, then use that card to make local or, more often, long-distance calls. It was presented to the public as a great way for college students to stay in touch with home, without being saddled with big phone bills. Something that keeps families connected, what could possibly be wrong with that?
No one can possibly make a phone call that costs exactly $10. That’s what’s wrong with that.
If our hypothetical student makes a call that goes over the face amount of the card, his call might be cut off, or he might get charged for the overage on his bill. Neither is great, but whatever. But what the phone company loves, and hopes you’ll do a lot, is to make a call that ends up costing $9.78.
Because with just 22 cents left on the card, it’s almost certain that you will throw it away. A 22-cent loss is no big deal to you—but again, multiply it. Tens of thousands of people throwing away 5 cents, 22 cents, even a dollar or two. Free money to the phone companies, who have provided nothing in exchange. To follow our example to its conclusion, if 10,000 people leave exactly 22 cents on their respective cards, that adds up to $2,200 for the phone company. And I’m sure the number of cards out there vastly exceeds 10,000.
But you bought the card because they advertised it with warm rosy tones, talking about how you’ll be able to keep in touch with Johnny now that he’s gone off to school. When, in fact, they’re secretly hoping that Johnny will get so involved in school that he won’t call at all, that he’ll forget he has that stupid card in the first place. And if that means that your family disintegrates a little in the process, well, that’s fine—so long as they can get your free money.
There’s no such thing as a free lunch? The hell there ain’t. Trouble is, you’re never invited--rather, you’re the one providing it.
Segue to this new blog.
As you can guess from the title, it will focus on the lies we’re told, and how those lies are used to exploit us. But from time to time I hope to also tell the other story, about how we’re able to, let’s just say, take a sad song and make it better. I’ll try to keep it light and entertaining, to restrain the impulse toward outrage that can make an outrageous subject seem muddy and clouded, thereby weakening its impact. But when anger is called for, angry I will be.
And now, a first taste of the kinds of things I’ll be dealing with:
Gift Cards and Calling Cards
For several years, my dearly-departed grandfather was fond of giving me, for Christmas, gift cards to restaurants I never visit. He didn’t know I never go to Outback Steakhouse or Chili’s, and there’s nothing wrong with them, they’re just not the sorts of places I happen to go. In his mind I’m sure he figured that they were big chains, very popular, and surely I would have occasion to enjoy a nice meal sometime, and to think of him when I did.
But since I never go to those restaurants, the gift cards sat in a pile and languished. The money he spent was wasted, his good intentions squandered.
The restaurants love this.
Because it’s free money for them. Those gift cards sat in a pile for three, four, five years before I discovered cardpool.com and got cash for them. (And, presumably, they were then bought by someone who was actively seeking cards for those exact restaurants. Win-win, at last.) Five years of money that Outback Steakhouse was able to use, and collect interest on, without providing any kind of service whatsoever. Remember, too, that the value of a gift card actually decreases over time.
Yes, the value of the card is static: a $25 gift card is always worth $25. But if a burger cost $7.95 in 2009, then a group of three people could each have a burger and the whole meal would fit on one card. But if the cost goes up to $8.95 a year later, now they would have to add cash on top of the gift card amount. The card is the same, but what it will buy has decreased. So if the card sits in a pile for a year and then you go out to dinner, you’re still getting less than you would have when the card was new. Advantage: the restaurant. Disadvantage: you.
And if the card expires, as some do? Or if you simply never go, and you never discover a service like cardpool.com? Twenty-five bucks, multiplied by the hundreds or thousands of people like yourself. A boatload of free money to these places, for which they have provided absolutely nothing.
Calling cards are even worse.
The existence of these pernicious instruments has, thankfully, waned with the rise of the cellphone. But remember that there are prepaid cellular cards as well, which operate on the same principle: you prepay a set amount onto a card, then use that card to make local or, more often, long-distance calls. It was presented to the public as a great way for college students to stay in touch with home, without being saddled with big phone bills. Something that keeps families connected, what could possibly be wrong with that?
No one can possibly make a phone call that costs exactly $10. That’s what’s wrong with that.
If our hypothetical student makes a call that goes over the face amount of the card, his call might be cut off, or he might get charged for the overage on his bill. Neither is great, but whatever. But what the phone company loves, and hopes you’ll do a lot, is to make a call that ends up costing $9.78.
Because with just 22 cents left on the card, it’s almost certain that you will throw it away. A 22-cent loss is no big deal to you—but again, multiply it. Tens of thousands of people throwing away 5 cents, 22 cents, even a dollar or two. Free money to the phone companies, who have provided nothing in exchange. To follow our example to its conclusion, if 10,000 people leave exactly 22 cents on their respective cards, that adds up to $2,200 for the phone company. And I’m sure the number of cards out there vastly exceeds 10,000.
But you bought the card because they advertised it with warm rosy tones, talking about how you’ll be able to keep in touch with Johnny now that he’s gone off to school. When, in fact, they’re secretly hoping that Johnny will get so involved in school that he won’t call at all, that he’ll forget he has that stupid card in the first place. And if that means that your family disintegrates a little in the process, well, that’s fine—so long as they can get your free money.
There’s no such thing as a free lunch? The hell there ain’t. Trouble is, you’re never invited--rather, you’re the one providing it.
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